Working With An External Sequencer - Kurzweil PC88 A Step By Step Manual

PC88 Made Easy

23. Working With an External Sequencer

1. To state the obvious, you need to have MIDI cables going from the Out of the PC88 to
the In of the sequencer or MIDI interface, and the In of the PC88 hooked to the Out of
the sequencer.
2a. The first thing you need to do when using ANY keyboard hooked to ANY external
sequencer is to turn Local Control Off. This is to avoid causing a MIDI loop problem. If
the Patch Thru function of the sequencer (sometimes referred to as Soft Thru or Echo) is
turned on, the sequencer takes all information coming into the MIDI In port and spits it
back out the MIDI Out port on whatever MIDI channel is assigned to the currently record
enabled track.
If you donÕt turn Local Control Off, the note gets played twice - once by the PC88
playing itself and once by the note going out to the sequencer and coming back. By
turning Local Control Off, the keyboard only sends data out the MIDI Out port, and not
to itself. So the signal j ust goes to the sequencer and is sent back, and does not get
played twice.
Some software sequencers (Cakewalk is one example) will send the Local Control Off
message automatically when you boot up the program. If you program doesnÕt do this,
you will need to do it yourself.
There are two ways you can turn Local Control Off. The first and easiest way is to press
the Global button, then set the Local Control parameter to Off.
2b. The second method of turning Local Control Off actually involves creating a very
simple Setup. Start from Setup #127 Default Setup. Press the MIDI Transmit button and
select a MIDI Channel (it really doesnÕt matter which one, but channel 1 is a logical
choice). Press the >> button. Set the Destination to MIDI (instead of Local+MIDI).
Name and Save the Setup - you might want to name it something Like Local Off or Seq.
Control, etc.
Now you have a single zone setup that only sends data out of the MIDI Out port -
which gives you the same thing as turning Local Control Off and playing in Internal
Voices mode.
There are several reasons why you may want to use this second method. First of all,
Local Control resets back to On each time you power up the PC88. The second reason is
that you can edit this Setup to assign the controllers to specific values you might want to
use when sequencing.
The final reason has to do with selecting programs. Typically the best way to choose the
individual programs you want for each track is to choose them in your sequencer. If you
have a patch list for the PC88, you can call up the programs by name, otherwise you can
put the program and bank change messages in the track.
However some people like to call up the sounds on the instrument itself. The MIDI
Receive button can be used to call up different programs on different MIDI channels. But
the way the PC88 is designed, when you turn Local Control Off globally, it wonÕt send
the program changes internally to the MIDI Channel, even in the MIDI Receive menu. So
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