Yamaha Mu100r

Well all messing about with the Roland PMA-5, stirred up my interest in the whole GS/XG synth era. When computers had'nt reached the point where they could even play back midi files properly let alone with any quality.
To get any musical results, hardware was necessary, and to fill this demand, Roland and Yamaha entered into an arms race with two fairly compatible tightly defined specs for midi playback- XG and GS.
Apart from the PMA-5 Ive never had access to an advanced GS or XG machine. While I on a computer I have dabbled with various peices of software with good results, felt the urge to check out a XG box.
Enter the Yamaha MU100r, a monster XG module with capacity for two of Yamahas PLG synth daughter boards.
Currently I have VL and AN boards installed. The VH harmoniser board I swapped out for the AN.

Editors for the Roland PMA-5

There were quite a few applications created for the Sound Canvas range of products over the years. Many of these are getting hard to find, but so far I've found a couple that are useful.

GS ADVANCED EDITOR 4.0.

I believe this was Rolands offical editor for the SC55 and SC88 series. Its quite hard to find online, fom memory I found an old dead lnk and retrived it using www.archive.org. Had a look last night, but still can't find where I found it.
Anyway GSAE is the most complete editor for the PMA-5 I have found. Other than it not having all of the correct patch name listed, because its was intended for the SC55, it gives access to the entire sound engine.
Its biggest limitation is that the interface uses numerical settings for everything. Its a very precise way of working, but it feels like using Excel.

Getting the PMA5 Conversion Software to run on Windows XP

I've had sucess in getting Rolands PMA-5 Conversion software to run on Windows XP. This is very useful, as this software is the only way to cleanly transfer files in and out of the PMA-5. Ive seen a couple of reports that recording track by track into a DAW creates a fair bit of unwanted data.

The software consisted of two floppy disks. These are availible from a couple of the Yahoo PMA-5 groups. One disk has the conversion software, while the other has a windows 95 serial driver and aditional style patterns for trafwering to the PMA-5.

The conversion software must be loaded from the "A" drive. Which is fine on a machine with a floppy drive, but will require creating a virtual "A" drive on most current floppyless windows machines.

Running the installer and program under the windows 95 compatibility layer is also neccesary to get it running under XP. This is accessed in the properties box of the .exe files.

Roland PMA-5 Drum Editing

Now that all the availible voice editing pamaters have been assigned to the Keystation, its time to move to the drum voices.

The parameters availible for drum editing are quite limited in comparison to the voice settings. Drum editing is different from voice editing in that each drum sound can be edited individually, basically key by key over the 61 keys that make up a drumkit. There are no filter or envelope settings, although this is typical for many Roland drum modules.
As well as being able to edit each drum instrument individually, the general midi controllers that apply to normal voice programming are still availible, but they apply to the entire drumkit as a whole.
CC1 Modulation- Not effective?
CC5 Portomento Time- ?
CC7 Volume- Sets volume limit of entire kit
CC10 Pan- Useful for extreme panning effects?
CC11 Expression- Useful
CC64 Hold- Drum instrumenst do not sustain
CC65 Porto On/Off
CC66 Sostenuto
CC67 Soft
CC84 Porto Control
CC91 Reverb Send
CC93 Chorus Send
NRPN
These are the commands that allow individual drum instruments to be edited
Coarse Pitch
Volume
Pan Random
Reverb Send
Chorus Send

Laying Out Controllers on a Keystation III

Now the middle row if the group B controllers is where I usually put pitch and LFO related controllers.



GROUP B Second Row

All controllers set to Global Channel 0

B18 CC129 Coarse Tune

B19 CC130 Fine Tune

B20 CC128 MSB 0 LSB 0 Pitch Bend Sensitivity 0-24 semitones. Default value 2 Min val. 0. Max val. 24.

B21 CC141 MSB 0 LSB 2 Master Coarse Tuning +/- 24 Semitones Min. val 24. Max val. 84

B22 Master Fine MSB 0 LSB 1

B23 CC16 System Controller 1

B24 CC17 System Controller 2

B25 CC131 Channel Aftertouch



The three rotaries B23 - B24 cover the two system controllers and aftertouch. These are used as modulation sources along with the pitch and mod wheels, and polyphonic aftertouch. The modulation matrix however, can only be activated and edited by sysex, which is beyond the keystation. A future project for the BCR2000 me thinks. But I'll park them here till I get around to them.

Third Row

All controllers set to global channel 0
B10 CC5 Portomento Speed
B11 CC84 Portomento Control

B12 CC1 Modulation

B13 CC7 Volume

B14 CC11 Expression

B15 CC10 Pan

B16 CC91 Reverb Send

B17 CC93 Chorus Send



I like generally to place portomento, panning and effects controllers on the bottom row of group B.
The modulation, pitch and expression controllers are here only, because they are the most useful controllers out of whats left. I will need to do some more experimentation, to see if there is a more useful function for these. Prehaps a set of the vibrato controllers with the values limited to +2/-2 in value to try and introduce some "analogue wobble" to synth type waves. Although, the PMA's sine wave only LFO's may limit this.

Laying Out Group Controllers on a Keystation II

Group B Controllers

Righto, now onward to group B; 24 rotary knobs, and 8 buttons. This is where the main sound shaping will take place.

Being able to load the whole 32 controllers in from one of the 10 presets stored in the Keystation opens up a possibile workflow. By creating several presets for different tasks and loading group B encoders for each step, I should be able to push the PMA5 to its limits.

The three preset banks that occur to me are;

Voice editing

Drum Voice Editing

Mixing when used with an external sequencer



GROUP B Bank 1 VOICE EDITING

Upper Row of Rotary Controllers (left to right)

All controllers set to global channel 0

B26 Filter Cutoff

B27 Filter Resonance

B28 Vibrato Delay
B29 Attack (filter & amp)

B30 Decay (filter & amp)

B31 Release (filter & amp)

B32 Vibrato Depth

B33 Vibrato Rate

The eight rotary knobs along the top row are the easiest to find and manipulate, for my fingers. So this is where I tend to put the most useful controllers- usually filters to the left and envelopes to the right.

First up, the filter controls; cutoff, resonance and vibrato delay. While only having one filter type is a bummer, at least Roland included resonance, which was more than some manufacterers were doing in the early nineties, which is when the Sound Canvas range was spawned.

The Vibrato delay deserves special mention. On the face of it I would expect vibrato delay to delay the onset of pitch vibrato, specified by the vibrato depth and rate controllers. Well it low settings it might, but its main effect seems to be on thev filter. If I had to rename it, I would label it "filter chorus". It gives a fairly sparse filter section a valueble boost.

Following that is the attack, decay and release controllers for the filter and amplifier envelope. That these share a single envelope , is probably the biggest limitation of this synth engine.

On the right I'll park the two remaining vibrato controllers- rate and depth. However nothing can wreck a cool solo line faster than yanking a lfo controller by mistake. These two are probationary.

Laying Out Midi Controllers on a Keystation Pro

With all those buttons and knobs- 55, the Keystation initially seems to be capable of simulataneously controlling every parameter possible. However even a fairly basic unit like a PMA5 will use them all up fairly quickly.

A useful feature of M-Audios design is the three controller groups- A, B and C. Each group represents a different type of controller on the Keystation.

Group A comprises mod and pitch wheels, the five buttons above them and three pedals. These controllers are probably best allocated to live proformance controllers such as sustain, and transport duties for controlling modules and software. One feature of this group is that they can be allocated individually to each of the four layers, and can even have differing controllers for each layer. I have'nt grasped yet what to do with that feature, but its on the list.

So I'll start by allocating these controllers to group A



The Two Wheels

Pitch Bend - CC140 (special keystation CC number

Modulation- CC1

The Five Buttons

(left to right)

Mono/Poly- CC126 Mono on toggling to CC127 Poly on

Portomento On/Off- CC65

Soft- CC67 I have'nt noticed any great effect from this as yet.

Sostenuto- CC66 Not quite sure what this does, something about sustaining only the notes active at the time its engaged, rather than all incoming notes, which is sustain

Sustain- CC65 I'm not great with pedals, so here's a useful position to put this.