Midi accordion malfunction

[JerryPH]

JOMO, very early implementations of MIDI only had the capacity for 8 simultaneous notes, 4 on the left and 4 on the right. You hitting the 5 note chord may simply be exceeding the capacity of this board.

ALAN, GET WELL SOON!!!

 

[Ventura]

JOMO, very early implementations of MIDI only had the capacity for 8 simultaneous notes, 4 on the left and 4 on the right. You hitting the 5 note chord may simply be exceeding the capacity of this board.

ALAN, GET WELL SOON!!!

interesting.. i never heard or experienced that before

MIDI note limits were always based on the polyphony of the sound module
as far as my experience goes

and i am going waaaaaay back to Thunder Bay retrofit add on boards and such
while my first MIDI Synths were DW8000 and AlphaJuno and first controller was
an MX73 from AKAI.. even Juno had 8 note polyphony but no limits as controller

 

[Alan Sharkis]

JOMO, very early implementations of MIDI only had the capacity for 8 simultaneous notes, 4 on the left and 4 on the right. You hitting the 5 note chord may simply be exceeding the capacity of this board.

ALAN, GET WELL SOON!!!

Thanks, Jerry. I’m working on it!

 

[TonyChicago]

Midern systems, and I can think of three or four manufacturers, don’t use key contacts: they mostly use Hall-Effect triggerng. The one exception that I know of is Cavagnolo, which uses an optical system. Key contacts proved to be unreliable, unless the contacts are gold-plated. I had a SEM Ciao Reedless for a while and its detectors were Hall Effect. I know because one got put of adjustment. But my dealer had already shown how to fix it, and I did. The midi was by Logic System. My current acoustic is an Armoniosa, made by Cooperfisa. Its midi and mikes were manufactured by and installed by Master Production of Castelfidardo. It’s also a Hall-Effect system, although to m eye, it’s more rugged than the Logic System in the Ciao. Other makers of midi for accordions and reedless accordions include MusicTech, Limex and Hey-Di (which could be Logic System.) I also have an AxE-cord which is made by Master Productions of Castelfidardo and sold under a different name in Europe, and a Roland FR-4x (please don’t ask me how midi is triggered in the Rolaand; I don’t know and I don’t care, but I suspect that’s a mechanical system .)

Alan,

What did you think of the SEM Ciao overall?

Tony

 

[Alan Sharkis]

Alan,

What did you think of the SEM Ciao overall?

Tony

It was a nice instrument in several regards. It was very light weight, around fourteen pounds. When it powered up, the treble sound was one of the accordion sounds, the bass was string bass and the chords were acoustic guitar. Of course, any of those could be changed to one of 400 sounds. The bellows were much lighter than an acoustic’s bellows, but decent bellows shakes were possible.

However, after a year or two, it developed a problem in the bass. If you held a bass button down for anything but a very short time, it seemed like the “reeds” associated with that button would drop out one-by-one. This turned out to be a design problem and nobody was willing to fix it.

I have also heard of problems developing with thevbellows pressure transducer in some SEM Ciaos.

 

[TonyChicago]

It was a nice instrument in several regards. It was very light weight, around fourteen pounds. When it powered up, the treble sound was one of the accordion sounds, the bass was string bass and the chords were acoustic guitar. Of course, any of those could be changed to one of 400 sounds. The bellows were much lighter than an acoustic’s bellows, but decent bellows shakes were possible.

However, after a year or two, it developed a problem in the bass. If you held a bass button down for anything but a very short time, it seemed like the “reeds” associated with that button would drop out one-by-one. This turned out to be a design problem and nobody was willing to fix it.

I have also heard of problems developing with thevbellows pressure transducer in some SEM Ciaos.

Thanks for the info. I no nothing of reedless accordions, nor have I ever played one. I'm guessing you could output to a midi unit and bypass the internal sounds? Would that have been a workaround for your bass issue or no? I'm just really curious about those types of units (reedless). I'm not really sold on them yet.

Thank you

 

[Chris Laarman]

1) If you're curious, you can find videos on YouTube, and manuals on websites of vendors. ;-)

2) When I became aware that I might want a button accordion alongside my piano accordion, I ran into the matter of right-hand button arrangement. By buying a Roland FR-1xb instead of a far cheaper acoustic accordion, I've got the option to choose between several button arrangements. Your situation may well vary from mine.

 

[TonyChicago]

1) If you're curious, you can find videos on YouTube, and manuals on websites of vendors. ;-)

2) When I became aware that I might want a button accordion alongside my piano accordion, I ran into the matter of right-hand button arrangement. By buying a Roland FR-1xb instead of a far cheaper acoustic accordion, I've got the option to choose between several button arrangements. Your situation may well vary from mine.

I simply do not like the sounds the Roland produces in regards to accordion and some other instruments. That's the issue I have.

 

[Alan Sharkis]

Thanks for the info. I no nothing of reedless accordions, nor have I ever played one. I'm guessing you could output to a midi unit and bypass the internal sounds? Would that have been a workaround for your bass issue or no? I'm just really curious about those types of units (reedless). I'm not really sold on them yet.

Thank you

The problem might have been solved as you described, but at the time I was taking lessons, and schlepping extra gear would have been inconvenient.

Just curious: have you tried any reedless accordions?

 

[Alan Sharkis]

I simply do not like the sounds the Roland produces in regards to accordion and some other instruments. That's the issue I have.

Here’s the interesting thingc about Roland sounds, particularly accordion sounds. They can be edited. On the FR-8x, it’s possible to do some editing right on the accordion itself, and on both the FR-8x and the FR-4x there is editor software to use on a computer. Every single “reed” can be tweaked.

 

[TonyChicago]

The problem might have been solved as you described, but at the time I was taking lessons, and schlepping extra gear would have been inconvenient.

Just curious: have you tried any reedless accordions?

The problem might have been solved as you described, but at the time I was taking lessons, and schlepping extra gear would have been inconvenient.

Just curious: have you tried any reedless accordions?

No, I have never tried a reedless unit. I do have a midi accordion but haven't used the midi in many years.

 

[TonyChicago]

Here’s the interesting thingc about Roland sounds, particularly accordion sounds. They can be edited. On the FR-8x, it’s possible to do some editing right on the accordion itself, and on both the FR-8x and the FR-4x there is editor software to use on a computer. Every single “reed” can be tweaked.

I'm sure you can tweak it. Do they use samples?

 

[Ventura]

sampling is old technology in synth type products

computers and studios took over the sampling mantle when
computing power and memory gave them domination

a couple black box devices were tried so live musicians could
have sampling in a simple typically accessible format, but they
had marginal market share.. i liked the PEAVEY best

so now sound engines have complex models based on taking the
best waveforms and imposing real world type motion over time
the way instruments would act naturally on their sounds

Roland was the first i believe to marry samples with synth in a hybrid
tone generator design that was neither a sampler type product nor a
pure synth