Roland Fr1X as Midi controller

[nikofou]

Hello ! i am relatively new to this forum and i must say i am amazed by the discussions going on! To get to the point, i have been working with my Roland FR1X accordion for some months now , and i am trying to get better sounds especially for the keyboard side. So i thought why not use it as a midi controller ( excuse me if the terminology is not exact) . Although i did connect my accordion via the usb b cable to my mac, my mac keeps recognizing only one midi input channel. So i cannot separate the bass side from the treble side. Has anyone come accross this again ? Is there a solution to this?
Thanks in advance!
Nikos.

 

[knobby]

Hi Nikos,
I had a Roland FR1 for a while (forerunner to your FR1X) and it was the same. Maybe that's something carried over to the FR1X.

 

[dak]

Hello ! i am relatively new to this forum and i must say i am amazed by the discussions going on! To get to the point, i have been working with my Roland FR1X accordion for some months now , and i am trying to get better sounds especially for the keyboard side. So i thought why not use it as a midi controller ( excuse me if the terminology is not exact) . Although i did connect my accordion via the usb b cable to my mac, my mac keeps recognizing only one midi input channel. So i cannot separate the bass side from the treble side. Has anyone come accross this again ? Is there a solution to this?
Thanks in advance!
Nikos.

Hi Nikos,
I had a Roland FR1 for a while (forerunner to your FR1X) and it was the same. Maybe that's something carried over to the FR1X.

I think both of you may be confusing MIDI channels with MIDI ports or with instrument patches. There is, of course, just one physical connection corresponding to one MIDI port. And many expanders will just use a standard piano patch by default for all channels unless overridden manually or by MIDI commands. But I am most certainly using my FR-1b quite successfully on multiple channels, and you cannot even avoid using multiple channels.

The FR-1 is rather inflexible in its channel assignments: it has two modes: "Roland" which puts treble on MIDI channel #1, basses on #2, and chords on #3, and "Others" which has treble on #1, chords on #2, and basses on #3.

Note that when talking about MIDI channels in words, they are numbered #1 to #16 while in programming, the numbers (and bit patterns) typically run from 0 to 15.

Also note that those assignments only hold for accordion sounds and for Stradella bass.

Orchestral or organ treble patches take channel #4, orchestral basses take #5, orchestral chords take #6, drums take #10.

When using the FR-1b as a bass accordion (requires firmware 2.0.0 or later, assuming there is a later firmware), it sends/receives on channel #2 (I haven't checked but assume that in "Other" channel mode, this would be #3). The manual does not state a different channel when using bass accordion modus with orchestral patches; again I haven't checked but would suspect that this would use #5.

Free bass is supposed to use #2, orchestral free bass #7.
For typical arranger work, you'll likely keep with the accordion sound settings as those use the channels most commonly employed in connection with arrangers.

 

[Airy]

my mac keeps recognizing only one midi input channel. So i cannot separate the bass side from the treble side. Has anyone come accross this again ? Is there a solution to this?

Nico, welcome to the forum and congrats to your FR1x.

• Your computer probably shows only one PORT. This is the terminology for regular MIDI connections between devices. And one PORT allows for 16 different CHANNELS. So no need to worry!
  
  Get the manual for the FR1x and lookup the table on page 56 (english manual) in the chapter "Connecting an external MIDI device to the FR-1x". This table shows which MIDI channels the FR1x uses to send and receive MIDI data. For example ch 1 is used for the accordion sounds on the treble side, ch 3 for the accordion chords on the base side, etc.
  
  
• As you may guess from my avatar picuture I play the FR1x myself. And I as well didn't enjoy the inbuild sounds very much. But ...
  • You can edit the parameters of any loaded factory program to create your own sounds directly on the FR1x. After that you will need to save the edited set to the 8 available memory slots for user programs (UPG). These are then available via the register buttons like the inbuild factory programs.
  • If you want to edit / create lots of own sounds AKA programs it may be easier to use Rolands dedicated sound editor software. Unfortunately this doesn't connect via USB cable directly to the FR1x like in the more expensive V-Accordion models. You'll have to edit a sound blindly on the computer and then transfer the sound via an USB memory stick to the FR1x. Kind of annoying because you cannot test the sounds while editing.
  • You can search the internet and will find sounds from other people for either the FR1x or other V-Accordion models and you can load most of these into the editor and convert to FR1x format. Not every parameter from different models will translate but this maybe a good start to create your own sounds.
  • You can buy handcrafted sounds from different creators / vendors like
    • Richard Noel = http://www.noelaccordion.com/roland.html
    • Gert Nijkamp = https://gertnijkamp.nl/product-categorie/v-accordion-premium-sound-packs/roland-fr-1x/
  • All sounds in the Rolands rely on recorded snippets from "real" accordions (and other instruments) which are then used as base sounds which are shaped with the different sound parameters. You can get additional such "wavetables" (so called "Sound Expansions") directly from Roland: https://www.roland.com/de/support/by_product/fr-1x/updates_drivers/
    You can have two additional Expansions simultanously installed in the FR1x and use these for your custom "User Programs". Some examples are already packed together with the expansions, so you can try these first.