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.