Sonogenic: General MIDI

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After jamming with the Yamaha SHS-500 Sonogenic, I’m glad that I chose it over the Yamaha PSS-A50. Sure, the A50 could be fun, but the Sonogenic panel voices are definitely step up from the A50. The Rhodes electric piano sounds great and I’m warming to the synth voices like Analogon — good for classic R&B, soul and funk. I love the mellow jazz guitar, too. One minor gripe so far. When I play the Sonogenic in my lap, it tends to slide and get away from my hands where as Reface YC stays put.

For brevity, I will refer to the SHS-500 as the “Sonogenic” in this post. Yamaha also makes the SHS-300 Sonogenic. The SHS-300 is not as robust as the model 500 and has a smaller set of decidedly lower quality voices. The model 300 is at home with its peers in the PSS family like the PSS-E30 Remie.

I make light of my obsessive pre-purchase analysis, but one observation paid off. The Sonogenic Owner’s Manual mentions “General MIDI System Level 1” compatibility on page 8 and includes GM compatibility in the product specifications. Yamaha don’t make such claims lightly and I wasn’t disappointed.

The SHS-500 has a 16 channel General MIDI tone generator built in! I successfully played back General MIDI (GM) compatible Standard MIDI Files (SMF) through the Sonogenic. (DAW: An old version of Sonar.) Missing organ, oboe or vibraphone? You can find them in the GM sound set. The SHS-500 responds to the GM System On System Exclusive (SysEx) message:

    F0 7E 7F 09 01 F7

which puts the Sonogenic MIDI interface into General MIDI mode. The Sonogenic GM tone module accepts MIDI messages from the currently selected MIDI interface: USB MIDI, wired DIN MIDI and Bluetooth MIDI.

You’re not limited to just the GM sound set over MIDI. You can also select one of the 28 panel voices (or 2 drum kits). You’ll need to embed an XG System On SysEx message at the beginning of the song file:

    F0 43 10 4C 00 00 7E 00 F7

This message makes the SHS-500 respond to MIDI bank select messages as well as program change messages. For example, if the song sends:

    Bank Select MSB: 104
    Bank Select LSB: 0 
    Program Change:  27

on MIDI channel 1, for example, then the tone generator will use the rather decent Jazz Guitar panel voice instead of the GM jazz guitar.

This is all good news, of course. However, there are limitations:

  • The GM sound set is available only over MIDI. You cannot select and play a GM voice via the front panel.
  • GM voices cannot be processed by the DSP effect. Thus, you cannot add a rotary speaker effect to a GM voice.
  • You cannot change the front panel voice or DSP effect via MIDI. Incoming MIDI messages affect the GM tone generator only.

The Sonogenic control architecture has inherited the quirkiness of the PSR E-series. That is, keyboard control and MIDI control are quite separate and independent.

There is some hope, however. Let’s say that you really want to play the General MIDI drawbar organ voice (MSB:0, LSB:0, PC1: 17). You can loop MIDI from the Sonogenic through an external sequencer and return the MIDI to the Sonogenic. First, you’ll need to turn LOCAL control OFF through the Sonogenic’s FUNCTION menu. Then, you need make (virtual) incoming and outgoing connections to the sequence — the equivalent of two standard MIDI cables connecting the Sonogenic with the sequencer. Then, you can select the GM drawbar organ voice on the Sonogenic’s MIDI channel (default channel one) and play the organ voice using the Sonogenic keyboard. It’s a roundabout trip, but it works.

I’m experimenting with other options like using an iPad app to loop MIDI messages back to the Sonogenic and to select panel or GM voices.

Be forewarned. The Sonogenic panel voices are significantly louder than the General MIDI voices. I haven’t decided (yet) if this is an inherent flaw nor have I found a way to boost the GM voices.

Even though Yamaha promote Chord Tracker for Sonogenic, don’t count MIDI out. The Sonogenic has a solid GM tone generator on board and you can use it to compose and/or play back MIDI songs from an external sequencer.

One final tip, if you put the Sonogenic in Jam Mode, Yamaha-specific chord name SysEx messages tell the Sonogenic to display a chord name. By placing chord name events in the MIDI song, you can jam along just like Chord Tracker only the accompaniment is coming from a MIDI sequencer instead of an audio track.

I hope to write a short summary of the MIDI messages recognized and interpreted by the SHS-500 Sonogenic. The basic synthesis engine is similar to the Yamaha PSR-E463 and PSR-EW410, minus the XGLite sound set. C’mon back!

Copyright © 2020 Paul J. Drongowski