PSS chorus: A dusty look back

Posted on September 1, 2021 by pj

Here’s a look into the past — and maybe, the present.

A PSR Tutorial Forum member inquired about the chorus effects in the PSR-E463. The PSR-E463 has the usual system chorus effect and the newer DSP chorus effect. I’m going to focus on the older system chorus effect.

The PSR-E series chorus system effect date back to the earliest days of Yamaha XG and arranger keyboards. These are low-cost entry-level keyboards and usually contain a single integrated circuit (IC) which integrates the main processor (CPU), tone generator and effect units. The most price- and cost-sensitive models integrate the wave memory (samples) on the IC, e.g., the SWLL (PSR-F51). Processors in the other models have an external wave memory, e.g., the SWL01 (PSR-E443) and SWX03 (PSR-E463).

Newer DSP effects aside, the E-series models share the same basic reverb and chorus effects. There are three chorus effects:

Chorus1 (MSB: 66 LSB: 17)
Chorus2 (MSB: 65 LSB: 02)
Chorus3 (MSB: 65 LSB: 00)

The LSB has varied, but they all refer to the same CHORUS (CELESTE) effect algorithm. The LSB just selects a set of preset effect parameters. Chorus1, BTW, falls into the XG CELESTE category, not CHORUS.

Due to hardware integration, the chorus effects likely share the same hardware. Since none of these processors have external DSP RAM, the chorus memory is integrated, too.

As far as chorus is concerned, this is the way it has been since the 1990s! Let’s look back to the Yamaha QY-70 XG implementation (1995). I suspect that the current chorus effects are the same or very similar to the good old QY.

The QY-70 had one chorus and celeste effect algorithm:

Param#  Parameter            Value range 
------  -------------------  -------------------- 
   1    LFO Frequency        0.00Hz - 39.7Hz 
   2    LFO PM Depth         0 - 127 
   3    Feedback Level       -63 - +63 
   4    Delay Offset         0 - 127 
   5 
   6    EQ Low Frequency     50Hz - 2kHz 
   7    EQ Low Gain          -12dB - +12dB 
   8    EQ High Frequency    500Hz - 16.0kHz 
   9    EQ High Gain         -12dB - +12dB 
  10    Dry/Wet              D63;gt;W - D=W - D<W63 
  11    ... 
  15    Input Mode           Mono, Stereo 
  16

These parameters are laid down by the Yamaha XG specification.

The XG specification does not define the preset values, however. Here are the QY-70 preset chorus values:

Param#  Parameter            Chorus1 Chorus2 Chorus3 Chorus4 
------  -------------------  ------- ------- ------- ------- 
   1    LFO Frequency        0.25Hz  0.33Hz  0.16Hz  0.37Hz 
   2    LFO PM Depth         54      63      44      32 
   3    Feedback Level       +13     +0      +0      +5 
   4    Delay Offset         106     30      110     104

QY-70 Chorus3 has the same MSB/LSB as PSR-E Chorus2. QY-70 Chorus 1 has the same MSB/LSB as PSR-E Chorus3. Confusing? Yes, but these are probably the PSR values or close to it.

Next are the QY-70 preset celeste values:

Param#  Parameter            Celeste1 Celeste2 Celeste3 Celeste4 
------  -------------------  -------- -------- -------- -------- 
   1    LFO Frequency        0.50Hz   1.17Hz   0.16Hz   0.33Hz 
   2    LFO PM Depth         32       18       63       29 
   3    Feedback Level       +0       +26      -20      +0 
   4    Delay Offset         0        2        2        0

None of the QY-70 presets have the same MSB/LSB as PSR, so your guess is as good as mine.

Now, the really bad news. The PSR-E series, at best, is XGlite. XGlite implementations typically don’t support the XG messages that set effect parameters. Therefore, what you hear is that you get. In other words, the effect presets are hardwired.

The Yamaha PSS series with its minimal SWLL processor implements exactly one chorus and exactly one reverb preset. You get what you pay for!

PSR-E473 speculation

Posted on August 17, 2021 by pj

Update: Yamaha PSR-E473 and PSR-EW425 announcement.

Yamaha have had a busy few years updating their entry-level models, most notably, the PSR-E373 and the DGX-670. We have yet to see the PSR-E473 and PSR-EW425 models which will replace the PSR-E463 and PSR-EW410, respectively.

No doubt, supply chain and global shipping problems have delayed product launch. Prior PSR-E4xx models employ digital-to-analog converters (DAC) including DACs from Asahi Kasei Microdevices (AKM). The AKM plant in Nobeoka city suffered a major fire on October 20, 2020. Japanese authorities just recently gave AKM permission to clean-up and rebuild. The AKM fire caused a mass shortage of its digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital converters. The shortage affects other major audio and digital musical instrument manufacturers, too, not just Yamaha.

In addition, Yamaha is ramping up production at its new OneHub Chennai (India) manufacturing plant. The Chennai plant products acoustic guitars and portable keyboards for the Indian market and for export. According to a May 2019 press release, the initial goal is to make 200,000 acoustic guitars and 150,000 portable keyboards, including the PSR-I500 and the PSS series. Yamaha eventually wants to raise the goal to 400,000 acoustic guitars and 300,000 keyboards per year. Roughly 50% of production will be for export.

My PSS-A50 was manufactured in India. Given kinship to the PSR-I500, I would expect Chennai to make the new PSR-E473 and PSR-EW425. Export data indicate that a few E473s already have been run off and exported. Prototypes? Development? Testing?

Of course, the delayed launch has intensified interest among enthusiasts. The E373 received substantial feature upgrades: Super Articulation Lite (S.Art Lite) voices and new DSP effect types which once could only be found on mid- and upper-range arrangers. A few of the new effects are top-of-the-line: dual rotary speaker, Real Distortion guitar amp effects, vintage stereo phaser, compression and harmonic enhancer. One fully expects to see the same upgrades in the E473 and EW425.

S.Art Lite voices behave somewhat differently than their mid- and upper-level cousins. A dedicated articulation button triggers the articulation effect. The cousins transparently employ software scripting which reacts to player gestures, e.g., legato, intervals, and so forth.

My first thought was “That looks quite professional,” not just a home keyboard. The live control knobs are re-located to the upper left. This decision will be controversial! The lighted buttons look pleasant (light blue color) and the screen is black and white monochrome. Still only four registrations per bank.

Yamaha did majorly swizzle around a bunch of front panel controls with respect to the E463. The keypad to the right has been significantly redesigned.

The quadrant to the right of the display has a 3×4 button matrix for voice and style selection by category. The buttons above the data wheel control selection mode: voice or style. I wonder if one of the mode buttons turns the matrix into a numeric keypad? The FUNCTION and PORTABLE GRAND buttons are below the matrix along with some kind of BOOST button.

The control groups running above the keyboard are (left to right): master volume, SONG/STYLE control, TRACK control, registration memory, and quick sampling. The large light blue button between the volume knob and the SONG/STYLE control group may be the ARTICULATION button.

The Quick Sampling feature got more real estate. Quick Sampling has several buttons: LOOP HOLD, A, B, C, D, and CAPTURE. I wonder if it’s possible to capture four waveforms? Did Yamaha re-think sample control including sample zones? Do the lighted A, B, C, D buttons reflect sample status like a pad controller? Can we play the pads? Are they velocity sensitive?

The live control knobs are further away from the keyboard in the quadrant to the left of the display. I can’t tell if there is an additional row or not. E463 has five live control rows; EW425 has 6 or 7?

The rest of the buttons in the upper left quadrant must be record, metronome, tap tempo, melody suppressor, voice control and all that miscellaneous stuff. The legends in the picture are too distorted to read.

Yamaha is still using an LCD with pre-defined, fixed icons and legends. Do they really save that much money versus a full graphic, pixel addressable display? What do I know? It probably simplifies the software, but it seems so 90s.

Should be interesting finally to see the specs, and not just guess.

Free DJX-II styles: Version 2

Posted on July 2, 2021 by pj

I’m happy to announce version 2 of my DJX-II styles for Yamaha Genos, Tyros and PSR arrangers.

These DJ styles are converted from the original Yamaha DJX-II patterns. If you would like to know more about the conversion process, please see: Mining the Yamaha DJX-II.

These are DJ styles, so they only respond to changes in the root note. The chord progressions are cooked into the patterns (just like intros and endings in regular PSR styles). I tried to find the best mapping from DJX-II patterns to style sections. Therefore, some of the DJXII styles have auto-fill, some do not. Longer “fill” patterns are assigned to the intro and ending sections which can play more than one measure.

Feel free to edit, rearrange and customize the styles in order to make them your own. I recommend Jørgen Sørensen’s excellent tools. Jørgen’s site also has documentation and tutorials about styles and style creation to help you along. Please check it out and support his work!

Click on this link to download the ZIP file.

Version 2 includes all of the files in the first collection. Version 2 adds Drum ‘n’ Bass, Disco, House and Trip Hop styles. The ZIP file includes a README.TXT file which should help you get started with the styles. I have also included PDF notation files for people who read music and want to know about the chord progressions, bass lines, and so forth.

Enjoy! The DJX-II style collection is free.

Arpeggio to style conversion

Posted on April 14, 2021 by pj

Let’s get one out of the vault… 🙂

The Motif XS/XF (MOX/MOXF) and Montage (MODX) arpeggios and performances are a great source of inspiration. Unlike Yamaha’s arranger series, the built-in phrase library is rich in urban and chill patterns. For some odd reason, one of the classic XS/MOX performances — “Dresden At Night” — never made the leap to Motif XF. And, it’s missing from Montage/MODX, too.

A PSR Tutorial forum member sought help resurrecting Dresden At Night, albeit a recreation for the PSR-SX700 arranger. I thought I would help out since I wrote a series of articles about MOX performance to style conversion:

The end result of that work is a small collection of PSR (Tyros, Genos) styles based on MOX (Motif XS) performances.

If you would like to try Dresden At Night or experiment with a conversion of your own, download the free ZIP file.

MOX performances have four parts (voices). Each part has up to six musical phrases (arpeggios) associated with it. Six front-panel buttons select the currently playing set of arpeggios, i.e., button one selects the first arpeggio for each set and so forth. To get the basic MIDI data, I played each arpeggio (group) for four measures while recording in MOX performance quick record mode. I wrote out the MIDI data as a Standard MIDI File (SMF), transfered the SMF to PC, and imported the SMF into a DAW (Sonar).

Dresden At Night is a downtempo (91 BPM), urban-ish chill performance. It has four parts:

Part# Voice    Name              NoteLo NoteHi VelLo VelHi Level Pan
----- -------- ----------------  ------ ------ ----- ----- ----- ---
  1   PRE8:070 8Z Heavy Hearts     C-2    G8     1    127    81   C
  2   PRE3:053 Dark Bass           C-2    G8     1    127    51   C
  3   PRE7:110 Ibiza Groove        C-2    G8     1    127   127   C
  4   PRE5:121 Smooth BPF Sweep    C-2    G8     1    127    73   C

The first part is the rhythm voice and the second part is the bass voice. As we’ll see below, arpegiation is turned for these two parts. The third and fourth voices are a play-along pad layer and arpeggiation is disabled. Thus, the rhythm and bass parts provide a looped backing while the pad voices provide an atmospheric you-steer-it, right hand part.

Here are the arpeggio assignments:

Arp#1 Tempo:91              Arp#2 
-----                       ----- 
  1   MA_8Z HeavyHrt1         1   MA_8Z HeavyHrt3      ON 
  2   MB_WestCoastPop _XS     2   MA_WestCoastPop _XS  ON 
  3   MA_Space Arp            3   MA_Space Arp         OFF 
  4   MA_Up Oct1              4   MA_Up Oct2           OFF 
Arp#3                       Arp#4 
-----                       ----- 
  1   MA_8Z HeavyHrt4         1   MA_8Z GatedBt3       ON 
  2   BA_Jazz Pop _XS         2   FB_WestCoastPop _XS  ON 
  3   MA_Space Arp            3   MA_Space Arp         OFF 
  4   MA_Up Oct4              4   MA_Down Oct1         OFF 
Arp#5                       Arp#6 
-----                       ----- 
  1   MA_8Z ChillBrk4         1   BA_Sp SFX            ON 
  2   MB_WestCoastPop _XS     2   MA_WestCoastPop _XS  ON 
  3   MA_Space Arp            3   Off                  OFF 
  4   MA_Down Oct2            4   Off                  OFF

The Arpeggiator is turned ON for Parts 1 and 2 only.

A big factor is the “8Z Heavy Hearts” drum kit. The “8Z” in its name means “eight zone”. Eight zone (8Z) voices are a Motif innovation beginning with the XS (MOX) family. If you would like more information, check out these earlier posts about eight zone voices:

8Z voices aren’t drum kits. They are implemented as synth voices and are just a clever way of using the eight elements which make up a voice. The eight zones (8Z) are divided across specific note ranges. 8Z Heavy Hearts assigns waveforms (zone sounds) in the following way:

Element#  Note Low  Note High  Waveform 
--------  --------  ---------  -------------- 
    1         C0       F#0     Bd T9-1 
    2         G0        C1     Bd Hard Long 
    3        C#1        D1     Sd Elec12 
    4        D#1        F1     Sd HipHop6 
    5        F#1        A1     HH Closed D&B 
    6        A#1        C2     HH Open T9 
    7        C#2        C4     Clap AnSm 
    8        C#4        C6     Shaker Hip2

Yamaha messes with each of the zones in crazy ways and ties keyboard notes to voice parameters (AKA “key follow”). For 8Z Heavy Hearts, the most notable effect is how the Clap AnSm pitch follows the keyboard.

Arrangers (even Genos!) don’t have 8Z voices. They have standard drum kits where each MIDI note is a separate drum instrument. In order to make a PSR style using a DAW, one must translate the 8Z MIDI notes to standard drum kit notes. You need to assign appropriate drum kits (e.g., DrumMachine, Analog T9, House, Break or HipHop) to style parts 9 and 10 (MIDI channels 9 and 10) and copy the Heavy Hearts MIDI data to both Parts. Then, delete the notes that aren’t needed in a style part, compress each zone into a single drum instrument, and map the resulting “compressed” notes to the appropriate drum instrument(s). So, for example, all of the notes in C0 to F#0 might be compressed into the Kick T9 1 instrument (B0) in the Analog T9 Kit, which is one of the target drum kits.

I found two PSR drum parts to be enough. However, styles are flexible and you could assign a third (fourth, …) drum kit to one of the other style parts. There’s nothing in Yamaha styles that prevents this. It’s just that parts 9 and 10 (MIDI channels 9 and 10) are conventionally assigned to drum parts in a style.

I went with two PSR drum kits: Analog T9 kit and Drum Machine kit. Here is one possible assignment:

Note Low Note High Waveform       Instrument        Note#   Kit 
-------- --------- -------------  ----------------  ------  -----------
  C0 24   F#0 30   Bd T9-1        Kick T9 1         35 B0   AnalogT9Kit
  G0 31    C1 36   Bd Hard Long   BD Hard Long      24 C0   DrumMachine
 C#1 37    D1 38   Sd Elec12      Snare Analog CR   63 D#3  DrumMachine
 D#1 39    F1 41   Sd HipHop6     Snare Hip 1       86 F#3  DrumMachine
 F#1 42    A1 45   HH Closed D&B  Hi-Hat Closed Syn 91 A4   DrumMachine
 A#1 46    C2 48   HH Open T9     Hi-Hat Open T9    46 A#1  AnalogT9Kit
 C#2 49    C4 72   Clap AnSm      Clap Analog Sm    27 D#0  AnalogT9Kit
 C#4 73    C6 96   Shaker Hip2    Analog Shaker     57 A2   DrumMachine

A lot of detail, huh? Nobody said style conversion was easy. 🙂 In the end, I spread each zone across multiple drum instruments of the same type, i.e., assigning the Shaker Hip2 zone to a few different Analog Shaker sounds in the Drum Machine kit. Part of 8Z Heavy Hearts’ charm is the subtle sonic variation provided by each zone.

Trying to keep this all straight in the DAW piano roll is cognitively challenging. Did I say, style conversion isn’t easy? 🙂

Fortunately, one can loop four bar sections and play the MIDI through the arranger (Genos, in this case) just like a MIDI song. Then, it’s the usual tweak, listen, rinse, repeat edit process. When the MIDI is tweezed to your liking, you need to add MIDI markers to delimit the style sections. (BTW, leave a one bar MIDI set-up measure at the beginning.) Style section markers are:

    Set-up measure 1: SFF1 
    Set-up measure 1: SInt 
    Main sections:    Main A, ... 
    Fill sections:    Fill In AA, ... 
    Break section:    Fill In BA, ... 
    Introduction:     Intro A, ... 
    Ending:           Ending A, ...

At a minimum, you need a few MIDI set-up System Exclusive (SysEx) messages at the beginning of the SMF (measure 1, beat 1):

    F0 7E 7F 09 01 F7                 GM Reset 
    F0 43 10 4C 00 00 7E 00 F7        XG System ON 
    F0 43 10 4C 02 01 00 01 16 F7     Reverb type 
    F0 43 10 4C 02 01 20 16 00 F7     Chorus type

Reverb is the “Light Hall” preset and chorus is the “Tempo Cross 1” preset. The tempo cross delay is an 8-beat echo.

Which brings me to a necessary ingredient: crunch. 8Z Heavy Hearts gets a lot of its appeal from the Lo-Fi effect:

#  Parameter                   Val  Hex   Meaning 
-- --------------------------  ---  ----  -------- 
 1 Sampling Frequency Control    4  0x04  8.82kHz 
 2 Word Length                  98  0x62 
 3 Output Gain                   7  0x07  0dB 
 4 LPF Cutoff Frequency         56  0x38  12kHz 
 5 Filter Type                   1  0x01  PowerBass 
 6 LPF Resonance                63  0x3F  6.3 
 7 Bit Assign                    4  0x04 
 8 Emphasis                      1  0x01  On 
10 Dry/Wet                      88  0x58  D<W24
15 Input Mode                    1  0x01  Stereo

Since we need Lo-Fi on both style parts 9 and 10, I configured the variation effect as an XG SYSTEM effect. Parts 9 and 10 also require variation send (MIDI CC#94) set to 127. Add a CC#94 message to parts 9 and 10 in the set-up measure. Here are the MIDI System Exclusive messages to add to the set-up measure:

F0 43 10 4C 02 01 40 5E 13 F7       Variation type 
F0 43 10 4C 02 01 5A 01 F7          Variation SYSTEM 
F0 43 10 4C 02 01 56 40 F7          Variation return 
F0 43 10 4C 02 01 58 10 F7          Variation send to reverb 
F0 43 10 4C 02 01 59 10 F7          Variation send to chorus 
F0 43 10 4C 02 01 42 00 04 F7       Variation parameter 1 
F0 43 10 4C 02 01 44 00 62 F7       Variation parameter 2 
F0 43 10 4C 02 01 46 00 07 F7       Variation parameter 3 
F0 43 10 4C 02 01 48 00 38 F7       Variation parameter 4 
F0 43 10 4C 02 01 4A 00 01 F7       Variation parameter 5 
F0 43 10 4C 02 01 4C 00 3F F7       Variation parameter 6 
F0 43 10 4C 02 01 4E 00 04 F7       Variation parameter 7 
F0 43 10 4C 02 01 50 00 01 F7       Variation parameter 8 
F0 43 10 4C 02 01 54 00 58 F7       Variation parameter 10 
F0 43 10 4C 02 01 75 01 F7          Variation parameter 15

At this point, you could save the MIDI to “DresdenAtNight.sty” and load it into your arranger as an SFF1 format style. The arranger should create the style CASM segment. As an alternative, you can add a CASM segment to the SMF with Jørgen Sørensen’s CASM editor. You might as well download his OTS editor, too, and use it to add OTS voice settings to the new style as well. Or, you can do this sort of work on your arranger itself. Mid- and high-end Yamaha arrangers save styles as SFF2 format, which is one way to convert from SFF1 to SFF2. I highly recommend Jørgen’s site, tools and style creation tutorial.

BTW, you can recreate Dresden At Night on MODX (Montage). Create a new MODX performance with 8Z Heavy Hearts and Dark Bass. 8Z Heavy Hearts has the appropriate arpeggios by default. You’ll need to assign different arpeggios to the Dark Bass part. Modify effects as needed. Choose and add pad or lead voices to give your right hand something to do. Done! Use the Scene buttons to switch arpeggio groups.

Combo organ: Montage, MODX, Genos

Posted on March 23, 2021 by pj

Contemporary workstation instruments offer several options for combo organ emulation. Every workstation has at least a few internal combo organ waveforms. Korg Kronos, for example, has two Vox organ waves built in. Even the lowly Korg microKorg XL+ has two Vox waveforms (DWGS single cycle).

Yamaha MODX and Montage — my focus in this article — have a good variety of Vox and Farfisa waveforms. Yamaha Genos has a lesser endowment as we’ll see. Yamaha Reface YC shares sonic DNA (AWM2 and effects) with the Motif XF and will be the subject of a future post.

Motif, Motif ES and Motif XS

Models in the early Motif series primarily base combo organ patches on two waveforms:

Portable Electronic: Vox-y tone
Compact Electronic: Farf-y tone

You can hear these waveforms at work in the Tiny Combo Bars 1 performance and the Tiny Combo Bar 2 performance. The patches layer three are more elements playing Portable Electronic or Compact Electronic (respectively). Each element is filtered differently: low pass, band pass and high pass. The net effect is like several distinctive tab stops or drawbars pulled at once.

These waveforms are very old, going back to the original Motif (maybe S80) in the early 2000s. I’ll bet dollars to donuts that the Portable Electronic waveform is the basis for the 60’sOrgan voice (MSB: 0, LSB: 116, PC: 18) in PSR and Tyros keyboards. The 60’sOrgan voice was the sole combo organ mainstay in the arranger line for a loooong time.

Motif XF, Montage, MODX

Motif XF got a big shot of combo juice. Motif XF added several combo organ waveforms:

Fr All Tabs
Fr Bright Boost
Fr Flute
Fr String Lo
Fr String Hi
Fr Trumpet
Fr Piccolo
Fr Pedal
Fr KeyOff
Vx Drawbar1-3
Vx DrawbarIV
Vx KeyOff

The Farfisa (Fr) waveforms support emulation of specific Farfisa features: individual voice tabs (flute, string, trumpet and piccolo), the wicked Bright Boost knee lever, bass keys (pedal), and key off sound. The Fr All Tabs waveform covers one of the most common use cases — all of the tab stops turned on. Subtlety was not a hallmark of sixties combo organ music. 🙂

The Vox (Vx) Vx Drawbar1-3 waveform covers the three Continentel footage drawbars while the mixture drawbar is handled by the Vx DrawbarIV waveform. The Vox waveforms include a Vox key-off noise.

In terms of voice programming, one uses note shift to achieve different footage ranks. Passive filtering is emulated through filter type (low pass, band pass, high pass) and cutoff frequency. Of course, everything can be routed into insert effects for distortion, amp simulation, and other grunge.

Since Montage and MODX inherit all things Motif, these waveforms and the Motif performances are there for you. The Montage and MODX sliders allow control over individual voice elements. For example, choose the Raspy Tabs performance and assign slider control to element level. The Fr Raspy Tabs waveform-to-element assignment is:

El# Waveform     KeyLo KeyHi VelLo VelHi Coarse Level Cutoff XA Ctrl 
--- ------------ ----- ----- ----- ----- ------ ----- ------ ------- 
 1  Fr String Lo   C2    G8     1   127     0     97   255   Normal 
 2  Fr Trumpet     C2    G8     1   127     0     82   255   Normal 
 3  Fr Flute       C2    G8     1   127    24    120   236   Normal 
 4  Fr Pedal      C-2    B1     1   127     0    127   160   Normal 
 5  Fr String Hi   C2    G8     1   127    19     24   236   A.SW2 On 
 6  Fr KeyOff      C2    G8     1   127     6     87    80   Key Off

Different tabs are brought in and out by moving the corresponding slider. Assignable switch 2 turns on additional brightness. The low keyboard octaves play the bass (pedal) tones. Overall, this is a fairly controllable representation of a wheezy Farfisa Compact.

Because the sliders are not discrete, you can probably make up Farfisa tones which aren’t entirely authentic. But, really, should one care? 😉

Vox performances have similar control-ability. Here is the waveform-to-element assignment in the Vx Full Bars performance:

El# Waveform      KeyLo KeyHi VelLo VelHi Coarse Level Cutoff XA Ctrl 
--- ------------- ----- ----- ----- ----- ------ ----- ------ ------- 
 1  Vx Drawbar1-3  C-2    G8     1   127     0     75   255   Normal 
 2  Vx Drawbar1-3  C-2    G8     1   127    12     77   255   Normal 
 3  Vx Drawbar1-3  C-2    G8     1   127    24     91   255   Normal 
 4  Vx DrawbarIV   C-2    G8     1   127     0    127   250   Normal 
 5  Vx KeyOff      C-2    G8     1   127     4     68    85   Key Off

The first three sliders control the 16′, 8′ and 4′ Vox drawbar settings and the fourth drawbar controls the Mixture (IV) tone. Go ahead, just everything to eleven. 🙂

Montage and MODX FM

But, wait, there’s more! Montage and MODX have two FM combo voices: BOX FM Combo Organ and FM YC Combo Organ. Although these performances don’t sound authentic to my ears, they provide starting points for further programming. I haven’t heard the YC61 as yet, but I wonder if the YC61 combo emulations can be ported to Montage and MODX?

Genos

As I mentioned earlier, the arranger series has been historically short on combo organ sounds, relying on the old 60’sOrgan voice. Wheezy, raspy Farfisa tones are noticably absent. The 60’sOrgan voice sounds like the Portable Electronic waveform on which the Motif 1967 Keys performance is based.

Tyros 4 and Motif XF were introduced at approximately the same time. They certainly were together in the development lab during late 2009. Tyros 4 added four combo organ voices:

60sComboOrgan1: VoxContiComb1_Full_NoVib waveform
60sComboOrgan2: VoxContiComb1_Full_VibOn waveform
60sComboOrgan3: VoxCombi4NoVib waveform
60sComboOrgan4: VoxCombi4NoVib091117 waveform

Voices 1 and 2 capture one Vox Continental drawbar combination (Comb1) and voices 3 and 4 capture a second combination (Combi4).

Voices 1 and 3 are without vibrato. Voices 2 and 4, unfortunately, have an excessive amount of vibrato — almost painfully so. When I use voices 2 and 4 in a MIDI sequence, I dial down the vibrato depth using MIDI CC#77 messages. Vibrato frequency is about 5Hz. I also remove touch sensitivity by setting:

Velocity sensitivity depth to zero, and
Velocity sensitivity offset to 114.

An organ voice should not respond to touch (key velocity) — ever.

PSR, Tyros and Genos players shouldn’t forget the “hidden” Italian 60s organ voice (It60’sOrgan) in the GM2 sound set. On PSR and Tyros, you’ll find It60’sOrgan within the Legacy voices Organ subfolder. On Genos, you need to download GM2 and XG user voices to the USER voice folder. (See this thread in the PSR Tutorial Forum.) Of course, you can select
It60’sOrgan from a DAW (MSB: 121, LSB: 2, PC: 17) .

All-in-all, you can get a nice Vox tone out of Genos. Farfisa is still missing in action, tho’. Kind of an odd shortcoming of a keyboard with styles and a user base that want to play popular hits from days past.

In the next post, I’ll compare Reface YC combo organs against Montage/MODX (Motif XF). The result may surprise you.

Customizing the Sonogenic voice editor

Posted on March 22, 2021 by pj

Back to the Yamaha SHS-500 Sonogenic voice editor…

Thanks to Brent at Keyboard Corner for suggesting a different set of default voices in my MIDI Designer-based Sonogenic voice editor. Back when I released the editor, I was hoping that folks could customize the user interface, changing or adding their own buttons and controls. Brent downloaded the editor, got everything running, and hit a roadblock with MIDI Designer. That’s understandable because I doubt if anyone can dive right into MIDI Designer as easily as diving into the menu of a synth.

So, smart guy, how do you change bank select and program change? Here’s a sequence of screen shots that may help. [Not so easy a year later, is it? 🙂 ]

MIDI Designer ordinarily runs in its operational mode, that is, the buttons, sliders and other controls are live and send MIDI. In order to make changes, one needs to enter Design Mode (edit mode). With the Sonogenic voice editor loaded, tap the More menu button, then tap the Design button under “Tools”.

You should see a floating button widget saying “Exit Design Mode”. If you see that, you’ll know that you’re in Design Mode.

MIDI Designer button (control) properties in Design Mode

Tap a button or other control to select it. MIDI Designer outlines the selected button (or control) in red. Double tap the button (or control) to display and change its properties.

In this case, I double tapped the “QuackLd” button. If you want to name the button something else, tap the “Label” field and change the button name.

To send a different MIDI message, tap the MIDI icon in the lower left corner of the Properties dialog box. MIDI Designer should display the control’s MIDI properties. The Sonogenic QuackLd voice has the following bank select and program change values:

Bank select MSB: 0
Bank select LSB: 112
Program change: 84

Values for the other SHS-500 preset voices are listed in the Yamaha Sonogenic SHS-500 Reference Manual.

Tap the “MIDI Off → On” field to edit the program change value. Tap the “Channel – Bank #” field to change the MIDI channel, bank select MSB value and bank select LSB value. You should probably leave the channel value alone.

MIDI Designer channel and bank select dialog box

The “Channel, Bank MSB, LSB” dialog box displays three spinning number dials (kind of like a slot machine) where the first column is MIDI channel, the second column is bank select MSB and the third column is bank select LSB. Spin the dials to get the setting you want. Tap the return arrow in the upper left corner when you’re finished. To leave a dialog box, just tap a blank area in the user interface background.

Tapping the Actions icon in the lower right corner of the Properties dialog box displays MIDI Designer actions. Use the “Delete” action to delete the control. Use “Copy” and “Make Similar” to copy the control.

The buttons for the Sonogenic General MIDI (GM) voices are similar. Here, I selected and double tapped the “Vibraphone” button.

Again, tapping the MIDI icon in the dialog box displays the MIDI message properties for the button. The GM voices adhere to the GM standard program change values. However, you must send zero for both bank select MSB and LSB to properly switch the Sonogenic.

Tap the Exit Design Mode button to leave Design Mode. Then test your changes with the Sonogenic. Also, you probably should save the modified MIDI Designer interface following the directions in my original article.

Hopefully, this tutorial is enough to get you started with customization!

What did you do in self-isolation?

Posted on June 15, 2020 by pj

Yes, this site still does music! 🙂

Several weeks ago, I decided to record the church tunes that I enjoy playing. It’s best to start with favorites, as most of you know how you come to detest a track after playing it over, and over, and over again during production. Energy quickly dissipates when micro-editing MIDI events or digital audio…

Before getting into production notes, here are links to the final tracks (all MP3). The goal was to crank out a new tune each week and send it to the folks in our music ministry. Some tunes are a little more polished than others. Please consider them “demo quality.”

Without going too far into the technical weeds, the primary sound source is Yamaha Genos™ and the primary vocalist is my spouse Fran. With the Mill Creek Chorale on hiatus — aren’t we all? — I was happy that she could contribute and have fun, too.

Production notes

So, how did all of this go down?

These demoes show off the Yamaha Genos as a sound source and production tool. I had two main subgoals:

Learn how to record a demo with Genos in either audio or MIDI format.
Learn how to mix down with Steinberg Cubase Artist and try out a few of the freebie plug-ins that I’ve collected.

By and large, Genos and Cubase were the main production tools although I back-slid into SONAR on a few occasions for MIDI editing. Old habits die hard. Workflow was not strictly linear from Genos to Cubase. In a few cases. MIDI and/or audio (stereo 16-bit 44,100 WAV) were slung back and forth between tools.

Genos is the sound source with one big exception: drawbar organ. When you hear B-3, you’re hearing Yamaha MODX through an Electro-Harmonix Lester K. I wanted to hear Lester K in musical context. It sits in a song pretty well and has more guts than the Yamaha MODX Leslie simulator. By itself, though, Lester K has some high-end swirliness in the upper drawbars, but in a track, it seems to mesh. You be the judge.

Emphasis was on speed. Get the tracks down quickly and finish a song each week ASAP. The Beatles used to call this recording “on heat.” Even so, it’s amazing how modern technology will drag you into the dank chasm of production minutiae. Don’t you just love hearing the same three measures fifty times while tweaking and tweezing. Not.

All vocals were recorded directly to Genos using its microphone input. Full backing and raw vocal tracks were exported to Cubase via WAV. Everything was processed and mixed in Cubase. The final mix was exported from Cubase as WAV, and then trimmed and converted to MP3 using Sound Forge Audio Studio.

Our God Is Here This was the first demo in the series and the process doesn’t get any simpler than this. All was recorded into Genos Audio Multi Recording. Find a beat, turn it on, lay down the organ part. Unfortunately, I didn’t plan for the ending, which is quite ragged. The organ is Genos in this case (not MODX). Kinda plain, huh? The bass is an overdub.

Audio Multi Recording is a nicely done sound-on-sound recorder a la Les Paul, minus tape hiss. There are two stereo tracks: main and sub. You can record directly to either main or sub, and bounce (sub+main) to main. There are options for punch in and overdub. Audio Multi Recording provides WAV import and export, functionality which eventually got a true work-out.

Audio Multi Recording keeps digital audio in a persistent project. A project resides in the internal Genos 60GB user solid-state drive and is always ready. The project remembers audio and mix settings without requiring explicit save and load user operations. That makes for a clean workflow. Export is the way to get digital audio into a WAV file and it mixes the main and sub on the way to WAV. In order to export a solo vocal track from sub, one needs to dial down the main and then wait while Genos writes the WAV file in real time. I wish there was a simple, direct fast export to WAV supporting both main to WAV and sub to WAV.

In The Day Of The Lord I quickly realized that I do need to think ahead and assemble a basic skeleton on which I could build a tune. (Duh!) In this case, Toontrack EZDrummer provided the drum patterns which I pulled together in Cubase. Genos played the MIDI drum track while I recorded the flute as a melodic guide and layered in the bass and organ — all recorded as audio. We then did a few vocal takes to Genos. I transferred all of the Genos audio as WAV into Cubase for the final mix. Vocal processing typically was light: a little pitch correction, EQ, and maybe double tracking. A touch of reverb (Cubase Revelation) blends everything together here.

Stop By, Lord This tune makes use of the Genos rhythm accompaniment consisting of main patterns and one-bar fills. I recorded a basic guide track in MIDI using the “BigBandBallad” style as the drummer. This meant switching the main and fill patterns with my left hand while playing the melody with my right hand. I layered in the piano, bass and horns, discarding the guide melody along the way. I added the B-3 organ (MODX through Lester K) in an audio pass. Everything was recorded and produced on Genos since we didn’t record vocals.

Psalm 95 If Today “If Today” makes full use of the Genos arranger features. I played the basic accompaniment track using the “Sunny Reggae” style. Whoever built that style, it must have been a labor of love and it fits this song quite well. I vocoded my voice. Both the accompaniment and vocal tracks where exported to Cubase for final assembly and mix down. I had a lot of fun adding dub effects and tons of reverb, Long live King Tubby!

Rise Up With Him “Rise Up” was recorded to MIDI, again using the Genos rhythm accompaniment as the drummer. The electric piano went down first followed by the bass. The B-3 organ is MODX through Lester K. Backing and vocal audio were exported to Cubase for final mix down. Overall, a pretty simple demo to pull together.

O Sacred Head I recorded the MIDI for this tune a long time ago — in the early 2000s on a Roland XP-60. The guitar picking was carefully edited and assembled (years ago!) from Twiddly Bits. I imported the XP-60 MIDI into Cakewalk, choosing Genos voices and effects. The Genos result versus the original XP-60 is amazing. Fran encouraged me to leave it as an instrumental.

This Is The Day This psalm is long out-of-print. A few years agao, I transfered a scruffy copy of the piano score into Sibelius. So, to kickstart this tune, I exported MIDI from Sibelius, restructured the sections, and humanized the piano as much as possible. I tried to keep the accompaniment simple adding just bass and horns. Once again, the backing and vocal tracks were mixed in Cubase. This demo is a good example of Arturia’s Plate-140 reverb — a freebie that Arturia gave away during the Christmas holiday. I love it.

Lead Me, Lord Another simple turn-on-the-beat-box, sound-on-sound production. Everything was recorded to Genos with the backing and vocal tracks exported to Cubase. (Another example of Plate-140, BTW.) The vocal harmony was generated by a TC Helicon Play Electric added in real time. Recording and production was dirt simple although it took a while to get the TC Helicon configured.

Alleluia! Love Is Alive This was the penultimate demo in the series. The basic track is a stripped down Genos “6-8PopBallad” style. Yamaha tends to over-orchestrate styles, so I kept drum, bass and guitars, tossing the rest. Instead of playing the basic track, I created the accompaniment using chord step-record. This MIDI Multi Recording feature lets a musician enter chords and sections from a lead sheet, quickly creating the song skeleton. You can even try different styles if you haven’t chosen one already. Once the skeleton is set, you expand the chord track into MIDI events, thereby obtaining the full backing track in a Standard MIDI File (SMF).

I added the Celtic violin by playing it into a free MIDI track. Using Sonar, I tweaked the tempo in the full MIDI song in order to add energy as the song progressively builds to the end. Finally, with the MIDI finished, I froze the backing tracking to WAV audio. The backing and vocal tracks were mixed down in Cubase with a little automation here and there to add vocal depth and double tracking.

Conclusions?

The preceding discussion is already a lot to absorb and to process. I’ll take a step back in a future post and try to summarize. All the best to ya.

Sonogenic voice editor

Posted on February 18, 2020 by pj

The Yamaha SHS-500 Sonogenic is a good sounding syntheizer which lets you jam along with ChordTracker songs. The SHS-500 includes a General MIDI Level 1 multi-timbral tone generator that is accessible over MIDI (Bluetooth, 5-pin or USB). Yamaha doesn’t promote the General MIDI capability, but it’s there!

Update: I added a post showing how to customize the Sonogenic voice editor user interface.

The Sonogenic lacks three critical features that one finds in a typical desktop synth:

Although the Sonogenic has 28 great voices and two drum kits built-in, it lacks many important instruments like organ, double reeds, tuned percussion and soft synth pads.
Internal voices cannot be edited, e.g., attack, filter cutoff and so forth cannot be adjusted.
The chorus and reverb types are preselected and cannot be changed.
Edits and changes cannot be stored into and recalled from user memory slots.

This is the ideal situation for a tablet-based app.

MIDI Designer is an iPad-based tool which supports creation and use of MIDI voice editors and controllers called “layouts.” Users have built and shared layouts for many popular synths. Now, I’m pleased to add the SHS-500 Sonogenic layout. With this layout, you can play the General MIDI (GM) voices, change reverb and chorus types, edit General MIDI (GM) voices and save all of your work in MIDI Designer presets. If you turn Sonogenic LOCAL sound generation on, you can layer an internal voice with a GM voice.

This post describes the Sonogenic layout. I recommend reading my post about MIDI Designer to Sonogenic communications (MIDI flow) first. It will help you to understand the relationship between the SHS-500 and the MIDI Designer Sonogenic layout. The write-up may even inspire a new way of using MIDI Designer with Sonogenic.

One thing that’s nice about MIDI Designer and layouts — you can customize them. So, if you want to modify my layout, don’t hesitate. First, though, you should read my post describing Sonogenic’s MIDI implementation. Then you will know more about the MIDI messages behind the layout’s controls.

Click this link to download my Sonogenic layout for MIDI Designer. Use iTunes file sharing to install the layout in MIDI Designer. I plan to upload the Sonogenic layout to the MIDI Designer web site.

Connection

Although you could connect by USB or 5-pin MIDI, the Sonogenic, MIDI Designer and Bluetooth MIDI are made for each other.

First, launch the free midimittr app which acts as a bridge between Sonogenic, Bluetooth MIDI and MIDI Designer. midimitter lets MIDI Designer echo Sonogenic’s MIDI note on/off, modulation and pitch bend messages back to the Sonogenic. You should turn Sonogenic LOCAL off unless you intend to layer a Sonogenic voice with a GM voice.

Next, launch MIDI Designer and make connections to midimittr as shown in the screenshot above. Then load the Sonogenic layout into MIDI Designer. You should be ready to go at this point.

Voices and effects

The Sonogenic layout is separated into three tabs: Effects, Voice and Voice Edit. (See the screenshot below.) Effect-related controls are on the left-hand side of the screen and voice-related controls (tabbed pages) are on the right-hand side.

Selecting a GM voice

The Sonogenic has a strict division between its keyboard sound and the General MIDI sounds over MIDI. You can think of the keyboard sound and GM sounds as two distinct tone generators, each with their own controls. The keyboard sound is selected and controlled through the Sonogenic front panel. The GM sound(s) is selected and controlled by the MIDI Designer layout.

The Voice page has an array of voice buttons. The 28 buttons at the top of the page select one of the preset “panel” voices. The two large buttons in the middle select one of the two preset panel drum kits. The buttons at the bottom of the page select a voice from the General MIDI sound set.

Please note: if you select a panel voice on the Voice page, you are changing the current General MIDI sound. The Sonogenic keyboard sound remains the same. The separation may seem artifical, but it lets us layer two sounds: the keyboard sound and a General MIDI sound.

The Sonogenic panel voices are generally better-sounding than the equivalent GM voice. The layout provides direct access to the panel voices while providing 12 buttons which can be customized for your own favorite GM voices. Of course, you’ll need to learn how to edit the GM buttons…

Effects

The large buttons on the Effects page choose the current reverb and chorus type. Like the voice buttons, the reverb and chorus effect type buttons are “radio buttons,” i.e., you can select only one effect type at a time within the reverb group or chorus group.

The reverb (Rev) and chorus (Cho) sliders adjust the reverb and chorus level for the General MIDI sound. [By the way, the GM voice and its effect levels are on MIDI channel 1.] Change the amount of reverb or chorus effect here. The sliders do not affect the keyboard sound — only the GM sound.

Changing the chorus and reverb type also affects the keyboard sound because the chorus and reverb units are shared by the keyboard sound and the GM tone generator. Reverb and chorus level only affect the GM sound [MIDI channel 1].

The four small buttons are utility buttons:

XG On: Sends an XG System reset to the GM tone generator. This resets the voice (acoustic piano) and all internal MIDI controller values.
Local: Turns Sonogenic LOCAL CONTROL on and off.
All Off: Turns off all notes which may be sounding — a panic button.
C3: Plays the MIDI note C3. Good for testing edits and changes.

Use the XG On button sparingly. The GM tone generator and layout do not automatically re-synchronize with each other.

Voice editing

The Voice Edit page is where you adjust basic voice characteristics like volume (Vol), attack time (Atk), release time (Rel), filter frequency (Freq) and filter resonance (Res). You can spruce things up with these controls. The attack, release, frequency and resonance controls behave like “quick edit” controls, that is, they are offsets from the preset voice parameter values. The middle position (64) specifies a zero offset leaving the original value unchanged. Higher values add an offset and lower values subtract an offset. So, if you want to increase attack time, move the attack slider up. If you want to shorten attack time, move the attack slider down.

Portamento adds a glide between notes. Press “Porta On” to turn portamento on and press “Porta Off” to turn portamento off. The portamento time slider (Porta Time) sets the glide time.

The velocity sensitivity knobs change how the voice responds to MIDI note velocity (touch). The two voice parameters are:

Velocity Sense Depth (VelDepth)
Velocity Sense Offset (VelOffset)

Please see Yamaha’s explanation in the figure below.

Organ voices, in particular, should not respond to velocity, i.e., a note is either on or off. To achieve this kind of touch response, set velocity sense depth to zero and set velocity sense offset to a value in the range 110 to 127.

The keyboard voices have a default volume which is louder than the General MIDI voices. You may need to set the volume slider (Vol) above 100 in order to get a better balance (mix) between panel and GM voices.

MIDI Designer presets

MIDI Designer itself implements preset storage and recall. A MIDI Designer preset is a snapshot of all the current values in a layout. Here’s a typical usage scenario:

Select a voice.
Select and adjust chorus and reverb effects.
Tweak the voice (e.g., change filter cutoff, etc.)
Save the finished voice as a MIDI Designer preset.

It’s easy to save a preset. Press the more button, press the “Save” button at the bottom of the drop-down menu, and then press one of the ten preset buttons. To recall a preset, simply press more followed by the desired preset button.

MIDI Designer has two groups of presets: regular and alternative. There are ten preset slots in each group, so you get twenty presets total. The Alt button selects the alternative group.

Potential issue: Portamento sometimes stays on (or off) after selecting a preset that changes portamento state. [I’m still investigating.]

Limitations

I experimented with several other controls of the kind normally found on a desktop synth. Unfortunately, the SHS-500 MIDI implementation is rather limited. Here are some known shortcomings:

Transpose and note shift
DSP effect control
Mono and poly mode selection

Should I make any progress with these deficiencies, I will issue an update.

Sonogenic UI MIDI flow

Posted on January 23, 2020 by pj

My Yamaha SHS-500 Sonogenic user interface (UI) is coming along quite well and is nearly complete. Before presenting the UI itself, I want to explain the overall concept of operation from the MIDI perspective.

The diagram below shows the flow of MIDI messages between the Sonogenic and the apps running on the iPad. The iPad and Sonogenic exchange MIDI messages over Bluetooth MIDI (BLE MIDI).

The two iPad apps are MIDI Designer and midimittr. Although MIDI Designer is Bluetooth MIDI capable, it is not able to echo incoming MIDI note on, note off and modulation messages back to the Sonogenic. For that, we need the (free) midimittr app. midimittr is launched first and makes the connection to the Sonogenic. In Bluetooth terms, midimittr is the “Central” and the Sonogenic is the “Peripheral.” MIDI Designer is launched after midimittr and virtual MIDI connections in and out are made to midimittr. THRU is turned on.

Thus, midimittr acts as a bi-directional pipe for incoming and outgoing MIDI messages (i.e., incoming and outgoing with respect to MIDI Designer.) MIDI Designer along with midimittr forms a MIDI loop-back.

Back in the Sonogenic, keyboard and modulation control messages are sent to the MIDI OUT link and, under the control of the LOCAL ON/OFF switch, are sent to the Tone Generator. If LOCAL is ON, keyboard messages are sent to the Tone Generator. If LOCAL is OFF, keyboard messages only go out on MIDI and no sound is initiated.

In this design, the Sonogenic transmits outgoing MIDI messages on channel 1. MIDI Designer also sends its messages on channel 1. The net effect of the loop-back is to merge messages sent by the Sonogenic with messages sent by MIDI Designer.

The incoming MIDI message stream always goes to the Tone Generator. Along this path, the Tone Generator implements a General MIDI Level 1, 16-channel synthesizer. All channel 1 messages are recognized and interpreted by the Tone Generator whether they originated within the Sonogenic or MIDI Designer.

The incoming MIDI messages and the keyboard messages (when LOCAL is ON) are received by the Tone Generator via two separate and independent ports.

The keyboard port is not one of the 16 MIDI channels. Panel voice selection and DSP effect control are available through this port. No General MIDI control is possible through this port.
The General MIDI message port handles all 16 channels including channel 1 which carries the merged messages from the Sonogenic loop-back and MIDI Designer. General MIDI messages cannot change the panel voice or DSP effect.

Now you can see why MIDI Designer loops Sonogenic MIDI messages back to the tone generator. And, you can see why there are certain limitations.

However, we do gain one advantage by having two such independent tone generator ports. If LOCAL is turned ON, you can layer a panel voice (selected on the Sonogenic) with a GM voice (selected in MIDI Designer). Want a phat stacked synth? You got it. Want to layer EPiano over strings? You got it.

The MIDI Designer UI lets you select and edit General MIDI voices. You can also select among all of the available chorus and reverb types. Thanks to MIDI Designer’s preset capability, you can save and recall the edited voices. The Sonogenic does not have patch editing or patch storage.

I hope this explanation is helpful. Soon, I will dive into the MIDI Designer interface.

SHS-500 Sonogenic MIDI

Posted on January 21, 2020 by pj

The Yamaha SHS-500 Sonogenic has hidden (undocumented) MIDI abilities! This post covers “What mother didn’t tell you.” I’m working on a MIDI Designer-based user interface for the SHS-500 and spent time exploring its MIDI implementation. Here’s the results.

For those who are “tl:dr”, The MIDI implementation is similar to (based on?) the Yamaha PSR-E463/-EW410. If you continue reading, you’ll learn a few new things about the E-series models, too.

General MIDI tone generation

The big news, of course, is the built-in General MIDI Level 1 tone generator. You can use the SHS-500 as a full 16-channel, multi-timbral General MIDI (GM) sound source (GM System On/Reset):

    F0 7E 7F 09 01 F7

You can also enable and select the panel voices by putting the Sonogenic into its ultra-light XG mode (XG System On):

    F0 43 10 4C 00 00 7E 00 F7

I won’t reproduce the GM voice table here nor the list of SHS-500 panel voices. Consult the SHS-500 Reference Manual for the bank select and program change values needed for panel voice selection.

Chorus and reverb effects

Like the E463/EW410, the Sonogenic implements a smattering of basic chorus and reverb effect types. Reverb type is selected by a MIDI message of the form:

    F0 43 10 4C 02 01 00 MSB LSB F7

The reverb types are:

                MSB  LSB  SysEx                        
                ---  ---  ----------------------------- 
    No effect     0    0 
    Hall 1        1    0  F0 43 10 4C 02 01 00 01 00 F7 
    Hall 4 *      1    1                       0  01 
    Hall 2        1   16                       01 10 
    Hall 3        1   17                       01 11    
    Cathedral *   1   23                       01 17 
    Room          2    0                       02 00 
    Room 3 *      2    7                       02 07 
    Room 1        2   17                       02 11 
    Room 2        2   19                       02 13    
    Stage         3    0                       03 00    
    Stage 1       3   16                       03 10    
    Stage 2       3   17                       03 11    
    Plate         4    0                       04 00    
    Plate 1       4   16                       04 10   
    Plate 2       4   17                       04 11

Please note the three reverbs added in the E463 (Hall 4, Cathedral, Room 3).

Chorus type is selected using a MIDI message of the form:

    F0 43 10 4C 02 01 20 MSB LSB F7

The chorus effect types are:

             MSB  LSB  SysEx 
             ---  ---  -----------------------------    
 No Effect     0    0    
 Chorus 3     65    0  F0 43 10 4C 02 01 20 41 00 F7    
 Chorus 2     65    2                       41 02       
 Celeste      66    0                       42 00       
 Chorus 1     66   17                       42 11       
 Flanger      67    0                       43 00       
 Flanger 1    67    8                       43 08       
 Flanger 2    67   17                       43 11

Unfortunately, Yamaha have not given us a way to select the DSP effect type. The Sonogenic does not implement CC#94 which is needed to control variation send when the variation effect is configured in system mode. I performed many experiments trying to enable the DSP effect as an insertion effect, failing all attempts. Yamaha’s MIDI set-up (for SMFs) on the E463 does not contain DSP configuration. So, I think we’re hosed when it comes to DSP effects via MIDI.

I couldn’t find a way to change the Master EQ through MIDI.

MIDI Continuous Controllers

The SHS-500 Sonogenic implements the following MIDI Continuous Controller (CC) messages:

 CC#  Function / purpose
 ---  ----------------------------------------------- 
  0  Bank Select (MSB) 
  1  Modulation 
  5  Portamento Time 
  6  Data Entry (MSB) 
  7  Main volume (channel volume) 
 10  Pan  11  Expression  32  Bank Select (LSB) 
 38  Data Entry (LSB) 
 64  Sustain (Off: 0 to 63, On: 64 to 127) 
 65  Portamento On/Off (Off: 0 to 63, On: 64 to 127) 
 71  Resonance 
 72  Release Time 
 73  Attack Time 
 74  Cutoff Frequency 
 84  Portamento Control (amount of portamento) 
 91  Reverb depth (Effect 1 Depth) 
 93  Chorus depth (Effect 3 Depth) 
 96  RPN/NRPN data increment 
 97  RPN/NRPN data decrement
100  Registered Parameter Number (RPN) LSB 
101  Registered Parameter Number (RPN) MSB 
120  All Sound Off 
121  Reset All Controllers 
122  Local On/Off switch (Off: 0 to 63, On: 64 to 127) 
123  All Notes Off 
124  Omni Off 
125  Omni On 
126  Mono (0 to 16) 
127  Poly

These CC channel messages are pretty standard. Without deep diving, note that CC#91 and CC#93 set the reverb depth and chorus depth, respectively. It’s still possible to have a lot of fun with CC#71, CC#72, CC#73, and CC#74 for voice editing. However, you’ll have to find a way to save your edits since the Sonogenic doesn’t have any user patch memory. I’m hoping to edit and save patches through my MIDI Designer user interface.

Sadly, there isn’t a way to control vibrato. It would be nice to control vibrato rate and depth, but what you hear is what you get. The best one can do is to control vibrato depth via CC#1 modulation.

Registered Parameter Numbers

The Sonogenic implements the General MIDI Registered Parameter Numbers (RPNs):

RPN MSB  RPN LSB  Function / purpose 
-------  -------  ------------------------------------- 
   0        0     Pitch Bend Range 
   0        1     Fine Tuning 
   0        2     Coarse Tuning 
   0        5     Modulation Sensitivity

I tested only coarse tuning as a means to achieve transpose.

No Non-Registered Parameter Numbers (NRPN) are supported.

Utility messages

The PSR-E463 MIDI Reference lists a few “utility” messages:

MIDI Master Volume
MIDI Master Tuning
Local ON/OFF

I tested Local ON/OFF and the Sonogenic responds to it. (The SHS-500 MIDI implementation chart shows this message as recognized).

None of the General MIDI Level 2 messages are implemented, e.g., Master Coarse Tuning. Thus, options for transpose (note shift) are limited.

XG extensions

I spent a fair bit of time searching for Yamaha XG extensions. Almost all XG extensions are ignored except velocity sense control:

Velocity Sense Depth (Part: 1, Default: 64)
    F0 43 10 4C 08 00 0C vv F7 
Velocity Sense Offset (Part: 1, Default: 64) 
    F0 43 10 4C 08 00 0C vv F7

I’m glad velocity sens control is supported. Organ voices, in particular, do not respond to key touch. If you want to turn off touch response in a MIDI channel, try:

    Velocity Sense Depth: 0 
    Velocity Sense Offset: 115 to 127

Both parameters default to 64 (Hex 0x40).

Based upon my analysis of E463 song set-up messages, the Sonogenic is likely to support XG Scale Tune messages.

Display chord name

You’ve probably seen demonstrations of Chord Tracker driving the SHS-500. Chord Tracker communicates chord names to the Sonogenic over MIDI. It uses the same SysEx chord name message as the Genos/PSR series keyboards. For example, the following two messages send “Dm7” and “G7” to the Sonogenic.

F0 43 7E 02 32 0A 32 0A F7     Dm7
F0 43 7E 02 35 13 35 13 F7     G7

Chord names are displayed when the Sonogenic is in Jam Mode.

Here is Yamaha’s definition of the chord name messages as taken from the Genos Data List PDF:

F0 43 7E tt d1 d2 d3 d4 F7     Type1 (tt=02) 
    11110000 F0 = Exclusive status 
    01000011 43 = YAMAHA ID 
    01111110 7E = Style 
    00000010 02 = type 1 
    0ddddddd d1 = chord root (cr) 
    0ddddddd d2 = chord type (ct) 
    0ddddddd d3 = bass note (bn) 
    0ddddddd d4 = bass type (bt) 
    11110111 F7 = End of Exclusive 

    cr : Chord Root 0fffnnnn 
        fff: b or #, nnnn: note(root) 
        0000nnnn 0n bbb           0fff0000 x0 reserved 
        0001nnnn 1n bb            0fff0001 x1 C 
        0010nnnn 2n b             0fff0010 x2 D 
        0011nnnn 3n natural       0fff0011 x3 E 
        0100nnnn 4n #             0fff0100 x4 F 
        0101nnnn 5n ##            0fff0101 x5 G 
        0110nnnn 6n ###           0fff0110 x6 A 
                                  0fff0111 x7 B 

    ct : Chord Type 0 to 34, 127 
        00000000 00 0 Maj         00010010 12 18 dim7 
        00000001 01 1 Maj6        00010011 13 19 7th 
        00000010 02 2 Maj7        00010100 14 20 7sus4 
        00000011 03 3 Maj7(#11)   00010101 15 21 7b5 
        00000100 04 4 Maj(9)      00010110 16 22 7(9) 
        00000101 05 5 Maj7(9)     00010111 17 23 7(#11) 
        00000110 06 6 Maj6(9)     00011000 18 24 7(13) 
        00000111 07 7 aug         00011001 19 25 7(b9) 
        00001000 08 8 min         00011010 1A 26 7(b13) 
        00001001 09 9 min6        00011011 1B 27 7(#9) 
        00001010 0A 10 min7       00011100 1C 28 Maj7aug 
        00001011 0B 11 min7b5     00011101 1D 29 7aug 
        00001100 0C 12 min(9)     00011110 1E 30 1+8 
        00001101 0D 13 min7(9)    00011111 1F 31 1+5 
        00001110 0E 14 min7(11)   00100000 20 32 sus4  
        00001111 0F 15 minMaj7    00100001 21 33 1+2+5 
        00010000 10 16 minMaj7(9) 00100010 22 34 cc 
        00010001 11 17 dim 

    bn: On Bass Note Same as Chord root; 127:N o bass chord 
    bt: Bass Chord Same as Chord type; 127: No bass chord

MIDI Realtime messages

The SHS-500 Sonogenic sends the following MIDI Realtime Messages:

Start (0xFA): Jam mode only, when play/pause is pushed while stopped
Stop (0xFC): Jam mode only, when play/pause is pushed while playing
Active Sense (0xFE)
MIDI Timing Clock (0xF8)

Miscellaneous messages

The Sonogenic sends the following message when tuning is changed via the function menu:

    F0 43 10 27 30 00 00 08 00 00 F7

The Sonogenic responds to the MIDI Identity Request message:

    F0 7E dd 06 01 F7

It returns an Identity Reply message:

    F0 7E dd 06 02 vv ff ff mm mm ss ss ss ss F7
        vv    Manufacturer (vendor)
        ff    Family
        mm    Model
        ss    Version

    F0 7E 7F 06 02 43 00 44 23 1F 00 00 00 6F F7 
                   vv ff ff mm mm ss ss ss ss

Summary

Overll, there are enough messages to be dangerous! I already have a prototype patch editor constructed in MIDI Designer. In addition to MIDI Designer, I’m running the free midimittr iPad app in order to send the Sonogenic’s note on, note off and modulation messages back to itself. midimittr merges the Sonogenic’s messages with the editing and control messages from MIDI Designer. No wires — it’s all transmitted over Bluetooth MIDI. Patches are stored and recalled using MIDI Designer presets.

So, I say, dive right in! The SHS-500 offers more than what’s document in the manuals.

Sand, software and sound

Electronics and computing for the fun of it

Category Archives: PSR/Tyros