G2 Engine control

fantayt · Joined: Mar 19, 2005 Posts: 1 Location: Coimbra

Hi folks,

Can you please explain me whats the best way to control a G2 Engine via the G2 Keyboard,because im a g2 keyboard owner and im thinking about buying the engine version to get 8 slots to work simultaneously...

Thankx in advance Smile

Andre Monteiro

mosc · Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2005 11:33 am Post subject:

fantayt, good to have you here. We have several members from Portugal already.

I don't have an engine, just a G2X. I think the best you can do is use the G2 to send MIDI to the engine. You can also, of course, route the audio back and forth, but I think that could be more trouble than it's worth, unless you make the engine a post processor for the keyboard or somthing like that.

You mght consider the Behringer BCR2000 knob box.

Unfortunately, there is no way to slave the engine to the keyboard so the polyphony is automatically extended, like happens with the expander cards.

blue hell · Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2005 11:37 am Post subject:

Welcome to EM Andre,

there is only one way to control the engine, you have to use MIDI (apart from the editor program).

This means that the patches on the engine should be set up to listen to MIDI in the way that you want 'm to listen. Additonaly you might want to add some MIDI modules to the patches that go into the G2-key to send certain information to the engine.

* When you want the engine to give you extra voices for a keyboard patch you'll have to invent some trickery to do so.

* When it's just meant to thicken up the voice it will almost be automaticaly.

* When you want it to do some post processing on your sound that;s also not very hard to accomplish.

I've said this before today in some other thread, but I'll say it again as people seem to be disappointed to find out about this:

The engine is not a voice extender for the keyboard version, it is excactly the same synth except for the controls not being present.

When you want the engine to do voice extension for the keyboard you'll have to program it yourself using the available modules - there is no direct built in support for this.

Jan.

seraph · Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2005 2:24 pm Post subject: Re: G2 Engine control

egw · Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2005 6:36 am Post subject:

If you want to have 8 slots active at the same time, it might be wise to set
up one slot in the keyboard G2 as a midi controller. Each variation sends the notes and selected knobs (via cc) over a different midi channel.
Fortunately the midi control functions use very little dsp.
You could put these functions in the FX area and still use the main area for a "normal" patch.

sundune · Joined: Feb 22, 2006 Posts: 5 Location: Kamuela, Hawaii

Hi folks, newbie here, my first post! I had a similar question, so I figured I'd borrow this thread that was already started. I got my G2 engine today (great stuff, love it already), but realized I had maybe not thought through the cabling issue carefully enough before whipping out the credit card..

So: I want to control the G2 engine in the first instance from my NL3 keyboard, but secondly I also need my sequencer (Logic) to be able to play back MIDI from the computer on the G2. As I see it, both of these actions requires to talk to the G2 via the MIDI IN port.

Now, I have a 8/8 MIDI interface, so I had imagined that betwen this, some clever use of the MIDI THRU ports and maybe some routing tricks in the Logic enviroment, this sould be a piece of cake. For the life of me, I haven't been able to figure out how to do it yet...

Any suggestions on how to solve this in the least painful way would be greatly appreciated!

cheers
ralf

seraph · Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2006 4:45 am Post subject:

Hi sundune
welcome to electro-music.com Very Happy

what you need is a midi merge to be able to control one synth from two sources Exclamation

mosc · Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2006 9:00 am Post subject:

Congrats on your new G2.

Can't your 8X8 MIDI box merge MIDI? If you are running on a PC, you can use MIDIOX to accomplish this. There must be a similar program on OSX but I don't it myself.

sundune · Joined: Feb 22, 2006 Posts: 5 Location: Kamuela, Hawaii

Thanks for the tips guys - yeah, I guess a MIDI merge box would do it, I need to go shopping again. Though it looks like I'm being punished now for going for the cheap MOTU MIDI Express 128 interface: I should have taken the XT or Timepiece instead, which have built-in 8x8 MIDI merge matrix functionality.. Confused

Oh well.

mosc · Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2006 1:07 pm Post subject:

MOTU MIDI Express 128 - I looked that up. If you get MIDIOX you'll be able to merge with the computer. I have a Unitor8. I don't even use the software that came with it (except for the driver). MIDIOX is a much better router.

Unless you want to operate without the computer in the link, then I don't think you need to buy anything.

see http://www.midiox.com/

sundune · Joined: Feb 22, 2006 Posts: 5 Location: Kamuela, Hawaii

Well, I had a look at MIDI-OX already, but there's no mac version of it, is there? But that means that at least it's possible with this MIDI interface, so there could be some OS X app out there that does this too, but I haven't found one yet. Browsing around a bit I came across things like "MidiFork", "MidiPipe" and "MIDI Patchbay" (neither of which I have tried out yet) - but at a glance, it didn't look like any of these would do what I need them to. But I'll keep looking then Smile

deknow · Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2006 5:54 pm Post subject:

abruzzi · Joined: May 16, 2006 Posts: 9 Location: Mesilla, NM, USA

mosc · Posted: Wed May 17, 2006 10:05 am Post subject:

Geof...