Making 1 synth control another synth with midi for live playing

[Davi1]

Hi All,
Hopefully, you good people can help.
My Yamaha MX61 will be arriving next week. I have a Roland VR 730.
The pianos (and a few other sounds) on the Roland are not great.
Would it be possible to have the sounds from the Yamaha available on both keyboards ? - eg having the Yamaha piano on the Roland and a Yamaha synth lead on the Yamaha and so on.
Basically I want to pick different Yamaha sounds for the individual keyboards, using the Roland as a sort of midi kbd (and be able to also have layers and splits on both kbds if required).
I would be using them live.

If anyone can tell me step by step how to do this I'd be very grateful.
Thank you.

 

[johnincolorado]

I've been on an "intro to MIDI" journey like yourself.

I'd suggest you search this forum for introductory threads. There are several. I'd also suggest you go to YouTube and watch some of the many "MIDI basics" video tutorials available there.

Then you'll want to read the manuals for your Roland and Yamaha, and identify the MIDI functionality each provides.

I have an MX61 and it has 5-pin MIDI in and out. If your Roland also has 5-pin MIDI in and out, I think the next step would be to buy a 5-pin MIDI cable and start experimenting with the configuration on each side to achieve your desired results.

That's the point I'm at with my MX61 and Korg TR88: stop thinking about it and start experimenting.

Good luck to you and to me!

 

[torhu]

It's basically just matching the MIDI channels of the parts/zones on each board to each other. Some boards send and/or receive MIDI on fixed channels, others don't. Some let you control multiple zones through a single channel, others don't. So figure out the easiest way to get what you want with those two boards.

And when you receive MIDI on a zone/part, you usually don't want that zone be controlled from the board's own keyboard, typically just a "zone enable" button that needs to be set to off. There is usually a "Local off" setting that disconnets the sound generator completely from the keyboard, but that's more for when you don't need the internal sounds at all.

The next step would be to send Bank Select (MSB/LSB) and Program Change messages from one board to switch patches or setups on the other, and so on.

 

[Davi1]

Hi Torhu, thank you very much for the info. I'm going to do some deep digging thanks to your guidance.
Thanks again.

 

[anotherscott]

You happen to be using two keyboards that don't have a ton of MIDI flexibility, but it can do what you need.

For the Roland to trigger a Yamaha sound, you'll probably want to set up one or more Registrations to do this (as opposed to making assignments globally). Within a registration you can specify a MIDI transmit channel, and, optionally, Program Change commands (which you'll use depending on how you want to select which Yamaha sound the Roland will be playing... it's up to you as to whether you want to make that setting on the Roland side or the Yamaha side).

By default (e.g. unless you're using 3rd-party software to change these things), the MX will use its first two parts -- tied to MIDI channels 1 and 2 -- for playing its internal sounds (which can be split or layered). Parts 3 through 16 are tied to channels 3 through 16 respectively. If you've got a piano sound assigned to Part 16 on the Yamaha, and you've set the Roland registration to transmit on channel 16, the Roland will trigger that Yamaha piano sound.

That's the gist, hopefully that saves you some time in getting on the right track!