Roland FA 06 Owner with Velocity Problems Black vs. White

[icemonk]

Hi folks first post here. i bough a used Roland FA 06 and i love the keyboard , but the key bed has inconsistencies between the black and white keys. controlling it with another board fixes the issue but i want to be able to use the key bed. it appears roland added a +15 velocity on the black keys and the result is unfortunate for owners. Heres a post from the roland clan forums of a gentleman who fixed this issue by running a midi solutions velocity converter. apparently with this device one can fix this issue. http://forums.rolandclan.com/viewtopic.php?t=49133 the forum is riddled with distain for this issue, i tracked down the one man who found a solution on a 7 year old post thats it.

my question : is there any other way i can achieve this ? would you guys recommend this midi solutions device? midi solutions also carries a Event Processor wonder if that will work. Anyways im a midi noob but a willingness to learn to fix my top board in my studio i will figure this out. Any wisdom i greatly appreciate

also need likley need mergers if im using the FA 06s midi in and out to loop a unit that fixes my problem,

also my gear is Roland FA 06 , Yamaha MODX6 , and a Roland SC 8850.

 

[delaware dave]

As it would appear to be a Roland firmware issue I would think that you need to address this question directly with Roland technical. Not much we are going to be able to offer you as a solution other than something like the midi solutions box that was already mentioned in your post. Also, I would doubt that Roland would go through the exercise to release a firmware update for a keyboard that is nearly 7 years old. Might be time to sell the keyboard while it still has a decent market value and look to something else.

 

[anotherscott]

I haven't played the FA-06 in particular, but I am familiar with the action from other boards that use it. I think what you're experiencing may be related to the underlying issue of keys quickly requiring more force to press as you move from the front to the back... maybe they programmed the black keys that way so that hitting them a bit further back wouldn't be as much quieter than the white keys as they would if they had better balanced their front sections. IOW, there are fundamental limitations to the action design, and so any setting is likely to be a compromise of some sort. And people may experience it differently depending on their own playing technique and hand size (both of which can affect where you tend to hit the black keys). So then, yes, it's possible that velocity conversion could help, though what fixes it for one player may not necessarily be best for another.

MIDI Solutions makes good stuff, but also, if you have any kind of computer in your rig (laptop, iPad, whatever), you should be able to find apps that will allow you to map velocities however you want. Also, I doubt the Event Processor would work well for this... I don't think it would have a global way to treat the black keys separately from the white keys, which means you'd have to instead map each of the black keys individually, which becomes a problem because you would probably end up having to map more events than the Event Processor can handle.

 

[delaware dave]

Scott, the MIDI solutions solution he's talking about isn't the Event's Processor, it is the Velocity Converter which apparently can be programmed to make this correction. MIDI out of the keyboard into the Velocity Converter and then a MIDI In back to the keyboard. Very kludgy and from the price of the unit fairly expensive.

 

[anotherscott]

Yes, he talked about the Velocity Concevrter, but he also asked if he could also do it with Event Processor, that was the question I was answering. Looking at the whole post again, one simpler solution might be to trigger the FA-06 from the MODX (using its Zone Master function), it could give him sufficient improvement requiring nothing more than a MIDI cable.

 

[delaware dave]

In his post he acknowledges that triggering it from another keyboard fixes the issue but also states that he wants to use the FA-06 keybed. So without a firmware upgrade that would allow adjustability of the black keys velocity the alternatives are limited. The velocity box is a better alternative than the events controller box.

 

[anotherscott]

In his post he acknowledges that triggering it from another keyboard fixes the issue

ha, I saw that the first time, and missed it on my quick review!

The velocity box is a better alternative than the events controller box.

Yes, that's what I was trying to say in my answer as well. Velocity box yes, events controller no.