Does anyone speak Yamaha?

[HapiCmpur]

I can't get a Yamaha AW2816 workstation to take midi commands from a Boss DR-770 drum machine. (I can't get it to work the other way around, either.) I've followed both of the manuals step by step, but none of the recommended configurations work.

Yamaha users out there already know that Yamaha manuals are written by aliens from another galaxy. Nevertheless, I have every reason to believe I'm doing everything right according to the manuals. And that's what's so frustrating.

The only thing I haven't tried yet is setting up a tempo map in the Yamaha. I've avoided this because a) it seems like an unnecessary step and b) because that method is recommended for when you want to use the Yamaha as the master and the other device as the slave. In my case, I'd like to enslave the Yamaha to the drum machine.

All I really want to do, as you might have guessed, is take a drum "song" that I've stitched together on the DR-770 and send it, sound by sound and pass by pass, to separate tracks of the Yamaha through the independent output of the DR-770. To layer the sounds on the Yamaha, I need to synch up the two machines.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

[Roel]

I mostly work the other way around. I mean, a roland recorder and yamaha sequencer.

I use the VS1880 as master, generating midi-clock messages, with the tempomap specifying the tempo. The yamaha is set as slave, and starts playing whenever I push play on my recorder... Very nice... And handy. Why would you want the drummachine as a master? Does it really matter which play knob you have to push?

 

[HapiCmpur]

Why would you want the drummachine as a master? Does it really matter which play knob you have to push?

Good point. I guess I was just trying to avoid having to set up (and learn about) tempo maps.

Besides, with the drum machine as the master, I was thinking that would allow me to start it up and walk away from it. The drum machine shuts itself off at the end of the song, and (I was hoping) it would shut off the recorder in the process. That way I could go get a snack or take a pee or work on breaking the code of the Yamaha manual and not have to babysit the recorder.

Thanks for the response, Roel. I guess I should just get on with it and start futzing around with tempo maps.