help needed fast please (midi keyboard + reason problems)

  • Thread starter Thread starter kuhn
  • Start date Start date
K

kuhn

New member
help me please, I'm goin' crazy. I don't know what I'm doin' wrong !! here's my situation: I have a yamaha PSS 790 keyboard hooked up with my pc soundcard (soundblaster pci 128), connected with one of them nifty midi to pc midi port cables. I have the cable in MIDI OUT of my keyboard. Now, I installed the Reason Software today, cos I know that Reason in combination with my keyboard is a very good combo indeed. BUT IT JUST WON'T WORK. all my settings are correct, I have midi input on PCI audio-midi IN selected. (at first I got a stupid device allready in use box, but that dissapeared after I deleted the joystick option from my hardware profile.). Now it should work right ?????? do I need some special drivers, or settings for my keyboard ??? I've set the send channel on 1 on my keyboard and I did the same for the receive thing in Reason. WHAT AM I NOT DOING ????? howcome I don't hear any playback through my pc when I have a MIDI driven module selected in Reason , exactly the way I'm supposed to ???? HEEEEEEELLLLP PLEEEEASSEEEEEE. Is there any prog. out there to test my mid port and/or connection with my keyboard ??????? cos then I know I just need a new keyboard.....
 
I don't have Reason.
(the long time members here already knew that.... :) )

But I do have a Yamaha keyboard (PSR-GX76) that my cat loves to disable. The answer is always: send a GM-reset SYSEX message to the synth module.
 
thanx, but what's a GM reset and sysex thingy blabla (I'm very new to midi)
 
I just heard about reason the other day. Sounds like a cool piece of software.

This is what I think you are trying to do:

Reason must have some sounds that you want to trigger from midi events. Right? So you could have two problems: 1) you aren't recieving midi, which is what you think the problem is and 2) the received midi note is not triggering any sound.

Let's assume you have 2) under control.

It sounds like you need to assign the correct midi port in reason.
A midi port is the equivalent to one midi cable. I have a midisport 4x4, which lets me hook up 4 in and 4 out midi cables to my computer. Therefore, I have 4 input and 4 output ports to choose from. Each port has 16 midi channels.
Your sound card should have a midi driver for your one midi port, if you go to Settings > Control Panal > Sounds and Multimedia > Devices Tab you should see a midi driver. If not, you probably need to install it from the software included with your soundcard.

Some where in Reason you need to select that driver/port. For Cakewalk it is under Options > Midi devices. You should have a similar thing in Reason. Find where the midi driver/midi port is set and set it.

I hope that helps.
Good luck.
 
>thanx, but what's a GM reset and sysex thingy blabla (I'm very new to midi)

In case Nemal's sound advice still leaves you without sound, here's my attempt to explain sysex messages. It stands for System Exclusive messages which are sent as part of the MIDI stream but control options that are specific to different synthesizers. Cakewalk has a Sysex editor built in, and comes with a few generic reset messages. It seems that the Yamaha keyboard has some buttons that, when pressed by my cat's paws disables my synthesizer. In other words, it's sending some sort of sysex message that crashes the synth. By sending the appropriate sysex reset message for my synth, it gets reset to operate normally. Even if all your ports are assigned correctly and connected the right way, if the synth has crashed: no sound.

The GM part of the GM reset stands for General MIDI which is a standard patch configuration for MIDI synths. So an acoustic grand piano patch gets the same patch number on GM compliant synths.

To get an idea of what the message itself looks like, here's some really worthless trivia: The sysex message that always fixes my Roland Sound Canvas:

F0 7E 7F 09 01 F7
 
well I'm glad I'm not doing anything wrong, but on the other hand I still have no sound. I know about all the settings I have to make in Reason, and there is a midi driver installed on my pci 128, I assigned the channel to 1, both on my keyboard and my pc. (and of course I selected midi control for a device in Reason), but still NO SOUND.



I've installed a software program called MIDI OX, someone recommended that to me, to check if my midi connection and keyboard are workin', and it says everything is installed, but I still get no reaction from my pc when I press a key on my keyboard.Probably my keyboard is broken, I bought it second hand at a very cheap price so it's not that bad, still...

thanx everyone for the advice though
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top