cooltouch
New member
Hello, this is my first post to the forum. I'm here for two reasons -- I'm very rusty on the ins and outs of MIDI, so I can really use a comprehensive refresher, but my most immediate need is to get my Roland GR-33 guitar synth working again.
I bought my GR-33 years ago -- back in about 2001, I guess it was, and I used it back then on several pieces of music I wrote -- with great effect. Back then I was running my Digital Audio Workstation on a Win98 platform and was using Cakewalk's Pro Audio 9 as my DAW software. I had the direct round MIDI ports in my system as well as a joystick/MIDI port. All were being used because I had several pieces of MIDI hardware connected to my system. After using it for recording those pieces, I let the system idle -- for entirely too long.
Nowadays, I have no MIDI ports on my system, so I'm having to use USB instead. I have two Midiman Midisport 2x2 MIDI-to-USB converters that I bought years ago, one of which is in use right now. Its drivers have been successfully installed. And I'm running my GR-33's MIDI out into the system using this one Midisport 2x2. The DAW software is still Cakewalk -- Sonar Platinum, which is the direct descendant from Pro Audio 9. Sonar doesn't "see" the GR-33. Instead, it sees the Midisport 2x2. But I have an instrument definition file for the GR-33 loaded and I've associated the Midisport's 16 channels to the GR-33. So now, when I load an instrument in Sonar, it sees the GR-33 instruments.
When I first hooked my GR-33 up to this system, everything behaved normally. Because I had an instrument file installed in Sonar for the GR-33, Sonar was able to access its instrument patches and was successfully playing them in a few pieces I tried it out with. Then suddenly, it stopped working. This was a few weeks ago and I've been struggling to get it back working ever since. I'm not 100% sure, but I think what might have caused it was, one day, I was playing around with the GR-33's buttons, and I punched the "Write" button, which loaded the first patch, A11 and its name. I don't recall what I did after that, but I do know I messed up that patch and a couple of others, so fearing I'd really messed things up, I went ahead and did a system reset -- which resulted in my losing about a half-dozen custom patches I'd made. Unfortunately doing this reset did not solve the issue.
I've gone through the manual, step by step, which isn't a very easy read, by the way, with anything having to do with MIDI and it hasn't done any good. It might appear that the problem lies with Sonar and my having something set wrong, but actually I really doubt it. Since Sonar loads a fresh page with each new song, it doesn't seem like there would be any carry-over if I had something set wrong in a previous tune. So if I have something set wrong in Sonar regarding the GR-33, it would have to be something in its set-up area, but as near as I can tell, everything there is correct.
When I play a piece of music, if I select the Roland in a track, Sonar responds, showing volume in the track's console slider, but the GR-33 is completely silent and unresponsive. If I change instruments, the GR-33 doesn't show the new instrument selected. It stays on the default voice, A11, or whatever other voice I might have set it to. The Midisport is even showing activity. Normally, with the GR-33 turned on, but not active, the Midisport has a single LED that pulses fairly rapidly. But as soon as Sonar is telling it to play something, three LEDs light up and begin pulsing with the music. And get this -- if I play the guitar while Sonar is running, the GR-33's sounds are getting through to Sonar. It even lights up the volume slider in the correct track when I play something! But still no sound when Sonar's asking for it. So this is indicating to me that the problem lies with the GR-33 itself. But as I said above, I've been through everything with manual in hand, and I don't know what I've missed.
Sorry about the length of this post, but I had a lot of "'splainin' to do."
So, any ideas?
I bought my GR-33 years ago -- back in about 2001, I guess it was, and I used it back then on several pieces of music I wrote -- with great effect. Back then I was running my Digital Audio Workstation on a Win98 platform and was using Cakewalk's Pro Audio 9 as my DAW software. I had the direct round MIDI ports in my system as well as a joystick/MIDI port. All were being used because I had several pieces of MIDI hardware connected to my system. After using it for recording those pieces, I let the system idle -- for entirely too long.
Nowadays, I have no MIDI ports on my system, so I'm having to use USB instead. I have two Midiman Midisport 2x2 MIDI-to-USB converters that I bought years ago, one of which is in use right now. Its drivers have been successfully installed. And I'm running my GR-33's MIDI out into the system using this one Midisport 2x2. The DAW software is still Cakewalk -- Sonar Platinum, which is the direct descendant from Pro Audio 9. Sonar doesn't "see" the GR-33. Instead, it sees the Midisport 2x2. But I have an instrument definition file for the GR-33 loaded and I've associated the Midisport's 16 channels to the GR-33. So now, when I load an instrument in Sonar, it sees the GR-33 instruments.
When I first hooked my GR-33 up to this system, everything behaved normally. Because I had an instrument file installed in Sonar for the GR-33, Sonar was able to access its instrument patches and was successfully playing them in a few pieces I tried it out with. Then suddenly, it stopped working. This was a few weeks ago and I've been struggling to get it back working ever since. I'm not 100% sure, but I think what might have caused it was, one day, I was playing around with the GR-33's buttons, and I punched the "Write" button, which loaded the first patch, A11 and its name. I don't recall what I did after that, but I do know I messed up that patch and a couple of others, so fearing I'd really messed things up, I went ahead and did a system reset -- which resulted in my losing about a half-dozen custom patches I'd made. Unfortunately doing this reset did not solve the issue.
I've gone through the manual, step by step, which isn't a very easy read, by the way, with anything having to do with MIDI and it hasn't done any good. It might appear that the problem lies with Sonar and my having something set wrong, but actually I really doubt it. Since Sonar loads a fresh page with each new song, it doesn't seem like there would be any carry-over if I had something set wrong in a previous tune. So if I have something set wrong in Sonar regarding the GR-33, it would have to be something in its set-up area, but as near as I can tell, everything there is correct.
When I play a piece of music, if I select the Roland in a track, Sonar responds, showing volume in the track's console slider, but the GR-33 is completely silent and unresponsive. If I change instruments, the GR-33 doesn't show the new instrument selected. It stays on the default voice, A11, or whatever other voice I might have set it to. The Midisport is even showing activity. Normally, with the GR-33 turned on, but not active, the Midisport has a single LED that pulses fairly rapidly. But as soon as Sonar is telling it to play something, three LEDs light up and begin pulsing with the music. And get this -- if I play the guitar while Sonar is running, the GR-33's sounds are getting through to Sonar. It even lights up the volume slider in the correct track when I play something! But still no sound when Sonar's asking for it. So this is indicating to me that the problem lies with the GR-33 itself. But as I said above, I've been through everything with manual in hand, and I don't know what I've missed.
Sorry about the length of this post, but I had a lot of "'splainin' to do."
So, any ideas?