When will Bank+Prog Select be available?

Question

In this answer you said this would be added in "one of the next releases" but that was June 2013 - 18 months ago. Is Bank+Prog available in version 1.7?  I bought MD solely for the purpose of creating 1 touch prog select screens and the "absurd hacks" that involve multiple sub buttons are not workable for me since I will have almost 100 buttons on each screen.

Thanks!

Comments

Hi thegrail and thanks for your question. It's true that we promised that 18 months ago in that answer, but that didn't happen. It's not included in 1.7, either. I understand it's a major pain point for you and for some other users. We've been finding (and collecting) all the big pain points in the app (things it "just should" do) and will be handling them as soon as we can. We hope you'll stick with MD even though the work is tedious for you.

On the other hand: you might not need a new bank change sub for each button (and it's pretty unlikely that you will). What are you trying to do?

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Thanks for the quick reply - I was hoping to get this all working over the holiday season.

I play improv guitar using a Roland GR-55 guitar synth. At any moment, I need to be able to push a button to select one of the Roland's patches, which are in 5 different banks.  Unlike a cover band with a known set list, there is no way to organize these program changes ahead of time - it's all dependent on where the musicians I play with are going. Here's a sample of our improv stuff - you can see me choosing new sounds at 3:40 and 4:40.

I currently use an Akai MPD26 for this purpose (it does actually send CC0 and CC32 MSB LSB and then the Program Change). The downside of it is the pads are organized into 4 banks of 16 pads, so labeling the presets is problematic and I have to choose a bank (on the MPD) before I press a drum pad to send the program change.

I know what you were thinking, that I could segregate the patches into banks, but that's not how it works. There is no assurance that the next patch I choose to play will be in the same bank as the one I'm currently playing, therefore I need to send bank and prog change on each button push.

I am really just seeking the ability to randomly select a bank+program from a button.  I have to admit I'm surprised this isn't a part of MidiDesigner already.

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Hi there. Nice vid.

Sorry, I should've been clear about what I was implying: you only need to make bank sub buttons for the banks you have, and you can reuse them in other combinations.

On the other hand, we do not support the ability to "randomly" select a bank-prog change, but I think you mean arbitrarily. In this case, you should be able to get at least some reuse, or even a lot of reuse (so less buttons, but still selecting two subs for each control).

I agree with you that it's surprising that it's not been done yet. If you take a look at the change log (http://midiDR.com/changelog) you'll see what we've been up to, but it won't help you with your frustration regarding  this particular feature-lack, but again: it's a question of workflow. You can arbitrarily hit a bank-prog change in MD in a number of ways, and they're kludgey. Eventually, we'll handle all these workflow woes for ALL of our constituents (including guitarists, of course).

Thanks again for your patience and good luck getting your rig to where you want it.

Best!
Dan

Dan Rosenstark
Author & CEO

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You are correct - I meant to say "Arbitrary".  

I would be happy to calculate the hex bytes needed - can MD send  out hex bytes that are not inside Sysex?  I will experiment with building a multiple object button.

Oddly, TouchOSC also has no way to do this.  My next stop will be Lemur.

Thanks for your quick reply to my question.
Roy

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Hey Roy, thanks. You cannot send arbitrary hex bytes at this point either, unfortunately. Would love to hear your results with other apps, if you would be so kind as to comment back.

By that time, hopefully we'll have implemented this.

Thanks and happy holidays!

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Hi Dan,
Just wanted to follow up as you requested and let you know that TB MIDI Stuff does allow me to send bank+preset change as we have discussed.  I found this guy doing something even more unusual than my project, controlling it with a MIDI footswitch.  

 

The patch selection he is doing at 0:37 is exactly what I'm after. I have purchased TB MIDI Stuff and downloaded this guy's setup to learn exactly how he did it.

I noticed that you have hidden this thread.  Wouldn't it be useful for others to know that MIDIDESIGNER can't send bank+preset?

Thanks for your help, and good luck with MD.

Roy

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Thanks Roy, the thread isn't hidden, just in a different category. Good luck with TB, would love to hear about your experiences as you move forward.

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Hi Roy, I've been scratching my head over this thread since the other day, because you've said, "Wouldn't it be useful for others to know that MIDIDESIGNER can't send bank+preset?"... the question you were looking at was about a VERY different situation. Here's the one you need:

http://mididesigner.com/qa/23/bank-change-then-program-change

and here's the general link on how to get ANY number of MIDI messages tied to one button:

http://mididesigner.com/qa/21/one-control-multiple-messages

NOTE: doing a bank and program change in MIDI Designer is -- if you count taps -- not a huge deal, ESPECIALLY if you can get some reuse out of your banks or progs.

For instance: if 10 of your changes are using Bank 1, then you only need ONE sub for Bank 1, even though you need 10 supers and perhaps 10 subs (for each of the programs)... Check the links.

This is NOT the "absurd hack" that was discussed. That was to get one bank change, 127 program changes, then another bank change, etc. Different situation than yours.

In the future, we'll implement bank + program change, but our users have gotten by making comprehensive and awesome layouts with MANY different types of MIDI messages -- including multiple like bank-prog change -- with no issues.

Thanks for the dialog. Best!
Dan

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Dan,
This is good news. I'll experiment with it over the weekend and get back to you - I much prefer MD's look and feel to TB's.  By the way, I'm also running the MIDI wirelessly using a Zivix PUC interface. Since it looks to apps like a standard CORE MIDI interface, I expect it to work OK with MD.  Are there any known issues with the Zivix PUC?   If you haven't heard of it, here's their site

http://www.mipuc.com/

The only downside to it is that you have to choose in or out, it does not support bi-directional. For my purposes, this is acceptable.

Roy

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Hey there, we haven't tested our PUC yet (it's in the mail somewhere), but the PUC will appear as a CoreMIDI interface and work fine, I believe.

Glad to hear your kind words on MD. We've deleted thousands of lines of code to get here ;)

To sum up, however:
1) sorry that I misunderstood your original message. We do bank+prog relatively easily
2) we will eventually add bank+prog as a message type, but our users combine commands of all different types. The original goal was to provide provide multiple MIDI messages of any type, but any method that we provide for doing that will ultimately look like super- and subcontrols without the UI (because for Prog change you need a min-max, etc.)... in short, it's tricky how to grow on that side.

I hope you'll stick with MD and understand that it's a work in progress with a very solid beginning.

Thanks and good luck with your setup.

Best!
Dan