I have some questions about aftertouch/pressure control on the EB. It’s been upgraded to 3.x hardware and 3.5OS.
I’m trying to monitor the aftertouch in MIDI-OX input monitor and not getting anything but note on/note off messages. MIDI filtering in MIDI-OX is OFF. I’m not even getting velocity messages, but I know the velocity is working because I can raise/lower the cutoff of the filter with velocity. I am getting mod wheel and pitch wheel messages, and other CC’s like patch change, volume, release, etc to display in the input monitor.
Under the Local Control display screen (press Master) all functions are ON.
I did a search for “aftertouch” and tried the suggestions in this thread but couldn’t notice any aftertouch effect at all.
Am I missing some other internal control? Or missing a setting in MIDI-OX?
After playing around with this a bit I’m getting the impression that the aftertouch is toggling on or off but not following the pressure applied to the keys.
MIDI running status is set to ON. It was OFF when I initially began looking into this. I switched it on after you mention the local control status thing.
I’m using a MIDIsport 8x8 and I’m not aware of any filtering being done by the unit. Maybe I need to look into whatever soft control there is over that unit. I’m not aware that there is a soft control panel for it.
After looking under the “all programs > M-audio > midisport” tab all there is is a read-me file and the driver uninstaller.
Without having MIDI-OX running it won’t pass MIDI in USB mode, only in thru mode.
To test it, simply assign the aftertouch (pressure) parameter to “pitch” with maximum “amount” and press slowly on a key and check for smooth operation…
Validate that your pressure is working well, using one of the modulation busses: set source to ON/mod2, controller to pressure, destination to pitch, and knob amount fully clockwise. You should hear the change in pitch playing a key while varying the pressure on it. Once you have established that the pressure CV inside the machine is alive and well, then it’s a Midi issue. I would guess that you have to do the steps just mentioned before the Voyager sends out pressure midi CC’s but I don’t know how the Voyager handles midi, mine is an an Old School.
Upon checking, page 89 of the Voyager user manual states the AfterTouch midi parameter in neither transmitted nor recognized. Dunno if a more recent version of firmware implements it or not.
All is not hopeless though if you want to use pressure from the Voyager. Using the VX-351 and a midi controller that has an expression pedal input, such as the Roland FC-300 or the Behringer BCR-2000, you can map the CV to any CC that you like and merge it on the proper midi channel of your midisport.
I still don’t know. If I turn the amount knob up and down I get pitch going up and down, but simply holding down a key with varying pressure doesn’t seem to have much influence.
I can get a tone with the key maybe a quarter of an inch above being bottomed out against the keybed. Depressing that final quarter doesn’t seem to have any effect on pitch.
Even outputting the pressure CV from the VX-351 doesn’t seem to be changing the pitch. Outputting the velocity CV is definitely altering pitch.
Is there a trimpot somewhere to adjust the aftertouch sensitivity?
The word data from the keyboard is unclear. I interpreted it as internal CV. If it related to MIDI, there would be a CC number in the recognized and transmitted column, and maybe an exception stated for the RME.
Looking at Appendix C of my Voyager manual shows aftertouch being both transmitted and recognized over MIDI.
My manual is dated 03/04/04 is it possible that MIDI implementation of aftertouch changed with the newer OS?
The more I mess around with this the more I am inclined to think it’s either on or off. Changing the amount knob changes the amount of pitch modulation, so I know that SOMETHING is being transmitted. But I’m not getting any kind of noticable scaling with varying pressure.
Maybe Amos or Rudy could shed some light on this ? I’m working from the online user manual version. I’ve had an Old School and played many times with a Voyager, but I don’t actually have one with me at the moment. All I have is a Minimoog D…
My friend’s Old School came out of the box with a non-working aftertouch or pressure. It turned out to be the aftertouch connector strip that had come loose under the mod-wheels panel… That could also be the case in your Voyager, maybe ?
That could be something worth looking into. When I did the mod wheel upgrade I put a dab of RTV silicone on the connectors from the wheels and tried to avoid touching anything else in the vicenity.
After pulling the connector off CN1 and flipping it 180-degrees there is no difference. Pressure is on or it’s off.
Velocity works either orientation.
I think I did have the connector on CN1 backwards, because the indented side was facing away from the connector on the wheel board. I had to put a half-twist in the ribbon cable to get the proper orientation.
I wonder if the pressure strip underneath the keyboard used by Moog can also suffer from the oxidization problems after some years ? Something that plagued older synths with a similar device (notably my Korg DW8000 which needed about 20 pounds of pressure on a key to produce any change in aftertouch, before taking it out and replacing it)?
