Is there a way to get Bank/Patch selection for MIDI tracks?

So one thing I’ve missed in playing with Cubase is the ability to have an easy interface to send bank/patch changes to VIs from a MIDI channel. I know there’s the “Program” selector, but that only seems to work with Steinberg’s own instruments like Halion. It just seems to be blank for other VIs. However many of those VIs can respond to normal MIDI bank/patch change commands. In Sonar I could just assign those easily in the track editor, but in Cubase I have to actually insert a MIDI event.

Is there any way to repalce the “Program” tool with just a bank/patch tool?

The Bank/Patch selection in Cubase is pretty primitive. It looks like most of it was written under Windows XP and has never been updated. And there’s not much useful documentation on it, though there are some YouTube videos that can help.
You tell Cubase about your instrument by clicking Studio | More Options | Midi Device Manager. There you can fiddle around with associating a mapping for your Midi instrument. I created a partial mapping for my Yamaha Clavinova to get at some of the sounds I wanted but it’s too big and involved to do all of them so I’ve left it there. I used the GM file provided as a starting point and edited it with notepad to change things up once I figured out the format. There aren’t many premade mapping files for Midi instruments that I’ve been able to find.
A more generic way to interface with a Midi instrument is to not specify a map for the device and just add a Midi track. Then you should see a Bank Selector and a Program Selector box where you were seeing the Program Selector for Halion (They’ll both have the word Off in them to show that they’re uninitialized). Using your instrument documentation you can punch in the numbers for the bank and patch you want. For the Bank Select you might have to specify an MSB (Most Significant Byte) and an LSB value (Least Significant Byte). This allows your device to support more than 128 Banks. But you have to combine these to one Bank number by using the formula: MSB * 128 + LSB.
Beyond that, if you want to change patch or bank mid-track, you’ll have to set something up in the List editor I suppose.
Hopefully Midi 2.0 will allow for a better experience in this area that Cubase will take advantage of :slight_smile:

That’s a great post Aikido. I’ve been puzzling this for a while now - really helped me out.

I just realized that maybe I wasn’t very clear about what I was after: I’m not actually trying to do this for real hardware, I don’t use any of that, I’m trying to do it for VST instruments. Some of the VI’s I have like Synthmaster, SoundCanvas VA, and so on can take bank/patch change commands. You don’t have to pop open their interface to select an instrument, if you don’t want to, you can just send a MIDI command. However when a MIDI track is assigned to output to them instead of the bank/patch dialogue, Cubase shows the “Program” selector, but there is nothing in it because those instruments don’t have whatever Cubase needs to see in to them to get at their patch list.

Did you ever figure this out? I am having same problem. I want to send program change to a Korg VSTi but no option in Inspector so wrote it in List Editor but synth doesn’t respond. I’m thinking I need a Bank Select as well but can’t figure out how to program that.