Transmitting midi bank / program on start

Cubase
#1

I have a Roland JV2080 with a lot of expansion cards. I created the requisite file to have it show up as a device in the midi output portion of the channel, with all of my patches grouped by bank. It works great, and makes browsing sounds so much easier. I can loop a midi section and drop down the menu, and simply arrow-keying up and down the menu fires the program changes to the 2080.

What I’m having trouble with is the start of the song. Back in ancient times when I used Cakewalk / Sonar, it would fire the bank / program changes to the hardware when the song started playing. I could swear Cubase used to do this as well but it’s been a couple of years and a few computer / software installations since I last played with this. I probably set something and have forgotten what it was.

If the 2080 is on a different patch and I start the song, it doesn’t change to the patch I’ve selected in Cubase. The 2080 just stays wherever it was. However, if I jiggle the patch up one and down one, two program changes are fired as you’d expect, and now the 2080 is on the right bank and patch.

I’m sure I’m missing something incredibly obvious but I don’t see any preferences / midi settings about firing bank / program changes on song start. Anyone able to point me in the right direction?

Thanks!

#2

*** Can someone help with this - everyone using outboard synths must have faced this problem***

Hi Chris, I have exactly the same problem and wondered if you’ve solved it as there are probably others in the same boat and would be nice to document here. An untidy workaround is to loop a bar as you have and record the midi change event. To do this I have to loop record then play notes on my external xp80 while changing the patch to the one I want via the xp80 performance part midi screen. If I dont simultaneously play some notes then the midi part dissappears. Doing this records the notes but also the patch name change info as 2 midi controller messages CC0 value 81 CC32 value 2 plus a program change event eg. ‘38 0’. If I change the patch in the inspector the midi info gets transmitted to the xp80 but not looped back so when I try and record this nothing is recorded. There must be a way to make the inspector read and transmit the starting patch information to outboard equipment.

#3

Hey, Simon.

Since I’d received no replies and am currently working on non-2080 stuff I’d forgotten the issue. I’ll bang on it some more and if I get it sorted will post back here. I’d swear this used to Just Work.

#4

I would simply record a sysex dump from each synth on their own track BEFORE the actual Song would start.

When you start playback in Cubase each track would send out the sysex file to change the patch on the synth to where it was when you did the dump.

I usually would set the song to start right after the last dump would finish on the timeline so it doesnt get missed.

#5

Hi Shanabit, thanks. Yes, I found if I set the track to record and changed the program in the inspector to patch I wnated the sysex got recorded but I had to play a few notes as well or the midi part dissappeared. I’d then have edit out the notes leaving just the sysex and the part remained. Is this what you do or am I missing a trick? I still think there should be a way for the inspector info to be transmitted when a song start playing. Has this never been asked for? Can’t help thinking there must be some option I’m missing.