FL 10 / WK7500 rotary send

[Harland&Wolff]

Called Casio, they have no clue how to get FL 10 to pick up the send. I keep thinking there must be a way because again, FL does pick up the button push from the 7500, and it does pick up the sustain pedal send. The sustain pedal only has 4 programmable functions, rotary isn't one of them.

I realize the 7500 was never meant to be a true midi controller, but am hoping someone somewhere has run into this kind of issue before, and has found a solution.

Thx,

JRH

 

[Ted Nicoson]

JRH

Are you working from the WK7500 MIDI Implementation Manual ? The 7500 does support both Rotary On/Off and Rotary Speed sends/receives. I suspect the it is sending something, just not what FL10 is expecting for Rotary info. It appears that the WK7500's send parameters are fixed, so if things don't match up, you would probably have to adjust what FL10 would recognize as Rotary info.

Good luck !

 

[Harland&Wolff]

I read the WK midi manual, and saw the rotary send/receive parameters, but am not sure how to implement them into FL. I'm not a midi expert (obviously), and the FL manual wasn't much help.

The WK is sending, the midi in light does flash when I hit the rotary button, but FL says it is an "unhandled input". I'll have to somehow figure out how to set up FL to assign the rotary parameter. Any ideas would be helpful.

Many thanks for your reply, I do appreciate it.

JRH

 

[Ted Nicoson]

I never really had any need or intent to use my WK7500 as a controller, but I thought I would give it a try so I could see what you have been going through. I used Sonar and Ableton Live, but sad to say, I got about the same results you did with FL10. First of all, I assume you have figured out by now that the Perc and Rotary buttons are only active, internally or externally, when the keyboard is in Drawbar Organ mode. When it is not in Drawbar mode, those buttons are dead to the world. In Drawbar mode, when I would press the Rotary button, I got no response from Sonar at all, even though the MIDI-IN monitor light on the PC would flicker. So, I knew the 7500 was sending something. With Ableton, whatever voice I had selected would momentarily experience a slight change in timbre and volume when I pressed the Rotary button, but that is all. It's like Ableton did not know what to do with the data it was receiving. I got no response at all from anything when I moved the Drawbar sliders. I didn't even see the MIDI-IN monitor light flicker, so I suspect the 7500 was not even sending anything from those. It would appear that the DAW software assumes that you are using a programmable controller that you have programmed to send the correct code for whatever the DAW software is looking for, but the 7500, being a keyboard and not a programmable controller can only send what it was designed to send, So, the 7500 sends one thing, the DAW is looking for something else, and never the twain shall meet. I take it from the questions and frustrations I see being expressed on various forums - how do I get my controller to do this and I can't get my controller to do that - that these kind of setups are not all that easy, even if you do have a full fledged controller. Those that seem to have the most success are those that have DAW software that came with controller setup templates, one of which matches the make and model of the controller they are using.

So, for now, I am going to withdraw from this and go back to playing and enjoying my keyboard.

Best of luck with this, JRH. Wish I could have been of more help !

 

[Harland&Wolff]

I really do appreciate your testing, as it answers what I suspected to be true. I think FL just detects a midi blip, but thats where it ends, and as you suggest, the DAW doesn't know what to do with it because the WK doesn't know either.

I'm going to call or write Casio and suggest that they develop dedicated midi link software, not that they will pay attention. They should though, as it would greatly enhance the functionality of the WK, which is a fine keyboard as is, and would be a great marketing ploy.

Going to do what you are doing, just enjoy the WK.

Many thank Ted,

JRH

 

[Ted Nicoson]

What you are suggesting is not unheard of in the industry. Some years ago, the Yamaha XS synths came bundled with Steinberg's Cubase AI4 DAW. Once you had everything setup, you could download a template for AI4 such that when you loaded it up, it went looking for the XS and as the XS came online, it went looking for AI4. Yamaha called it total integration, and it worked great. Now, Roland bundles Cakewalk Sonar X1 LE with its Jupiter 50 & 80 synths and a downloadable template that does the same thing. Roland even offers an iPad app editor for them. This all stands to reason, since Yamaha either owns or partners with Steinberg, and I know Roland owns Cakewalk. Cakewalk's logo now reads "Cakewalk by Roland". Since Casio is obviously trying to increase their standing in both the arranger and synth markets, maybe it is time for them to go out and partner with or buy a DAW maker - say like - Ableton - maybe. Especially Ableton - since it does MIDI, but its forte is audio. That would bring the best of both worlds to Casio. OR . . . maybe they should put their software engineers to work and design their own DAW designed specifically to work with their new line of keyboards and bundle them. They could make a one-size-fits-all for all of their new arrangers and a second one tailored to the new XW synths. BUT . . . I guess, at this stage, we can only dream !

 

[Harland&Wolff]

Since they are getting back into the "serious" keyboard market, you would think Casio would want to be cutting-edge in the keyboard-DAW integration, and maybe they are, just not ready for the reveal. The WK wasn't my first choice for a new keyboard, but after doing the research, it seemed hard to beat it for the money, which was my limiting factor. Love the drawbar function, and with the ability to tweak the voices, I've been very happy with it (give or take the noisy keys).

Thanks again for your insights, they have been very helpful and encouraging.

JRH