How can I have one keyboard control another through midi?

[snowbird12]

I have a Roland Juno Gi and a Novation Ultranova. I use both at the same time when playing live. To reduce the downtime between songs, I need a way to make the Novation change presets when I manually change presets on the Roland. Can this be done? If not, is there something else I could buy that I can program to change presets on both keyboards at once?

 

[delaware dave]

The answer is yes. The MIDI standard around this is not totally consistent. First, you have to allow the Novation to receive program changes. You also have to allow the Roland to send program changes.

This article might help you figure out the correct MIDI commands to send program changes from the roland to the novation.

http://home.roadrunner.com/~jgglatt/tech/midispec/pgm.htm

 

[snowbird12]

Thanks for your help. I have found a way to have the Novation change the programs of the Roland, and they stay in sync perfectly. I connected midi out of the Novation and into the Roland. The problem is that pressing keys on the Novation plays the tones on the Roland, and I can't seem to find a way to turn it off. I've change the "Local Switch" on the Roland to On, which should allow only the Roland keys to play the Roland tones, but it isn't working. Quite frustrating as I've spent almost all day working on this.

 

[delaware dave]

Set the Novation and the Roland to two different MIDI channels. If the Novation is set to channel 1 and the Roland is set to channel 2 this issue should resolve itself. You might need to have the Novation send MIDI program changes only on MIDI channel 2 as well, not sure though as I am not familiar with either boards MIDI implementation.