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Need A Clue: Sending Bank Select and Program Change with MIDI
I'm using Xequence to send standard MIDI files to iSymphonic. iSymphonic instruments can be selected
by ending a MIDI bank select (BS) and MIDI program change (PC) message pair. Reading the Xequence user guide shows how to set a PC event on a controller track but doesn't mention Bank Selects.
Is there a way to do this?
Do I need to add a 3rd app that has this capability and run this app as a set up
exercise to align the MIDI Tracks of Xequence with the best instruments in iSymphonic?
This problem helps me understand why the codified instruments of General MIDI made some sense
assuming a single 128 instrument set. But for decent sound you just have to get out of that limited set of
often cheesy samples crammed into a tight space. There are a few really decent General MIDI Sets for BS-16i that comes close to sounding good but nothing like what iSymphonic can provide.
It does look like I'll need to go outside iSymphonic for a lot of essential Percussion like a few Snare Drums.
The extra Symphonic Percussion instrument has 5 notes in total and 1 is a snare that plays 2 quick notes for every input... like a double stroke(?). Very strange choice for the only snare drum in the whole product.
But the choirs in that set are awesome. So, tradeoffs.
Anyway. Can I get a clue on BS + PC programming?
Comments
@SevenSystems Can you comment?
I checked it out. You already know how to insert a PC message. So my idea was to generate a Bank Change message on CC#0, in the last instant before the PC message. What I found was Xequence has a CC range of 1 - 119, so if no CC#0 you are probably out of luck.
You may be able to do it somehow using MidiFire, StreamByter, or even MidiFlow or anything that would let you remap a CC message from a valid # to 0. Then you could use any available CC# in Xequence, but remap it to CC#0. Seems daunting, not even sure it would work. I would think finding a simple way to generate a Bank and Program change message that was triggerable from Xequence would be the best way. Probably need to use MidiFire and/or StreamByter to pull it off.
There’s something to chew on until the Dev Supreme can weigh in.
And happy 4th!
@McDtracy Hi, sorry to say that Bank Select is not currently supported in Xequence. However, it's on the roadmap for the near future (it will be an additional Input field in the Program Change popup).
@CracklePot nice idea regarding CC 0
that would actually have been possible in an older version of Xequence, which didn't yet do sanity checking of the custom CC number 
Thank you for giving a clear status of what's possible. I don't know how often you ship updates but I'll look forward to seeing this feature added for this problem.
That was a deep clue on how the MIDI specs work. Pick up enough of these tips and you can start to master the technical possibilities. I'd also look forward to an update that allowed this hack to work too.
I found "MIDI Pro" app which set "Sound Bank" and "Preset" for $3. Testing it out to give me a short term fix to automate setting up iSymphonic. It appears the "Bank Change" setting might not always work correctly with iSymphonic.
I also got a clue that Cubasis automation has a similar this capability.
For deep voodoo it looks like "MidiFire" has the best solution to set up 16 tracks fast without a lot of extra GUI bullshit. It has a scripting language.... But it's $16.