Sending the GR-55 Bank and Program Change from a laptop

[RedSparkleFade]

You cannot view this attachment.Hi, all, and thank you for inviting me in.

I am a drummer, but I'm the designated "tech guy" for my band, so I've been saddled with the task of setting up a laptop (Win 11, running a fully updated version of PreSonus Studio One 6) to send Bank and PC messages to two GR-55s being used by my guitar and bass player. They just want to play and not be bothered by stepping on pedals and navigating through patches and whatnot.

For purposes of this thread, I am working with the bass player's GR-55. It receives on MIDI channel 5, Map Select is set to "Fix", and I want to ONLY access patches in the User bank. Please refer to the attached screenshot. If I bring up this Studio One session, MANUALLY call up User banks by pressing the "User" button on the GR-55, and hit the Play icon, here's what happens:

1. Keeping in mind that NO MSB or LSB commands are assigned from the outset, the first event takes place at measure 1.2. It is a PC 10 message, and it calls up User 04-2.

2. Six sequential PC commands (11-16) follow at the intervals shown, and they access 04-3 through 06-02.

3. At measure 3, the PC command jumps to 127, which calls up User 43-2. So far, so good.

4. At measure 3.2, the PC command drops to 1. This where I want to call up User 43-3. And this is where I hit a brick wall.

Please understand I am not being lazy here. I have researched the hell out of this and spent an unhealthy amount of time punching in numbers to no avail. My question is very simply this: what combination of Program Change, MSB, and LSB messages do I need to use at measure 3.2 to call up User 43-3?

Just for the record, the MSB and LSB commands at 3.2 are both 0. So, combining this with PC 1 at 3.2, what happens? User 01-2 is called up.

So, if I tweak this a little by changing the MSB message at 3.2 to 1, the PC message at 3.2 to 1, and back it all the way up to the beginning, what happens? User 47-1 (PC 10) is called up at 1.2, culminating at 86-1 at measure 3. 44-1 is called up at 3.2 using PC 1 (yay!!), culminating at 86-1 at measure 5. Okay, so it seems like we're getting close.

But...how is the session throwing me into banks numbering in the forties at the very beginning when there in NO MSB or LSB command present until measure 3.2? This makes no sense to me.

Next step: save the session, restart the GR-55, rerun the session. Same result.

I then add an MSB 0 command at 1.1.2, and this is where it gets really freaky. Running the session again, here is what gets called up in the measure 1.2 to measure 3 range (in order):

1.2 PC 10 = User 04-2
1.3 PC 11 = User 04-3
1.4 PC 12 = User 05-1   
2   PC 13 = User 05-2
2.2 PC 14 = User 48-2 (!!!!)
2.3 PC 15 = User 48-3
2.4 PC 16 = User 49.1
3   PC 127 = User 86-1

As before, PC 1 at 3.2 remains at User 44-1 and follows the same chain it did in the previous example.

If there is some discernable logic to all this, I am not understanding it.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.         

You cannot view this attachment. 

[shawnb]

In the GR-55 manual (pg 94), it says it only responds to PC 0-127.

But the GR-55 has this weird thing called the RX PC map (pg 79), where you can map the PC values to GR-55 patches.  I recall there were odd quirks with the RX PC map...

I never used it, but hopefully this points you in the right direction!

[shawnb]

IIRC, in "FIX" map select mode, you can only send 0-127. 

But in "PRG" map select mode, you create lists of patches you want to pull up, one list per bank.   Then, to pull up patches, you specify MSB=bank, LSB=0, PC=xxxx to pull up a patch. 

[RedSparkleFade]

IIRC, in "FIX" map select mode, you can only send 0-127. 

But in "PRG" map select mode, you create lists of patches you want to pull up, one list per bank.   Then, to pull up patches, you specify MSB=bank, LSB=0, PC=xxxx to pull up a patch. 

Thank you for the reply. If all this is correct and keeping in mind that I am in "Fix" mode the whole time, why do the patches I call up change right after introducing MSB 1 into the session? I may have to dive into "Prg" mode even more, because I haven't been able to get it to work at all so far. The process of having to assemble your own banks just because "Fix" supposedly ONLY responds to Program Change messages seems very tedious to me and completely unnecessary. But it is what it is.