Sub-forum for discussion about the DAWs and mobile apps that you use with your MPCs
By m56p87 Thu Feb 21, 2013 6:51 pm
Hey guys,
I have a family friend staying with me who's an old midi gear head. He uses a yahmaha psr 40 to compose all his tracks and has years worth of midi compositions he wants to open on his new MBP with logic express.

I have tried to help him, but logic is the only DAW I have no experience with. So far I am able to open the viewer on the right and see that at 1.3.3 in the timeline all the midi channels receive midi program changes and it even says what the program should be like "choir" or "pop organ". I'm not sure if that's the specific voice name on the keyboard or the general midi voice description.

It seems that logic has the information about the program changes, but doesn't know what todo with them... He used to used cakewalk/master track pro on his old iBook which would register the program changes just fine.

Any advice to help him out would be awesome, and please explain it like I'm a total retard. Like I said, never used logic so I'm way out of my element. From what I've figured out on my own it seems logic is known for not doing a great job sending and receiving program changes.

I'm aware that he could just look at what the program should be and change it manually, but he explained that he has thousands of songs with any number of voices. Which would be a huge PITA to configure one by one. Same goes for saving a channel strip as a "performance". Looking todo something to connect the information that's already there
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By tapedeck Thu Feb 21, 2013 7:12 pm
i think the point is that logic does not respond to program change messages like an old midi synth would.

found this thread: http://www.logic-users-group.com/forums ... php?t=3070

you would need to either set up the channel strips in advance and set the program changes up to to respond to hose (would only take an intial push for setup, then should be easily recallable).

another option is to find an audio unit synth that does respond to prg change and use that...i wonder if a good soundfont wouldn't do it for you?

you are going to have to do some research though, tl;dr logic has tons of instruments so 'program change' doesnt mean the same thing it does on a limited hardware instrument.
By m56p87 Thu Feb 21, 2013 7:43 pm
There's not a native general midi device in logic? It's old sure, but most daws I've used have atleast something. On a pc you can atleast use the Microsoft general midi device in pretty much anything.
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By tapedeck Thu Feb 21, 2013 9:11 pm
garageband has the DLSMUSICDEVICE (or had maybe - not too versed on it).
logic might could use that.
but no - I don't think logic really gives a shit about gm. :mrgreen: except for the purty icons.
By m56p87 Fri Feb 22, 2013 4:55 pm
Weird yesterday, logic express just randomly decided it was time to start allocating garage band instruments to the general midi commands. Works great now, lets hope it stays that way.
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By tapedeck Fri Feb 22, 2013 5:05 pm
i started thinking - i have always just imported midi files and not really had an issue - though i always go in and rebuild the instruments myself anyway.

point being, i've never had any issue. just loaded, and it worked.