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Classic Midiworks Midi Control Unit - MCU

Building organ consoles for use with Hauptwerk, adding MIDI to existing consoles, obtaining parts, ...
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jimintoronto

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Classic Midiworks Midi Control Unit - MCU

PostSat Aug 18, 2018 1:26 pm

Hi folks,
I am putting this out there to see if one or more of you use this midi controller and have some experience in programming it.

I have four manuals and an AGO spec pedalboard. This is all the inputs that the MCU can handle.

The MCU is programmed to have 61 notes per manual and 32 for the pedalboard.

There are 64 pins (inputs) for each of the four manuals and pedalboard. This means that there are three extra pins on each manual and 32 extra pins on the pedal input card.

One can use the spare pins for pistons, which is what I have done. They work perfectly!

However, I have more pistons than spare pins. I need five more pins for piston inputs.

My thought was to short the Solo manual by five notes ( I don't play that far up ) and use the extra five pins for my pistons.

However, Classic says that Hautwerk expects 61 notes when a manual is defined and probably won't work if I only define it as 56 notes. I had originally thought, when autodefining the top and bottom notes, I could simply define the top of the range as the last note before the piston allocation. Then use the MCU programming to define the remaining pins as program change for the pistons. i.e. the first 56 would be note on/off and the remaining 8 would be program change.

My alternative is to program the Solo manual note by note in HW, which may be tedious and may not work either.

Does anyone have any thoughts or experience with this type of tinkering? I would be very grateful to learn any tips or workarounds this community can offer.

Many thanks, in advance,
Jim
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smfrank

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Re: Classic Midiworks Midi Control Unit - MCU

PostSat Aug 18, 2018 4:21 pm

I don't think HW cares how many notes there are. You could split a keyboard and change octaves. That's one good thing about having to relearn everything.
Steve
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ldeutsch

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Re: Classic Midiworks Midi Control Unit - MCU

PostSat Aug 18, 2018 11:44 pm

Jim,

HW indeed does not care about the compass of the keyboards. In fact, I have done things like you are considering for concerts on HW systems when the console does not have enough pistons. I simply define a keyboard to be a few notes shorter and then use the top keys as extra pistons.

I have a Classic controller in my theater rogan console. When IO ordered it, I specified lots of inputs for pistons so I don't have to do these sort of tricks at home!

Les
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engrssc

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Re: Classic Midiworks Midi Control Unit - MCU

PostSun Aug 19, 2018 3:12 am

ldeutsch wrote:When IO ordered it, I specified lots of inputs for pistons so I don't have to do these sort of tricks at home!


The trick being to remember where you put "things" esp if you aren't using music as in written down..

Rgds,
Ed
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jimintoronto

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Re: Classic Midiworks Midi Control Unit - MCU

PostSun Aug 19, 2018 2:55 pm

Thanks, Ed, Les and Steve for your kind replies. That is more or less what I thought.

I have a further question:

I used the Classic Midiworks software to open the config file for the MCU and saved it to my hard drive in case of inevitable screw-ups.

I noticed that for the Choir, Great and Swell manuals, only pins 62, 63 and 64 were defined and pins 33-64 on the Pedal. These were all defined as 'program change', meaning they could be used as piston inputs. The Solo manual, on the other hand, had every note defined with its correct pitch as note on/off, with 62, 63 and 64 as 'program change'. I believe this is because the MCU can only define three manuals plus pedal and the fourth card input (Solo in my case) is open to whatever you define the pins to be.

I tried changing pins 57 - 63 from note on/off to program change and saved it back to the MCU. (Pin 64 was already defined as 'program change'). I started HW again and nothing works at all - no sound, no pistons, no couplers.

When I restored and saved the original config file back to the MCU, HW didn't recognize it and I had to re-define the entire setup again.

Does anyone know why this would be the case? Would any of you be willing to talk me through this - or at least discuss it with me so I can understand better? I'd be happy to call you at a time of your convenience and would very much appreciate the help - as you can probably tell, my understanding of how HW uses midi to interface with the computer and produce the correct sounds and operate stops and couplers is not sufficient to enable me to figure this out myself.

Thanks again, in advance.

Regards,
Jim

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