X7 - Changing MIDI Channel of built-in keyboard?

Can this even be done?

it can, with some restrictions. I'm at work now and answering from the cell phone. Later in the evening I can explain it better. Ok ?

Sounds good! I'll look forward to your reply.

If it's easier to just work out how to create the performances with the external keyboard being MIDI channel 2 or something, I can try to work out how that's done on some of these other controllers, though I'd still appreciate a quick best-practices tip or two on setting up the performances on the Fantom.

Thanks!

Hi Oneota,
Good evening.

**1-** Like you described, you can set up your performances in such a way that MIDI channel 1 of the controller is be controlling the Fantom's Patch assigned to the channel 1 of a specific performance. In this way, anytime you need to change a patch, you just change the performance to a similar one that has the channel 1 assigned to a different patch.
Doing like this, you will need several similar performances, just differing on the patch assigned to channel 1.
In this case you will need to setup the keyboard range for that channel away from the patches used on the X7 itself, so playing the X7's keyboard you wont hear any sound coming from channel 1, only if you play the external keyboard.

**2-** I use a similar approach in my 3 keyboard set, where I set up several similar performances on the Fantom, differing to one another, just in some of the patches/channels, that I want to differentiate. I'll give an example:

I have a set of 10 similar performances, that have the following patches, only differing in: Patches / MFX / Chorus & Reverb:

Patch___Instrument
1--------EL.Piano / Acoustic Guitars /Acoustic Pianos
2--------Strings / Brass / Orchestral
3------- Accompanying Guitars / World sounds / Bass
4------- Poly Synth
5------- Organ 1 + Leslie
6------- Distortion Guitar 1 (ex: Heavy metal)
7------- Distortion Guitar 2 (ex: Distortion Stratocaster like)
8------- Lead Synth
9------- Organ 2 + Leslie
10------ Drums
11 to 16 - Normally Not used

This is the base of almost all my performances for live playing.

I hope this helps you
Take care
PauloF

It sounds like you've got it mostly covered.

What I was really after, though, was in addition to using an external keyboard on Channel 1 (which I know how to do), how can I set it up so that I can also use the Fantom's built-in keyboard, but have it play a different patch?

It seems the easiest thing to do would be to setup the performance so that MIDI channel 2 (or whatever) is the patch that I want the Fantom's keyboard to be assigned to, but that still leaves the question on how to set the Fantom's keyboard to actually respond on Channel 2 as opposed to channel 1.

Does that make sense?

Oneota,
Do you have Messenger ? it would be easier to explain

mine is **Blaster** (jpaulof11@hotmail.com)

Oneota wrote **"It seems the easiest thing to do would be to setup the performance so that MIDI channel 2 (or whatever) is the patch that I want the Fantom's keyboard to be assigned to, but that still leaves the question on how to set the Fantom's keyboard to actually respond on Channel 2 as opposed to channel 1."**

As I said earlier in point 1 of my post, the way to do that is to setup the keyboard range for channel 1 away from the range used for the patches used on the X7 itself, so playing the X7's keyboard you wont hear any sound coming from channel 1, only if you play the external keyboard. For example:

In the Fantom, set patch/channel 1's keyboard range to be between C8 and C9 for example, and save the performance. This way, when you play the Fantom's keyboard, you will not hear that patch, only the ones assigned to the other selected Patches/channels and inside the X7's keyboard range.

make sense ?

Yeah, I think that makes sense. I'll give it a try and report back with any other questions.

Thanks!

Sorry to resurrect a really old thread, but I'm doing a different show this time, and for whatever reason, I just can't get this to work like I did last time. I even pulled up the old performances (still had them in memory), and no matter what I tried, the MIDI-in keyboard did the exact same thing as the built-in keyboard. I couldn't get MIDI channel 1 to sound under any circumstances.

Any idea what I might be doing wrong? It's been a couple of years, so my memory on exactly how I had things set up at that time are a little fuzzy. Maybe someone can point out something obvious I'm forgetting to do?

Sounds like you have the 'Remote Keyboard' switch enabled:

Fantom manual, page 331 wrote:

Remote Keyboard Sw (Remote Keyboard
Switch)
Set this parameter “ON” when you want to use an external MIDI
keyboard instead of the Fantom-X’s keyboard. In this case, the MIDI
transmit channel of the external MIDI keyboard can be set to any
channel. Normally you will leave this parameter “OFF.”
Value:
OFF, ON

You'll need to turn this off.

Arjan wrote:

Sounds like you have the 'Remote Keyboard' switch enabled:

Fantom manual, page 331 wrote:

Remote Keyboard Sw (Remote Keyboard
Switch)
Set this parameter “ON” when you want to use an external MIDI
keyboard instead of the Fantom-X’s keyboard. In this case, the MIDI
transmit channel of the external MIDI keyboard can be set to any
channel. Normally you will leave this parameter “OFF.”
Value:
OFF, ON

You'll need to turn this off.

Yeah, I tried it both ways in my testing, and wasn't able to get the desired results either way. I'll keep plugging away, though. Thanks for responding!

Have you tried this: In perf mode, hit the layer/spit button and make sure no checkmarks are next to any keyboard. Hit the mixer button and note which fader is highlighted. The internal keys will play the sound that is associated with the highlighted fader. Use the cursor to move the highlight to the 2nd fader or midi channel 2. Now the keyboard will only play channel 2. Connect your external controller and set to send on channel 1 and make sure fantom is set to receive midi in the system setup. Should do it Add checkmarks to layer sounds in the layer/split screen.