I am trying to embed the bank selection in the midi track and so far I can select successfully all instruments in the GM bank (via the Program Change command). However if for example I select MSB = 63 and LSB =0 instead of showing PRE1 bank on my S90, it continues to select GM bank. I see that on the S90 in the Seq Play view - under the voice tab.
I have browsed quite a bit on the various forums but so far I cannot seem to figure out what I am doing wrong or what is missing either on the logic side or on the S90 side.
I am using Logic Pro 9.1.8 on MacOS Mountain Lion (10.8.2).
Thank you in advance.

Sounds like a matter of timing. Your Bank Select and Program change must come after the GM RESET command and before any music data. And by after we mean, it must occur at least 100-200ms after the GM RESET message.

You don’t mention where you are or even if you are inserting the MSB/LSB (Bank Select) command in the track data.

Actually I have created a track that has no music for the moment. The first 3 commands in the track are the Control MSB, then the Control LSB and the Program Change to select the voice in the bank (in that order). The Program Change command seems to take effect because the voice selected is the correct number of the one I have in the command. However the MSB and LSB commands do not seem to take effect as the bank does not change from GM to PRE1.
I have played a little bit with timing but I am not sure i have put enough delay between each command. What I have tried is the following
1 1 1 1 Control MSB Value
1 1 1 5 Control LSB Value
1 1 1 10 Program Change Value
I have to check which of the 4 numbers I need to play with to create the 100 to 200 ms delays you are taking about. If you know which numbers I need to use to make sure I have the right timing, please let me know. Thank you.

At a tempo of 120 Beats Per Minute, each quarter note is 500ms - just as a perspective. If the GM reset is on the downbeat, the next MIDI command can safely be placed an eighth note later. I certainly do not know Logic but 1.1.1.1 sounds like it is the downbeat, not later… Move your first event (and all subsequent events) back to allow the GM command to be sent and the receiving device to respond before any other event happens.

I looked at notes from another track and made sure that the commands for MSB and LSB and Program Change were spaced by at least 1/2 note. Still no luck.
Reading more on the various forums, I have decided to create an environment and created a new Multi-instrument called S90 (and have it apply to all channels). I edited the custom bank select messages to show:
Bank 0 - MSB 0
Bank 0 - LSB 0
Bank 1 - MSB 63
Bank 1 - MSB 0
etc..
This should allow me to access bank 1 with a custom bank select message.
Still no luck. I am getting kind of frustrated as I have looked around everywhere and have tried so many combination. I even added all the names of the sounds from S90 Bank 1 into the list.

If I take one of the MIDI instrument track and double click on the instrument, I have the list of sounds come up. I can select Bank 0 or Bank 1 from the pop up and I chose custom bank select from the other pop up.

When I select sounds from Bank 1 by clicking on it, it selects the right offset sound but does not change the bank so it is still in MSB-0 LSB-0 bank.

What am I missing here?

Thank you in advance

I edited the custom bank select messages to show:
Bank 0 - MSB 0
Bank 0 - LSB 0
Bank 1 - MSB 63
Bank 1 - MSB 0
etc..
This should allow me to access bank 1 with a custom bank select message.

Sorry I don’t know what this means but it clearly will not work for the Motif XF.

Let me ask a few questions. Do you really need this to remain a GM compatible setup… why not remove all the GM Reset data and simply use the S90’s on board MULTI MIX to recall the sounds for you?

Sorry, what this list of commands meant was what you need to do in Logic pro to edit the custom bank select commands. I created this multi instrument in the environment window and edited the custom bank commands as listed in my previous post. I am only trying to do that with Bank 0 (which is the GM bank on S90 and is accessed via MSB=0 and LSB=0) and Bank 1 (which corresponds to PRE1 on S90 and is accessed via MSB=63 and LSB=0 commands).

If that does not work for motif XF it may also not be the right way to do it for S90, but this is what I have found so far. Not sure again what is wrong with this method from all the reading I have done.

I am not sure what you mean by a GM compatible setup (I still consider myself green at using all these setups and Logic pro).

What I was hoping to accomplish was to avoid having to manual set the voice on the S90 for each channel that logic is using on a particular song. I would like to have the first commands of the track for a particular channel to select the bank and the voice for the sound I want this track to play. Right now each time I load a new song in logic, I have to go and manually change each channel voice on my S90 to play the proper sound (not difficult, but time consuming).

I don’t know what is the S90 multi mix on the S90 that could help me do something similar? If you can point me in the right direction, I will look it up.

However I still don’t understand why the bank changing commands coming out of Logic do not take effect on my S90. This seems to be pretty straightforward from how MIDI commands are sent on a particular channel. It almost seems that the S90 in the SEQ play mode is ignoring all bank select commands and only offers the GM bank.  I hope I can figure it out eventually, but I am pretty sure that other people may have run into this problem or are doing the same thing that I want to do.

Thank you,… This is really a good forum to learn stuff :)

I have done some more experiments. I set the S90 in Voice mode and I created a logic file with only 1 track which controls channel 1.
In the track I added the event commands for the MSB and LSB commands and the program change.

I made sure to leave enough time between each command and I see the LED on the S90 blink when the command is sent and there is visible plenty of time between them.

Well, I still cannot get the bank change to happen on the S90.

In voice mode, the Program change command works fine as I can see the sound name change on the S90, but it stays always within the bank I selected on the S90 myself.

If I can figure out why in this simple case, I can get the S90 to select a bank from the MSB/LSB bank commands coming from Logic, it will fix my problem.

Reading from the other stuff on the net, I can see that people say that they can do that with no problems but I am not sure if they do it with Logic or other SW like cubase.

Any ideas?

Thank you.
-Olivier

Just noticed that the Yamaha website has a FW update for the S90. It was posted back in 2005. I checked my S90 and it is still on the original FW version (1.00), but the update is 1.04.
Does anyone know whether this could be the cause of my problems with bank selection? The release notes are not very detailed.

If I want to update the S90 I need now to find a Smart Media card (old tech stuff) and a reader :)

If someone knows anything about the FW update, please let me know.

Thank you
-Olivier