PC88 Made Easy
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
A Note About the Physical Controllers
The tutorials above specify that you select a particular physical controller. But you can
always choose a different controller if you want. For example, you might like to switch a
function with a button instead of a pedal. The programming steps are exactly the same -
you simply choose a different controller.
The thing to remember is that the controllers fall into two different types. Switch
controllers are designed to have only two states - On or Off. Continuous controllers will
send a range of values between 0 and 127. Logically, you will want to pick a particular
controller based on what type of message you are trying to send. If you only need to
send two different values, then you would typically use a switch controller, whereas if
you need to send a range of values, you have to use a continuous controller.
The MIDI Controller numbers are grouped by type - Controllers 0-63, are designated for
continuous control, 64-69, 96, 97, & 120-127 are switch functions. Others may be
continuous or switch depending on how they are used.
But there is no reason you canÕt use a continuous controller for a switch type function, or
assign a switch controller to a MIDI continuous controller number.
For example, you could assign a Slider to the Arpeggiator On/Off function (controller
#116 in the PC88). If the slider is moved to the halfway point or higher it is On, and if
the slider is moved below the halfway point, it is Off.
Or, you could assign a button to MIDI Volume and use it to toggle between two different
specific volume levels. Another example of this is found in tutorial #14, where we used a
button to set pan positions.
Finally, you should keep in mind that there are actually two different types of
continuous controllers. the Sliders, CC pedals, and Wheel 1, will stay wherever you
move them to, but Wheel 2 (which is almost always assigned to pitch bend) and the
Mono Pressure strip return to 0 when you let go of them. You would probably never
want to assign MIDI Volume to Mono Pressure or you would have to press hard on the
keys all the time to hear anything.
Some info on the Global Parameters
Several of the previous tutorials have touched on some of the parameters found within
the Global menu. Following is some information on some of the other parameters that
may be useful to you. See the manual for complete descriptions of all the parameters.
Many of the Global parameters will revert to their defaults on power up, so you may
need to set them each time you turn on the unit, if you are not using the default values.
