Possible to ignore MIDI coming into CT-S1?

[cmalven]

I've had my Casio CT-S1 for a pretty long time and I love it. Fantastic keyboard.

 

I bought a Yamaha Seqtrak a couple days ago hoping to use it as a companion for the C1-S1. The Seqtrak has a wonderful sound library and by hooking its audio output up to the amazing CT-S1 speakers, the two make a fantastic portable audio workstation.

 

However, I'm facing a big issue with this pair that I can't seem to find a way around:

 

• I have the two connected via a USB-C to USB Micro cable (USB-C into the Seqtrak, Micro into the CT-S1).
• The CT-S1 sends MIDI to the Seqtrak just fine. (Just in case it helps anyone, I did have one USB cable that wouldn't send a MIDI signal between the two, but using a different cable fixed that).
• The problem is that the Seqtrak also sends MIDI OUT to the CT-S1, and that MIDI out causes the CT-S1 to play a C4 note on whatever CT-S1 tone corresponds with the value the Seqtrak is sending.
  • For instance, the Kick Drum track on the Seqtrak sends a MIDI message of 91 3C 64 (I found this by hooking up the Seqtrak to my Mac and monitoring the MIDI) which causes a C4 note on Tone 1 (Stage Piano) to play out of the CT-S1 on every Kick Drum hit. The Synth 1 track on the Seqtrak sends a MIDI message of 97 3C 64.
• I've poured over the manual for the CT-S1 and Seqtrak trying any possible setting to eliminate this, and nothing has worked.
• Some of the settings I've tried on the CT-S1:
  • Local Control (is useful for turning off sound triggered by CT-S1 keypresses but doesn't help with my issue)Main Tone
  • Tone (Main and Layer)
  • Part Volume (Main and Layer)
• I don't necessarily expect anyone here to be familiar enough with the Yamaha Seqtrak to help with that side of this, but rest assured I've done my due diligence on that end. There are many MIDI settings available there and it doesn't seem like there's a way to disable MIDI OUT sends on the Seqtrack. Here's the documentation if you're interested: https://manual.yamaha.com/mi/de/seqtrak/en/SEQTRAK_UG_En_A0_017.html

 

Anybody have any ideas on how to possibly work around this? Happy to gather any followup info if it would help. Would love to get this combo working together - they'd be an almost perfect match if I can figure this out. Thanks in advance!

[Brad Saucier]

Welcome to the forums.  Unfortunately you'll probably need to find an external MIDI event filtering solution.  There is no MIDI filter on the CT-S1 USB MIDI input.  It will respond to whatever it receives.  

 

For what it's worth, the CT-S1 has a dedicated MIDI 16 part sound engine in addition to the local parts.  It is only possible to control the MIDI parts via MIDI input.  The entire GM sound set is available there as well as the 61 preset CT-S1 tones.

 

Some third party boxes are out there for filtering MIDI events.  MIDI Solutions is one brand that comes to mind.  Otherwise it would be entirely up to the Yamaha to stop transmitting those MIDI events to the CT-S1.  

[cmalven]

Thanks @Brad Saucier that makes perfect sense and I thought that might be the case, but I'm grasping at straws a bit here. I'll see if I can find someone in the Yamaha/Seqtrak community who might have some ideas, but a MIDI filter is a good last resort. I was already eyeing the Retrokits RK-006 as a way of managing various USB/TRS MIDI devices, but was really hoping to avoid the cable management and power delivery complexity that would introduce.

 

Quote

For what it's worth, the CT-S1 has a dedicated MIDI 16 part sound engine in addition to the local parts.  It is only possible to control the MIDI parts via MIDI input. 

 

That's interesting. I had no idea. Do you have any idea of whether it's possible to set parameters on those parts (volume, tone, etc) via MIDI so I could potentially set them to zero/null/whatever?

[Brad Saucier]

Yes it responds to all standard MIDI control change messages.