How to do WAH WAH with Genos foot pedal

[chony]

A medal to whoever can figure this out.

On the Genos we should be able to use the volume pedal to trigger WAH effect. Take a look at the attached screenshots and snapshot of the owners (ref) manual and you'll see that you can assign a foot pedal to the WAH effect, and that you can assign the WAH effect in certain distortion effects to the foot pedal.

But I've spent time on this and simply cannot figure out how to get it to work.

Anybody else want to give this a go?



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[voodoo]

The answer is sad but true: The wah wah pedal does NOT work for the multi effect.

The pedal works for all other DSP effect types that have ,,wah" in the name. But it does not work for the shown multi effect DSP program, although it has an option ,,control wah by pedal". 

Yamaha has forgotten to enable the pedal for this DSP.

[Sokratis1974]

Hello.
Yes. You can however not with Multi FX..
You can with different way with simple WhaWha Pedal FX..
Please watch my video.. https://youtu.be/BLu00JfN1Mo

[pjd]

Hi folks --

I gotta ask... 

Looking at the MULTI FX specification on page 60 of the Data List file, the "Wah Pedal" parameter is marked with a dot. Yamaha must expect this to work.

Maybe foot pedal control is enabled when the "Wah SW" parameter has the specific value "Wah Pedal"? The other SW settings are some form of auto-wah and may be ignoring pedal/control input.

Yamaha is good at fixing bugs, and given the spec, this sure looks like a bug/oversight if we can't get it to work.

All the best -- pj

[DerekA]

All the effects on PSR / Tyros / Genos have a parameter marked with a dot which is supposed to be controllable by an assignable controller.

I've never managed to actually make that work though because I don't know what an "assignable controller" is on PSR / Tyros ....

Anybody know???

[pjd]

Hi Derek --

There's an XG entity known as an "assignable controller." I've got to drop my spouse at the dentist, but will look into this later. Genos, PSR, etc. are all XG voice architecture.

Well, I tried my own suggestion (hypothesis) and set up a guitar voice with MULTI FX. I can get the auto wah switch settings to work, but can't get the wah (foot) pedal to work. I tried different assignable settings without joy.

Has anyone asked Yamaha support directly about this function? Might be a way to get an official bug report into Yamaha engineering.

All the best (gotta run) -- pj

[Normanfernandez]

The Wah goes from 0 to 127 ( Value)
Is that how's it's done for Real Guitar Players??

Would have been nice if it could work with the Fc7 Pedal
Pressure sensitive Wah..

Norman.

[DerekA]

This page seems to suggest that you need to send a SY*** message to associate AC1 with a control change number, then sending that control change should alter the dotted parameter ...

http://www.studio4all.de/htmle/main92.html

[voodoo]

Hi pj and Derek

yes, there is a nice generic framework built in the XG architecture, known as assignable controller. Every DSP has one dedicated parameter, that can be controlled by this assignable controller. But Yamaha has forgotten to make this assignable controller accessible in the Genos software.

There is no direct way, to assign for example a foot pedal or a slider or knob to the assignable controller. If this was possible, it would be wonderful for the control of most DSP programs. Instead they built a special solution only for Wah pedal, and in this special solution, they have forgotten the multi FX program.

Derek, you are right. It is possible to link for example mod wheel CC1 with the assignable controller, and thereafter, you could control DSP parameter using the mod wheel. However, this has to be done by sending a special XG sy*** command. I have tried this from an external computer by sending this Sy*** command to the Genos. And it kind of worked. But this link cannot be saved to any storage in the Genos.

I think that this assignable controller can be used in midi files, when they are XG conform and contain the corresponding XG sy*** commands. But there ist no simple way, to make use of it for live play.

Uli

[DerekA]

Thanks Uli

I wonder if it is possible to craft a simple MIDI file that just runs the SY*** to connect up AC1 for voice R1. If you 'played' that file would AC1 then work. Something to try, I'm not sure which XG 'part' corresponds to R1 though. That might be the catch.

[chony]

I've been a Yamaha customer - buying every flagship model since PSR 8000 - since 1998, and I still cannot figure out how to report bugs to Yamaha.

When the Tyros 4 came out, I called Steve Demming and sent him videos of the 4 critical bugs I found. He told me I just didn't know how to used the keyboard. I turned to Youtube and uploaded the videos and got about 150,000 views between them (and $200 income from Google in ads). They became the first videos to show up when typing in "Tyros 4". (In fact, I just checked now, and even now it's #3).

Sure enough, a month later a software update was released.

It seems like a pretty extreme way to get Yamahas attention. In fact, it's the only time I ever did...

[pjd]

Been kind of busy trying to pick up some new music. Anyway, thanks to Uli!

I stumbled across this old Sound On Sound article series:

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/creative-synthesis-yamaha-xg-part1
https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/creative-synthesis-yamaha-xg-part2
https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/creative-synthesis-yamaha-xg-part3

Part 3 talks about the XG modulation matrix and control, including Sy*** to set AC1 and AC2.

Made me wonder, as a work-around to Yamaha's oversight, can we sweep the regular voice filter by assigning the foot pedal to modulation (or some other CC) and then assign modulation to the voice filter cut-off?

All the best -- pj

[pjd]

So, here's a quick experiment.

Select the ClaviAmped voice.

Go into Voice Edit.

Under Controller, set Modulation (+)
    Filter         127
    Amplitude      0
    LFO Pitch      0
    LFO Filter     0
    LFO Amplitude  0

Under Controller, set Modulation (-)
    Filter         127
    Amplitude      0
    LFO Pitch      0
    LFO Filter     0
    LFO Amplitude  0

Under Sound, set Filter:
    Cutoff         -31
    Resonance      63

Go into Menu > Assignable.

Set the Footpedals:
    1. Volume
    2. Articulation1
    3. Modulation (+)
       I have an FC7 expression pedal plugged into pedal jack 3.

Then get your Stevie on. :-)

Have fun -- pj

[Normanfernandez]

So, here's a quick experiment.

Select the ClaviAmped voice.

Go into Voice Edit.

Under Controller, set Modulation (+)
    Filter         127
    Amplitude      0
    LFO Pitch      0
    LFO Filter     0
    LFO Amplitude  0

Under Controller, set Modulation (-)
    Filter         127
    Amplitude      0
    LFO Pitch      0
    LFO Filter     0
    LFO Amplitude  0

Under Sound, set Filter:
    Cutoff         -31
    Resonance      63

Go into Menu > Assignable.

Set the Footpedals:
    1. Volume
    2. Articulation1
    3. Modulation (+)
       I have an FC7 expression pedal plugged into pedal jack 3.

Then get your Stevie on. :-)

Have fun -- pj

Is it Pressure sensitive. ( FC7)

[voodoo]

So, here's a quick experiment.

Hi pj,

nice experiment. So we can link the foot pedal (or any slider) to Modwheel and do things like filter sweep or cross fade two parts. But we have no access to DSP parameters. I wish I could control the amount of distortion für my organ sound, but I cannot find a way to do so.

Uli

[overover]

Is it Pressure sensitive. ( FC7)

Hi Norman,

yes, an ExPRESSion Pedal, like the FC7, is "Pressure sensitive", of course.

Best regards,
Chris

[voodoo]

Thanks Uli

I wonder if it is possible to craft a simple MIDI file that just runs the SY*** to connect up AC1 for voice R1. If you 'played' that file would AC1 then work. Something to try, I'm not sure which XG 'part' corresponds to R1 though. That might be the catch.

Hi Derek,

if I remember correctly, I have tried to do exactly what you propose. But it did not succeed. I think that by playing a midi file in the midi song player it is not possible to change the voice settings of the keyboard parts. I think, the two areas for song parts and keyboard parts are separated and isolated to minimize side effects.

Uli

[pjd]

Thanks, folks!

Oh, yeah, it works with the old FC-9 expression pedal, too, of course. 

I agree that Yamaha needs to fix this bug in MULTI FX. I wonder if the problem is due to the WAH SW parameter. All of the other wah effects are "always on", while the MULTI FX has a switch parameter to turn the wah effect on and off? Well, it clearly needs to be on their TO-DO list.

I wish Yamaha would publish a MIDI signal routing diagram. (Maybe there's an old diagram for a legacy keyboard? Old timers?) This would make the separation of keyboard channels (RIGHT1, etc.) from SONG channels, from STYLE channels. I think Uli is correct -- a MIDI SONG sequence cannot inject a MIDI Sy*** message into a RIGHT1 part. There are Yamaha META events for "Keyboard Voice," but this isn't enough to set AC1 or AC2 for RIGHT1, etc.

By the way, has anyone ever decoded (reverse engineered) the "Keyboard Voice" META event (Genos Data List, page  115)? It would be helpful to have a PC/Mac-based tool that could edit and encode such messages in order to set up RIGHT1, etc. from MIDI Songs. (Of course, this is in addition to the in-built Song editor.)

All the best -- pj

[Marty]

Hi

Would be nice to know if this problem has filtered down to the SX900?

No problem with  my s770 using the 'wah fx effect' and a Fc7 foot controller.

Thanks