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This page is read from MIDI Instrument Definitions, a Python library used in the author's other projects, in which every number is traced to a document its maker published. Its source is on GitHub.

Roland D-50 MIDI implementation

The MIDI implementation of the Roland D-50: what it answers to.

At a glance

Firmware
Not recorded.
MIDI channel
Any one of 1 to 16.
Parts
Lower Tone: on the base MIDI channel, taking notes.
Upper Tone: on a MIDI channel of its own, taking notes.
Voices
Not recorded.
Note range
Not recorded.
Velocity
Not recorded.
Aftertouch
Answered, of a kind its documents do not say. It sends aftertouch too.
Pitch bend
Not recorded.
Program change
Received and sent, with 128 presets.
MIDI clock
Not recorded.
Start and stop
Not recorded.
Control change
Assigned by the player, so there is no fixed chart.
NRPN
Not recorded.
System exclusive
Supported.

Where these facts come from

Source documents

How they were read

Owner's Manual (Advanced Course), 78 pages, scanned and with no text layer at all: the MIDI chapter on printed pp. 51-56, the data transfer chapter on p. 61, the patch factor table on p. 70, the MIDI function table on p. 73, and the back cover on p. 78.

ROLAND'S OWN PAGE FOR THIS INSTRUMENT SERVES NOTHING. Its owner's manuals page exists and offers no document: the page's own title reads "Roland - Support - - Owner's Manuals" (support_page), with nothing where the product's name belongs. That is proved rather than asserted, by fetching the same page for a product that does have documents on the same day - the TR-1000's names its product and offers fourteen files, this one names none and offers none. The manual was found by a search restricted to the maker's own domains.

THE CHART THE MANUAL POINTS AT IS IN NEITHER PLACE, and the head of this file says what that probably means: this is the Advanced Course volume, and the book refers to a Basic Course and to a separate booklet called "MIDI" which Roland does not publish.

WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT CONTROL CHANGE IS TWO RANGES AND NO NUMBERS. "With the pedal switch, the Controls from 64 to 95 can be controlled" (p. 55) and "With the external control pedal, Controls from 0 to 31 can be controlled" (p. 55), and the appendix repeats them as "Pedal SW 64 ... 95" (p. 73) and "External Control 0 ... 31" (p. 73). Which one each pedal sends is the player's to choose, so there is no factory map to transcribe and no controls block below. The display drawn beside that passage shows 91 and 31, which may be the values as shipped and which the manual never calls defaults.

FOUR MORE CONTROLLERS ARE NAMED WITHOUT THEIR NUMBERS. Aftertouch, Bender, Modulation and Volume each get a line in the MIDI-2 display and Hold, Portamento, Program Change and Exclusive in MIDI-3, every one of them with the same sentence - "To receive or transmit Modulation messages, set this to ON" (p. 54). The instrument plainly answers to modulation, volume, hold and portamento; the specification's numbers for them are not this maker's words, so they are not written here.

TWO TONES ON TWO CHANNELS, which is what parts below records. "When Separate (Solo) mode is selected ... the Upper and Lower Tones can be controlled on different channels. The Lower Tone is controlled by the basic channel, and the Upper Tone is controlled by the receive channel set here. (The D-50's keyboard can control only the Upper Tone.)" (p. 53). The upper tone's channel is set on its own, and each patch may override it.

THE MANUAL CONTRADICTS ITSELF ABOUT THAT CHANNEL'S RANGE, and three of its four statements agree. Its MIDI chapter says "1 to 16 are valid for receive channel" (p. 53); the appendix says "1 ... 16" (p. 73); the patch factor table says "Off, 1 ... 16" (p. 70); and a later page says "OFF and 1 to 100 are optional" (p. 56), which is the sentence above it about program change numbers repeated by mistake. The three are followed.

AND IT CONTRADICTS ITSELF ABOUT PROGRAM CHANGE. Its table of patches runs 1 to 128 - sixty-four in the instrument and sixty-four on a memory card - and the footnote under that same table reads "*0 to 127 Program changes can be sent" (p. 55). One of the two is off by one and the manual never says which. A patch's own transmitted number, moreover, stops at 100 (p. 56), so the last twenty-eight of the map cannot be chosen that way.

NOT RECORDED: POLYPHONY, and this is a case where something is known and cannot honestly be written. There is no specifications page in this volume at all. The number of voices is stated nowhere in words; it appears only as rows of circles in the key mode diagrams on pp. 57 and 59, which both readings counted as sixteen in whole mode and eight and eight when the keyboard is split. A count of circles in a drawing is not the maker saying a number.

NOT RECORDED: the note range, the key count, aftertouch's kind, and any system exclusive layout. The manual names no note number anywhere - pitches are "C1 to C7" (p. 30) and "Middle C (C4)" (pp. 31, 38) - and its exclusive chapter describes bulk dump and bulk load without one byte of format.