Setting things up.

Before starting to work with One Man Band you need to define a few things in the settings menu. First you have to select the MIDI In port. when you point the mouse at this menu item, then a sub menu will appear wich will list all the available MIDI Ports on your PC. You can select more than one MIDI In port, all MIDI messages from different ports will be merged. If there are no MIDI ports listed, this means that there are no MIDI In drivers installed on your system. If you buy a soundcard with a game/MIDI port then the installation software of the soundcard should install the MIDI drivers too. Check with your hardware supplier.

Click on the MIDI Out menu item. The Output Ports selection window appears. If you want to use only one MIDI output port then select it from the list item "All channels" at the top of the window. If you want to use more than one device then you can assign each MIDI channel to a seperate device. E.g. you can assign channel 9-16 (the accompaniment channels) to a soundcard synth and assign channel 1-8 (the melody channels) to an external keyboard-synthesizer. Or assign a few of the melody channels to a special device that produces cool sounds but is not able to provide the complete (GM, at least 32 polyphony) accompaniment. VSTi, DXi and ASIO is discussed in a separate chapter.

The only real standard for the organising of synthesizer sounds is GM (General MIDI). It defines 128 different instruments and a series of percussion sounds. Almost all modern synthsizers have the GM sounds but have a lot more than that too. For additional sounds Roland came with the GS standard and Yamaha came with the XG standard. Many styles that you will use are made for Yamaha synths with a more or less XG set of sounds. If you are using a Yamaha XG synth with OMB then you should select XG. If you're using a different type then select GM. In that case OMB will not send band select controllers and will automatically convert XG drumsounds outside the GM range to matching (more or less) GM sounds. This will eliminate the sounds of hooting owls, car crashes and bells that are a well known sign of wrong drum mapping. If you have created your own styles or "tweaked" existing styles to match your synth then it is best to select Device Type Custom.

You can use One Man Band in combination with another sequencer or arranger. In that case you must specify if One Man Band will act as Master or Slave. The master sends 24 MIDI clocks each beat and the slave will adjust it's tempo to keep in pace with the MIDI clocks received from the master.

Select the type of chord fingering that you intend to use. The first 4 listed items use a chord area. The last two will recognise chords on the entire keyboard. The chord fingering methods are described in detail in a separate tutorial.

Select menu settings/keyboard-control to assign functions to MIDI messages coming from your MIDI keyboard controller and to PC keys. These functions are used in live accompaniment in one of the three live windows: PC Keyboard 1, PC Keyboard 2 and Midi keyboard. The functions are changes of the variations, the tempo, volumes etc. Also the keyboard layout (chords and melody) is defined here.


The settings below are optional and / or advanced.

Style loudness correction...
The volume settings and the velocities of the notes in styles coming from different sources may vary considerably. This is a problem when you switch styles.To fix this you can specify avarage values for these. They will apply to all styles. The volume differences between tracks and parts within a style will stay the same because they are increased or decreased the same portion. If you are using styles in which the difference in loudness between tracks and parts seem not correct, then you can specify fixed volumes instead of avarage.

Vocal harmonizer...
A vocal harmoniser is an instrument that adds extra voices to a human voice based on the chords that are in effect. If you have a vocal harmoniser device then you can use this option in the settings menu to define how One Man Band must communicate with it.

On/Off MIDI data...
If you know the sysex and controller messages that should be sent to your synthesizer when you start working with OMB then you can define it here. This data is sent want you start and exit OMB and is also sent when you use the switch on/off function that lets you switch an arranger keyboard quickly from the internal arranger to the OMB arranger and vice versa.

Confirm restart...
When this option is checked then the accompaniment will not restart automatically after being stopped when a new chord is played. You will have to press the Pause/restart key first. This is needed when you use chord recognition method "Full keyboard" or "Guitar" and you want to keep on playing thru an ending.

Panel Lock
Applies to PC Keyboard 2. By default Panel Lock is off. When you go to the voices panel and make a selection, then you will return to the functions panel automatically. When Panel Lock is set on you will stay in the voices panel after the selection is made and subsequent voices can be selected without having to press the shift key first. To return to the functions panel or to go to another panel you will have to press the key that activates that panel.

Pedal is chord fixation
The controller type assigned to this pedal (default 64=sustain) can be changed in menu settings/keyboard-control. While the pedal is pressed no chord change will take place.
This is needed when you use chord recognition method "Full keyboard" or "Guitar" to prevent chord changes to happen unwantedly. This function can also be switched on and off with a key in the functions menu. If you have only one pedal then you will be able to use it for sustain in some songs and for chord fixation in others.

Controller defaults...
In many styles there are no definitions available for the reverb and chorus level and such. OMB will reset this parameters to default levels. What these defaults are can be redefined in this option.

Random velocity...
Add a human feel to the accompaniment. The notes will be played each time with a different velocity.

Wallpaper...
Select other skins for the main screens or define a plain color.

Songtext size
Define the size of the text in the song window and in the text window that can be assigned to a preset.

Karaoketext size
Define the size of the text in the karaoke display.

National keyboard
Qwerty/Azerty etc. adjustments.

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