Hi all:

I'm just returning from a long weekend of wedding gigs and this is my first chance to reply to some of the posts here.

Peter: I have been using midi files on stage since 1983 and plan to continue. Noone has ever questioned me about using midi files live - it's just what I do. This being an arranger forum means that most of the discussions are about arranger-use, which I also use live... but IMHO it's quite acceptable and professional to use midi files for backing in small solo gigs.

Simon says:
"To be honest, I would be surprised if the drum expansion board did work properly with the 9000 pro. After all the 9000 pro accepts voice expansion cards, which you would assume enhance the keyboard voices of the instrument. I would have first checked with someone with the knowhow in Yamaha as to the extent of functionality of this card when playing it live from the 9000 pro, since again I assume the 9000 pro has limited control over new cards. Using a PC with the 9000 pro and midi is another question, here I would expect you to have fuller control over this card and access the sounds you require. It is possible maybe that you could direct percussion via midi back into the pro to trigger the card, but I'm assuming that this isnt the case?
This is obviously a very new expansion card, something I havent heard of before but it sounds quite nice. If you succeed in getting it to perform from the pro, I'd like to hear some samples from it if its possible... though it sounds as though you can only play it from the keyboard am I right?"

Simon: The PLG150-DR is a year old now. I did not check with Yamaha directly before getting the PLG150-DR (not sure who I'd call) but I did review everything I could find about the card, including downloading the owner's manual and reading it before purchasing. The key phrase that indicated that this card would have a common-sense feature like midi channel assignment within the 9000 Pro was in the PLG150-DR owner's manual on Page 15, which says the Part Assign (Yamaha-speak for midi channel) can be set by "any XG Plug-In system compatible mother device". The 9000 Pro is part of the XG-Plug family and has the XG-Plug symbol on the front panel. If Yamaha really wanted to clear things up they could have a page in the owner's manual that lists every device the PLG150-DR is recommended for and/or what limitations it will have with devices it is not recommended for.

The only way to use the PLG150-DR in the 9000 Pro is to assign it to one of the R1, R2, or R3 or the L1 sound and then assign that voice to whatever midi channel you want, which would make those slots unuseable for other live-performance parts (unless you want to play a keyboard drum solo). This applies no matter how the midi input to the card is coming in, from keyboard or external PC. My problem would be solved if the drum card defaulted to channel 10 but it defaults to channel 1. As you asked, the only way to play the drum card's sounds is from the keyboard, unless I reprogram all of my midi files so the drums are on channel 1 (I might be able to reprogram the arranger so the accompaniment drums are also on channel 1 - I dunno). But that's ridiculous - even cheap drum machines that cost less than half of what the PLG150-DR cost have assignable midi channels.

Here's the kicker: there is clearly a panel under the 9000 Pro's Plug-In Manager for programming the drum card's "Native Parameters" - this is where you assign the midi channel of the drum card or any other expansion card on every other XG-Plug keyboard (Motif, MU128 etc.). On the 9000 Pro, this page comes up blank for the PLG150-DR. Clearly this is where the "part assign" could and should be accessable - but Yamaha has not written the 9000 Pro's OS to allow it to access the drum card's parameters. That's why I asked Yamaha to look into making this relatively simple, minor upgrade but they refused.

It's funny that Yamaha designed the 9000 Pro so that you can add sample memory, a hard drive and two expansion cards yourself but they assume the end-user would not sophisticated enough to need to set a midi channel for a device. Or (more likely) the person at Yamaha support that answered my support request just wanted to be rid of me. I'd love for Steve Deming to respond to this subject, but it seems likely that we already have as much of a response from Yamaha as we lowly home-keyboard owners will ever deserve in their minds.