LAYOUT: Yamaha SY77/TG77 Voice Editorby ibo-kai

Question

Platinum

MIDI Target Manufacturer(s): Yamaha
Summary: Yamaha released the SY77 keyboard -- and the TG77 rack-mount -- in 1989. They coined the term "Realtime Convolution and Modulation Synthesis" to describe the sound engine. It's an FM-synthesis and sample-based hybrid that creates amazingly rich, layered and multitimbral sounds.

This Platinum layout is well-thought-out, well-designed, well-executed and brilliant on every level. Master Layout Author Ibo Kai, winner of the Rainer Award for layout-design excellence, goes deep with this layout. He not only shows a particular vision of the TG77 through the layout, but he also provides a particular workflow. And that's EXACTLY what great editor design is about.

We're so fortunate to have Ibo Kai and his many contributions. Some of this others include brilliant editors for the Kawai K1, Yamaha Reface DX, and the Korg 707. Big ups, Ibo Kai!

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After having fun programming FM voices with the AFM Editor, I found that some improvements were neccessary. For example I sometimes mixed controls especially on the EasyEdit page, so I implemented a colour scheme for the controls (yellow and orange for Levels and Rates, blue for Volumes etc). Then I decided to include AWM, which is much less parameters than AFM and thus far easier to do. From that point it grew bigger and bigger and finally became a complete voice editor.

Now bank 1/5 (OBP) starts with the EasyEdit and the Common functions, including FX and naming, still not including MicroTuning (anybody using that?). It now allows to select the Mode, means how many and what kind of Elements (e.g. 2 AFM+2AWM etc).

Bank 2/6 includes the AFM part known from the AFM editor, but slightly re-arranged. It still does not cover the Operator Feedback routings or other OP input options (too complicated stuff!).

In bank 3/7 there are the AWM functions (just 2 pages here).

On all pages relevant to Elements there is a crossfader at the top, which changes from Element 1 through to 4. Please note that switching from, let´s say, one AFM element to another AFM element does not make the controls adapt to the values of the other element. You have to keep track of this by yourself. I recommend (and that´s what I am doing) to first program Element by Element and just jump between them for some fine tuning.

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If you want to try this, beware: loading will take a few seconds (on my iPad Air) and also switching between banks (e.g. using the "...Details" buttons) will always give you a moment of peace ;-) It is some 800+ controls in this layout, so that might be normal.

Any questions, comments or bug reports welcome!

Downloads: 3486
SY77-TG77 Editor v1.45 - Updated labels to reflect SY77 as a additional MIDI target

TG77 Editor v1.42 (admin's mod) - Admin says: Wrote some code in the Lab to fix this: substituted white in images for transparent, change buttons that had images on them to be "piano key" display option, and hid the labels on these same buttons. Then, tiny manual tweaks.
Downloads: 2007

TG77 Editor v1.3 - EDIT: version 1.3 My first attempts in using the new Image Panel feature. From the looks not yet perfect, but still a great help in choosing the right algorithm in an AFM element (an being able to check it visually any time), or find the needed FX routing.
Downloads: 1682

TG77 Editor v1.2 (old) - EDIT: version 1.2 (AWM filter parameters now work as expected in addressing the element chosen with the Element selector; some minor bug fixes)

Images

Yamaha SY77/TG77 Voice Editor Screenshot

Yamaha SY77/TG77 Voice Editor Screenshot

Yamaha SY77/TG77 Voice Editor Screenshot

Yamaha SY77/TG77 Voice Editor Screenshot

Yamaha SY77/TG77 Voice Editor Screenshot

Yamaha SY77/TG77 Voice Editor Screenshot

Yamaha SY77/TG77 Voice Editor Screenshot

Yamaha SY77/TG77 Voice Editor Screenshot

Comments

Thanks to Dan@MIDI Designer again for his great support on uploading this (too big) file!

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Thank you! Just fixed the link to use %20 for the spaces. Amazing work!

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Thanks for this!! I was just trying it with my SY77 but have a hurdle that is puzzling me.  MIDI Designer Pro seems to be reading data changes fine if I enter them on the synth itself. The knobs in your layout change to what I set on the SY77. However, the SY77 doesn't seem to receive any data from MIDI Designer when I change parameters.The parameters on the synth do not change. My midi interface lights up on virtual knob twists so I know the data is getting to the hardware and the MIDI connections have been triple checked. I tried changing MIDI TX and Receive channels on the SY77 as well and disabled Bulk Protect to make sure sysex wasn't being blocked. Am I missing a parameter somewhere? Thanks to whomever solves my debacle!

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Things I have tried this morning:
I plugged my ipad MIDI out into my Mac and used the MIDI monitor app on the Mac to make sure my ipad and MIDI Designer were sending MIDI on the MIDI out from the ipad...all good. Sysex strings are being received from the ipad. I did notice that the manufacturer ID being send from the TG77 design in MD was a manufacturer ID labeled as "Oberheim." I thought perhaps changing the System ID on my SY77 from "1" to "all" may help, but no go there. Still there is no data being changed from the ipad MD layout to the SY77, even though it is sending Sysex data. I tried different midi channels again to no avail. I have the SY77 in Voice Edit mode. Again, I am able to send data from the SY77 TO the ipad and the controls in the layout change to reflect the values chosen in the editor. I believe it is either some setting I am missing on the SY77 or something in the sysex string that the SY77 doesn't like coming from the MD layout. It's got to be something simple. I have tried different config settings in MIDI including slowing down the MIDI data stream in the Config page of MD. No luck yet!

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Man I always wanted to build an editor for this beast. I've not tried this yet but I think you've done a really good job.

I am now 40. Even if went 60, i could have never managed to build this. Congrats!!

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Hi there. I figured out how to get this working wirelessly into my Mac and then into my hardware, but I will post about that later. You mentioned reporting bugs in this fine layout and I think I may have one. When editing AWM Element 3's waveform, it seems to be actually going to Element 4. Even if I manually select Element 4 on the SY77, if I twist the knob on the ipad for waveform on Element 3, it edits Element 4. Just a heads up! Now that I have it working wirelessly using a Network session and its Live Routing settings, this really makes editing more fun :-) Thanks again!!!

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@mckaygarner so you're solved?

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I found a workaround to the way I was routing MIDI in and out of the ipad. Thing is, I can't remember what interface out of the ipad I was using in my previous troubles. It was likely hardware based and may have been a MIDI Mobilizer 1 with MIDI Bridge. The data would show up fine on the Mac MIDI Monitor app but would not go to the hardware. Perhaps I was using Ableton as a router then, too. Not sure. Regardless, wireless is better anyway for my editing sessions :-)

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I know we're all about this hi-tech stuff to solve the hi-tech stuff, but NOTHING beats a legal pad to write down what you're doing... or Workflowy, or Evernote, or Simplenote, or Google Docs, or whatever... the point is that without a coherent notebook (see Will Smith in I Am Legend) you can't trace your conclusions back.

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Hi, I am afraid you´re right: I just double-checked the layout and found that the Channel Changer variable "L" is missing in the AWM parameters! Thing is that I do mostly FM sounds, not bothering the AWM part that much. I´ll try to fix that soon. Thanks for letting me know!

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Excellent. Yeah, I use my SY77 for a lot of FM, too, but occasionally an AWM waveform attack or texture is really useful. The layout you've worked so hard to create has these AWM features right in front of us allllmost working and extra useful :-) Thanks again for all your great work! It is truly appreciated by more of the community than may be evident in the comments (silent celebrations going on all over the SY/TG community I imagine hee hee)...

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Problem solved! It was really a channel byte "L", which was missing in some controls. Instead they were routed fix to element 2 of the TG77. Therefore the Element selector at the top didn't work for these. Funny thing is that addressing the filter parameters is quite tricky and requires bit changers as well. I had to study my own layout to find out how I managed that when I made the layout back in the days ;-)
Now the only problem is again how to upload the new version, because it exceeds the max. file size of 2 MB.
Dan, can you help here again, please?

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Upload problem solved as well! I found the upload info from last time. Should work fine now.

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Thanks @ibo-kai! Glad we're able to get this moving without my intervention (but I'm here!).

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Plus I just found, that the new "upload from app" option can handle even huge file size as this layout - brilliant!

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I think we actually set a different cap site-wide. But glad it's working. Do you want me to move those pics from inside your post to the Extra Fields? I've got a special Admin function to do that.

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Thanks, that would be fine. It gives more clarity to the posts.

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Okay, I did some heavy-handed messing around with the post to get it into Extra Fields. Hopefully you're ok with the result. This editor is ridiculously detailed! It's amazing to see how deep people are going with MD... and wonderful!

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Thanks, Dan, for cleaning it up! Absolutely makes sense.

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we probably need to discuss what we could provide on our side to make your Algo Select page better. I guess you could lower the alpha of those images by a tiny bit, but that's not really the big money.

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I modified to get to version 1.42 (admin mod), and posted some images here. There are going to be 10 in all. I think the algo's page came out pretty well. This is such an amazing layout and represents such an awesome amount of work: we've been very careful to respect Ibokai's vision and implementation.

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Yeah! Great work, guys!!!!!

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Just uploaded new layout (1.45), adjusted labels to reflect both MIDI targets (SY77 and TG77) and moved some stuff about. Redid all the screenshots, again, too. Please let me know if anything is broken! Thanks to IboKai, again, for this enormous work!

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Looks fantastic! I have 3 x SY99 and wonder, if this editor would also work for them? I basically want to modify the AFM Elements, which are identical between SY77/99 ... anyone tried it?

Answer 1

I've just tried this great layout yesterday on my SY77, and it works great! I'm using Line 6 MIDI Mobilizer II because the first gen Alesis I/O Dock does not do Sys Ex. It seems to work strait away even with just the iPad midi out connected to the midi in on the SY whether the bulk switch is on or off. sY's MIDI receive is set to OMNI. When I run the midi out of the SY back into the iPad, the SY oddly gets forced into edit mode with a press of the sustain pedal. Just have to be sure to press Cancel when changing patches so not to overwrite some valued sound. Love that Compare button. So wish a couple of my newer synths hadn't overlooked this essential function.

I digress. This is a great programmer for the TG/SY77. Thanks a ton! Still such a deep beastie this architecture is.

Comments

Thanks, glad you like it! And good to know it works fine with the MIDI Mobilizer. I never tried such a "direct" connection, I always route everything through my Mac and Cubase.
The switch to Edit mode when pressing the sustain pedal sounds pretty odd indeed. No idea what that could be...
Yes, a Compare function is always very useful. On those boards which doesnt have it, I always need to look for an empty sound memory or one that can be overwritten, before I even start making a new sound. Also I try to archive as much as possible on my computer, I use an old copy of Sounddiver for that.
And yes, the SY/TG77 is very deep! I couldn't even cover everything in the layout and the element switching is not perfect (as the controls would not adapt to the values of the elements), but still it helped me a lot creating voices far quicker and easier than on the machine itself, giving me more time to experiment around - there is a lot to experiment with!

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@brenner13, this is going to be released as a standalone app. Can I add you to the beta team?

Thanks!
Dan

Answer 2

I've just tried this great layout yesterday on my SY77, and it works great! I'm using Line 6 MIDI Mobilizer II because the first gen Alesis I/O Dock does not do Sys Ex. It seems to work strait away even with just the iPad midi out connected to the midi in on the SY whether the bulk switch is on or off. sY's MIDI receive is set to OMNI. When I run the midi out of the SY back into the iPad, the SY oddly gets forced into edit mode with a press of the sustain pedal. Just have to be sure to press Cancel when changing patches so not to overwrite some valued sound. Love that Compare button. So wish a couple of my newer synths hadn't overlooked this essential function.

I digress. This is a great programmer for the TG/SY77. Thanks a ton! Still such a deep beastie this architecture is.

Answer 3

Hi! Thanks for the great work. I'm new to MidiDesigner, so maybe I'm just missing something obvious. But is it possible, to initialize the editor with a patch from the synth? I tried sending bulk data for single voices, but MidiDesinger doesn't seem to react to these. When I edit individual parameters on the synth, their values are correctly set. But it would be really helpful to transfer all parameters of a patch, so that it can be modified from MidiDesigner. Is there a way to do this?

Comments

Sorry for the late reply! Unfortunately that does not work. Handling single parameter changes works via the "parameter change" sys-ex command. This is what you would program into a MD control. The synth will then respond to this one parameter to be changed. In case of the TG/SY 77 even the synth itself sends such commands, when editing parameters in the synth, so here it works in both directions. However voice bulk is a different kind of data package than parameter changes with a different header. Unfortunately MD cannot understand this kind of package and is not able to split the package into the single parameters and finding the controls in the layout to allocate the values correctly. This is somehow understandable due to the nature of sys-ex data, where the data structure will be different from device to device. It would be necessary for the user (the maker of the layout) to somehow specify the voice bulk content first or MD would need to have an analyse function for this. Maybe something for a future update...
By the way in fact there is a work-around, which Helfried uses in his Reface DX layout. He uses a supercontrol to make each control in the layout to send a parameter request to the synth, which in return sends the according value. So instead of using a voice bulk (all parameters in one data package), each parameter is sent separately and this way each control can get the correct value. However due to the way this works, it would double the number of controls in the layout and this would be totally impracticle for the TG editor , which already comes to the limits (plus the huge effort to make it, honestly speaking).

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Ok, i already guessed that after playing around with it a little more, and also refreshing my memory on how sys-ex works. But you say, there is a sys-ex command, which requests an update for each single parameter? Would it then be possible, to add ONE control to the layout, which sequentially send ALL sys-ex requests to the synth?

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As I mentioned before, it would be possible, but a huge workload and would make the layout slower and maybe even crashing. The reason is that for each (!) function you would need a dedicated button (hidden in performance), which sends the parameter request to the synth. Then you would make that one button, which as a Supercontrol triggers all the other buttons. That´s why you would double the number of controls, which is right now several hundred already. Of course del free to try ;-)

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Then maybe this would rather be a suggestion to the Midi-Designer team: My idea was, that there could be a SINGLE control that would sequentially send all sys-ex requests to the synth, not a supercontrol triggering individual ones.
Just one control, containing a probably huge sys-ex string. But that string could be compiled on a Desktop PC, would probably just be a lot of copy&paste work. As long as the button isn't pressed, it shouldn't significantly affect the layouts performance.

To the MD Team: Is this possible? Could it be added for MD 2?

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By the way I meanwhile found, that helfrieds method is definitely not possible with the TG77, because the TG does not support parameter requests (like many other older synths).

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@Florian sorry I missed this comment for the feature add. Can you open that up as a standalone suggestion here on the Q&A site, or perhaps send us an email to support at mididesigner.com? Thanks!

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Yes, Florian, please make this a new question in the "suggestions" category. I would love to support that one!

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Allright, done!

Answer 4

Hi! Thanks for the great work. I'm new to MidiDesigner, so maybe I'm just missing something obvious. But is it possible, to initialize the editor with a patch from the synth? I tried sending bulk data for single voices, but MidiDesinger doesn't seem to react to these. When I edit individual parameters on the synth, their values are correctly set. But it would be really helpful to transfer all parameters of a patch, so that it can be modified from MidiDesigner. Is there a way to do this?