Keyboards to sound modules

[ProAudioX]

So most of my gear from the past were primarily keyboards and these have been the mainstay of my midi rig. In the past few years I have been getting rid of the keyboards and converting the midi gear to just the rackable sound units.

What I am finding is that while the space that the studio takes has decreased alot, it is pretty hard to keep bending down and around to control the settings on the modules since not all of them are at eye level or within reach.

Anyone have a suggestion on how to help deal with this? I have a main controller keyboard but not all of the units behave well with patch change commands and you certainly can't edit sounds from the controller.

[Centurion]

Hey Pro,
There are software tools out there that will present a UI allowing you to emulate the rack-mounted gear using the sysex channel in MIDI. SoundDiver was one such tool. I think they went under EMagic. So look into that sort of deal. They work pretty good once you have configured everything.

[ProAudioX]

Thanks I am looking into it.
If I can find a stable solution on this sysex channel that would be great. The constant squatting down to tweak patches is really annoying and there has to be a better way to keep everything in and up front.

[Dusty Chalk]

Anyone have a suggestion on how to help deal with this? Actually, that's almost exactly my rig -- bunch of rackmount modules, and one or two keyboard controllers.

My advice is to reengineer your setup. You've probably done it piecemeal, and put things wherever they fit -- try taking everything down, and putting them back up in racks, starting at desk height and working your way up.

I also have a slight advantage on you -- I don't tend to do a lot of realtime programming -- I basically consider "programming sounds" and "writing" as two separate activities (well, three: "playing"/"jamming" being the third). I don't want to advise you against realtime programming, because perhaps that is incumbent in your sound, but perhaps you ought to separate out "tweaking" from full-on "programming" of sounds.

Also, what sort of troubles are you having with gear not handling program changes well? Perhaps I have been unusually fortunate, but I have yet to run across anything that can't handle program changes. Cite a specific example, perhaps you just need one or two workarounds.