Switch sound and sustain?

[Eric Zane]

Dear musician friends,

I'm having some troubles using my Yamaha S08. I have to foot pedals to use. I would like them to be assigned as a sustain pedal and a pedal to change sound (like in the Voice/Multi mode). But the problem is, the setup is a bit screwed up, so to say.
On the Yamaha S08 you have to pedal inputs. One foot controller, one foot switch. With the foot switch you're able to use a sustain pedal, change the sounds and some other thing, and on the foot controller you can change reverb, vibrato, volume and so on. Here's the tricky part. How can I assign sustain or soundchanging to the foot controller? Right now, I'm only able to either have a sustain pedal OR a sound changer, not both of them.

Or should you buy some special designed pedal?

[godsmcktma2]

You won't be able to, and that's the flat out truth..sorry.


doug

[Spacehog]

You'd have to get some kind of midi control pedal, something like the Behringer FCB1010 would work wonders, although it's possibly a bit overkill. I think Yamaha make a little 5 / 6 pedal board that you could probably use to select patches...

Martin

[Eric Zane]

Oh, thanks alot! I think you just saved my day (and future ;))!

Edit: is there anywhere you have seen this 5/6 pedal board from Yamaha?

I have a MIDI sequencer att home, wondering if I could be able to apply a pedal to it and use, somehow ...

[Spacehog]

Hmm, OK, the one I was thinking of was the Yamaha MFC10 which actually has 10 pedals... I can't remember what the other one was, maybe it was a Roland or something... hmmm...

[tekskater]

I have the same keyboard. If you're not using the foot controller to change reverb, vibrato, etc., there's no need to get a midi control pedal or anything along those lines. You can use the foot controller as a sustain pedal. Set it to function #64 (the sustain function), and it will put sustain on when it is depressed more than half way, and turn it off when it is depressed less than half way. This feels a bit weird at first, but isn't too tough to get used to.

On the other hand, if you need the variable functions of the foot controller, you're stuck; my solution has just been to try and avoid situations where I need to use all three of these things at once.

[ImaX]

As tekskater said a controller-value between 64 and 127 is interpreted as "on", while everything from 0 to 63 it "off". So you can use a pedal as a switch. But perhaps you could also be able to use a real switch instead of the pedal, that depends on the way in which a yamaha-compatibel foot controller acts electrical. Some controller are a kind of voltage controller, and a switch can also be seen as a digital voltage controller (nothing / everything). I don't have a yamaha synth so I don't know, but if you're lucky you might have only to put a stereo jack at your footswitch (with the right polarity) and can use it as digital controller.