Roland MC-101 & MC-707 ZEN-Core synth engine control with MIDI System-Exclusive messages

💡It can work over USB MIDI as well🤩
#mc101 #mc707 #midi #synth #roland #hack

The GitHub repository:
https://github.com/Locriana/mcpoker/

Chapters:
00:00 Hi
00:58 Introduction
03:18 Motivation
04:59 Nice to know first
05:20 How I started
05:58 The concept of an address
06:45 The Roland address space
10:12 MIDI Sys-Ex for Roland
10:57 Data Request 1
13:07 Data Set 1
13:43 The checksum
14:18 The experiments
15:29 Setting the Coarse Tune
16:39 Setting the Partial Wave L
17:46 How I did that - tips & tricks
19:25 Thank you & final notes

Errors & corrections & updates:

Q: Does the SysEx control work over MIDI?
A: Yes! :)
I've just tested the Coarse Tune setting to +2 as in the video, but using USB and Linux command line - and it works! 🥳 I tried both Generic and Vendor driver on my MC-707 - and it worked in both cases. I use Linux (obviously ;)), so I tried it with the "amidi" command, like that (copied & pasted exactly from the terminal):
amidi -p hw:2,0,0 -t1 -d -S 'F0 41 10 00 00 00 5D 12 30 42 00 18 42 34 F7'
The "hw:2,0,0" is how my MC was displayed after issuing the command:
amidi --list-devices
and the SysEx message contents was copied&pasted from the terminal running the mcpoker.py as in the video.


Useful links to works on the similar topic by other Authors:

If you prefer a complete & independent solution, you may be interested in the Zen Editor Librarian (that it not my project and I didn't try it - but I think it looks okay),
(accessed 2025-07-06):
https://www.benis.it/cm/ZC_Editor/ben...

A very valuable resource about Roland System-Exclusive MIDI communication (accessed 2025-07-04):
http://midi.teragonaudio.com/tutr/rol...

Similar topic, but for Roland Verselab MV-1 (accessed 2025-07-04):
https://drolez.com/blog/music/sysex-c...