Midi Rocker LX & RB3 PS3

[gooney0]

So far so good. Here is my setup:

Roland TD-4
Midi Rocker LX (lastest firmware)
PS3

I've been playing Pro Drums expert. Here is what I've found so
far....

Drums, kick, and cymbals all work properly just as they did in RB2.
The only changes I've found are:

Flams are charted as red drum + yellow drum in Pro mode. This is
weird and takes a little getting used to as I always just played them
with the snare and high hat. (In real life you'd play both on the
snare of course.)

When using your drums in the menus i often have to hit a drum quite
hard for the game to respond. Example: If I want to continue I'm
told to press "X (Green)" I have to hit my floor tom pretty hard or
nothing happens. Velocity is fine when actually playing though.

I need to check the LX manual to see how I can press square and other
buttons to sort songs or rate songs. I also can't hold X of course
but I think there is a trick available. This is really a minor
drawback considering how great it is overall.

For now I left the "hi-hat footswitch" feature off. Maybe i'll play
with that latter.

In Pro mode the high hat is always Yellow cymbal even in old songs!
Now I can go back and play Orange Crush and other songs with 16th note
high hat patterns.

-Gooney0

[Scott Pinkham]

Thanks for the info!

I've also noticed some difficulty in navigating the menus -- I'm
looking into that now.

I'll also be coming out with a firmware update to add support for the
hi hat pedal feature. RB3 now supports having a hi hat pedal (this is
what the "extra" pedal port on the RB2 controller was for) -- it will
set the hi hat open or closed and affect the sound you hear during
drum fills, but I don't think it has any effect while playing the
charted notes.

I'm also looking at adding support for keyboard mode. It's not as
straightforward as I'd hoped, as it is not obvious how the keypress
data is sent out to the console, but I think it is just a matter of
decoding it some more.

-Scott P (Byte Arts)

[Scott Pinkham]

I've fixed the problem with menu navigation in RB3 on the Playstation.
I also added support for the hi hat pedal. Obviously I haven't had a
lot of time to test all this, so it is "beta" for now. You can
download the new firmware at: http://midi-rocker.googlegroups.com/web/MRLX_PS_Drums_V90b.hex

Please let me know if you find any problems.

Note that installing this firmware will overwrite any changes you've
made to the default note maps, so you'll have to save and then recall
your map after the update if you want to keep it. The update also
resets the note duration setting to 50ms -- in my testing, I found
that RB3 on the Playstation seems to work best with this setting. In
RB2 I was using 30ms, but RB3 seemed to miss a lot of notes when using
this value.

The way the hi hat works is this -- if you press your hi hat pedal
more than half-way, then it "closes" the hi hat switch in the game (in
the game, the hi hat is either open or closed, there is no in-
between). You can adjust the hi hat threshold setting using the GUI
software (Windows only for now). It defaults to a value of 64 (since
the hi hat pedal position goes from 0 to 127 on most drums, 64 is
about half way). Note that the hi hat pedal only changes the sound you
will hear when playing the hi hat during drum fills and doesn't have
any effect during normal play.

I have not had a chance to try RB3 on the Wii yet.

So far, I'm pretty impressed with RB3 -- Pro Mode really makes
drumming a lot more fun! I haven't messed with the keyboard much yet.

-Scott P (Byte Arts)

[Hugo Gayosso]

Hello Scott,

On Tue, Oct 26, 2010 at 8:02 PM, Scott Pinkham <sco...@bytearts.com> wrote:
> I've fixed the problem with menu navigation in RB3 on the Playstation.
> I also added support for the hi hat pedal. Obviously I haven't had a
> lot of time to test all this, so it is "beta" for now. You can
> download the new firmware at: http://midi-rocker.googlegroups.com/web/MRLX_PS_Drums_V90b.hex

Any chance you have a beta also for the original MIDI Rocker?

Thanks,
--
Hugo

[Scott Pinkham]

I should have one available later today.

The original MIDI Rocker (and any MIDI Rocker LX) should work fine in
RB3, it's just the menu navigation in the game that may not be working
right -- you can still navigate the menus using the direction, start
and back buttons on the MIDI Rocker, but navigating by hitting the
drum pads doesn't work.

-Scott P (Byte Arts)

[danwa]

Scott can you please test RB3 on Wii. I'm not getting the cymbals to
register in Pro Mode, they are still being seen as tom hits. So Pro
Mode drums is unusable until I figure this out. I've checked all 3
cymbals in the options menu. Things are still working fine in basic
mode. I'm kinda stumped, wondering if it's working for others on
Wii. I'm playing on a Roland TD-6v and really looking forward to pro
mode.

Thanks!

DanW.

On Oct 26, 5:02 pm, Scott Pinkham <sco...@bytearts.com> wrote:
>
> I have not had a chance to try RB3 on the Wii yet.
>

[Scott Pinkham]

I'm sure it just a small tweak that needs to be made to the firmware
and I will try to get it worked out as soon as possible.

Thanks,
Scott

[LibertyGeis]

I think I've uncovered a little snag with the pro mode in RB3. During
a song I was playing last night (I think it was possibly Space
Oddity?) there was a stretch of eighth-note ride hits (blue cymbal)
coupled with occasional snare and high tom (red and yellow pad) notes
along the way.

The RP+BC combination registered well every time, but the game kept
insisting I was missing notes on the high tom (YP), when as far as I
could tell I was spot-on. At first I though I wasn't hitting hard
enough -- that maybe my tom's crosstalk settings were canceling the
stroke or something -- but even hard accents only worked occasionally.
I gave it a little thought and I think I understand what's happening.

My uneducated guess has to do with how notes are sent to the system.
I'm given to understand that pad notes are roughly equivalent to
buttons, where cymbals are sent as L1 + the relevant pad
"button." (Correct me if I'm mistaken?) If this is the case, hitting YC
+BP, YP+BC, or YC+BC simultaneously would be indistinguishable to the
game, as the signal would appear to the game as simply L1+YP+BP in all
three cases.

I'm wondering if the new RB3 drum kit handles this differently,
perhaps? Otherwise the official kit would have the same problem. It
seems to me it'd be a really easy thing for the developers to have
switched up the signals to, say, L1+YP for YC, L2+BP for BC, and R2+GP
for GC (or something similar) to make them more distinct, but that's
just wild speculation (my only "official" kit is a busted-up hunk of
RB1 plastic.)

Anyway, just something that might be worth looking into. I haven't
tested it yet, but I'd imagine flamming the strokes so YP precedes BC
by just a hair, might work as a temporary "fix" for score purposes
until we know a bit more.

(Also I gotta say, wow, talk about on the ball. New firmware already?
I'm just about to install this new beta to test the hi-hat, so I'll
report back on anything I find out.)

[Scott Pinkham]

There is a beta version of firmware for the original MIDI Rocker now
available at http://midi-rocker.googlegroups.com/web/MR_PS_Drums_V90b.hex

This version fixes menu navigation in RB3 using the drum pads, and
adds support for the hi hat pedal feature in the game. I expect to
have "released" version early next week, but if anyone tries out this
beta version, please send me any feedback you have!

Thanks,
Scott P (Byte Arts)

[gooney0]

Scott,

I've updated my LX to your beta version and have started to test with
PS3 & RB3.

The high hat pedal option doesn't seem helpful. Open high hat is
mapped to blue cymbal so even in fills or freestyle mode you hear the
ride cymbal sound. Am I missing anything here?

So far the menus all work well using the drum pads. I noticed the new
default for "Velocity Threshold" is 0. I was using 50 before. So far
so good... I can actually hit the pads softly without extra hits.
I'll play some more and see if I can keep it at 0. The lower the
better.

I'll play a few hours tonight and post any bugs / issues I run into.

-Gooney0

[gooney0]

Some issues I've found on LX + PS3:

When a song ends you have no way to press Square. In the previous
firmware I could hit blue tom for square.

Up and down are now yellow tom and blue tom. This is nice but breaks
a few features. Probably better to use joystick.

If you try to "hold X" by pressing the joystick to the right it
creates a playlist. You can no longer use the green tom to "press x"
at this point. You also can not hold the stick to the right to "hold
down x." To get unstuck you must hold the stick to the left for 2
seconds. I didn't try this feature with the previous firmware.

If you are in the playlist you can hit Yellow cymbal for more info.
From there you can review songs, but it's nice to press Square and
review songs right after you play them.

Hope this helps,

-Gooney0

[gooney0]

Let me correct myself a bit:

If you want to review a song you need to press Square. You can do
this with the blue cymbal, not the tom. This is probably expected.

Yellow cymbal plays the song again. Probably as expected.

If you press the stick left for 2 seconds it does the PS button. I
was not able to hit anything to "press X" so I couldn't actually quit
the game this way. (I never used this feature before anyway)


So basically the two real issues are:

1) Hold right stick to add to playlist gets you stuck.

2) Hold left to press "PS" gets you stuck.

Everything else just needs documentation.

-Gooney0

[Scott Pinkham]

Gooney0 -

Thanks for the detailed feedback, this is really helpful. I have seen
most of these issues myself, but hadn't tried out the song list
sorting options yet.

I haven't quite figured out the best way to utilize the hi hat feature
in RB3. With the option turned off in the game, you can use the hi hat
pedal as a second kick pedal, but I haven't found any songs yet that
really use it.

What drum kit are you using? I've been using my DTXplorer for testing
and I know it handles the hi hat notes a little different than the
Roland's do.

I'm working on a scheme to solve all these issues, and maintain
backwards compatibility with older versions of RB. It will probably
early next week before I have it all sorted out and have firmware
update that is ready for everyone. I'm also doing the Wii version, and
am bringing the firmware for the original MIDI Rocker up to date.

Unfortunately tonight I got caught up in the World Series game and
didn't get any work done!

- Scott P (Byte Arts)

[Lars]

Scott,

I just tried to download the new beta firmware as the navigation was
too much to bear and noticed the link wasn't working. Was this
because you wanted to address everything before pushing it out or just
a wonky link? Thanks for your continued commitment to the midi rocker
family.

[Scott Pinkham]

Hmm, I just tried and was able to download. You might try going to http://groups.google.com/group/midi-rocker/files and then get the file from there.

-Scott P
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[gooney0]

Scott,

I'm using a Roland TD-4. My HH is setup so that when my pedal is
depressed I get yellow cymbal. When I lift my foot I get blue cymbal.

The 2nd kick pedal isn't relevant for me as I have regular double bass
pedals which hit the same kick pad. I don't know how other sets like
the Roland HD-1 do this. (It doesn't use a pad)

Lars,

The downloaded file may appear as text in your browser. A whole bunch
of numbers. I just saved it from the browser as whatever.hex and it
worked just fine for me.

-Gooney0

[Lars]

Thanks guys, and forgive my internet ignorance, I'm all set, just
needed a little hand holding.

[Hugo Gayosso]

Hello Scott,

On 10/29/10, Scott Pinkham <sco...@bytearts.com> wrote:
> I haven't quite figured out the best way to utilize the hi hat feature
> in RB3. With the option turned off in the game, you can use the hi hat
> pedal as a second kick pedal, but I haven't found any songs yet that
> really use it.

FYI:
Harmonix announced that Hi-Hat or Double-bass would be used ONLY
during fills or in freestyle.

Also, they specifically said they did not chart double-bass.

--
Hugo

[Hugo Gayosso]

I had the same experience described below by LibertyGeis.

I am using the original MIDI Rocker, this was with the previous
firmware, not the beta.

On 10/27/10, LibertyGeis <liber...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think I've uncovered a problem with the pro mode in RB3. During a

> song I was playing last night (I think it was possibly Space Oddity?)
> there was a stretch of eighth-note ride hits (blue cymbal) coupled
> with occasional snare and high tom (red and yellow pad) notes along
> the way.
>
> The RP+BC combination registered well every time, but the game kept
> insisting I was missing notes on the high tom (YP), when as far as I
> could tell I was spot-on. At first I though I wasn't hitting hard

> enough -- that maybe my TD-9's crosstalk settings were canceling the

> stroke or something -- but even hard accents only worked occasionally.
> I gave it a little thought and I think I understand what's happening.
>
> My uneducated guess has to do with how notes are sent to the system.
> I'm given to understand that pad notes are roughly equivalent to
> buttons, where cymbals are sent as L1 + the relevant pad
> "button." (Correct me if I'm mistaken?) If this is the case, hitting YC
> +BP, YP+BC, or YC+BC simultaneously would be indistinguishable to the

> game, as the software would read the signal as simply L1+YP+BP in all

> three cases.
>
> I'm wondering if the new RB3 drum kit handles this differently,
> perhaps? Otherwise the official kit would have the same problem. It
> seems to me it'd be a really easy thing for the developers to have
> switched up the signals to, say, L1+YP for YC, L2+BP for BC, and R2+GP

> for GC (or something along those lines) to make them more distinct,

> but that's just wild speculation (my only "official" kit is a busted-
> up hunk of RB1 plastic.)
>
> Anyway, just something that might be worth looking into. I haven't
> tested it yet, but I'd imagine flamming the strokes so YP precedes BC
> by just a hair, might work as a temporary "fix" for score purposes
> until we know a bit more.

--
Hugo

[Scott Pinkham]

If possible, try using the "waterfall" display feature in the Windows
software and see if you see the same issue there. The waterfall
display displays the data received from the MIDI Rocker in real-time,
using the same "note lane" format you see in the game, so you see at a
glance what's happening.

Each pad or cymbal is mapped to a individual bit in the data that is
sent over USB to the console, so in theory, the game should be able to
see every possible combination of pads and cymbals. My understanding
is that the new "Pro Drums" function identically to the RB2 drums, the
only difference being some tweaks to the pad/cymbal sensitivity.

It may be that the note duration needs to be tweaked a little -- the
beta firmware (for the Playstation) defaults to 50ms because in my
limited testing that seemed to work, but maybe it needs to be tweaked
a little. You might try 40 and see if that makes any difference. (The
manual has instructions for changing the note duration).

I initially tried 30ms (that what I was using in RB2) but that dropped
notes like crazy, so they definitely changed how they sample the data
in RB3.

-Scott P (Byte Arts)

On Oct 31, 5:06 am, Hugo Gayosso <hgayo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I had the same experience described below by LibertyGeis.
>
> I am using the original MIDI Rocker, this was with the previous
> firmware, not the beta.
>

[Scott Pinkham]

There is an updated beta version of firmware for the LX and
Playstation available at http://www.bytearts.com/beta/beta.htm.

The main change was that now the CH6 light comes on when the hi hat
pedal is closed. You can adjust the threshold for when the pedal is
considered closed by using the Windows software. I will have a way to
adjust this in the firmware shortly.

I also changed the default note map that gets loaded when you load the
firmware -- it now matches the notes used in RB3 better.

Note that you can use the MIDI Rocker to make and edit play lists in
Rock Band 3, even using the older versions of firmware. Here's how it
works:

* Press and hold the navigation button on the MIDI Rocker to the RIGHT
to start making a play list. This is equivalent to pressing and
holding X on a PS controller.
* Press and hold the navigation button on the MIDI Rocker to the LEFT
to bring up the "shortcut" menu. This is equivalent to pressing and
holding down the kick pedal on the drum controller.
* Hit the BLUE CYMBAL (ride) to change the rating for a song (called
Review in the game). Equivalent to pressing SQUARE button.
* Hit the YELLOW CYMBAL (hi hat) to view more song information, same
as pressing the TRIANGLE button.

Note that you will need to enable "Drum Navigation" in the "Modifiers"
menu for the drum to use the drum pads or cymbals in the menus.

I'll get all this stuff put into the manual soon. I'm making a little
"quick start" card that you can refer to while playing.

-Scott P (Byte Arts)

[Hugo Gayosso]

I downloaded and flashed the beta for the original MIDI Rocker and
played "Space Oddity" again and now everything was fine.

The note duration was set at 50ms.

I did not have "Dolby" but I have "Bass Boost".

Also, the navigation using the drums worked perfectly, I was able to
select a song and also to "review" it after playing, I did not try to
make a setlist though.

--
Hugo

[Fascismo]

The LX firmware beta wouldn't happen to work for the 360 would it? Or
is that one on the way?

[Scott Pinkham]

So far there haven't been any changes that affect the Xbox version.

I'm getting close to "officially" releasing the updates for the Wii
and PS versions.

-Scott P (Byte Arts)

[LibertyGeis]

Just wanted to report back, I've tried it again with Space Oddity as
well and it looks like everything's fixed. My note duration was 40ms.
The drum navigation is wonderful as well.

As for the hi-hat pedal, it looks to be functional, and works as a
second bass trigger when "Hi-hat enabled" is off. When it comes to
using the hi-hats in fills and freestyle, I haven't had a chance to
test, because I have fills turned off. Even if they were on, my hats
are mapped to blue when they're open, and wouldn't take advantage of
the new yellow-cymbal fill sounds.

New patch is working marvelously and I've seen no problems at all. If
I have some time I'll try fiddling with the new hi-hat options a bit
more.

[Gary]

So first Kudos to Scott for getting the RB3 patches out so quickly for
the PS3....

I updated last night and it worked like a charm (of course my drumming
stilll sucks, but hey thats down to me ;) )

Then when I tried to go back to play 'Beatles Rockband' (clearly
Rockband 2 protocol based), the drums wold not work for me.

The only solution that I could see would be to keep downloading
different firmware versions as I switch between games? Is this it?
Or is there some trick ;) that I am missing.

Any suggestions?

Gary

[Scott Pinkham]

Gary -

What exactly doesn't work in Beatles Rockband? I have to admit I
haven't gone back to test the MIDI Rocker with earlier versions of
Rock Band since RB3 came out.

Thanks,
-Scott P (Byte Arts)

[Steve.B]

Beatles still works perfect for me.

> > Gary- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Gary]

OK Then this is probably some weird user error.

For me nothing worked at all. Almost like I had no controller
connected.

At least now I know that it should work (thanks to Steve B) I can try
a more rigorous test (I will report back here either way) than just a
casual attempt to load the game.

Thanks for the quick response.

Gary

[Gary]

Alright so now I feel like an idiot.

Please ignore my post, I clearly was doing something wacky.

Works perfect for RB3 and then perfect for Beatles Rockband.

Sorry for jumping the gun and posting in error.

And once more. Kudos to the forum and to Scott for setting me straight
and getting this patch out so quickly.

gary

[Fascismo]

I just tried using the LX beta firmware with my 360 and I'm having
trouble. It boots up just fine, but it freezes up shortly afterward.
It doesn't let me go into program mode, and the yellow "MIDI" light
doesn't blink when I send it any notes from my DTXplorer. I'm pretty
sure that it's because my LX is normally plugged into a USB cell phone
charger instead of my computer, since my kit is in a different room.
When I was changing the firmware and it was plugged into my computer,
it did let me go into program mode. I couldn't really test if the LX
could detect MIDI notes while it was plugged into my computer, but I
get the sense everything was working normally when it wasn't plugged
into a cell phone charger.

This wasn't a problem with the older 360 firmware, is there anything
specific to this issue that's different between the beta firmware and
older versions?

[Scott Pinkham]

The beta firmware is currently only for Wii or Playstation. So far,
there aren't any changes needed to the Xbox version of the firmware
for RB3.

When the LX is running the Playstation or Wii version of the firmware
and is connected to the Xbox, the LX will appear to freeze up because
the Xbox basically shuts down the USB connection when it sees an
unlicensed controller.

-Scott P (Byte Arts)

[Fascismo]

Oh, haha sorry, when you said it the first time, I thought you meant
that running the beta firmware with the 360 wouldn't mess with the
controller's functionality.

If nobody's mentioned anything yet, the 360 version is having the
same problems the the PS3 version had before the new firmware was
released, at least on my end. Namely, the game won't register Cymbal
+Tom hits and I can't navigate menus with the pads. The bright side is
that I am able to use the d-pad on what's left of my controller, but
it would be nice not to have to get up to go through the menus.

On Nov 8, 9:21 am, Scott Pinkham <sco...@bytearts.com> wrote:

[Scott Pinkham]

If you can't navigate the menus with the pads, then the "Drum
Navigation" option is probably turned off. To turn it on, press the
Start button on the Xbox drum controller to get to the drum menu and
then look for the Drum Navigation option -- I think it is under
Options or Modifiers menu. You'll also find the options for turning
the cymbals on/off -- you should turn on all the cymbals if you want
to use pro mode.

-Scott P (Byte Arts)