Hi All,
I'm a new comer to this forum and have my Forte 8 for about a month now and I've been converting some GM midi files to play correctly from a sequencer running on a P.C. I got very frustrated at first due to midi files altering expression CC's to various levels, playing a new file only to hear silence or after increasing the Forte's volume nearly blowing the cones out of my speakers!!!

I've altered the files now and set midi CC 11 (expression to 100) which gives acceptable output at the files programmed volume level (CC 7). The midi files sounded O.K. but nothing to shout about then I noticed files with pitch modulation sounded awful!!! I have another keyboard (Kawai MP7) which does have a General Midi mode and the same file sounds fine. What I've discovered is this:- Midi RPN 100,101,6 (set bend range) needs to be doubled in order to sound correctly on the Forte. If the file has a bend range of 2 (2 semitones up, 2 semitones down) I alter the bend range to 4 and the file sounds great. I just wondered if anyone has also discovered this feature?

Something else that puzzles me is that I created a multi to play my modified files and initially thought I needed a 16 zones with each zone set to a different midi channel and even set the input to each zone to 'M' (midi only) from the default of 'none' but noticed the midi stream got kind of 'hung up' and missed the first bar or so playing from a few bars in. What i actually needed was a 1 zone multi, or one zone for the midi 16 channel stream and one zone's input set to 'LM' set to midi channel 16 cos that's rarely used, for me to play along on my '9 foot German Grand' . The upshot is that each zone of a multi appears to be 'listening' on all midi channels so if I have 16 zones i'm playing 16 times 16 channels!!!!!

As I said at the beginning I am a new comer to this forum and also new to Kurzweil if I am doing it wrong I'm sure someone will point me in the right direction nudge nudge. I have to say that the overall sound of the Forte blows anything I have owned or listened to out of the water!!! Booooooooom!

Happy New Year everyone!