Preset mode R5

Pick the voice the selected track’s gear plays. Each pad is one voice of that device’s own list, read from a CSV at startup — so a pad is CFX ConcertGrand, not a bank and a program number.

• Select the track first with B1–B8, then R5 — one press, no modifier, and the only way in from the grid; PRESET on the panel is the other. A tap of R2 here goes on to the step parameters, which is what that button means everywhere else, so R2 is free to be held for the preset page.
• B1–B8 keeps you in the mode and moves the selection, as it does in Pattern mode and the step lanes: the whole grid is the selected track’s voice, so giving eight tracks eight voices is B1, pad, B2, pad. The grid follows the track to the window and page its own voice sits in — a track on a piano and one on a kit come up where their sounds are, and the green pad is never left off screen. A track past the eighth means the track row of a page panel, since SHIFT + B1–B8 is spoken for here; without a panel, step out to Note mode and back.
• Tap a pad to send that voice to the track’s gear, on its channel and port: Bank Select — MSB (CC 0) then LSB (CC 32) — and then the Program Change, which is what makes the gear act on the bank. All three come from the voice’s row in the list. The bank is a 14-bit pair and a synth keeps the half it isn’t sent, so both go out every time rather than leaving a stale LSB to decide the bank. It is sent again whenever the track’s channel, port or instrument changes, for every track when a project opens, and for every track when you press play from stopped — so your gear comes back on the right patches even if someone turned a knob on it between takes. Nothing is resent while it runs: a Program Change cuts sounding notes on a lot of gear, which is not something to do in the middle of a loop.
• Opening Preset mode shows the window and page of the track’s current preset. Hold SHIFT (or R2) and press B1–B8 to change page — 64 voices each.
• SHIFT + the bottom pad row picks the window, 512 voices each. Eight windows reach 4096 voices. While SHIFT is held the row shows them in the usual colours — green the window on screen, blue one holding voices, grey one past the end of the device’s list — so a 1,650-voice keyboard reads as four lit and four dark. The simulator labels them W1–W8.
• The window follows the track. Nothing is stored for it: re-entering the mode opens on whichever window holds that track’s own voice, so a track on a piano and one on a drum kit each come up where their sound is.
• A page panel gives the windows a pad row of their own — all eight, one press each, on the row directly above its preset pages. Window on one row and a page of it on the next, like a row of tabs over what the open tab shows, and both visible the whole time with nothing held.
• A pad past the end of a device’s list is a voice it hasn’t got: dark, and deaf to a tap. So is a window past the end, on the pads or on the panel — a port declared General MIDI has 128 voices, one window’s worth, so only the first lights, while a port with no list at all walks 4096 and lights all eight.
• Every pad looks the same but the one in use, which is green: a preset is a voice in the gear, not something the sequencer keeps, so there is nothing for a pad to be full or empty of.
• Where the list comes from. voices.conf in the config directory says which CSV belongs to which device, and the CSV is the maker’s own list pasted in whole — a PSR-SX920’s runs to 1,650 voices. Slot n is the nth voice of the file, so 1.01 is its first. A device with no list gets a walk of bank and program — slot n is bank LSB n/128, program n%128, 4096 unnamed slots — which assumes nothing about the gear: a synth with 300 patches answers the first 300 and ignores the rest. A port that really is General MIDI is declared one with p4.voices = gm, and then it is 128 named voices.
• The list follows the gear, not the port. Which voices a pad offers is decided by what the track’s port is wired to at that moment, so a REFRESH that moves a synth to another port takes its voices with it.
• CLEAR and DUPLICATE do nothing here — there is nothing to clear or copy. In every other mode they act on something the sequencer holds; a patch lives in the synth.