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This work has evolved. See here: https://github.com/waldt/goplus

Exploring Roland GO:KEYS and GO:PIANO.

Roland GO:PIANO and GO:KEYS are derived from Roland Juno-DS. Apparently, when Roland released these entry-level keyboards in 2017, it re-used what was developed for Juno-DS released in 2015. Consequently, the GO-keyboards share many of the core capabilities with their advanced and rather more expensive sibling. This repository documents my ongoing findings and notes of my discoveries about these extra-portable and affordable instruments.

1. Preset sounds

GO:KEYS and GO:PIANO have all the sounds from Juno-DS "PRST" bank, except the last six. Both have full set of GM2 sounds. Sounds form Juno-DS "DS" bank are not included, the bank has been re-used for GO:PIANO sounds which seem to be different from PRST and GM2 sounds. See full list of preset sounds.

2. Channel allocation

Choosing instrument category from GO:KEYS touch panel changes used MIDI channel.

Ch# Part Allocation
1 PIANO Panel
2 ORGAN Panel
3 STRINGS Panel
4 BRASS Panel
5 BASS Panel
6 SYNTH Panel
7 FX/GUITAR Panel
8 Bass Loop Mix
9 Part A Loop Mix
10 DRUM Panel
11 Part B Loop Mix
12 Part X Loop Mix
13 Part X Loop Mix
14 Part X Loop Mix
15 Part X Loop Mix
16 Drum Loop Mix

GO:PIANO keypresses generate MIDI events always on channel 1.

3. Demo songs

GO:KEYS has five demo songs. For playing the first one, send the following SysEx strings:

f0 41 10 00 00 00 28 12 01 00 02 10 00 00 00 00 f7
f0 41 10 00 00 00 28 12 01 00 05 05  00 00 f7

(first one selectis the song, the second one triggers start/stop) Second song:

f0 41 10 00 00 00 28 12 01 00 02 10 00 00 01 00 f7

4. Sound tweaking

Both keyboards respond to many effects-related CC commands (e.g portamento, vibrato, filter settings etc.)

  • CC 5 - Portamento time
  • CC 7 - Volume
  • CC 10 - Pan
  • CC 11 - Expression
  • CC 65 - Portamento on/off
  • CC 71 - Filter Resonance
  • CC 72 - Release Time
  • CC 73 - Attack Time
  • CC 74 - Filter Cutoff
  • CC 75 - Decay Time
  • CC 76 - Vibrato Rate
  • CC 77 - Vibrato Depth
  • CC 78 - Vibrato Delay
  • CC 91 - Reverb Send
  • CC 93 - Chorus Send
  • CC 126 - Mono Operation
  • CC 127 - Poly Operation

5. GO:PIANO has the same loop mixing fun as GO:KEYS!

Loop mix modes can be changed and triggered either by using MIDI NRPN commands or via SysEx. NRPN numbers can be found in gokeys-scratch-extension repository. SySex string for GO:PIANO:

f0  41 10 00 00 00 3C 12 01 00 00 19 01 00 f7

5. Sound layering

Up to 16 (or maybe 15 as ch#16 is used for controoling performance) sounds can be played at the same time. See the SendMIDI script here for an example.

6. Keyboard splits

Different instruments can be assigned to different parts of the keyboard. See here.

7. Custom patches!

It is possible to upload custom patches to GO-keyboards.

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Discovering hidden features of Roland GO:PIANO and GO:KEYS

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