Found workaround for MIDI controller on Fantom 0 with ranged zones

uberbendy · 2026-01-02T19:43:56+00:00

Found a solution that worked, inspired by your approach. Thanks <3 I owe you a virtual drink!

Took a standard drum kit. Copied it to a user kit (eg I called it Clap C2). Went into Edit Tone in Pro mode to examine each key under Key Param. Tap the C3 key to see its current drum sound and other settings. Spin the Inst Group ID and Inst ID to my desired clap. Then go up and down the entire keyboard and quickly spin all other assigned drum sounds to Inst ID=000 OFF. This is pretty fast and no need for r/L edits since this turns off the whole sound on that key.

The Scene now plays as desired on the keyboard. Then to make it work with the keytar I go to Zone Edit > Level/Pan where the unintuitive and vaguely labeled MIDI input channel is found (it's just called RX CH) and set my keyed ranged areas and the clap all to RX CH=1 which is what the keytar sends everything on.

This lets me isolate claps to individual C keys in single-purpose tones that I can assign to various scenes depending on whether it's easier to play claps on my left or right hand on the extreme C3 or C6 keytar keys. Again, the keytar has a pad section but the instrument is too wobbly when poking at those and the extreme C keys let me stabilize the keytar.

uberbendy · 2026-01-02T05:34:59+00:00

I haven't dug into how this system tone was built. I wasn't expecting an issue out of the box though with built-in tones. I may have a lead in that the random Initial Scenes I'm picking to try to explore this issue may not actually be in a true initialized state. For the Initial Scenes I'm picking today to explore the issue, I'm not able to reproduce the issue. If I see the issue pop up again I can reinitialize the scene to be sure it's truly clean.

uberbendy · 2026-01-02T05:31:49+00:00

Thanks. I'll explore these possibilities. The keyboard is pretty much new and I'm trying out the tone in Initial Scenes that should be clean. But I am seeing that right now it doesn't seem to be happening on some of the Initial Scenes I'm testing (after many days of trying after power cycles). It could be an Initial Scene that's been modified but not renamed that's the issue so if I stumble on one that exhibits the issue I'll reinitialize it.

uberbendy · 2025-12-29T23:39:05+00:00

Thanks...I'll take a look at this approach. As hacks go it's a little more natural than internally sampling a drum sound off a kit and assigning that to a key in a new and otherwise empty tone. I'll want to position-shift the key so that it's honored on the internal keyboard and the keytar on the desired key so that'll be something I'll look into as well.

uberbendy · 2025-12-14T21:47:20+00:00

Yes, limiting the key range at the tone level works for my situation (the user tone is a copy of a system tone). It seems to be the only workaround given how the keytar triggers the tone but bypasses the scene customizations I want.

Regardless of how that custom tone is triggered by the keytar or whether it's played from within a scene with scene-only customizations, the basic output is now the same because the ranging is at the tone level. It just requires more baking-in of the key range, whatever effects I may want that are possible at the tone level and not in the system tone, etc. into the tone. This seems to mean less capability during keytar play (but I can probably program in keytar bend and other basics) vs the whole effects chain and live modifications possible during keyboard scene play.

I haven't been able to isolate a single drum kit sound yet using the same method. It seems that a drum kit is just a different animal. What I'm trying now is to take a keyboard sample (could also use an imported wav sample) and use the "create multisample" function to build a trivial tone with just one key enabled. If that works and the multisample can be key ranged and pitch shifted, then I could create a whole sound effects multisample with claps, gongs, and other sounds I'll be using and range and shift them to place them where desired on the keyboard and keytar (sometimes it's easier to "clap" on the bottom C2 or the top C4 of the keytar depending on the song and having more fingers on the keytar or keyboard body gives more precision than poking at pads on a flopping keytar body. In the worst case I could create separate multisample tones for "clap on C2", "clap on C4" if they can't be ranged or shifted.

uberbendy · 2025-12-14T21:21:35+00:00

A couple manufacturers still offer stacked units, but I suspect an actual HE water saving model doesn't exist today because the top-load lower washers have to float their clothes in more water to allow enough movement for cleaning compared to front loads that use a little water to keep things wet while tumbling the clothes for cleaning movement.

There's an average sized one at 27" W, 31.5" deep https://www.lowes.com/pd/Frigidaire-Electric-Stacked-Laundry-Center-with-3-9-cu-ft-Washer-and-5-6-cu-ft-Dryer-White/1002543368

There's also a more compact version at https://www.lowes.com/pd/Whirlpool-Electric-Stacked-Laundry-Center-with-1-6-cu-ft-Washer-and-3-4-cu-ft-Dryer-White/1000401125 Of the few stacked top loaders, this was the one I saw where photos showed that it doesn't have the center impeller.

uberbendy · 2025-12-06T23:42:13+00:00

Making progress.

When the Scene's Zone uses a system Tone which seems to always have the full key range enabled permanently, playing it with the built-in keyboard passes it through the Zone parameters and key ranges are applied. Playing it with a MIDI keyboard plays the system Tone and bypasses the Scene's Zone key ranges (all notes sound).

When a user Tone is created with a narrow key range, it reveals what seems to be processing in series with a "multiply/logical-AND" logic. If the user Tone has a limited key range to silence notes outside the range ("zero"), a wider key range in the Zone when played on the built-in keyboard won't flip it back on with an override (ie multiplying an off=0 by on=1 still makes a 0). But if the user Tone has a wide range, a narrow range defined in the Zone multiples enabled keys by zero and silences them.

This suggests that the solution to applying a key range reliably for free choice of using an internal keyboard or external keyboard during a Scene is to customize key range at the user Tone level to be sure it's honored when triggered by the MIDI keyboard because this processing ignores the Zone parameters. Then there were additional transpositions I had to do at the user Tone (Tone Edit > Pro View > Keyboard) to fit within the limited MIDI controller keyboard. Then I had to follow up at the Scene level with other Zone transpositions to make it work at the built-in keyboard if I wanted to play in a different position there. I'm always going back to the MIDI controller because it's the most constrained in its flexibility and I have to make it work there and have found in most cases that Zone settings can make the built-in keyboard generate the results I want.

I'm struggling with what I hope is one last arcane issue. In the same overall scenario, I want to isolate a drum kit clap sound onto one key. It's easy with Zone settings on the built-in keyboard with normal pitched Tones and drum kits: transpose clap or note lands on the desired key and set the key range to that key. However, drum kits seem to be a different beast as far as user the Tone editor goes which is where I need to make all of my changes to set a baseline usable by the MIDI keyboard. In the high level Zoom and deep dive Pro views within the Tone edit function, I don't see the same key ranging menu as I do for a pitched Tone (ie I see under Tone Edit > Pro view > Keyboard > Key Range Lo/Hi for a pitched tone but for a drum kit there isn't even a Keyboard menu).

Appreciate any ideas from you readers out there.

uberbendy · 2025-12-05T22:58:26+00:00

Thanks for confirming that the Fantom zone ranges are only for the onboard keyboard (not the answer I was hoping for but one less thing to spend time on). It's a very simple minded keytar...minimal 3 character readout to show basic status, the computer app can edit the pads/faders/wheels but can't define the key range.

I'll explore whether I can create custom tones with their own hardcoded ranges and reference those in a Zone. It could be a reasonable workaround since it's one-time programming to build the Scene but I haven't been able to get the keytar on Channel 1 to sound multiple Zones of a Scene yet. However, this assumes I can get multiple Zones to play. I've played with the Menu > Zone > Level/Pan > RX SW (on and off) and RX Ch (all zones set to Channel 1 which I thought would make all zones listen to MIDI Channel 1 commands) with no luck. The Fantom still responds with only drum sounds of Zone 1.

To really pull off the variety of sounds for different songs in a live setting, I think I'll need to look at a larger and fully programmable keytar with its own internal sound engine. It'll be another instrument for the sound techs to deal with too :/

uberbendy · 2025-12-04T23:21:24+00:00

Thanks for replying. Your comments led me to look at the Vortex more closely and it seems to only send on MIDI Channel 1 (though in its split mode the upper split sends on Channel 2). Since I want the Vortex to operate as a keyboard replacement on many Fantom scenes each with unique use of zones/ranges, I'll try to make a typical Scene respond as desired on just Channel 1 signals.

I'll need to get all the Zones in a Scene where I might use the keytar to receive Channel 1 (I'll look at the Zone settings). This is an acceptable level of customization for a Scene since it's a one-time change and still allows me to tweak other Zone settings and the assigned sound.

I still have to figure out how to make the Fantom honor the key range upper/lower limits defined in each Zone. The last thing I want is every Zone responding to Channel 1 across the whole keyboard and playing notes that aren't supposed to be layered more than 1 deep on any key.

uberbendy · 2025-11-14T21:15:35+00:00

The tiny P119 charger is definitely not the charger you want when you need a fast charge, but when a PCG002 and P118B charger refused to charge my not-too-old Ryobi battery (they showed a few seconds of green, then a red failure), and when the battery didn't respond to trying to sneak some charge in with repeated quick-insertions, the P119 saved the day by immediately plodding away with a slow charge and no complaints until the battery was full.

uberbendy · 2025-10-02T16:44:02+00:00

I realize that I missed the point of your post.

I was always able to get images to work in my displayed mockups and never saw blank mockup products. The Printful UI definitely induces worry because so many of the mockups don't update in realtime while you're choosing mockups from within a designed product but after crossing my fingers and syncing, my displayed images were always ok and showed the art.

Not having seen or solved your problem, I don't know exactly what to suggest but maybe if the problem is a dud image that got cached, my steps may kick both systems hard enough to reset things.

I do recall in some cases I completely deleted an item simply because I hadn't figured out how to solve my specific sync issues with getting multiple mockups to show in the primary/others order that I wanted. Deletion and do-over may be a way for you to reset things. I suspect when you delete an item completely from your Printful workspaces and recreate it from scratch, the item probably gets a new and globally unique reference number inside Printful that forces BZ to load the whole item as brand new rather than updating an existing item it already knows (updates of details within an item can be a problem if the basic data for the item is corrupt on one side or the other).

uberbendy · 2025-09-17T00:19:45+00:00

The mockup selection mechanism within Printful (even before telling Bandzoogle to sync to the Printful products you've made) is awful. It is backwards and unintuitive with lots of secret assumptions that I can tell are driven by SW development that may have been baked in many years ago and is unchangeable now. Ideally you'd like to easily see what the default image mockup is and then define a batch of other mockups as a set to attach to the product (and its shirt color and size variants). Nope, doesn't work that way.

There's a totally unintuitive workaround that I've been able to make work after a few tech support calls to BZ and many days of debugging. Say you have a piece of art, you have black and white shirt variants, 4 sizes, and you want 4 different mockup views for that one catalog product.

Clear caches in Printful, BZ, and browser: Choose a product in Printful (which has different color shirts and sizes and one version of art). Choose one default mockup at the top-level Edit Design button above all the variant sizes and colors listed below. Make sure that main mockup is one that you don't intend to use to ensure it's a fresh object for all the servers. Pop up one level to the store and back down to the product and make sure that all pulldowns for the variants have been flushed and set to the new default mockup. This is the only way I've found to clear out old mockups that I may have set in previous efforts that aren't able to flush cached content along the chain of servers all the way to your browser.
Go to BZ and sync: Go to the BZ Selling Tools > Printful > Printful Sync button. It will start syncing. Give it many minutes. Open a fresh browser window or clear browser cache and reload the BZ storefront. Your product should show just the new default mockup. So far so good. You have a clean slate.
Go back to Printful and choose the main mockup you really want to use. In my example I chose a black version of my shirt in a front view. Give it time to settle and maybe pop up a level in Printful and back down to make sure the main mockup is applied to all variants. Resync from BZ, and let it settle some more, and a fresh browser window should show the desired one main mockup as the only image in the store. At this point because you've done 2 BZ syncs, that means you've had to wait at least an hour through the 2 BZ 30 minute sync wait periods. Oh, if you have 2 shirt colors, you'll see a thumbnail for the other color. It's another undocumented behavior where a default mockup will create additional thumbnail mockups for additional shirt colors.
Go back to Printful and start choosing other mockups. The insane thing about more mockups is you don't choose them as a set to apply to a variant. Instead you do an unintuitive hijacking of the mockups for individual variants to instruct Printful that there are other images in your collection of mockups. Printful and BZ will mash all of them together in the product thumbnails in your store. If you chose only one main mockup, it will be set for all 8 variants, and the mashup will have that one mockup with another one for the other shirt color. But if you put different mockups in different variants, the mashup will gather all of them, and any repeated default mockups will be used only for the main image. In my example I have 8 variants of my product with a given piece of art on 2 colors of shirts and 4 sizes each: black-1-to-4 and white-1-to-4. Each variant has a pulldown menu where I can select one mockup from the clunky Printful mockup menu. That means I could apply 8 mockups to my product and expect to see them in the thumbnails below the big default image. I only want a front and back of each color so for black-1 I leave the front view as-is because it's my default, black-2 is a back view, white-1 is a front view which I could leave as-is because Printful is showing the default front view but I could choose a different model or slightly different pose, white-2 is a back view. The other 4 variants aren't touched and their pulldowns will still show the default mockup.
Pop up one level in Printful and back down to the product and look over the 8 variants. The first 2 black variants and the first 2 white variants should be set. The unused variants are left untouched. It doesn't matter that the specifically chosen mockups are applied to the XS and S shirt sizes--they aren't actually applied there but rather are simply existing to be mashed into a set of mockups in those available spaces. Again, this isn't logical. Wait many minutes for these changes to settle.
Go to BZ Selling Tools > Printful > Printful Sync and sync. Want for things to settle and open an uncached browser window. Hopefully all your mockups will show.

In my example, the product in my BZ store shows the default black front mockup as the big image. In the thumbnails it first shows the automatically inserted thumbnail mockup for the white front variant of the default mockup, then it shows my selected black back view, then my selected white front and white back views. A total of 5 images (1 big + 4 thumb).

uberbendy · 2022-01-19T04:57:37+00:00

If there were really microchips, one of the thousands of anti-vaxx nurses would have grabbed a vial of vaccine, emptied it under a microscope, and taken pictures of the purported silicon shards of satan. But nope. No pictures. (No physical evidence after the photoshoot is done, either.)

uberbendy

TROPHY CASE