Yamaha Electone HC-2 and MIDI

The Yamaha Electone HC-2 multi-keyboard is a digital instrument, but it looks like an electronic organ, having two manuals and a pedal. I use it as a stand alone instrument for playing with hands and feet, but also for rendering MIDI sequences, especially J.S. Bach pieces. And, inevitably, for composing (that is: just keying in) prototype MIDI sequences myself, with help of a nice Midi Data Filer (MDF) by Kai Risku and a little Turbo Pascal program (SYX2NUL).

The HC-2 has the following MIDI characteristics upon sending MIDI messages:

Note ON/OFF : $9(channel) (note) (ON = velocity, OFF = 0)
channel = 0 : polyphonic < 8, note = 53 - 96, velocity = 64
channel = 1 : polyphonic < 8, note = 41 - 84, velocity = 64
channel = 2 : monophonic, note = 36 - 48, velocity = 64
Program change : $C(channel) (program) ; channel = 0 , l , 2 , 15
see Registration Form for available programs (= registration menu's).
Control : $BF OB (Expression): channel 15 : Expression pedal
Control : $B(channel) 40 (ON=7F, OFF=00) ; channel 0 , 1 , 2 : Sustain.
Clock ticks (!) $F8 ; sensing $FE

MIDI commands can be recognized and are rendered as follows:

channel = 0 : polyphonic < 8, note = 36 - 96, velocity = 64
channe1 = 1 : polyphonic < 8, note = 36 - 96, velocity = 64
channel = 2 : monophonic, note = 36 - 96, velocity = 64
channel = 3 : monophonic, note = 36 - 96, velocity = 64
channel = l4 : drums, variable (!) velocity
channel = 0 , l , 2 , 15 : Program change
channel 15 : Expression pedal
channel 0 , l , 2 : Sustain
All Notes OFF : $B(channel) 7B 00
Start (rhythm box) $FA ; Stop (rhythm box) $FC ; Reset $FF .

Most of the HC-2's MIDI commands, however, are System Exclusives.
I use a Registration Form for programming them. Otherwise, they would be hard to remember !

I have exploited the speciﬁc possibilities of Yamaha Electone HC-2 in an original composition, called Mama's liedje. It's actually a KARaoke ﬁle (written in my mother tongue: Dutch) but eventually you can play it as a MIDi. However ..
This midiﬁle can hardly be used for anything else but a Yamaha Electone, because the null track is abundant with System Exclusive messages, meant for the Automatic accompaniment. There is even a track which consists of nothing but a huge sequence of timing ($F8) messages. In short: don't download this ﬁle if you don't have a Yamaha Electone in your living room, because there will be no bass, no drums and playing the ﬁle will probably even screw up your sound card! Therefore I decided to render this song as a MP3 ﬁle too.