Tweaking the Roland D-20

I have acquired this synth more than 15 years ago but until now I was mostly it as a MIDI master keyboard (yeah…). The main reason for that is that I don’t like the factory presets.

So, I have decided to change the factory presets ! The first thing I have tried was to save the factory presets on my computer and then to push a new bank of presets on the D-20.

This was quite easy achieve with an usb MIDI interface (I have a Roland UM-ONE) and sysexxer-ng ! SySex messages are sent through MIDI to program MIDI instruments. Please note that you should not use cheap MIDI interface if you want this to work properly.

Syssexxer-ng is included in Librazik

The next step was to tried to program my own presets and has it’s not really easy to do on the D-20 (small screen, lots of buttons to push…), I have decided to try to do it the old school way ! I have setup an Atari emulator with Synthworks. Unfortunately, even if the software is booting and seems to be working, I was not able to setup a proper MIDI communication between Synthworks and the D-20. I presume that I have to keep on fighting to find a workaround and maybe borrow an real Atari from a friend of mine.

You can find a lot of resources concerning the D-20 on this website and here or here.

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