Korg M3: Controlling the Drum Track On/Off by MIDI

Scenario

You want to use a programmable MIDI foot controller, or your sequencer, to turn the Drum Track on and off.

Procedure

Unfortunately, there is not an easy-to-use continuous controller (CC#) assigned to the Drum Track button. To turn the Drum Track on/off, you need to use SysEx (System Exclusive). You would program the device or your sequencer to send the following messages:

Combi:
F0 42 30 75 41 00 00 20 00 0A 00 00 00 00 01 F7 
F0 42 30 75 41 00 00 20 00 0A 00 00 00 00 00 F7

Prog:
F0 42 30 75 41 02 00 19 00 0A 00 00 00 00 01 F7 
F0 42 30 75 41 02 00 19 00 0A 00 00 00 00 00 F7

Seq:
F0 42 30 75 41 04 00 1F 00 0A 00 00 00 00 01 F7 
F0 42 30 75 41 04 00 1F 00 0A 00 00 00 00 00 F7 
               ^^    ^^                   ^^
              mode  paramID             on/off

Note that the message is different for each mode. Only the mode byte, paramID byte and on/off byte changes. The rest of the message stays the same, and basically says "I am for a Korg M3, and I want to control the Drum Track on/off parameter."

Tips

Note that you can find out these kinds of things by using a MIDI monitoring application on your PC or Mac and watching what happens when you press buttons or move things. For more information on SysEx and how to find out various messages for your keyboard, see this article:

Finding SysEx messages for your keyboard