By the way, when using the Variation system effect, the variation send level (CC#94) must be set for any part needing the variation system effect. I didn’t see a CC#94 message in your original post. The variation send level determines how much of the part signal is sent to the variation effect and must be non-zero for any part using the effect. If the send level is zero, you won’t hear the effect because it won’t be applied.
Hope this helps — pj
Yes, that ultimately solved it! I did have that message (in my case "BE 5E 7F", labeled by my midi event inspector as "Controller Celeste Level: 127"), but it was sent before the effect was switched to system, so it did nothing as it only affects the system effect levels not insertion (which are the default after GM reset).
Interestingly this event order came straight from the factory style midi, meaning the event order they put in their own styles is incorrect and you have to reshuffle them on your own, that's pretty odd. I wonder if there are any guides on which events should go first, but that probably would be too much to ask...
So my initial problem with the voice being completely muted was caused by a few factors:
- I was setting the dry level to 0 which muted the original voice and left only the effects, so since the effect wasn't working there was nothing else to hear
- I did miss the effect selection message which should go first F0 43 10 4C 02 01 40 HH LL F7 (thank you andres_fprado)
- I had "variation effect send level" message, which ultimately sets how much of the selected effect you are hearing, before the effect was switched from the default insertion to system, so my effect level was at 0 (thank you pj)
Thank you guys, and those blog posts were super helpful, yamaha manual doesn't go into any details on any of this stuff.