Forscore - page turning

Has anyone had any luck turning pages with Forscore using one of the MC pedals? Basically I’m wanting to use two switches within a Bank, one for “Previous Page” and one for “Next Page”. The MC6 has the WIDI bluetooth connecting wirelessly to an iPad via bluetooth. Going to a particular song I can set MIDI actions such as open a particular song using the Forscore listening function so I know Forscore is getting bluetooth MIDI messages from the MC6. But when I go under Forscore > Settings > Page turners & shortcuts > Previous Page, to have it listen for the bluetooth signal it just spins on “Listening…”. Odd that it works for one part of the software and not for the other.

Does Forescore listen to midi?

Most page turners listen to keystrokes from a device that looks like a (bluetooth or usb) keyboard.

You can use a wired USB connection from the Morningstar to send keystrokes (once you disconnect the editor).

Yes, it listens to MIDI. It is listening wirelessly with the WIDI bluetooth device connected to the MC6. I can have the assign a button on the MC6 to open a particular song in Forscore by having Forscore learn the button. But when I listen to learn the page turn it never seems to accept the message. I’m am monitoring the MIDI traffic through another app and I know the iPad is receiving. I’m also tried assigning a button on the MC6 to do a page up/down, arrow up/down as if it were a connected keyboard and still nothing in Forscore.

Anyone figure this out? I can get the MC6 to turn the page forward OR backward, but not both.

Hi,
can you share a screenshot of your MC presets?

I could, but I believe I’ve narrowed this down to a ForScore issue. ForScore doesn’t allow the user to input commands one wants to assign to page turns. Instead, it has a learn function. Since it doesn’t seem to matter what MIDI commands to use (aside from not using anything with a velocity value), I tried various versions of PC and CC messages on a single channel that I wasn’t using elsehwere (in this case I chose channel 16).

The issue arises because ForScore “learns” everything coming in, including the SysEx messages. I noticed this when I was using ForScore’s learn function and I clicked a footswitch on the MC6 that didn’t have any commands assgned, but ForScore still learned an incoming command. The MC6 sends SysEx messages apparently, regardless of anything being programmed to that switch or not. I don’t know enough about MIDI, but I assume that’s pretty standard procedure.

Now for the obvious issue: ForScore learns those SysEx messages, but doesn’t seem to get past the one or two SysEx messages before the actual CC or PC command that I’m trying to get it to learn. And then those 1 or 2 SysEx messages seem to be identical enough that ForScore sees them as the same. So when I test the function, whichever page turning command I assigned first is the only one that works, and it works for both switches. BUT both switches have different CC or PC commands! Again because Forscore sees the SysEx message that each footswitch initially transmits as being the same.

I hope that’s clear, as it’s difficult to articulate. I guess I’m going to reach out to ForScore and see if they have any advice. This seems like a silly roadblock. If they’d just allow the user to designate the command (ch 16, CC 1, Value 1 for instance) instead of forcing us to use their Learn function, this would perhaps be simpler.

Can the MC6 send keystrokes like the MC6 Pro? If so, just program the MC6 to send Left and Right keystrokes, or Page Up/Page Down.

If you prefer to use MIDI CCs, I’ve had no problem configuring my MC6 Pro to send these for forScore page turns, too….both forward and back. Works flawlessly every time.

Huh! It must be because I’m using the WIDI uHost in between. I’ll try wiring directly from the MC6 Pro to the iPad and see what happens. I’ll report back.

It can send keystrokes, however that functionality definitely doesn’t work over the uHost, so I had nixed that solution. Hoping to keep this wireless…

Well that was quick! Here’s what I did:

  • Disconnected uHost
  • wired iPad directly to MC6 Pro USB-C device port
  • went back to ForScore, used learn function to learn the two commands
  • verified that worked as expected (it did)
  • disconnected USB-C and reconnected to uHost
  • tested again via uHost and it works!

So now it works as intended. And a bonus, I wasn’t sure my AirTurn page turner would still also work while the page turn commands were set to MIDI, but in fact both methods will work simultaneously.

So I guess I found a bug in ForScore? Note to the wise, program hard wired first if you’re gonna use a WIDI uHost. Thanks all!

I’ve had this exact “bug” debate in the FB forScore group but was told that fS responding to both the default commands AND learned commands is not a bug. I still believe it’s a bug but with it providing an unintended benefit, I don’t want this particular bug to be fixed!

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Ha! Yeah, I’ll take it. Would be annoying to re-program the commands in FS everytime I switch back to the dedicated page turner.

Personally I just wish ForScore would switch away from their MIDI HEX code implementation and use the more widely-understood system of MIDI CC, Note, etc. Translating the required messages from those to HEX is always a bit annoying for those of us who don’t have to do it frequently. At least offer both!

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100% agree re. MIDI Hex vs CC etc. I hate using Hex :face_with_steam_from_nose: