Apologies, I've corrected my post so that you can see the reply from Sequential support.
Regarding AT on separate MIDI zones -- yes, my keyboard controllers allow you to decide whether aftertouch works for a particular zone/channel as desired. Of course you can't have polyphonic aftertouch, but you can turn AT on or off per zone, giving some degree of polyphonic aftertouch independence ("paraphonic AT"
. Don't forget that the MIDI spec incorporates filtering out certain messages per channel, including pitch bend data and monophonic or polyphonic aftertouch.
Many, many MIDI controllers, processors, and patchbays use these filters to customize your rig's MIDI zones. For example, with the
MIDI Solutions MIDI Event Processor, my very old Digital Music MX-8 MIDI Patchbay, and especially my Kurzweil Expressionmate, the amount of control is crazy. You can take an incoming MIDI channel and output it to a different channel. Transpose outgoing notes, create velocity cross-switching over different MIDI channels, merge MIDI, convert breath control to aftertouch and vice versa, expand or compand velocity response, define keyboard ranges and channel zones, mimic analog delay using MIDI (the famous D-50 "chase" function), play odd notes on even MIDI channels, etc, etc, etc...
I imagine these lesser-used MIDI specs are how DSI, Moog, and others have achieved poly-chaining. I also imagine Stephen Kay who created KARMA knows these specs better than anyone else. I recently discovered how to add a sorely missed MIDI DIN/USB merge function to my Kronos using KARMA as a workaround. And I'm certain Dave Smith could also give the Prophet series MIDI merge functionality if he deemed it feasible and desirable from a manufacturer's viewpoint.
Sequential did note that they can implement some aftertouch workaround in the future, so the capability is there. Here's to hoping...
Long live MIDI!
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