Hello and welcome to the forum!
So here's what you can do: the Virus enables you to use up to 16 parts on a single midi port. You can set up keyboard ranges plus (and this is important) chose which channel to use for each part, so you'd be able to layer sounds together simply by selecting the same channel for more then one part. So you can either play one part here, one part there, or two parts layered together, it's depends on how you set things up. But the answer to most of the questions you ask is YES.
You can also reserve some key range for the M3 and use the midi out connection to send midi information for it. But you'd need to clear the key ranges of both instruments from within the instruments themselves: both on the Virus and M3. They both can be triggered by their own keyboards or some external midi connection simultaneously, the way both machines will interpret how to handle the information is set up within each.
What you can't do is set up some part on a multi to act as an external midi controller for some other instrument. Much easier and convenient to place the key ranges set apart, or in other words reserve some key range for each.
This would all be configurable from the instruments themselves and dispense the use of a computer or another midi interface that you'd have to carry with you.
You can play parts of each instrument from the other's keyboard, once you've laid out the key ranges for the parts of each instrument and making sure they don't overlap. Just takes some planning and afterwards all you need is to save the multi on the Virus (that saves all this settings along with it), and do the same for the M3 and you'd be good to go. Bare in mind that by doing this, the two keyboards would act exactly the same: the same key pressed on either the Virus or M3 would trigger the exact same sound on both.
Hope this helps. Cheers
|