contrrolling a drum machine via midi

i have a 707 but it doesn't have midi working so i don't know the answer to my question... ok, which is:

if i have a hardware sequencer and it has one midi out port, i want to attach a synth and a drum machine to the midi out.

obviously i use midi through on one and chain them together.

does the drum machine say a roland 707 or 505 take midi on one channel? like does the drum machine work ONLY on channel 1 and midi 2-16 is used for the synth?

you can set the channel of the drum machine to receive (and/or send) MIDI information from/to whatever source you choose. so your synth can be set to transmit MIDI data on channel one and you set your drum machine to receive on channel one. it doesn't matter what channel you use really, just as long as you tell the source and destination devices which one you want them to receive information on, or send information on.

personally i use a Kenton MIDI thru box to just transmit MIDI clock data from my multitrack to all my different synths, modules, drum machines etc which all have built in sequencers. in this way they can all play the internal patterns i programmed into them, but stay in time with each other.

ok that's what i wanted to know. that you can choose which channel a drum machine uses and that it only uses 1 channel

well beware though, there are some older midi-enabled devices that don't allow midi channel setting, so they usually operate on channel 1. that can be a bitch. in those cases you can help yourself with a midi router (routes specific midi channel events to separate hardware midi ports)