Librarian... Share your tips / tricks?

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Jdoo
Posts: 216
Joined: 06:19, 19 February 2016

Librarian... Share your tips / tricks?

Post by Jdoo »

JD-XA Librarian —

I shared some tips on copying tones around earlier… and was asked off-forum by a couple of folks how and why I use the Librarian. The Librarian is a funky beast. However — if you tame it, and learn how to work around it’s Achilles’ heels, in my opinion — it’s a great organizer and time saver. This is the stuff that works for me. Your mileage may vary.

My Tips …


READING
Connecting to the Computer
Follow the manuals on connecting to the computer. With the right USB drivers installed, and the right physical connections between your computer and the JD-XA, you will connect. The tip that follows… assumes that you have been able to connect your computer and your JD-XA at least once.

Often though… The connection between the computer and the JD-XA gets lost or flakey. In fact, this is the number one problem I have with the Librarian. It loses connection to the JD-XA. Here is how I combat that.

Re-connecting: On the Mac… with the Librarian loaded.. I will choose the Setup / Set Up Midi Devices menu option. This launches the dialogue for setting up MIDI devices. It should already be setup for the JD-XA for Input and Output.. just hit OK. Often just opening this dialogue and hitting OK will make the connection to the Librarian wake up and start working. If not… I select the same menu option, but change the Input to (none) and hit OK. Then re-open it… and select Input JD-XA. This will often be all that it takes to fix flakey connectivity between my JD-XA and my Mac. Important though… It takes two seconds to just open this dialogue and hit ok. I do this ALL THE TIME while working with the Librarian. It’s second nature. It shouldn’t be necessary. On the other hand, this is the only recurring problem I have with the Librarian, and two second menu selection doesn’t outweigh the benefits of having a Librarian to organize my Programs, Sets, Patches..

Loading what’s on the JD-XA into the Librarian
Try to not be doing other things on your computer at the same time.
Especially during a ‘Read’ … try to not be doing anything else on the computer. Connectivity - I/O is flakey with the JD-XA librarian and computer.

Read a bank at a time (16 programs) - don’t choose Read All, instead use Read Selected.
Once I had my banks organized the way I want them… I usually work with a handful of banks at a time anyway - but in any case… Even if I am re-writing a boatload of banks.. I read 1 at a time.
example: I will select 017 through 032 to read everything in the B bank on the JD-XA. If for some reason, things get stuck (which can happen during a read.. see next tip) I only lose whatever progress I had made on reading the 16 programs.

If the read gets stuck on “Reading User Program 0xx’ for any length of time.. You probably lost connectivity. Hit cancel, and try it again. Often… this will work. If not — try re-connecting again (see first tip). Note too: This happens ALL THE TIME, and was one of the most frustrating things about working with the Librarian. If a ‘Read’ stops even for a few seconds — I hit cancel and click read selected again. I don’t wait. It becomes second nature, but once you get used to it.. and understand that this is just the main downside to using the Librarian, it becomes second nature. The upside to having a Librarian to organize banks FAR outweighs this niggling bit. Really … hit cancel/re-load and it unclear the issue. I don’t wait 5 seconds for any user program read… I just hit cancel, and click read selected again…


ORGANIZING Librarian Banks

Librarian Banks (not to be confused with JD-XA Banks, though you could set them up to be one in the same)….
Save them! You can create Librarian banks based on Major Releases, Sets, Tone types, work in progress, anything. To create and save a set.
Choose File / New from the menus. This will bring up an empty / untitled Librarian set.
Click on patches you want to copy from the “Main” window or any other windows you might have open . Tip: on a Mac, Command-click selects more than one at a time. I think on the PC, you hold “Control” while selecting
Choose Edit / Copy from the menus
Click on the “End of Line” row of the bank where you are copying to select it
Choose Edit / Insert from the menus. This should paste your patches to the bank/list

The bank organization you use is up to you. Create them based on how you work, etc. In my case, I have created these banks:
Banks for major releases =======================
Bank for each Roland JD-XA major release. I have one called factory_1_10.xal and one called factory_1_50.xal. These have all the patches that were provided by Roland for those releases. For each of these… I used the Memo fields to catalogue the patches, and to rate/rank them (to my liking) and to put in some other notes. Here is what I use
Memo1 = Rating… 1 star through 5 star. 1 = lowest… 5 highest.
Memo2 = Program Type… I use PAD, BRASS, LEAD, ARP, SEQ, SYN, DRUM, BASS, EFX, etc..
Memo3 = Notes for me. Often I will add notes on how I got good tones out of a Program, or tips on what I want to come back to in order to learn a feature of a Program. or something about how to play it, etc…. These are notes for my use
Memo4 = Mono or Poly (sometimes both…)

Since I spent a few hours going through the included programs, and wanted to use them as a learning tool, and knew I wanted to go back and use many of the better tones.. it was worth it to me to organize this way. I’ve done it with other synths (most notably Logic Pros built-in synths, and soft synths I have used with Logic Pro over the years), so this was second nature for me. At the end of the day though… having the factory patches organized this way, helped me build up my next set of Banks.

Librarian Banks/Sets By Tones ==============================
I am still in ‘learn’ mode on my JD-XA, and organizing Programs by tone has been helpful for a lot of reasons. Mostly though — as I construct my own Programs… I wanted a quick and easy way to find tones. So - I have created Librarian sets of 16 or less Programs… for tones. I use 16 or less… because ultimately, these are copied into Banks on my JD-XA. A JD-XA bank only holds 16 programs… so I work with 16 or less. Here are the ones I created, and keep in the same directory on my Mac:
JDooBass.xal (1)
JDooBrass.xal (13)
JDooDrums.xal (16)
JDooEffectsAtmo.xal (10)
JdooLeads.xal (3)
JDooPads.xal (13)
JDooPads2.xal (13)
JDooPolySyn.xal (14)
JDooPolySyn2.xal (2)
JDooSep1.xal (16) <— this is Bank A .. Work in Progress
JdooSeqArps.xal (17 (oops/crap))
JDooSeqArps2.xal (4)

These only include the tones that I rated/ranked three stars or more, or created myself. The stinkers stay back in the factory sets i created. :) If there are less than 16 Programs in the set.. I fill those with INIT PROGRAM programs.

I also have the .xal files for the Axial download in the same directory. Plus Factory: 1.10(64) and 1.50 (160) — all

The JDoo sets are loaded into Banks A-L on my JD-XA. If I am checking out an Axial bank, i put it into Bank M. Bank N, O, P I have been using for Set lists. This isn’t necessary… as Favorites can point to whatever is in the other banks… but its a good backup mechanism in case I screw up my favorites by fat fingering something in the middle of live play (don’t ask).

That’s it for now… Sorry for droning on. It would be GREAT to see tips for using the Librarian from others.

Joe
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