Saving patterns and mute issues

[Doggy79]

Hi,

I have just had my JD-Xi for a week now and having so much fun jaming along and tweaking the sounds in real time. There are a few issues that bothers me though and I dont know if they are features that I can't work around:

1) When I make a pattern and save it as a program fine, but when I make some adjustments and save it again as another pattern it wont save the effect parameters. Is this supposed to be so? I have not started these patterns from scratch but used one of the exsisting ones and tweaked the sounds to my liking.

2) Is there a way to solo one of the parts instead of muting all the others e.g. if I want to perform and quickly mute all but the analog part it gets a bit tricky and I dont seem to have enough fingers?

3) Is there a way to mute drum sounds separately e.g. in the middle of a pattern mut the bass drum and then turn it back again?

All help is more than appreciated.

[rsaintjohn]

1) When I make a pattern and save it as a program fine, but when I make some adjustments and save it again as another pattern it wont save the effect parameters. Is this supposed to be so? I have not started these patterns from scratch but used one of the exsisting ones and tweaked the sounds to my liking.

Are you writing(saving) a new Program with the changed effects, or are you using the Pattern Copy feature, and copying the variation into an existing Program? Because Effects don't copy, just the Pattern and/or the Tone. But I may be misunderstanding. Using the effects live is easy, but managing them and the chain and saving and retrieving the results you want can be tricky, especially when effects are recorded as part of the Pattern and Program. Definitely get the Xi Parameter Guide PDF and read through the pages on how the Tone and Effects are structured, and the note up front about recording effects knob movements (and how they're not erased).

2) Is there a way to solo one of the parts instead of muting all the others e.g. if I want to perform and quickly mute all but the analog part it gets a bit tricky and I dont seem to have enough fingers?

Not that I know of, but you can mute more than one at a time, if that helps. Otherwise, I would create a variation of the program where only Analog is active, and switch to that, then back. Use Favorites to make this all very accessible.

3) Is there a way to mute drum sounds separately e.g. in the middle of a pattern mut the bass drum and then turn it back again?

If by "middle of the program", you mean doing it live while the program is running, you could only do it by menu diving and turning that partial on/off. Not convenient. But like #2, you could create a variation of the Program where the bass drum is muted. The only issue is when you say "middle of the pattern". This might be able to be done, by hand, using real-time recording. Queue up the Program, navigate in the menu to where you'd turn the bass drum on/off, hit Play and RT Rec, and execute the mute at the right time. It might record that. Be sure to save it as a new Program, or it will forget it!

Alternately, create a variation of the Program where bass drum is muted, but change the measures. Let's say that your Pattern is 4 measures. Call it "A". Now create and save a variation of it that is 2 measures. Call it "B". Now create a variation of that where the bass drum is muted, and save that. Call it "C". Now assign A, B and C to Favorites. Play A, and when you get to the point where you want to play your variation, you'll switch to B, then C, then back to A.

Cumbersome, yes, but does that make sense?

It's definitely a bit of a trial to really get to know the architecture, but I found that after a few weeks there wasn't much I couldn't do, even if it required a workaround. You sound like you've already gotten farther and faster in a week than I did. Getting comfortable with the shortcuts is a big help, and once I got it into my head to "Save and Save Often", it cut down on a lot of frustration.

Welcome to the club!

[Doggy79]

Hi and thanks,

Thanks for the reply!

1) Yes I am copying the pattern in order to do a "performance" with minor alterations. So as you explained it is probably ment to work so. This is a bit tricky if you want to create a song of several saved patterns and don't want a clear change in the sound when you make the change from one to another. If I get the first pattern right and save each tone individually, does the effects come along then to the next copied pattern? I'll have a look at the parameter guide for sure, thanks.
2) That's what i was afraid of. I know that I can mute many tracks at once, but like I said, it sometimes feels like there is just too much going on and a solo function would have been much easier.
3) Again, that was my initial fear as well. So if you really want to make a cool song, you have to do quite many different patterns of the same material and change them on the fly.

All this makes sense indeed but are somewhat frustraiting :)

I actually bought this synth just for fun because I have never owned a analog and it exceeded my expectations indeed. I have never been fond of the "Roland" sound in comparison to other gear, but I must say that you can get so heavy bases and grunt from this little machine that it is almost unbelievable. The drum sounds also kick arse.

And thanks. Might even get an FA-06 to mess around with :)

[rsaintjohn]

1) Yes I am copying the pattern in order to do a "performance" with minor alterations. So as you explained it is probably ment to work so. This is a bit tricky if you want to create a song of several saved patterns and don't want a clear change in the sound when you make the change from one to another. If I get the first pattern right and save each tone individually, does the effects come along then to the next copied pattern? I'll have a look at the parameter guide for sure, thanks.

I want to be clear on this one, because it can get confusing. I'm talking about the different functions of:

-- Using the specific Pattern Copy (Menu/Write + the 10 button) function (which won't copy effects), as opposed to;
-- Creating a custom Program with tones/effects/pattern, then writing it to another bank (Shift + Menu/Write), which will preserve the effects.

IOW, do everything you can and that you want to with (for example) a Program on E01. When you're done, re-save it, but this time save it to E02. You'll have two identical Programs, including the effects. They will transition seamlessly between each other. Then go into E02, and customize the Pattern and so on. As long as you don't radically change the Effects, you should get the result you want.

[rsaintjohn]

2) That's what i was afraid of. I know that I can mute many tracks at once, but like I said, it sometimes feels like there is just too much going on and a solo function would have been much easier.
3) Again, that was my initial fear as well. So if you really want to make a cool song, you have to do quite many different patterns of the same material and change them on the fly.

All this makes sense indeed but are somewhat frustraiting :)

Yes, it can be a pain. My songs on the Xi so far have varied from 2 to 7 Programs, often just to accommodate chord changes (that's one of my own biggest peeves). At the same time, though, doing it and using the Favorites, I have found a lot of fun just in the jumping around. 5 Program variations, along with live variations created by muting parts or switching parts and changing their tone with the pitch wheel has been taking me places I don't think I would have gone otherwise. To me it really is a lot of fun, though a bit harder when I want to do something fairly strict, without mistakes, for something like one of my YouTube videos. Takes lots of rehearsal and sometimes an index card with notes.

Making the adjustment from a "sequenced" frame of mind to a "pattern" frame of mind took me a few weeks, but I now find it really liberating for performance.

I actually bought this synth just for fun because I have never owned a analog and it exceeded my expectations indeed. I have never been fond of the "Roland" sound in comparison to other gear, but I must say that you can get so heavy bases and grunt from this little machine that it is almost unbelievable. The drum sounds also kick arse.

It's a helluva deal for the money. I had planned to get a TR-3 and a TB-8, but I feel like I've got everything I need right now in the Xi for those.

And thanks. Might even get an FA-06 to mess around with :)

This is my first Roland, and now I'm wrestling with what to get next: an FA-06 to have a great workstation, an SH-01 because I really want more hands-on synthesis and sound design with little menu diving, or just continuing to save save save for the JD-XA. I've been so pleased with the Xi, everything else fell off my wishlist.

[Doggy79]

Off course, how stupid of me. Now I get this:

-- Using the specific Pattern Copy (Menu/Write + the 10 button) function (which won't copy effects), as opposed to;
-- Creating a custom Program with tones/effects/pattern, then writing it to another bank (Shift + Menu/Write), which will preserve the effects.

Actually now when I think about it there should hardly be any situation where I need the copy function at all. I just create new programs by saving and build up the song/performance that way. I have not gotten to the favourites part yet. I somehow see it to be more straightforward to always create the patterns within each bank in the same way and structre and benefit from a bigger number of songs totally. Or can you have several favourites that change when you switch from e.g. bank a to bank b?

[synthandy]

You have 16 pages with 16 favorites, makes 256 in total.
Favorites are only shortcuts to the programs, you still need to save the variations to programs as you do now.
But the favorites let you arrange them in the right order for your song.
In addition to a link to a program a favorite also saves the current Part-Mute settings and remembers the selected part to play. So they will be the solution to your question 2).

to 3) You can mute single drum sounds with the Volume knob while the pattern is playing. You need to go to the drum part, and select the drumsound first with the keyboard, then you can adjust the volume of every individual drum sound. To mute it just turn volume to zero.
Funktree shows that in some of his youtube videos.

Andy

[Doggy79]

Thanks for the reply,

Ok, 16*16 that should take me a long way. I thought that there was only 16 in total. Those should come in handy e.g. each song on each page lets you build aty least an album worth of tracks.

To use the volume as a mute function I tried already, but in order to get the precicely the same amount of volume (unless it is fully turned on) might can be a bit tricky especially if you change pattern along the way because there might be a small volume bump in the middle of a performance. Not that cool.

Cheers,
Toni