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Note 482.0 Roland MC500 Sequencer 6 replies
ERLANG::FEHSKENS 174 lines 25-AUG-1986 16:59
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I've spent my first weekend with Roland's MC500 disk-based sequencer,
and herewith some first impressions. A fuller report, perhaps, someday.
The MC500 is a 5 track, 25000 (onboard) note sequencer with extensive
editing facilities. It includes a 3.5" floppy disk drive, and the disk
is used to store both the MC500's software (the machine itself is just
an unprogrammed computer) and sequencer data. The disk can hold up to
100000 notes' worth of data, grouped as up to 100 named songs. A song can
hold synthesizer parts, synth program/patch data, and drum machine
sequences. The MC500 can hold up to 8 songs onboard at a time, and
songs on disk and onboard can be given names of up to 13 alphanumeric
characters. Loading a song from disk is very quick; this is a practical
performance oriented machine. The ability to store *everything*
associated with a song on the same disk is extremely convenient. No
more saving to and loading from three different cassette tapes (one for
the synth, one for the sequencer, one for the drum machine)!
This is quite a machine, but it is as close to intimidating as I've ever
seen. Users lacking adequate sequencer experience may be at a
loss trying to take advantage of the MC500's most powerful features.
The documentation is little help. There are three manuals (a "basic
course", an "advanced course", and a list of error messages), and they
are written in typical Roland pidgin Japanese-English. The basic course
is extremely superficial, just telling you how to initialize a disk
and record in real time to it. The advanced course is not a course at
all, but rather an unindexed reference manual. It does have a table
of contents, but the TOC includes no page numbers! What you have to
do is read the manual from beginning to end, note interesting things,
and markup the TOC suitably. There are also numerous editorial
glitches.
Despite the hurdles, once you get familiar with this machine it is
unbelievably powerful. Unlike much Roland gear, the user interface is
almost totally consistent and once you understand the philosophy behind
it you can pretty much get by without the manual, having to resort to
it only to jog your memory about how some of the more subtle features
are invoked. Most of the machine's "how to" for an experienced operator
could be encoded on a 3x5 card (well, you'd have to write small).
The basic interaction style is very menu-like. Labeled buttons select
the top level "menus", and then you are guided through almost everything
via prompts in a 2 line 20 character per line backlit LCD. The display
is very easy to read and visible under a wide variety of lighting
conditions. Menu items are selected by rotating the "alpha dial" (a
big, easily spun wheel that steps through options sequentially in either
direction) or numerically (for when you learn what the codes are) from
the numeric keypad. You move from submenu to submenu with left and
right arrow keys, and the currently selected submenu blinks in the
display. You have to remember what's a mode and what's a function, but
once you get the hang of it you can enter command sequences
quite rapidly. The software so far appears bugfree, and is full of
cross checks that you will find either annoyingly restrictive or
helpfully disciplining. The MC500's software is called MRC500 (all the
documentation is labeled MRC500), and consistently implements a
philosophy of "define it before you use it".
One of the 5 tracks plays the special role of "rhythm track". This
track records drum parts, in typical drum machine sequencer style, of
up to 999 bars of up to 90 patterns. This track also records tempo
variations (you can assign a distinct tempo to any resolvable event
in the rhythm track, down to 1/64th note, so you can do accelerandos
and ritardandos of almost arbitrary precision), and each pattern can
have an almost arbitrary time signature. More on the rhythm track
later. Incidentally, you can save a "base tempo" with each song;
you can change the base tempo at performance time, and the tempo variations
you programmed in will still occur, suitably scaled to the new base tempo.
The other 4 tracks are synth tracks, although you can also record
MIDI drum sequences in them; the rhythm track just stores repetitive
drum patterns more efficiently and has a special interface for
programming that is better suited to unpitched percussion instruments.
The synth tracks take their time signatures implicitly from the rhythm
track; all tracks of a song must thus have their bar lines "line up".
The synth tracks are recorded to a time resolution of 1/96 of a quarter
note. Just about all possible MIDI events can be recorded, or ignored.
You can record incoming data on all MIDI channels, or single out just
one channel to listen to. You can overdub, merge tracks, extract a
single MIDI channel from a track, assign all the data on one MIDI
channel to another channel, transpose up or down two octaves in half
step increments, compress, expand or shift dynamic levels, copy any
number of bars any number of times, and "quantize" to any resolution.
All these operations can be applied to any subset of bars on a track.
Once a track is recorded, you can edit it by deleting bars, punching in
and out, or inserting blank bars (which you can then punch into or step
mode program). Unlike the MSQ-100, you cannot input and insert at the
same time. But you can also edit at the individual MIDI event level,
including repositioning events to 1/96 quarter note precision; you can
literally change any parameter of any MIDI event.
You can step mode program from a keyboard or from the numeric
keypad - i.e., you don't even need a MIDI keyboard to record into
the MC500. The step mode allows complete control over articulation -
you can control the "gate time" as a percentage of the note's time value
over the range 0% to 200%, on a note by note basis.
Returning to the rhythm track - this track (and all others) can be up
to 999 bars long. It is programmed as a traditional drum machine
sequencer - each bar is assigned a pattern. You can define up to
90 patterns per song, and there are another 38 predefined patterns of
rests of various lengths, up to two bars. No need to program a
metronome into your patterns any more, the MC500 has a builtin metronome
with a jack on the back that disconnects the internal chirper and sends
an audio metronome to your board.
The rhythm track uses up to 32 instruments. Each instrument can be
assigned its own MIDI note number; all instruments must be on the same
MIDI channel. Each instrument is represented by a three character
mnemonic; the MC500 comes set up to drive a Roland TR-707/727
combination on channel 10. You can reassign instrument names and
note numbers if you have a different drum machine. It would be nice
to be able to assign each instrument its own channel, or to be able to
assign multiple note/channel pairs to an instrument; maybe in a
subsequent software release.
Each rhythm pattern can use up to 8 different levels for each rhythm
instrument; it's thus possible to get quite nice accent and crescendo/
diminuendo effects. You can specify what MIDI velocity levels
correspond to these 8 levels, but this is across the board, not per
instrument. More levels don't seem necessary; crescendos with just the
8 seem smooth enough. The effect of these levels when properly used on
fills is stunning.
(As an introductory exercise, I programmed a 32 bar rhythm track that
invoked each of the rhythm instruments in turn, stepping through all 8
levels. This immediately exposed the 727's quijada ("vibraslap") and
star chime ("bell tree") as having only two dynamic levels - velocities
less than or equal to 32 are "soft", and those greater than 32 are
"loud". Everything else in the 707 and 727 responded continuously.)
Each pattern also has its own time signature; the only constraint is
that the denominator be a power of two; bars can be any length up to a
maximum length equivalent to 2 bars of 4/4; e.g., 7/4 is ok but 9/4
isn't.
You can mix resolutions within a bar, with the significant restriction
that the resolution within a bar is fixed for a given instrument;
thus, for example, you cannot program a single bar in which the snare
drum plays both 16th notes and 16th note triplets (this requires 32nd
note triplet resolution, which this software release does not support
for the rhythm track). You cannot "microedit" the rhythm track, or
rhythm patterns; this means you cannot program "ahead of" or "behind"
the beat - you take what Roland's software developers give you. Again,
if you need to do this, you can do it on one of the other 4 tracks.
The MC500 has two MIDI outputs, and you can assign a "split point"
in the channel range defining which channels go to which output (e.g.,
channels 1-8 on OUT1, channels 9-16 on OUT2). You can control a variety
of MIDI matters, but this is for all songs in the machine and is not
saved to disk, so you have to manually reinitialize all this when you
power up the machine.
The MC500 will record and transmit system exclusive data, so if your
synth has a mode where it sends patch data as system exclusive on patch
changes (and loads its "workspace" from incoming system exclusive
patch data) you can store your patches on the MC500 disk as part of a
song.
I'm sure I've left out a lot - as you can see this is one hell of a
sequencer. It is easily the match of any PC-based sequencer I've seen,
except for the concision of its user interface, but even that is quite
usable, and almost "friendly" if terse. What's more, since it's all
"done with software", the few restrictions noted above may only prove
temporary.
All this in a box the size of the Boston yellow pages. $1195.
Includes two 1 meter MIDI cables, a disk of software and a blank disk.
len.
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Note 482.4 Roland MC500 Sequencer 4 of 6
ERLANG::FEHSKENS 23 lines 26-AUG-1986 14:46
-< Once A Song, Always *That* Song >-
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One serious limitation that I'm pretty sure is real - i.e., I haven't
yet found a way to work around it.
You can't move data between songs. Or assemble a new "song" from
pieces of other songs. What this really means is you can't use
songs as a place to save work in progress that isn't ultimately
destined for that song. Or you can't build up "libraries" of
standard drum patterns. Or you can't keep a "notebook" of fragments
that you don't know what you want to do with yet.
The only way I can see to get stuff out of one song and into another
is to send the data out to another MIDI recorder (one that's capable
of storing all the same kinds of MIDI data the MC500 can) and then
loading it back into the MC500 in the destination song context.
Loading a song from disk trashes all the onboard tracks for the
specified song number, and you can't move onboard data between the
8 onboard songs.
Maybe next rev...
len.
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Note 482.6 Roland MC500 Sequencer 6 of 6
DRUMS::FEHSKENS 138 lines 13-JAN-1987 11:45
-< OK, MC500, For Your Next Trick... >-
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The following MC-500 wish list is being given to the New England Roland
rep via my buddies at EUWurlitzer. It will be interesting to see
what they do with "customer feedback".
len.
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The MC-500 is an *incredible* instrument. This wish list is based
on things that seem possible that would be real assets.
I'd be willing to give up some song capacity both on disk and onboard
in exhange for these sorts of features, as long as there was some kind
of high capacity configuration (e.g., "performance disk/software") that
was compatible with the full featured software.
Better documentation. The manual is just barely usable. Needs a
*real* table of contents. Desperately needs an index.
Warn users that swapping disks while in disk mode results in screwed
up directories! One should only swap disks in standby mode!
Separate soft thru per output.
Separate MIDI channel per rhythm voice (so different rhythm voices can
come from different instruments).
Multiple note numbers per rhythm voice (so instruments can be doubled;
can be gotten around but requires additional programming).
Can't do 16th notes and 16th note triplets in the same bar for a single
rhythm voice, except by programming them as "different" voices.
Annoying limitation!
Edit R-PTNs with respect to CPT of events. Would allow "swing" or
shuffle timing subtleties, as well as backbeat a little ahead or behind
beat. This can be gotten around, but only at great programming cost,
by programming the rhythm track as an ordinary synth track.
More convenient access to R-PTN editing operations (copy, clear),
e.g., via edit menu instead of "secret" codes that have to be looked
up.
Some easy way of telling which rhythm voices are used in an R-PTN.
Some way to go to that R-PTN for editing easily from this display.
Could display up to 5 voice names per line on the display, or 10
voices in all.
Bar to R-PTN conversion. Take a bar of data from a synth track, and
map note numbers to rhythm voices per mapping. Ignore ambiguities
(two voices mapping to same note number) or resolve by picking lower
voice number (e.g.)? Would provide a cheap way to convert drum machine
MIDI output to R-PTNs.
Playback-only transpose. Doesn't change song data as stored.
Record/thru transpose.
Need way to move tracks between "songs". Current restrictions disallow
"distributed arranging" with cooperating writers swapping disks.
Writers have to work strictly serially - I make all my changes to my
tracks, give you the disk, you make all your changes to your tracks,
give me back the disk, I make my next set of changes to my tracks,
give you the disk, etc..
Chain play too limited to be of much use. Should be generalized to allow
storage of "parts" on disk (by name, like songs) and assembly of song
from parts (e.g., intro, verse, chorus, alternate chorus, bridge,
break, vamp, etc.). Assemble pieces via "P-TRK" analogous to R-TRK.
Have to allow a lot (i.e., at least 100) different parts, and "P-TRK"
length up to 100 parts. Parts should be movable between songs.
Computed accelerandos/decelerandos. (Starting place and tempo,
ending place and tempo).
Computed crescendos/diminuendos. (Starting place and velocity,
ending place and velocity).
Scope of all editing operations defined down to CPT (e.g. from/to as
bar number + beat number or CPT within bar, number of bars + beats or
CPTs).
More songs onboard (minimum 12 (approximately 1 "set"), preferably 16).
The rumored "performance disk/software"?
Bulk song load/save from/to disk. E.g., "load set" or "Save all
onboard songs to set". Ability to group songs on disk as sets?
Version numbers on songs (can do manually, but too easy to screw up).
Save all songs that have been edited/changed? Bump version number
automatically.
Arpegiate chords - specify time interval between notes (as note values
or CPTs), pattern specified by sequence of relative position in source
chord, e.g., from bottom up (e.g., specify up-down arpeggio as
1-2-3-4-3-2). Only applies to notes occurring on same CPT.
Chord operations - delete, change CPT, invert (move lowest not to
highest), probably as microscope edit operation.
"Gate time" quantization. 5 modes of quantization:
1) quantize note on, don't change gate time, compute note off
2) quantize note off, don't change gate time, compute note on
3) quantize note on, quantize gate time, compute note off
4) quantize note off, quantize gate time, compute note on
5) quantize note on, quantize note off, compute gate time
Bulk edit of articulation. Legato (overlaps note offs with successive
note ons). Nonlegato (removes overlaps, shortens gate time by specified
percentage?).
Bulk application of accents on from/to range? Specify accent position
and amount as CPT within bar, % increase in velocity?
Time shift of track. Add/subtract constant to note on CPTs.
Shifts notes across bar lines as necessary. Not applicable to R-TRK.
Applicable to R-PTN by "rotating" rhythm events within bar?
Shift specified as note value or CPT.
"Listen but don't run" mode for inserting patch changes etc.?
Clock value at insertion is time by which all data will have been
sent (rather than time at which data starts being sent), i.e., defines
*end* of interval rather than beginning.
Tempo diminution/augmentation. Specify from/to range, factor.
Factor may be restricted to certain integers (e.g., 3, powers of 2)?
Changes gate times and note on CPTs relative to starting point.
Save/load MIDI parameters to/from disk for setup. By named file.
Synth bulk patch dump/load (especially for Roland synths). By name.
Single patches, banks, areas. Allow editing of addresses for
reorganizing? (Actually stores patch, doesn't just load workspace.)
MIDI clock on block repeat.
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