[Search for users] [Overall Top Noters] [List of all Conferences] [Download this site]

Conference napalm::commusic_v1

Title:	* * Computer Music, MIDI, and Related Topics * *
Notice:	Conference has been write-locked. Use new version.
Moderator:	DYPSS1::SCHAFER

Created:	Thu Feb 20 1986
Last Modified:	Mon Aug 29 1994
Last Successful Update:	Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:	2852
Total number of notes:	33157

2818.0. "Roland MC50 Sequencer - Review and Questions" by BAGELS::SREBNICK (The buck starts here.) Fri Jan 10 1992 13:30

    I just broke down and bought a Roland MC50.  What a nice piece of
    equipment.  Manual needs some work (everything's there, but it's
    sometimes tough to find, and assumes knowledge of MIDI).
                          
    I have a question or two and an answer to a question/problem that
    someone else may have.

    My questions:

    1.  I tried recording TEMPO TRACK in real-time mode.  Apparently, the
        MC50 calculates the tempo on the fly and records it (somehow) on
        the tempo track.  Any idea of exactly what gets recorded?  Is it
        MIDI events, or is it some kind of internal thing?

    2.  I recorded a song along with the tempo track from a PC-based
        sequencer to the MC-50.  At one point, there must have been a
        glitch because the tempo in the MC-50 dropped from 90bpm to 12bpm
        for one beat.  It was transmitting with an internal clock, and the
        anomaly always happened in the same place.

        I tried using micro-edit to find the stray tempo event and 
        get rid of it.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find it.  I must
        confess that after reading that Pulitzer Prize-winning manual
        I was not able to figure out exactly what I should be looking
        for.  Any ideas?

        It's not clear in the manual exactly what the display should look
        like for a TEMPO event.

    My "Answer":

    When I first started recording/playing, I noticed that when playing
    back songs through the MC-50 that a) notes would get stuck on, b) notes
    would be skipped (wouldn't sound).  It souned like the sequencer wasn't
    recording all events, or that it wasn't playing all events.

    The problem was that "AutoSense (AutS)" was enabled, yet my keyboard
    did not understand it.  Apparently, autosense is used to detect and
    correct "stuck" notes.  If you use it with a keyboard or sound module
    that doesn't understand it, things really get messed up.

    All I did to solve it was disabling Autosense.

    Makes sense.

    Dave

T.R	Title	User	Personal Name	Date	Lines
2818.1		MIZZOU::SHERMAN	ECADSR::Sherman DTN 223-3326	`Fri Jan 10 1992 14:46`	29
	That tempo track is kind of funny. I don't think you can micro-edit on it. At least, I don't know how. It doesn't send MIDI events, but you can set things up to allow MIDI to control it. I prefer setting it up to respond to notes, high notes make it speed up and slow make it slow down. Works very effectively, enough that it's sufficient for my purposes. In short, I think the tempo track records events that are kept inside the sequencer and you can't edit them the same way you can edit MIDI events. As to the 90 bpm and 12bpm issue, sounds like the Tempo track was set up to respond to the events you were sending. Don't have my manual handy, so I don't remember the details about setting up to record with the Tempo track. It's been a while since I've done serious messing with the Tempo track. Autosense is an okay feature. Seems to work okay with the D70. The MC50 complains when I power down the D70 and it's still sending stuff. Overall, I really like the MC50. It does what I need and I've used many of its features. Haven't banged its memory limit on any songs, yet. (I have when doing 3 of my songs at once, though.) I miss the macro capability of the QX5, but the MC50 makes up for it with its rhythm track which can sort of be used in a similar fashion. It's nice to just power the thing up and start going. Also pretty easy to set it up in my lap and watch TV while doing massive edit stuff. I'm getting to where I can run it "by feel" rather than have to think much during edits. :) Steve
2818.2	How to edit (micro-Edit) the TEMPO track	ELIL::LIARD		`Mon Jan 13 1992 11:41`	38
	Dave, to edit the TEMPO trk do the following: - Press [MICROSCOPE] - Use the arrows (<- ->) to get to the TRK field - Use the dial (wheel) and enter "T". Press [ENTER] - Use the arrows to get to the last field on the Measure/Beat field (xx-xx-xxx) ^^^ - Use the dial to cycle through the song's tempo changes, which are displayed in terms of bpm (note that the MC50 will skip measures without changes in tempo. Also note that changes in tempo are executed relative to the basic tempo of your song.) - Edit the bpm on the measure desired. Press [ENTER] twice - Press [STOP] To record TEMPO changes on a song: - Press [RECORD] twice - Use the arrows to get to the TRK field - Using the dial, select "T". Press [ENTER] - Select CONTROL=MIDI. Press [ENTER] - Select either COUNT-IN or KEY-ON start and record as desired As Steve mentioned in the previous note, the MC50 can be programmed to respond to different types of MIDI events and to interpret those as tempo changes. The default is: NOTE. You can set it so that the pitch bend wheel controls the tempo. A positive value (UP) will increase the bpm relative to the song's basic tempo etc. One final note: while recording on the tempo trk, the MC50 will respond to data coming from ALL MIDI channels. So if your PC-based sequencer is sending NOTE data on a channel, AND tempo changes on another, the tempo track may record BOTH as tempo changes. The solution to this may be to either make sure that only tempo data is being transmitted, or to set up the MC50 to ignore NOTE data as tempo changes and use instead CC or PB events(or any other unused MIDI event) I hope this helps. Felix
2818.3	Reading and writing disks	BAGELS::SREBNICK	The buck starts here.	`Mon Jan 13 1992 16:32`	22
	Re: .2 Thanks. That did the trick. With some trial and error I also found out that if you press [MICROSCOPE] followed by the [TEMPO] button, you can do the same thing. Now another question. It said in the glossies that the MC-50 uses IBM-PC format disks. True, it does. I can just put that disk into my PC and copy files to and fro. HOWEVER, it does not seem possible to copy MIDI standard files onto the MC-50 diskette. First, separate directory file must be updated. Even when the directory is updated, the files must be in some sort of special format. The MC-50 doesn't seem to read MIDI standard files (type 0, 1, or 2). Is there any way to take MIDI standard files from a PC-based sequencer and simply copy them to an MC-50 diskette without recording them real time? If it is possible, I imagine it involves special software on one end or the other. Anyone ever tried this before?