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    Roland d50 Clinic Keyboard Magazine

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    Roland d50 Clinic Keyboard Magazine

    Uploaded by

    Felipe Mosse
    101 views10 pages
    ROLAND D50 CLINIC KEYBOARD MAGAZINE

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    ROLAND D50 CLINIC KEYBOARD MAGAZINE

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    Download as pdf
    101 views10 pages

    Roland d50 Clinic Keyboard Magazine

    Uploaded by

    Felipe Mosse
    ROLAND D50 CLINIC KEYBOARD MAGAZINE

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
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    KEYBOARD MIXING & MM ATCHING STRUCTURES & PARTIALS — UNLEASH THE PERSONAL DIMENSIONS OF THE ROLAND FTER YOU'VE GOT YOUR NEW 'D-S0home and enjoyed playing the factory presets fora few days, you'll ‘probably tart to wonder what other sounds might be lurking behind the front panel. I this is your first synthesizer, you're liable to be thoroughly intimidated by the maze of parameters, most of which areabbreviatedinentirely crypticwaysin the LCD. And even experienced pro- ‘grammers have been known to feel afew qualms when confronted by the D-50's ‘new terminology and labyrinth of menu ‘pages—to say nothing ofits owner's man- tua, which does leave a bit to be desired. Don’t despair, though. Programming the D-50 isa lot easier than you may have thought. All youhave to doislearna few basic concepts and spend a couple of hours getting familiar with which parame- tersare hidden on which screens. Those of you who have done any MID! layering of sampler with asynthesizer will discover that the method of synthesis used on the D-50 is already familiar. Within a short time, you should find that the sonic resources of the instrumentare literally Fight at your fingertips Inthearticle below, Roland product specialist Eric Persing starts by going over the basic conceptsand basic operations that you'llneed to know. Then he delves a bit deeper into some specific patch appli- Eric Persing is a consultant to Roland Coxporation and a synthesist and program- ‘mer with extensive creditsin records, films, and television 3A KEYBOARD /DECEMAER 187 cations and points out sme directions that you might find worth exploring. em —Keyboard HED-501S A 16-VOICE INSTRUMENT, and like most polyphonic synthesizers these days,itcan operate in whole mode (16-voice polyphony spread across the keyboard), split made (eight voices on each side ofa programmable split point), = dual mode two voices layered on each key for cighi-voice polyphony) The diterence between the D-50and other instrumentsisthat their dual and split programs typically call up existing single programs fromadifferentarea of memory. Thats, if sound program 23 in a typical synthesizers used asthe left half of split 9and one of two sounds in dual layer 46, when you edit program 23, both split 19 and dual 46 will sound different than they did before. in the D-50, on the other hand, ‘every split or dual keyboard layout (which is called a patch) contains its own unique pair of single sounds (which are called tones). f you want to use a particular tone inseveral different patches, of course, you can easily use the ‘copy’ function towriteit into those memory locations. So two tones make up a single patch, Andewo part make upasingleton i you've read any acoustic theory, you've ‘encountered the term‘partial,’ which usu- ally refers to one of the sine wave over. tones in the harmonic spectrum of a com plex sound, For D-50 purposes, forget that Usage. A -50 partial is one of the four sound modules whose outputs are blended together to create a patch, The D-i) BY ERIC PERSING basic layout of a patch is seen in Figure 1 Dont make the mistake of thinking a partial as being equivalent to an osci- lator. A partial contains several different components, including waveforms, enve- lopes, modulation routings, and (in the case of synthesizer partials) lowpass iter. Synthesizer partials? Right. As long as you don't confuse this specialized use of the word ‘synthesizer’ with the idea thatthe 5-30 ise isa synthesizer, youl get along ine. Partials ‘ACH OF THE PARTIALS IN A PATCH ‘can be of either of two types—synthe- sizer or PCM. A synthesizer partial is more OF less the same as a one-oscillator version of the analog synthesizer voice found on many older synths, including Roland’s JX8P. Its oscillator, which Roland calls 4 WG (wave generator), can produce either sawtooth wave or a pulse wave, andithas itsown lowpass filter, plus five-stage erve- lope generators for both the TVF (Roland- speak for ‘time-variant filter’, andthe TVA (time-variant amplifier) PCM partials are a bit different, and account for the characteristicsound ofthe Ds. A PCM partial is functional ie ical toa synthesizer partial except for Wo things: There is no IVF, and instead of sawtooth and pulse waves the WG pro- duces sampled sounds that have bee? encoded using a PCM (pulse code modu- lation) process and stored in the 0-50 ROM. There are four types of PCM wave- forms: attack, looped, spectrum, and what ike to call the loop-the-loop samples. To hearhow these work, enter the patch on page 37 called “PCM Demo 1.” Ths patch will alow you to audition the PCM wave- forms in their raw state, so you can hear better precisely what the building blocks of your D-50 patches will be. ‘After entering “PCM Demo 1,” call up upper partial 1's waveform and use the increment/decrement buttons to step through the PCM waveforms. The first 47 ofthese are attack-type samples. These include the attack portions of sounds created by mallet instruments, guitar, bass, wind instruments, and percussion. The reason why these samples add so much color to the D-50's patches is because our ears are most sensitive to the quality of sounds atthe beginning ofthe sound. The details of asustained sound are lessimpor- tant than the initial burst of overtones during the attack. So a basic way of creat- ing sounds on the D-50 involves blending, the sampled attacks from acoustic instru ments with a sustaining body of tone ‘reated by synthesizer partials. Many of the PCM sounds are digitally filtered to remove the fundamental fre- uency of the sample through a process aalled reverse Fourier synthesis. The rea- son this was done is so thatthe transition n an attack sample and a sustained synthesizer partial can be assmooth as. Possible, Note that the PCM sounds are not multi-sampled across the keyboard, so getting patches that sound good across the (WNIT Fig. 1. 0-50 patch is ceate by ming the sounds of four paral. Each partial has ts own parameter st- tings Two partalsmake up tone, andeach tone s ‘delinedtunher by common parameters, whichaect Dosh paral Finally, the two tones ae combined ina patch, whose parameters affect the entire sound. Fortunatelyforusprogrammers,noneolthetone ot patch parameters directly overap the meanings ofthe parti parameters. (hiss the case on some sampler, Ieheretwo iter cutot settings, forexample, maybe [ded together to determine the setting that will ‘eal be heard) fullrange can be tricky. But its possible. In some cases, the D-50 contains several samples of attacks from the same instru- ‘ment—three piano samples, high and low flute, and so on. Try playing these across the entire range of the keyboard, and use key transposition to extend the range even further. You'll find some digital noise of various kinds at the extreme ends of the range. But on many of the patches that can be created, this quality can be used as a plus rather than a minus, as the sound changes character radically depending on what pitch you're playing. The next group of PCM samples (num- bers 48 to 67) are one-cycle looped wave- forms. These are named after the samples that they were taken from, but since they contain only a single cycle of the original waveform, not all of them retain the cl acter of the full-length instrument sound. ‘The organ loops are quite close in charac- ter tothe original samples—not surprising, since the character of an organ sound is fairly static. The guitar and string loops, on the other hand, were chosen from the full-length sampies not for their authen- ticity but because the character of the ‘one-cycle waveform seemed to be auseful tool for synthesis. It's more accurate to think of these PCM optionsassampled waveforms rather than as looped samples like the ones you would find in a sampler. A looped sound ina sampler would most likely contain the attack portion of the sound in addition toa looped sustaining portion, while these oops in the D-50 have no attacks. ‘The third type of PCM waveforms are called spectrum sounds. These contain the upper portion of the harmonic spectrum DECEMBER 187/KEYBOARD 35 D-50 CLINIC 1 sound, being looped independently of tfondamenal raquency. Tose are probably the most unusual sounds in the ravetable. Most of the original spectrum Samples were of sounds with a lot of har- monic content, such as drinking glasses, talfles, and bells. One good way of using spectrum sounds is to give them a quick attack and fairly fast decay with the TVA ‘envelope. In thiscase, they are functioning asattack transients. Another approach isto tse them as sustained upper harmonics coloring a sound. They can also be used ‘melodically. Try lowering the tuning of the bell spectrum (PCM 73), for instance. Use this sample forall four partials, but detune them rom one another and give each fs ‘own envelope shape to make complex attack overtones. ‘Atthe end of this series of PCM sounds Is a noise loop (sampled from a synthe- sizer, no less!). Even though PCM partials contain no TVFs, you can get a filtered noise effect by tuning this sample. For a sweptfiter noise effect, drive the PCM. wave generator pitch with its pitch ‘envelope. The last 23 samples in the PCM wave- table are most useful for fun, and for spe- cial effects. These loops cycle through various sections of the complete PCM wavetable in the D-50. They don’t actually take up any memory in the PCM ROM. Incidentally, they were created by acci dent. The engineer working on the PCM. wavetable looped two incorrect address points in the wavetable, and several of the attack samples started playing rhythmi- cally. He wanted to fix the mistake, but we thought it sounded so neat that we had him create more, and build them into the instrument, The factory patch “Digital Native Dance” uses one of these loops. As an example of what can be done with four different loop-the-loop partials, try enter- ingthe patch “Music Box Hell," shown at. left. To get the full effect, hold downa key for awhile. Structures HE D-50 IS DESIGNED FOR COMPO- rent synthesis. Component synthesis is not a technology but a technique in which the various parts of a sound (attack transients, sustaining sound, ambience, harmonics, etc.) are created separately and then mixed together. Its a simpler tech- nique than full additive synthesis. In addi- tive synthesis, each of the components isa sine wave. In the D-50, each elementiin the sound has its own complex overtone struc: ture, which has the important advantage that it lets the musician get a handle quickly on musically related portions of a composite sound, rather than having to specify separate envelopes for dozens of sine waves, as with additive. In the D-50, each patch can contain up to four elements (partials). We've already learned that each partial can be either a PCM sample or a synthesized tone. The ‘next question that arises is how we choose between PCM and synth partials, and how "ROLAND 0-50 oan oar osm] taste oon Hee Ta] ae pee oom fe] PAC a acetate pom erate ere | «6 Hearetetete. EHSL nicaorso mpc dow oe afte complain FE ee i oe emma anc ETE TE trenton iar ley ot Se ee cern caer ashe pee 1126] hold down two or three keys an octave apart. i ROLAND 0-50 Joa [ra oan oar] fecoeryesue] teste etert = a a bar etary om Feta] ee et comet tn) PA al | ™ Peeters : SSS setae ma aie TounD as 5] rence] tate con HET ae comer iets] SE , ae TRE = at Velocity Leslie. This meat-and-poatoes organ patch sat up so tata stowrrotor sounds heard with sot keysrakes and 3 fastrtor sound with hard keystrokes. This effects caused by negative velocity ‘modulation in two of the parte {eM Demo? The demonsraonpth contain oni one actve partial Byselectingupper partial spt screenandithen tepping right tthe Po Form page, your {an ete ncrerentand decrement switches to ier {Dal ofthe PCM samples inthe raat DECEMBER 1987/KEYBOARD a p50 CLINIC Js interact wth one another. The the hich this happens in the instru- we nis called the sucture. wt Sructure determines which types of paras are used ina tone. Understand of Pructresf perhaps the single most ine srant Key to understanding how impearecreatedin the D-50. Asyoucan souttom looking a the instrument's front Sohal the structure is sort of a second Petsin to the DX7 algorithm. There are Seven possible structures, each of which SSmbines synth and PCM partials in adi ferent way. “The structures are printed on the right side of the instrument's front panel. The'S? Sands for synthesizer partial, while the stands for PCM partial. The 'R” stands for fing modulator. In structures that Use @ fing modulator, the output ofthe second ial never heard directly. Instead, itis Aigtally modulated by the waveform com- ing from the fst partal to produce atone thathas additonal frequencies int Some othe effects produced by the ring modu lator are similar to what you can get from FM synthesis, but they are arrived at by 2 different method. If you have any programming experi- ence at all, you can apply it directly to the 1D-50 by choosing the structures that are ‘most familiar to you. If your expertise isin ‘analog programming, start with structure 1. If its in FM, start with structure 2. If you're familiar with wavetable synthesis or sampling, structure 6 should provide a ‘good starting point. I you're good at MIDI- ing synths with samplers, use structure 3, ‘or combine structures 1 and 6 in a patch’ And if you're ready for a challenge, try tackling structures 4,5, and 7. Unless you also bought Roland’s PG- 1000 front-panel programmer for the D- 50, there’s one point about structures, especially ring-mod structures, that may confuse you. On the main page for each patch you'll see a balance parameter that adjusts the relative levels of the two tones, but nowhere on any page of the LCD will you find a parameter for adjusting the telative levels of the two partials within a tone. Nevertheless, this parameter does exist, and is independent of the output level settings on the TVA page. It must be ‘programmed using the joystick. Simply hit the upper balance or lower balance but- ton next to the joystick and use the stick’s left/right movementto et the balance you need, This balance willbe retained in ‘memory as part of the patch. Unless you know how to set the balance al the way to Partial 2, your ring-mod patches won't Sound like much of anything, because the ‘unmodulated sound of partial 1 will over Powe the ring-mod overtones. nother thing you might want to con- sider when choosing structures sthat both Partials ina structure will be processed by the same EQ settings, since EQ is a com- ‘mon parameter (thatis,a parameter that affects both partials na tone). The effect of EQonPCMpartialscanbevery different fromits effect on synth partials. Soif you're planning.adual patch that contains both synth and PCM partials, it’s better to use structure Tfor one tone and structure 6for theother,ratherthan using twostructure 3's. Thisway, you can EQand process the PCM sounds separately from the synth ‘sounds. Programming Exercises HE BEST WAY TO GET STARTED understanding how D-50 patches are put togethers probably to go through the Fi leplelelelelsls|3-| lfeletellelelel|3-| bE 1401. The D-s0containsthree LFOs foreach one, one ‘dicated vibrato and the other two valable or pulse Feel 5 fell felelealellelaelelalel'a STEREO VS 1 BEND, AEPB: ffs |e ‘with, fier, andampltude modulation. Thspatch shows ‘ne yp of drone that can be generated using muiple Os Stereo V5 1.By sting the D-50's amplitude envelopes to diferent attack and decay ates, you ‘ean get a composte sound that seems to sweep between different st of overtones DECEMBER 8E7/KEYBOARD 41 D-50 CLINIC factory patchesina systematic way. Call up 4 patch, hit the ‘L-Edit’ button twice to get into the lower tone’s partial 2menu, and then use the partial mute buttons (patch select buttons 1 through 4) toselectively mute and unmute individual partials. You'llfind that the partials are combined in many different ways.Some patches may use the same PCM sound four times, with only abit of detuning to add fatness. Oth- fers combine four quite distinct partials Another exercise isto listen to a whole patch and try to guesswhich structure or pair of structures was used to createit. guarantee you'lllearnalot about what results each structure yields. Let's go step by step through the pro- cess of creating a patch, in order to illus- trate one of the basic principles of D-50 synthesis: The human ear can be fooled into believing that it’s hearing a longer sample than it really is We're going tocreatea full-keyboard kalimba (thumb piano) patch. To begin with, mute the lower partialsand choose structure 3 for the upper tone. For partial 1, cchoose the straight kalimba sample (PCM #8), and for partial 2, use a basic square wave. Give partial 2's TVA envelope a fast attack (00) and a fairly fast decay to a zero sustain level. Partial 2gives our kalimbaa fuller sound anda more natural decay than just the sample by ise. You'll notice that the kalimba sample is stretched long at the low end of the key- board, so set partial 1's TVA envelope fora quick decay~justlong enough that the pitch of the original sample canstillbe heard. Next, set the TVA velocity response of partial 1t0 #50and the TVA velocity response of partial 2to +10. This combina- tion gives you a much more dynamic response than you could get from veloc- ity-controllingasingle partial. Thesound will be predominately synthesizer-ori- ented at low velocities and more sample- oriented when played hard. Now put the patch in dual mode, set the lower tone tostructure 3, and unmute lowerpartial2. We want to et this partial tosome high harmonic using the coarse tune parameter on the pitch page. Its TVA envelope should be sets that it will decay slightly faster than the fundamental (upper partial 2). Its TVA velocity response should also be set to +50, By setting the key follow parameter of this partial 0 1/2 or 5/8, you can get some neat overtones that wll be different from key to key. This partial doesn’t need to be loud to be effective: A level of 30orlesson the TVA page might work just fine, Our final partial will add another attack transient. Unmute lower partial 1 and choose something like the Japanese drum sample (PCM #5). As you play up and downthe keyboard, you'llnotice that in the lower range thissample loses its effect- iveness asan attack, because it becomes long and flabby. The TVA envelope could be used to fix the long decay, but the attack would stillbe blurry in the lower octaves. Again, let's turn to the key follow parameter on the pitch page, and sett this time to 0. Now lower partial 1s not track- ing the keyboard atall. Instead itiscreating, thebox resonanceeeffect or our kalimba, By changing the coarse tuning, the TVA decay, and the PCM number, you can create a myriad of different attack sounds. Forfurther variation, try modulating the WG with the pitch envelope. A quick downward or upward pitch change works well Starting from ths patch, you can create most of the sounds in the mallet percus- sion family (xylophone, steel drums, marimba, bass marimba, log drum, wood block,etc.). Simply change upper partial 1's PCM number and the tuning and level of upper partial 2and lower partial 1. ‘Another important way to remove offending attack sounds from a patch is by using the bias point (BP—equivalenttoa Yamaha break point) and bias-point level parameters in the TVA section. The bias- point levels always negative; thatis, when itis et to zero, the partial will have its full volume across the entire keyboard. The carat sign next to the BP parameter shows whether the left side or the right side of the keyboard will have its level scaled down- Think of ttas a REV7 For the past few years, audio professionals praising Yamaha REV’ digital reverb to the skies. So there was incredible pressure to make its successor even better than expected. Introducing the REVS, Representing a break- through in the sound barrier for reverb. Anda collective sigh of satisfaction from the overachieving have been design engineers at Yamaha. Because not only is the REV5 matured in capabilities, it improved in sonic quality as me ‘We added more DSP chips to boost the REV5$ processing power, creating smoother reverb sounds and multi-effect combinations. Full band width extends reverb to 20 KHz. | Inaddition to master analog EQ, the REVS has three band parametric, programmable digital EQ Sowhen you make individual EQ settings, theyrerecalléd ith each program. ward forthaty Short Cuts enemeaeeceipa hice cresngeceonees ae UFOs NEOF THE LUXURIES OF A SOFT: vare-basedsynthesizeristhatyou canhavemore control devices operating. with a sonic boom. uu dont ha And when the time t anemic have Forinaance the 3 it nie hr ep eee Tvan tt ra een eased rat noah Sib pote ‘Sin ee Ss oa det site aco roc snd ndges tects he prt pteau ur Steno late partial 2's pulse width ata slightly faster eeine eatite ane ce mis sthemceteiMernS aay Sikeraea Nace, etching Benda Sc coating Here'sanotheridea: Since the LFOs canbesyncestothe keyboard, they can heuned dana me cope (Rikon teria and ive modulation, Sic them tothe key, and perhaps use Pontive modulationin the upper tone Flong with negative modulation in the iowel tone to produce auto-panning Cwelopes and effect You could abo use coarse uningot the pariassothat each Keymill produce four different pitches wthdiferentrepettion rates. The "LFO Tpatchon paged usessome ofthese Concepts. Ty holding sustained note with hs patch and then feaningon the Key tointroduce presure modulation. Key Follow NOTHER WAY OF FATTENING UP Sounds in the 0-30 by using the Stretch-tuning settings ofthe key follow parameter The clase analog synthesizers Sounded warmer to people for several reson but one thew that an aalog Synthesizer soscilatorsareraely perfectly intune with eachother allthe ay across thekeybourd.Thiseflec canbe mimicked on the D- 30 by seting al four partials toa Basle synth sound with ite or no detun- ing,andseting some ofthe partials tot (atetch'}or:2nstead of normal Youmay need to. make some fine-tuning adjust ments afterward to find the perfec de vi make it, ou may fin cult to ¢ a ns, there are 30 preset programs, plas z h Yaaha Mecicet 19 come back down ta une unique preset combination programs. User-memory slots let you save: om atbets And even though lot of the features are new using the REVS wont be. Because the format is the same as the REV? youre used to using. Check with your friendly Yamaha Professional Audio dealer about the new REVS, Once you hear A Divo, 0 Bac 0500 Buena waz In Yamaha Canada Music | td, 135 Wvenue, Scarborough, Ontario MIS 3RL. © YAMAHA Engineering imagination” D-50 CLINIC tuned range on the keyboard for each partial, but he result willbe asound that is Bite less digitally perfect and.alttle more " gnalog” random. (Another way to intro-

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