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#305375 - 01/03/01 06:31 AM Roland G800 & Cakewalk sequencing
rustcat Offline
Junior Member

Registered: 01/03/01
Posts: 5
Hi,

Newbie alert so please be patient with me.
I've had mixed luck with sequencing - I have a Roland G800 arranger keyboard and Cakewalk ProAudio V8.0 on a Pentium PC. The specific challenges/questions I'm facing currently are:

1) The G800 manual says that Channel A16 is for playing manual drumkit notes (as opposed to Channel A10 which is for the arranger's drum notes). I set Track 16 to Channel 16 and play the drums manually - playback from Cakewalk works fine. However, when I save it as a MIDI Format 0 or Format 1 file and play the sequence directly from the keyboard, the drum tones are replaced by other patches (such as strings) and they (as you may expect) sound horrible. Has anyone else had this problem with the G800? Any suggestions would be very greatly appreciated.

2) The G800 has two sets of MIDI ports (in/out/thru), i.e., A and B which can take 16 channels each. Is there any way of using both of these to sequence music in Cakewalk AND play them back from floppy on the keyboard? It seems B1-B16 are for what is called "recorder" or "song" parts - I'm not sure what that means. But, I would like ideally to sequence 16 + 16 tracks and then play it all back directly from the keyboard. Any thoughts?

3) What is the procedure for applying effects that are available on the keyboard into specific measures in Cakewalk? For example, I would like to apply a delay+chorus on Bars 1-3 of Track 4. I haven't been able to figure out how to do that? Is that through the application of controllers? Again, I'm quite new to MIDI sequencing so this is most probably a pretty dumb question.

That's it for now - thanks in advance for any advice/help.

Best regards for the new year to all,

Vallury Prabhakar

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#305376 - 01/07/01 12:54 PM Re: Roland G800 & Cakewalk sequencing
Adnan Offline
Member

Registered: 05/14/00
Posts: 110
Loc: Sarajevo, BiH
You need the aproppiate SYS-EX message to activate Ch#16 as Drum Channel. This SysEx is recorded in midi file every time when you do some recording on G800's recorder. I recommend you to use this tip (I use this also on my G1000):
- Insert a floppy in G800's drive
- In G800's Recorder section press Record, wait one second and press Stop. G800 will ask you to save recorded material to disk; Give some name to file and save it. It appears you didn't record anything, but you recorded the SYS-EX informations, control and patch assignments (known as Header) along with Midi file.
- Now insert this floppy in your PC's drive. Import the file you recorded on Roland (as .MID extension - standard midi file format 0) into CakeWalk. You will see that all the data was recorded in just one track. Mark the whole recorded region and do "Remix" from Menus (I work in Cubase, but hope Cakewalk has same option). After that, you will get 16 midi tracks. You have to delete the original track (which is remixed).
The rest of 16 midi tracks you can now use as Midi Header. Just open some part at beginning of track and you can edit many parameters (such as Volume, Reverb, Chorus, Program Change...). In first part on the Ch#1 is SysEx you need, and every time you playback just-made header, you Roland will automatically set up Ch#16 as Drum Channel.
If you want to set-up the specific reverb/chorus setting or patch on specific position, just copy the first part (bar) of it's track, open it and edit the data. Never delete these control parts.
When you finish the work, you may freely export it as SMF (.MID) and play from G800 for best timing. Don't forget - G800 may manipulate songs with max. of 17 tracks - no more!
You can't sequence all 32 parts from the keyboard. You must have a computer or sequencer w/ two Midi ports to do that.

Good luck !

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#305377 - 01/07/01 12:55 PM Re: Roland G800 & Cakewalk sequencing
Adnan Offline
Member

Registered: 05/14/00
Posts: 110
Loc: Sarajevo, BiH
You need the aproppiate SYS-EX message to activate Ch#16 as Drum Channel. This SysEx is recorded in midi file every time when you do some recording on G800's recorder. I recommend you to use this tip (I use this also on my G1000):
- Insert a floppy in G800's drive
- In G800's Recorder section press Record, wait one second and press Stop. G800 will ask you to save recorded material to disk; Give some name to file and save it. It appears you didn't record anything, but you recorded the SYS-EX informations, control and patch assignments (known as Header) along with Midi file.
- Now insert this floppy in your PC's drive. Import the file you recorded on Roland (as .MID extension - standard midi file format 0) into CakeWalk. You will see that all the data was recorded in just one track. Mark the whole recorded region and do "Remix" from Menus (I work in Cubase, but hope Cakewalk has same option). After that, you will get 16 midi tracks. You have to delete the original track (which is remixed).
The rest of 16 midi tracks you can now use as Midi Header. Just open some part at beginning of track and you can edit many parameters (such as Volume, Reverb, Chorus, Program Change...). In first part on the Ch#1 is SysEx you need, and every time you playback just-made header, you Roland will automatically set up Ch#16 as Drum Channel.
If you want to set-up the specific reverb/chorus setting or patch on specific position, just copy the first part (bar) of it's track, open it and edit the data. Never delete these control parts.
When you finish the work, you may freely export it as SMF (.MID) and play from G800 for best timing. Don't forget - G800 may manipulate songs with max. of 17 tracks - no more!
You can't sequence all 32 parts from the keyboard. You must have a computer or sequencer w/ two Midi ports to do that.

Good luck !

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