Roland Fantom-Xa Fiche technique

Working with Standard MIDI Files

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Workshop

any form without the written permission of Roland Corporation U.S.

About the Fantom-Xa Workshop Booklets

Roland’s Fantom-Xa workstation keyboard provides lots of

creative power at an affordable price. It shares many of the

features of its more expensive siblings—the Fantom X6, X7,

and X8—including killer sounds, 128-note polyphony, a full-

featured 16-track sequencer, sampling capabilities, and so

much more.

The Fantom-Xa Workshop booklets discuss some of the

things you can do with your Fantom-Xa. Each booklet

focuses on one topic, and is intended as a companion to your

Fantom-Xa Owner’s Manual.

About This Booklet

Many performing musicians—as well as hobbyists—enjoy

working with ready-to-use MIDI arrangements. These

arrangements are typically found in the form of Standard MIDI

Files, or “SMFs,” and can be purchased in music stores and

online. SMFs provide a great way for working musicians to get

a set list of popular tunes together quickly, and they’re lots of

fun for hobbyists as well. They can be great for singing over

and/or playing along with.

The Fantom-Xa can load and play SMFs. With its excellent

onboard sound set, it’s a great SMF playback device. Once

you’ve got an SMF onto your computer—copied from a CD,

floppy drive, or after downloading it, for example—it’s simple

to transfer the SMF from the computer into the Fantom-Xa.

This booklet explains how to transfer an SMF into the

Fantom-Xa, how to play it, and how to customize it for your

use.

Understanding the Symbols in This Booklet

Throughout this booklet, you’ll come across information that

deserves special attention—that’s the reason it’s labeled with

one of the following symbols.

A note is something that adds information about the topic at hand.

A tip offers suggestions for using the feature being discussed.

Warnings contain important information that can help you avoid possible

damage to your equipment, your data, or yourself.

About Standard MIDI Files

How They Work, and What They Are

Each MIDI recorder, or “sequencer,” has its own way of doing

things, and when it records a sequence, it normally stores

its data in a disk file only it can open. (Sometimes another

sequencer made by the same manufacturer can open it, too.)

A Standard MIDI File, on the other hand, is a MIDI

sequence that can be played by most modern

MIDI recorders and playback devices. You can

easily identify an SMF—its name always ends

with “.mid.”

SMFs have become a very popular format for the distribution

of pre-programmed MIDI musical arrangements.

General MIDI and General MIDI 2

Since MIDI sequences contain instructions for playing their

notes, and not the sounds themselves, an SMF uses MIDI

Program Change messages to select the patches it needs.

Each Program Change message tells a synth to select the

sound stored in a specific memory location—with a Program

Change message for each track in an SMF, all of its sounds are

automatically selected for you.

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Of course, if every synth has its own unique sounds, how can

an SMF possibly know where the sounds it requires are stored?

The solution is that every synth that plays an SMF contains a

General MIDI (or “GM”) sound set. In the GM sound set, patches

are stored in standardized memory locations so the SMF can

know where to find them.

In addition to its own unique patches,

the Fantom-Xa contains the latest

version of the General MIDI sound set,

the General MIDI 2 sound set. When

you first load an SMF, you select the

PRST : 64 GM2 Template performance

so the SMF can find the GM2 sounds.

You can then customize the SMF to use

any Fantom-Xa sounds you like.

Type 0 and Type 1 SMFs

Typically in an SMF, each instrument is associated with a single

MIDI channel. Therefore, you can have up to 16 instruments

at a time. The data for all of the SMFs’ MIDI channels may be

stored in either of two ways:

• Type 0 SMFs—pack the data for all of their MIDI channels

onto a single track.

• Type 1 SMFs—place the data for each MIDI channel on its

own track.

The Fantom-Xa can load and play either type of SMF.

Once you load a Type 0 SMF, you can work with each channel’s data

separately even though everything’s on a single track, or you can extract

the channels’ data to separate tracks, usually an easier way to work.

Getting an SMF Into the Fantom-Xa

This section presumes that you know how to operate the computer you’ll

be using. See the computer’s documentation if necessary.

Since the Fantom-Xa can connect to a computer via USB, the

first step is to get the SMF—the .mid file— onto your computer,

from a floppy disk, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM or by downloading it

from the Internet. Put the SMF somewhere easy to get to, such

as on your desktop.

Making and Activating the USB Connection

Connecting Via USB

This procedure is possible only with USB-supporting computers using the

following operating systems: Windows XP/2000/Me or higher, Mac OS 9.04

or higher, or Mac OS X.

When a device contains

the GM2 sound set, it

bears this logo.

When USB communication is turned on, do not unplug the USB cable

connecting the Fantom-Xa and the computer.

Before connecting the Fantom-Xa to your computer via USB

and activating communication, perform the following steps:

1. On the Fantom-Xa, press LAYER/SPLIT, MENU, and then

select System if it isn’t already selected.

2. Press ENTER—the System Menu window appears.

3. Press F1 (GENERAL).

4. Press F4 (USB)—by default, the Fantom-Xa’s USB connection

is set to STORAGE, as the red arrow shows here.

The Fantom-Xa’s USB connection can also be used for sending and receiving

MIDI data.

5. If USB Mode is set to STORAGE, skip to Step 7. If USB Mode

is set to MIDI, turn the VALUE dial counter-clockwise until

a warning message appears, and then press F6 (OK) to

proceed.

6. Press F6 (WRITE) to store the new setting.

7. Turn off the Fantom-Xa and start up your computer.

8. Using a USB A/B-type cable, connect the A-type USB plug

to a USB jack on your computer, and the other end to the

B-type USB jack on the rear panel of the Fantom-Xa.

USB A plug USB B plug

Plug this

end into the

Fantom-Xa.

Plug this

end into the

computer.

9. Turn on the Fantom-Xa.

To activate the USB connection on the Fantom-Xa:

1. Press LAYER/SPLIT and then the MENU button.

2. Turn VALUE to select USB Storage.

3. Press ENTER—the USB Select screen appears.

4. On this screen, you allow your computer access to the

Fantom-Xa’s user memory or card memory. To choose:

• user memory—press F2 (INTERNL).

• card memory—press F5 (PC CARD).

The Fantom-Xa can load and play SMFs stored in either memory area, so

choose whichever one you want to use.

The Fantom-Xa displays “USB Access” and then “Connected”

when communication is established. The Fantom-Xa’s

user or card memory appears on the computer in a new

window or on the desktop as a removable storage device.

User memory appears as “FANX USER.” Card memory

appears as “FANX CARD.”

5. Open FANX USER or FANX CARD on your computer.

SMFs must be placed in specific folders in user and card

memory.

6. Double-click the ROLAND folder, then the SEQ folder, and

finally, the SNG folder.

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You may see .svq files—Fantom-Xa song files—in the opened SNG

folder.

7. Drag the SMF into the SNG folder. Your computer will copy

the file into the Fantom-Xa’s user or card memory.

8. When you’re done, eject the Fantom-Xa’s memory area

from your computer as you would any removable device.

Ending USB Communication and Disconnecting

1. Once you’ve ejected the Fantom-Xa’s memory area from

your computer as described above, press EXIT on the

Fantom-Xa to leave the USB Select screen.

2. Power off the Fantom-Xa, and disconnect its USB cable.

Loading and Playing an SMF

You can load and play an imported SMF just as you would any

other Fantom-Xa song. Before you do that, though, you’ll have

to select the GM2 performance so the SMF plays the intended

sounds.

Selecting the GM2 Performance

1. Press LAYER/SPLIT to display the

PERFORMANCE LAYER screen.

2. Press 3, and then press INC once to select the PRST

performance bank.

3. Press 4, and then turn the VALUE dial to select PRST : 64

GM2 Template.

Loading and Playing an SMF

1. Press the SONG EDIT↔LIST button once or

twice to display the SONG LIST screen.

2. The Fantom-Xa displays the song list in the user memory

area by default. If you copied the SMF to card memory,

press F2 (CARD) to display its song list.

3. Turn the VALUE dial to select the SMF.

4. Press F6 (LOAD)—the Fantom-Xa warns you that the SMF

will replace the currently loaded song if you proceed.

If you’d like to preserve the currently loaded song, press EXIT and save the

song to user or card memory before returning to Step 1.

5. Press F6 (EXEC) to finish loading the SMF.

6. Press the SEQUENCER Play button to hear the song.

If your SMF plays back at the wrong tempo, don’t worry—it simply

means that it has no Tempo setting of its own as of yet, so it’s using the

performance’s Tempo setting. We’ll talk about changing an SMF’s tempo

in a little bit.

What You See Is What You’ve Got

You can easily take a look at the patches your loaded SMF is

using, as well as a range of its mix-related settings. To do this:

1. Press LAYER/SPLIT to get back to the PERFORMANCE LAYER

screen.

2. Press F2 (PARTVIEW) to display the first of the PART VIEW

screens, where you can see the patches being used.

Press 5 and 6 to

scroll up and down

through the SMF’s

instruments.

3. You can press F2-F6 to view other settings in the song.

Part View? What’s a Part?

When the Fantom-Xa is in Performance mode—where you go

to play and edit songs—it can play up to 16 different sounds

at once. Each of these instruments is called a “part,” and has

its own collection of settings that determine its behavior and

how its sound plays. Every part plays the data for one of the 16

possible MIDI channels.

Here are two important things to know about parts:

• Parts 1-16 play MIDI Channels 1-16, respectively, by

default.

• Tracks 1-16 record and play back the MIDI data for MIDI

Channels 1-16, respectively, by default.

Therefore, even though parts, channels, and tracks are actually

three different things, with the Fantom-Xa’s default settings,

they all might as well be one and the same, since Tracks 1-16

record and play data for MIDI Channels 1-16 using Parts 1-16.

Selecting a Part/Track

The Fantom-Xa’s PART/TRACK buttons make it really fast and

easy to select a part/track/channel for playing or editing. There

are eight buttons and 16 parts/tracks. Here’s how they work.

To select a part/track:

1. Press the SELECT button to the left of the PART/TRACK

buttons—this tells the Fantom-Xa you want to select a

part/track.

2. To select:

• Part/Track 1-8—make sure the 9-16 button to the right

of the PART/TRACK buttons is unlit, and then press the

desired Part/Track 1-8 button, as labeled above the

buttons in white.

• Part/Track 9-16—make sure the 9-16 button to the

right of the PART/TRACK buttons is lit, and then press

the desired Part/Track 9-16 button, as labeled above

the buttons in gray.

Customizing an SMF

You can do as many things to an SMF as you can to a song

you’ve recorded on the Fantom-Xa. The following sections

discuss some tweaks that people commonly make.

If you change an SMF’s sounds, or tweak its settings, your changes most

likely won’t stick once you start playback of the song from the beginning.

We’ll explain how to deal with this in “Getting Sticky,” later on.

Saving a Customized SMF

Once you’ve edited an SMF, we recommend you re-save it

to user or card memory as a Fantom-Xa song file. This way,

you’ll save more than just the MIDI data: You’ll also save the

song’s performance that contains the sounds the song uses, its

realtime control setup, and more.

To save a song:

1. Hold down SHIFT and press the

WRITE•SAVE/LOAD button to

display the SAVE/LOAD MENU

screen.

2. Press F2 (Save Song)—the SONG FILE NAME screen

appears.

Here’s where you name the song file.

The song file name is different from the song name you see when the

song’s loaded in the Fantom-Xa. Here, you’re naming the song file, not the

song itself. See Page 149 in the Fantom-Xa Owner’s Manual to learn how to

name the song itself.

3. The first character position is underlined, so turn the VALUE

dial to select the first character of the desired name.

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4. Press 4 to move the underline to the next character’s

position, and then turn the VALUE dial to select the name’s

second character.

5. Repeat Step 4 to finish naming the song file.

As you name the song, you can press F2 (TYPE) repeatedly to jump

between letters and numbers. Press F3 (DELETE) to remove the character

at the underline’s current location. Press F4 (INSERT) to create a space for

selecting a new character at the underline’s current location.

F1 (CAPS LOCK) is always turned on when naming a song file, since

Fantom-Xa disk files are always comprised only of capital letters.

6. When you’ve finished naming the song file, press F6

(WRITE)—the SAVE SONG window appears.

7. Press F1 (USER) or F2 (CARD) to select the memory area in

which the song file is to be saved.

8. Press F6 (SAVE).

9. The Fantom-Xa asks if you’re sure you want to proceed—

press F6 (EXEC) to finish storing the song file.

Changing the Tempo

To change the song’s tempo, press the TEMPO

button in the SEQUENCER area to display the

Tempo window.

Tempo in the Fantom-Xa is measured in beats per minute, or

“BPM,” and that’s the number you see in the Tempo window.

You can set the song’s tempo in either of two ways. You can:

• perform the desired tempo—by tapping it on the F4 (TAP)

button when the Tempo window’s visible.

• enter the desired tempo—using the VALUE dial or the INC/

DEC button when the Tempo window’s visible.

To move more quickly through the BPM values when using the VALUE dial,

hold down SHIFT as you turn the dial—each tick of the dial changes the

Tempo setting by 10 BPM.

When you adjust the Tempo value, your new setting is automatically

written into the SMF’s Tempo track. When you save the song, this new

Tempo value is stored along with the song’s other data.

Type 0 or Type 1—Extracting Tracks

If you’ve loaded a Type 0 SMF, all of your arrangement’s

elements are squooshed together on Track 1. While you can

edit the sequence this way, you’ll find everything much easier

if each MIDI channel’s data is on its own track. In most SMFs,

this’ll result in your having one instrument per track, a much

easier way to work.

In some SMFs, a MIDI channel uses different instruments in different

areas of the song. In this case, your tracks will still involve more than one

instrument. Still, this is a far easier thing to deal with than having the

whole shebang on one track.

Here’s how to extract all of the MIDI channels in an SMF to their

own tracks in one operation:

1. Press the SONG EDIT↔LIST button once or twice to display

the SONG EDIT (TRK) screen.

2. Make sure Track 1 is selected as shown above—its REC box

will be blackened, and “Rec Track TRK 1” will be displayed

above the tracks area on the display.

You can quickly select Track 1 by pressing its PART/TRACK button as

described earlier.

3. Press F5 (EDIT) to display the Track Edit window.

4. Press 6 or turn the VALUE dial to highlight Extract, and

press F6 (SELECT) to display the Extract parameters.

5. Turn the VALUE dial and use the 5 and 6 buttons to set

the Extract parameters as follows:

• Src Track/Pattern—Set this to Track 1, since that’s

where all of your data is.

• Ch/Part—Set this to ALL (Ch1-Ch16) so that the MIDI

data for all of the SMF’s MIDI channels gets extracted

from Track 1.

• Measure—Set this to 0001, for Measure 1, so that the

extraction starts at the beginning of Measure 1, the

top of the song.

• For—Set this to ALL so that the extraction includes all

of the song’s measures.

• Dst Track/Pattern—Set this to TRK ALL. With this setting,

the data on MIDI Channels 1-16 will be extracted to

Tracks 1-16, respectively.

• Extract Mode—Leave this set to REPLACE, so that

extracted data replaces anything already on the

destination tracks. (When you’re extracting a newly

loaded Type 0 SMF, there probably isn’t anything

already on any of the other tracks, except for Track 1 in

any event.)

Don’t worry about destroying your original SMF data, which is already

on Track 1. The Fantom-Xa is smart about this—when you’re done, Track

1 will contain only the data for MIDI Channel 1, with all of the other

channels’ data safely extracted to other tracks.

• Status—Set this parameter to ALL, so that all types of

MIDI data in the SMF get extracted.

• Range Min Range Max—These parameters are inactive

when Status is set to ALL.

6. Press F6 (EXEC).

7. When the Fantom-Xa asks if you’re sure you want to

proceed, press F6 (EXEC) again to turn your single-track

SMF into a multitrack SMF.

Choosing New Sounds

The best way to select a new sound for an SMF’s part/track is

to start from the PART VIEW patch screen, which we showed

you earlier.

1. Press LAYER/SPLIT, and then F2 (PART VIEW).

2. Use 6 and 5 to select the part whose patch or rhythm set

you’d like to change.

3. Underneath the Fantom-Xa’s pads, press the CATEGORY

button so it lights.

The Fantom-Xa’s patches are arranged in instrument

categories that make it easy to find the one you want. When

CATEGORY is lit, press a pad to display a patch category.

By default, Pad 0 is selected—above the pad, “PIANO” is

printed, and a list of piano patches is displayed.

Each pad provides access to a few related categories. You can get to these

additional categories by pressing 4 and 3.

4. Press a pad and turn the VALUE dial or use the 6 and 5

buttons to select a new patch.

You can quickly audition the currently selected sound by pressing F5

(PREVIEW), or you can play it on the Fantom-Xa yourself.

5. When you find the patch you want, press F6 (SELECT).

Adding Realtime Control

You may want to control the volume—or some other aspect—

of one of your song’s instruments in realtime onstage. To do

this, set up the realtime controller(s) you want to use, and then

select the desired part onstage. The controller can send a MIDI

message that allows you to manipulate the desired aspect of

the sound in realtime.

The Fantom-Xa offers lots of realtime control, with its REALTIME

CONTROL knobs, ASSIGNABLE SW buttons, and its D Beam.

Press this button

repeatedly to

set the REALTIME

CONTROL knobs’

mode.

To set up a realtime controller, hold down SHIFT and turn or

touch the controller to display its parameters. For example, by

holding down SHIFT and turning REALTIME CONTROL Knob 1,

the knob’s parameter appears onscreen.

Here we’ve set Knob C1—the first knob—to transmit MIDI Controller 7

messages so we can control the selected part’s volume using the knob.

Press:

• F1 (KNOB)—to display the MIDI message transmitted by

the four knobs when they’re set to ASSIGNABLE mode, as

shown in the illustration at the start of this section.

• F2 (SWITCH)—to set the behavior of the two ASSIGNABLE

SW buttons.

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