Roland Corporation MIDI in Ministry Newsletters User's Manual

The INFO Source for Church Musicians Vol. I No. I

Help us help you...

Here at the Worship Connection, we want to provide valuable
information on specific products and applications that relate to
using MIDI in church. Help us make it a two-way “connection.”

• Tell us what you’re doing with MIDI in your church.

• What cool tips and/or tricks have you discovered that

might help other church musicians?

• What are some topics you’d like to see covered in

upcoming issues of MIDI in Ministry?

Send any ideas, questions or comments to:

Roland Corp.U.S.
AT TN. Worship Connection
7200 Dominion Circle
Los Angeles,CA 90040

FAX: [phone]

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Joining the growing family of Roland
Connections Newsletters is MIDI in MINISTRY.
This newsletter is a response to the growing
number of musicians who use Roland gear in
church-oriented activities and need a reli­able source of information on how to maxi­mize their gear for that application. Here’s
what you can expect to find in this and
upcoming issues of the Worship Connection:

•

Hands-on accounts from renowned worship
leaders and praise band instrumentalists

•

Information on new products, updates, and
tips on how to enhance your Roland gear

•

Upcoming events related to church music
like Maranatha! Worship Leaders
Workshops and other Roland seminars

•

The Fundamentals: getting a handle on
music technology from the ground up

cont. on page 3

worship

Small church -

BIG MUSIC...

One Music PastorÕs True Story

by Steve Young

Imagine this. It’s Saturday evening. You’re finishing up
the final musical preparations for Sunday morning’s wor­ship services. You’re excited about the new song that
you’re introducing to your congregation. And as you
remember how great it sounded at rehearsal, you receive
the phone call. You know. . . the one telling you that your
only bass player has the flu and won’t be able to play in the
services tomorrow. Suddenly, the moment that seemed so
uplifting five minutes ago has turned into a time bomb
waiting to go off. Or has it?

This scenario is all too familiar to many of us. Those who
serve in smaller churches are certainly hit the hardest, yet
mid-size and even mega-churches experience these poten­tially paralyzing situations from time to time. While wor­ship leaders and music directors are always trying to come
up with new ways of dealing with these sort of challenges,
I’ve found a solution that has worked well for us here at
Sand Canyon Church in Irvine, California.

Sand Canyon is a one year-old church plant, and presently
serves about 200 people each Sunday morning. We meet
in a rented facility in a park and have to meet the ongoing
challenge of being completely portable. Everything has to
fit into a couple of vans. As you can imagine, with a young
church of this size, we don’t have an abundance of musi­cians. We’re extremely fortunate if we can even put a com­plete rhythm section (drums, bass, guitar & keyboards) on
the platform each Sunday. In short, we’re struggling with
the challenge of using today’s musical styles while not
always having the people to pull it off. Enter the XP-80.

The Roland XP-80 keyboard is the one piece of equipment
that we literally cannot do without from week to week. The

NO, SERIOUSLY...

REALTIME PHRASE SEQUENCING WILL CHANGE THE WAY YOU THINK

ABOUT

MIDI IN WORSHIP! LEARN HOW TO MAKE AN INTERACTIVE,
“LIVE” MIDI FILE WITH RPS ON THE XP-50 MUSIC
WORKSTATION.*

The Roland XP-50 Music Workstation is able follow your cues as
the worship leader – in realtime! Normally , when using MIDI files
to accompany your performances, you have to decide ahead of
time: how many verses, how many choruses, how long the intro
is, what order all these sections are in, etc. Now, MIDI files can
be as flexible as a live praise band with “RPS” – Realtime Phrase
Sequencing on the XP-50.

NOTE: Be aware that the first measure of many songs contains only
setup data (program changes, controller messages, system exclusive
data, etc.) for that song – no notes. It is advisable that this measure(s)
be played before the RPS patterns to ensure that the correct instrumen­tation for that song is loaded into memory.

Follow these simple steps to make any Standard MIDI File interactive...

Loading a Song into Memory

1) Insert a Standard MIDI File disk into the XP-50 Music

Workstation.

2) If the file was written for a General MIDI instrument, press the

GM button while holding the SHIFT button.

3) Press DISK/UTILITY.

4) Press “2” on the keypad to select LOAD.

5) Press “1” to select SONG.

6) Turn the Data Dial to select the song you wish to load and

press ENTER.
HINT: You should listen to the whole song first, noting the
measure numbers where various sections of the song occur
(i.e. intro, verse, chorus, etc.).

Creating Patterns

1) Press EDIT. The EDIT light should now be on.

2) Press the SEQUENCER:TRACK EDIT button directly to the right

of EDIT. This light will begin to blink.

3) Press the INC button twice to select “03:COPY”.

4) Press the ¨ button twice to move the cursor to “Dest” (des-

tination).

5) Press INC once to select “PTN 001”.

6) Press the ¨ button again to move the cursor to the “Measure”

parameters.

7) Use the Data Dial and à ¨ buttons to select the measures

to be copied to PTN 001.
For example: the chorus might start on measure 20 and last
for 8 bars. The display for this example would look like this:

Measure

20 for 8k 1

8) Once you’ve finished setting the all the copy parameters,

press ENTER. The display will read “Executing”.

9) Repeat this process to create more patterns from any range
of measures in the song.

Assigning Patterns to Keys

1) Press the SEQUENCER:RPS button. This light will begin to
blink.

2) Use the data dial to set the Trigger Quantize to “MEASURE”.

3) Press .

4) Press the key on the keyboard from which you want to trig­ger this pattern.

5) Press INC to change Play Pattern to “001”.

6) Playback Mode should be set to “LOOP1”, which means that
the pattern will play only when the key is held down.

7) Press the RPS button. The RPS light should now be on.

8) Press the key to which you’ve assigned a pattern. It will play
as long as you hold it.

9) Repeat this process to assign other patterns to keys on the
keyboard.

Setting the Clock Loop

Once you’ve finished creating all the patterns and assigned them
to keys for RPS:

1) Press the SEQUENCER:TRACK EDIT button directly to the right
of EDIT. This light will begin to blink.

2) Use the INC/DEC buttons to select “01:ERASE”.

3) Make sure the Target is set to “TRK ALL” and the Measure is
“1for ALL” then press ENTER. Screen will say “Executing”.

4) Press LOOP. The light should be on.

5) Press PLAY.

Saving your RPS Sequence

1) Press DISK/UTILITY.

2) Press “3” on the keypad to select SAVE.

3) Press “1” to select SONG.

4) Use the Data Dial or keypad to name the song you wish to
save and press ENTER.

5) Press EXIT three times to return to SEQUENCER mode.

*These steps (with slight variations) can also be used to create

RPS files on the XP-80 Music Workstation.
For a worship-ready RPS MIDI file of

Lord, I Lift Your Name on

High

from Worship Solutions™, go to:

www.rolandus.com/products/keyconn.html

This file is compatible with both the XP-50 and XP-80 Music
Workstations.

COMING SOON:

Now this is the stuff dreams are made of! Keep an eye out for a
new MIDI disk from Worship Solutions™ (800-249-MIDI) that will
have pre-made RPS patterns for your favorite Maranatha worship
songs. (All the above steps are done for you.) All you have to do
is select the song and the RPS keys will be ready for you to play.
What could be easier? Now ANYONE can lead band and/or
choir rehearsal or an entire worship set with just one finger!

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using MIDI FILES IN WORSHIP