Roland XP30 Synth.

[Nishione]

I'm a newbie in keyboards and Desktop recording. Recently I purchased a Audiophile 2496 for my beige G3 466 running 9.22 to sequence my XP30 and have been reading up on many Mags and internet to see what is possible but am confused on what I can record with a synth. Are all sequencing in midi done as GM. Why i ask this is because if that's all it can do, GM set is pretty limited. I have added a extra expansion board that has great Hammond and Rohdes sounds that I like to add to my recordings and as a GM set it does not show any of the sounds of the expansion card.

Sorry if this is really a newbie question, plus what is really a good sequencing software for the Audiophile 2496, Mac G3 and Roland XP30 set up?

Thanks for all your help.

[mikeh]

GM (general MIDI) was established to provide a standard communication protocol. The GM sound sets were set up so that you would always know that a certian MIDI note triggered a certain sound. But you do not have to be limited to the GM soundsets.

Most sequencing software (and I'm focusing only on MIDI in this post) will record a MIDI performance. You then assign that performance to a MIDI "out" port through one of 16 MIDI channels (MIDI cables can transmit and recieve on 16 channels).

So if you have recorded a piano part, you would assign the output to say MIDI out port 1, on channel I. You can then assign whatever sond you want on the XP30 to MIDI channel 1.

Repeat with say, bass on MIDI channel 2, strings on channel 3, up to 16 channels (note: is you havemore than 1 MIDI port, you can exceed 16 channels of MIDI (32 or 48 or 64).

On your XP30, you need to go into performance mode to assign the proper sounds to each MIDI channel (including any sounds from the expansion cards).

I can't recommend anything I haven't tried - but I can tell you I've never had any trouble with Cakewalk running my XP30 (along with 8 other boards/modules).

[Nishione]

Wow! If so....it's exciting. so, what's the best sequencer for the mac on my setup?

By the way thanks for the insight.....

[mikeh]

I'm not real knowledegable on Mac applications (I'm in a PC format), but I have used MOTU (Mark of the Unicorn) sequence software on a Mac and it was very user friendly. I beleive there is a lower version of Pro Tools for Mac - but I don't know was features it has.