Still confused- Roland XP30 Difference between Patch and Performance

[wheresgrant3]

Roland experts...

 

I've owned this XP30 (without the manual) for about four months, and I am really trying to dig deep to learn how to edit this synth. However I am still tripping over simple concepts with the layout and some of the editing features of the XP30.

 

First off... what is the difference between a patch and performance. I know the simple answer is that a patch is a sound bank made up of "up to"4 tones and a Performance is 16 patch banks to be either played in unison or individually. It doesn't make much sense to me the meager offering of completed performances ("layered") and other performances which offer just a single patch. Almost all of the layered performances seem like an excuse to suck up poly without serving much of a useful purpose. There is nothing in the 'preset' performances that I find useful or inspiring. The performances in User Bank CDE seem to just be a mixture of random patches thrown together.... nothing remotely useful to song creation.

 

The Korg Triton LE on the other hand has 8 part (patch) combi's. The Presets are fat, full (if a little overdone) and I never seem to run out of polyphony. Even though most of the presets combi's are gear toward rap/dance they still can provide an excellent structure to build off for song creation. Live I use many combi's which I pre-program to create zones, splits, octaves and to trigger fx's. I'd like to get the same functionallity out of the Roland, but I'm still having a hard time grasping it without the manual (one has been on order with Roland for weeks).

[Yoozer]

The reason why it sucks on the XP and why it rules on the Le is because Korg is good in that kind of {censored} - but it has very little to do with the underlying paradigm; your descriptions are still correct.

 

A patch can only be controlled by a single MIDI channel; a performance can have multiple patches controlled by their own MIDI channels. Layering and splitting don't have any differences; the ideas simply describe what's going on with the keyranges and zones.

 

Roland's performances are what I use for a multitimbral setup; just to put everything on its own channel. For live use, it won't help you much. It doesn't sound spectacular, but it does the job alright.

 

I'm not a fan of layering on the machine itself, and as you say, the preset performances are less than spectacular. There's a lot you can do already in the patch itself, but that has a reason; Roland uses a 4-osc structure while Korg still has a 2-osc structure. Your polyphony in a preset is, essentially, twice as big. It's a sign of Korg's programming skills and multisample depth on how much they can squeeze out of just 2 oscillators.

[Hydra]

Well I don't own a XP30, but I play a Roland JV90 onstage. (which has almost the same sound-engine)

 

The difference between a patch & a performance on my machine:

 

 

Patch: consists of a maximum of 4 waveforms to put together one sound. eg: My custom Piano consists of 3 different Piano-waveforms, covering soft playing and hammering (both require a different waveform on my JV90, it mixes the waveforms according to the pressure applied on the keys).

 

This sound can only be played on the complete keyboard.

 

 

Performance: Layers or Splits of patches. So you can split up the keyboard in 3 zones, e.g. Piano in the left, some organs in the middle & Brass in the upper zone.

 

This way you can play multiple sounds on the keyboard.

 

You can also layer 2 or more sounds. Sometimes it's not necessary: if you have a patch which only uses 1 waveform, you can add the other sound to that patch. But if you want to combine complex instruments (like a Piano which uses 3 waveforms) you need a Performance

[mrcpro]

In Rolandese, Single performances are optimized for MIDI recording of one channel at a time and Layer performances are optimized for live use. Layers can do a lot more than just layering patches. Because each Part of a Performance can be assigned to any MIDI channel (you can set several parts to one channel with local off for instance) with transmit on-off, receive on-off, program change, and offset paramaters, you can effectively run several tone modules from your XP-30. This is impossible to grasp without a manual...I applaud you for trying...but you'll just have to wait until it arrives I'm afraid.

[Tusker]

 

Originally posted by wheresgrant3 First off... what is the difference between a patch and performance. I know the simple answer is that a patch is a sound bank made up of "up to"4 tones and a Performance is 16 patch banks to be either played in unison or individually. It doesn't make much sense to me the meager offering of completed performances ("layered") and other performances which offer just a single patch. Almost all of the layered performances seem like an excuse to suck up poly without serving much of a useful purpose. There is nothing in the 'preset' performances that I find useful or inspiring. The performances in User Bank CDE seem to just be a mixture of random patches thrown together.... nothing remotely useful to song creation.

 

 

I use play the XP30 every week in a supporting role. It provides pads, orchestral parts, etc. In short, it's the texture maker, not the lead machine, comping machine, drum machine, etc. In this role, the 64 voices are more than adequate. I'm playing in a live band, so some of my perspective may be different than yours.

 

The XP30 is fantastic in multi-timbral performance, primarily due to those 8 buttons under the screen. But first, recognize that there are two kinds of performances: Layer and Single. These settings can be accessed in the Performance Common menu.

 

Generally Single is good for midi-driven arrangements and Layer is good for user played arrangements. In Layer mode, the 8 buttons (I love them) control which of the voices 1-8 are on. In other words they toggle on and off. For voices 9-16 there is the button on the right-hand side that switches the functions of the 8 buttons. For most songs I only activate 8 timbres, so that I can be 1 key press away from any timbre.

 

Then I set up the timbres. Sometimes I split the keyboard so I've got 4 timbres in the bottom half and 4 on the top. As you play, one hand can toggle timbres. Want to play a line which starts with a bell sound (voice 1), then adds a string sound(voice 2) behind it, then finally ends with a piano arpeggio(voice 3) by itself? Your right hand plays the notes, and the left hand toggles the sounds on and off. The button presses for the LH would be 1, 2, 123 (the 123 toggles voice 1 and 2 off).

 

Of course the synth has only one multi-effect. I typically give that to Leslie (for B3 sounds) or sometimes, I will run all the voices through the enhancer (#6). This gives me more of that bright sizzle that the Korgs have. Not it's not perfect. Good luck.

 

Jerry

[Birdienumnum]

The Roland manuals have improved over time; my XV-5050 manual is quite clear (as is my Edirol PCR-50 one). It sucks that Roland doesn't publish their manuals online like Yamaha, E-mu, Novation, et al. I remember back when I almost bought an XP-30, I went to Sam Ash and demanded they open their file cabinet and fish out their mouldy XP-30 manual. It took the salesman a half hour to find it, but he did. What a piece of confusing shit that was. Still, it is absolutely essential that you have it, and you should ride Roland's ass until they send you one.