Download
Share
Print this page
Roland MC-909 Getting Started Manual
  1. Manuals
  2. Brands
  3. Roland Manuals
  4. Music Mixer
  5. MC-909
  6. Getting started manual
Roland MC-909 Getting Started Manual

Roland MC-909 Getting Started Manual

Hide thumbs Also See for MC-909:

Advertisement

Quick Links

Download this manual See also: Owner's Manual
®
ÂØÒňÎ
Getting Started Guide
What's the Getting
Started Guide?
Roland's MC-909 Sampling Groovebox is a hot new dance music workstation packed with exciting
features. If you're new to grooveboxes, the MC-909's many features may be a lot to take in at first,
what with all of the unfamiliar words and concepts you've got to learn.
Don't worry—we've created this Getting Started Guide just for you. We'll explain what you need to
know to start having fun with this monster box.
We'll begin with some important words and concepts you may have heard about, but don't yet
fully understand. Next, we'll show you how to create your own music on the MC-909. We'll teach
you how to sample. Finally, we'll talk about how to move stuff back and forth from the MC-909 to
a computer, something that lots of people like to do.
That said, let's get this party started.
©
2003 Roland Corporation U.S.
MC-909
MC-909 Getting Started Guide
July 29, 2003
Page 1

Advertisement

loading

Related Manuals for Roland MC-909

Summary of Contents for Roland MC-909

  • Page 1 Roland’s MC-909 Sampling Groovebox is a hot new dance music workstation packed with exciting features. If you’re new to grooveboxes, the MC-909’s many features may be a lot to take in at first, what with all of the unfamiliar words and concepts you’ve got to learn.
  • Page 2 What comes out of a tambourine is audio. What comes out of the jack labeled “OUTPUT” on the back of a synthesizer or the MC-909, or out of a 1/4” jack on an electric bass, is audio.

  • Page 3: Inside The Box

    Each time you strike a pad on the MC-909, the pad sends a MIDI message to the sound generator. If you hit a pad that plays Middle C, for example, the pad sends the sound generator a MIDI message that means, “Hey you, play a Middle C!”...
  • Page 4 MIDI also allows completely separate MIDI instruments to communicate. You might, for example, connect a MIDI keyboard to the MC-909 so you can play its sounds from the keyboard instead of from the MC-909’s own pads. You can even sequence on the MC-909 by performing the desired parts on an external MIDI device.

  • Page 5: The Bottom Line

    Sample? In many ways on the MC-909, it all starts with the sample. A sample is simply a digital recording of a sound. It can be a mono recording, or a pair of recordings that make up the left and right sides of a stereo audio image.
  • Page 6 PCM waveforms, like samples, can be stereo or mono. Whatza Patch? When you play a sample or PCM waveform on the MC-909, you play it in something called a “patch.” The MC-909 comes from the Roland factory with 800 ready-to-play patches, and you can create your own, too.

  • Page 7: Rhythm Sets

    Whatzan Effect? A big factor in making the MC-909’s patches sound as great as they do is the MC-909’s “effects.” An effect—technically speaking—is an audio process that changes the sound of a sample, PCM waveform or an entire patch in some way. Non-technically speaking, an effect adds interesting new personality traits to the basic sound of a patch.
  • Page 8 Whatza Pattern? One of the things you’ll do most often on the MC-909 is select and play patterns. You can play one pattern over and over, play one after the other on-the-fly, or chain them together in songs. Obviously, it’s a good idea to know just what a pattern is.
  • Page 9 In the MC-909, a song may be as big as 50 patterns long. When you play a song, the string of patterns plays in the correct order.

  • Page 10: How To Sequence

    Sequence Select an Unused Pattern Since each sequence in the MC-909 lives within one of its patterns, the first step in recording a sequence is to select an unused pattern. The MC-909 contains 200 patterns into which you can record—these are called the “user” patterns.
  • Page 11 We’ll explain how to change a part’s sound later on. Your First Recording The MC-909 provides several different ways to record. You can record using any of these methods, depending on how you like to work or the kind of part you want to record. You can even switch between methods while working on a part.
  • Page 12 On the TR-Rec Standby screen, the MC-909 offers you three options for how you’d like to set up your sequence. To change a setting—no need to do this now—you’d press highlight the parameter you wished to change, and then turn the VALUE dial to select the desired value for that parameter.
  • Page 13 Here we go. 1. Press PLAY—a few things happen: • The MC-909’s metronome starts beeping as the empty sequence plays over and over. • The TR-Rec screen appears and the first of the sequence’s four measures appears in a grid.
  • Page 14 When all of the pads are lit, you’ll hear the hi-hat on all 16 16th notes in Measure 1. The other three measures remain silent, since you haven’t yet added hi-hat notes there. Let’s replace one of these closed hi-hat sounds with an open hi-hat sound. © 2003 Roland Corporation U.S. MC-909 Getting Started Guide Page 14...
  • Page 15 11. Press VELOCITY PADS 5 and 13 to light them and place snare drum notes at the start of Beats 2 and 4 in Measure 1. You’ve just TR-recorded a rhythm in Measure 1. Let’s do Measure 2 now. © 2003 Roland Corporation U.S. MC-909 Getting Started Guide Page 15...
  • Page 16 A Short Trip to the Editing Planet Copying Recorded Measures Let’s pause in our recording session to use the MC-909’s editing tools to fill up the remaining two blank measures in our sequence. 1. Press F2 (Edit). The Pattern Edit screen appears.
  • Page 17 3. Press F2 (Copy)—the first Copy window appears so you can select the part from which data is to be copied. All of the PART buttons at the bottom of the MC-909 light to show that all 16 sequence parts are currently selected for editing.
  • Page 18 BPM by turning VALUE without holding down SHIFT. You can send the metronome sound to one of the MC-909 outputs from this window by setting the Output Asgn parameter to the desired output, but we don’t need to do this now.

  • Page 19: Saving A Pattern

    Until you actually save your work, the MC-909 holds it in RAM (“Random Access Memory”)—if you select another pattern or power-down the MC-909, your work is lost. To keep it safe, you’ve got to save, or “write,” the pattern into the MC-909’s memory. Here’s how: 1.
  • Page 20 Whenever you save something on the MC-909, you can name it on a screen that looks just like this one. Names in the MC-909 can have up to 16 characters in them. Each character has a position on the display, which is shown by an underline. (Right now, the first character position is underlined.) You create the name you want by selecting each of its character positions and dialing in the desired letter, number or punctuation mark.
  • Page 21 When you’ve finished naming the pattern, it should look like this: 5. Press F6 (Write)—the MC-909 presents you with a list of user pattern memory locations in which you can store your pattern.
  • Page 22 The MC-909 writes the pattern into its memory and displays “Pattern Write Completed!” when it’s done. While we’ve just saved a pattern, the procedure for saving anything else in the MC-909 is pretty much identical. In this example, we’ve stored our pattern in the MC-909’s built-in user memory. If you’ve installed a SmartMedia card, you can also save patterns on the SmartMedia card.
  • Page 23 3. Press -OCT twice more to lower the pitch of the pads to -3 octaves. Middle C, or MIDI Note C4 4. Play the pads again—now we’re in bass territory. © 2003 Roland Corporation U.S. MC-909 Getting Started Guide Page 23...
  • Page 24 Rec Loop Rest—turns a silent measure at the end of the pattern on or off. This is actually quite handy. The MC-909 plays each pattern over and over again during recording, allowing you to add more notes each time. This is especially cool for quickly layering percussion parts. Rec Loop Rest gives you a short break after each playing of the pattern so you can get your bearings before it comes around again.
  • Page 25 Here We Go 1. Press PLAY—the one-measure countoff starts and the Realtime Recording screen appears. Don’t worry. You don’t have to play anything yet. We’re just going to let the MC-909 run for a bit to get our bearings. Each time the pattern reaches its end, you hear an extra, empty measure—four beats of the metronome.
  • Page 26 Getting Started Guide Erasing Notes and Adding Notes in Realtime You can easily fix any wrong notes you’ve recorded without stopping the MC-909. Simply erase the notes you don’t want, and then add in the ones you do want. 1. Press F2 (Erase)—the Realtime Erase window opens.
  • Page 27 Step mode allows you to record by entering notes and chords beat-by-beat. This is the slowest way to record for most people, but does allow you to create parts that are just too complicated to play by hand. It’s described on Page 41 of the MC-909 Owner’s Manual. Tempo/Mute Recording Tempo/Mute recording is actually two types of recording rolled into one: •...
  • Page 28 The roughly five-second “There’s no other love” sample that ships in the MC-909 is a stereo sample whose left side and right side are both 257 KB in size. “257 KB” means 257,000 bytes, so the sample’s size is 514,000 bytes in total. On the other hand, the short, mono R&B Guitar sample is only 76 KB.
  • Page 29 Getting Started Guide Sample Storage Memory As you start digging into the MC-909, it’s likely that you’ll be building a library of your own samples to use whenever you want. The MC-909 allows you to permanently store samples in two different places.
  • Page 30 SmartMedia cards are for. Once your work is safely stashed in one of these two places, you can reload it into live sample memory as you need it. In fact, the MC-909 offers some options for automatically re-loading your samples the next time you turn it on. We’ll explain how to do this at the end of our sampling examples.
  • Page 31 STEREO now. • Pre Sample Time—The MC-909 can add a little bit of time to the front of a sample to help ensure that the very beginning of your audio doesn’t get chopped off. For now, leave this set to 0ms (“0 milliseconds”).
  • Page 32 When you hear the loud click at the end of Track 27, you’ll stop sampling by pressing F5 (Stop) on the MC-909. Locate the F5 button now so you’re ready to move quickly. (F5 is currently the Cancel button, but that’ll change once sampling begins.) ©...

  • Page 33: Playing Back A Sample

    2. When you hear the loud click at the end of the drum groove, press F5 (Stop). That’s it. You’ve just sampled the Track 27 drum groove . The MC-909 takes a moment to draw its waveform on the Sample Edit screen, allowing you to see what you’ve just captured.
  • Page 34 Setting a Sample’s BPM The MC-909 can do some pretty amazing things to a sample to make it fit into any musical context. In order to do this, the MC-909 needs to know the sample’s original tempo. Let’s tell it now: 1.
  • Page 35 MC-909’s live sample memory. If Overwrite is turned off, the MC-909 creates an edited copy of the sample, taking up additional live sample memory space. The benefit of this is that you have a separate copy of the sample at every stage of its editing in case you wish to go back a few steps in time.

  • Page 36: Saving A Sample

    As we discussed earlier, the MC-909’s live sample memory is cleared when you turn off the MC-909. To preserve a sample, you must save it in the MC-909’s user memory or an a SmartMedia card. Let’s save the sample we’ve captured to user memory.
  • Page 37 5. Select the USER:001 memory location. 6. Press F6 (Write). The MC-909 asks if you’re sure you want to finish saving the patch. 7. Press F6 (Execute) to proceed. The MC-909 now thoughtfully offers to assign the new patch to the currently selected part, Part 16.
  • Page 38 Getting Started Guide Auto Sync The MC-909’s powerful Auto Sync feature allows you to change a sample’s timing so it fits perfectly into a pattern that uses a different tempo. Auto Sync is super-simple to use, as we’ll see. Let’s use Auto Sync to make our 90 BPM sample work with our 100 BPM pattern.
  • Page 39 Beat 1 or 3. Tweaking the Mix Let’s adjust the volume balance between our parts to make the mix a bit better-sounding. 1. Press MIXER ASSIGN—the MC-909 presents its built-in mixer. Faders control the boxed parts Though we’ll only be adjusting volume here, you can see that you can also set each part’s stereo panning, pitch and reverb from the Part Mixer screen.
  • Page 40 MC-909’s amazing effects—you can “resample” the whole thing. When you resample, the MC-909 makes a new sample from the audio coming out of its own outputs. Since this is all done digitally, you can sample and resample over and over, and it can sound better and better and better.
  • Page 41 Once chopped up, these individual samples can easily be assigned to their own pads for playing. In the MC-909, you can chop up a sample manually wherever you like, or you can let the MC-909 do it for you using its AutoChop feature.
  • Page 42 You can save it to the first rhythm set memory location, USER:001. 10. Finally, when the MC-909 asks if you’d like to assign the new rhythm set to the current part, press F6 (Execute). The chopped pattern is now a rhythm set assigned to Part 8.
  • Page 43 3. Press ENTER to display the System Menu screen. 4. Press F4 (Sampling) to display the System/Sampling screen. 5. Select the samples you’d like the MC-909 to load at startup. To load: • the factory preset samples—set Preset Default Load to On.

  • Page 44: Swapping Files With A Computer

    Both WAV and AIFF files are high-quality formats. If a particular computer software program prefers one over the other, you can set the MC-909 to store samples in the desired format. See the description of the Default File Type parameter on Page 129 in the MC-909 Owner’s Manual for details.
  • Page 45 Before you begin moving samples, you’ll need to be able to identify them. WAV/AIFF sample files are named on disk according to the user or card memory location they occupy—though a sample uses the name you created when it’s in the MC-909, its disk file is named after its memory location.
  • Page 46 5. Press F1 (User) or F2 (Card) to select the area of memory in which you want to temporarily hold the SMF for transfer. When the MC-909 is hooked up to a computer, it connects either its user memory or its card memory to the computer. You can hold your SMF in either area. After you’ve copied the SMF to the desktop or a folder on your computer, you can delete the SMF from user or card memory to free up space.
  • Page 47 F3 (Internal). • your SmartMedia card to the computer—press F4 (Card). In a few moments, the MC-909 shows “Connected” to tell you that USB communication’s been established with the computer. Then: • on a Windows XP computer—a window pops open showing you the contents of the area of memory your selected in Step 4.
  • Page 48 Moving Files From the MC-909 to the Computer Since the computer sees the MC-909 as just another disk drive, all you need to do to move files is to drag them to the desired location on your computer, such as its desktop or into a folder of your choosing.
  • Page 49 1. Power down the MC-909. 2. Unplug the USB devices connecting the MC-909 to the computer. Importing Samples and SMFs Once you’ve moved files from a computer into the MC-909’s user or card memory, you’ll need to import them for use. Importing a Sample 1.
  • Page 50 Of course, the MC-909 is a feature-packed box and we’ve only scratched the surface. Now that you know your way around, go have some fun with the MC-909. As you work on your own music, don’t be afraid to dive into the MC-909 Owner’s Manual. You’ll find procedures, tips and at least a handful of eye-popping things you didn’t know the MC-909 could do.
  • Page 51 Getting Started Guide For the latest info on new products, support documents, upcoming Roland events and more, visit our Website, www.RolandUS.com. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, you can receive a library of support materials and product information on your fax machine—and it’s all FREE! Just call (323) 890-3780.