FC-300 & GR-55 & GT-100 & RC300 Advice

Started by LukeB, December 03, 2013, 09:31:05 PM

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LukeB

Hi All,
I very recently purchased a FC-300 controller to help simplify (I had hoped) the use of my GR-55, GT-100  and RC-300 for live gigs.

Basically I wanted to set up the FC-300 to select appropriate patches in each device for specific songs.

I've read the FC-300 manual several times now and have also read many very informative threads relating to the FC-300 here on VGF.

I think I've got a first principles method worked out (although not yet implemented) where I setup suitable User patches in each device that are selected by a common FC-300 foot pedal press.

The FC-300 would be in Patch Mode and all device MIDI interfaces would be in Omni mode and sharing a common channel (channel 1).
Up to 5 device patch/control selections could be made within a song.
Each song would have its own FC-300 patch.

Well this is the path I've thinking along so far.

Could I please get some advice from the very capable FC-300 uses here to let me know if this is a viable method to use.
Now I'm not trying to cut the learning tracks short here, but some advice could save me many hours of fruitless effort.

Also, I read that a FC-300 floorboard was being developed. Is this program (beta or otherwise) yet available?
If yes, would someone please reply with a link.

Thank you all for a great forum. Definitely would be in deep doo doo without it.

Cheers,
Luke
P.S. If there are any FC-300 etc, users here in Australia, it would surely be great to make contact to share gear stories.


LukeB

Hello,
After much reading research and trial and error I have finally discovered a method that allows me to use my FC-300 MIDI Controller to fully control all my devices in the way I wanted.

As it turns out, the programming of the FC-300 is really quite simple (as is everything once you know how), but for me it involved a significant amount of work, including the design and construction of a 4 Channel MIDI THRU BOX.

I won't bore you with the details of my work but the following is a basic procedure that works for me and I hope may help another person who like me started out as a MIDI novice.

The MIDI THRU box allows me to route the MIDI Out from the FC-300 to the MIDI In of the 4 devices I use in my home studio.
A GR-55, RC-300, GT-100 and Focusrite Scarlet 8i6 Analogue Interface.

If Roland had included a MIDI THRU in all the devices then I wouldn't have had to build the MIDI THRU box.
But hey, Roland must have saved at least 10 cents per unit by not including a MIDI THRU socket.

From memory, the only change I needed to make to the Out-Of-The-Box settings of the devices was to reset their MIDI Channels to 1,2,3 & 4 respectively.

The following is the procedure I used for the GR-55. The procedure is similar for all the other devices.

=================

Using The Roland FC-300 MIDI Foot Controller with the GR-55

The first step is to review the FC-300 User Manual information on Patch Mode - Creating Patches.

Set the FC-300 to Patch Mode and follow the procedure outlined on Page 34 of the FC-300 Manual to create the Patch.

To be able to fully access all GR-55 sound patches in Lead, Rhythm, Other and User Banks, Continuous Control Messages (CC#) need to be sent.

This is done by creating a FC-300 Patch containing  a MIDI data stream with three parts comprising of two CC# messages (MSB & LSB) and one Program Change (PC#) Message to select the sound patch.

Part 1 contains a CC#00 message to set the MSB (Val = 0, 1, 16, 17 & 18) to access the Lead, Rhythm, Other and User Banks.
Part 2 contains a CC#32 message to set the LSB (Val = 0) always = 0.
Part 3 contains a PC# message (Val = 1 to 128) selects the sound patch.

Additional parts 4, 5, 6, etc (CC# messages) could be added to the MIDI data stream to setup switches etc, but the above three steps shows the method needed to control the GR-55 as well as many other MIDI devices.

There is a lot of information I haven't included here, but it was the above three steps the caused the penny to drop fro me. Maybe it will help someone else as well.

It would have made things much easier if Roland didn't bury or totally omit this critical information in their documentation.

Cheers,
Luke

M Bas

#2
Quote from: LukeB on December 03, 2013, 09:31:05 PM
Hi All,
I very recently purchased a FC-300 controller to help simplify (I had hoped) the use of my GR-55, GT-100  and RC-300 for live gigs.

Basically I wanted to set up the FC-300 to select appropriate patches in each device for specific songs.

I've read the FC-300 manual several times now and have also read many very informative threads relating to the FC-300 here on VGF.

I think I've got a first principles method worked out (although not yet implemented) where I setup suitable User patches in each device that are selected by a common FC-300 foot pedal press.

The FC-300 would be in Patch Mode and all device MIDI interfaces would be in Omni mode and sharing a common channel (channel 1).
Up to 5 device patch/control selections could be made within a song.
Each song would have its own FC-300 patch.

Well this is the path I've thinking along so far.

Could I please get some advice from the very capable FC-300 uses here to let me know if this is a viable method to use.
Now I'm not trying to cut the learning tracks short here, but some advice could save me many hours of fruitless effort.

Also, I read that a FC-300 floorboard was being developed. Is this program (beta or otherwise) yet available?
If yes, would someone please reply with a link.

Thank you all for a great forum. Definitely would be in deep doo doo without it.

Cheers,
Luke
P.S. If there are any FC-300 etc, users here in Australia, it would surely be great to make contact to share gear stories.



I have a question about the RC300. Are you able to assign the built in metronome to the head phone jack only? And in that case, how do you do that? I've been thinking of purchasing a RC300. My only concern is if it's easy to get the first recorded loop really really tight.

Thanks! /M

LukeB

Hi M Bas,
Sorry it's taken me so long to reply to your question.

As far as I know, the RC-300 does not have a metronome as such. It has a Rhythm generator (drum machine) and it is always output to the Phones output unless you assign the main output to SUB.

Also as far as I remember, the beat tempo information is recorded with your loop but not as part of the recorded audio. So if you don't want to hear the rhythm, just turn its volume down.

It takes a little bit of practice, but it's not difficult to record a tight track when using the rhythm generator as a timing guide.
If you then want to transfer the audio to a DAW program (I use Reason 7) on a PC, just turn the rhythm volume off first.
Don't forget to set the BPM on the DAW before recording the audio.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Luke