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®ÂØÒňΠWorkshop
Fantom-G Workstation Keyboard
The Fantom-G Possibilities
© 2008 Roland Corporation U.S.
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written permission of Roland Corporation U.S.
FGWS01
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Understanding the Symbols in This Booklet About the Workshop Booklets Throughout this booklet, you’ll come across information that deserves Roland’s Fantom G6, G7, and G8—the Fantom-G family—set a new standard special attention—that’s the reason it’s labeled with one of the following for excellence in workstation keyboards, with spectacular sounds and symbols. incredible built-in effect-processing muscle. A beautiful full-color LCD display and innovative performance features make getting ar
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Button Up Hold It To add a sustain pedal to the Fantom-G, connect a damper pedal such as a Beneath the display is a row of 10 buttons. Roland DP-2 or DP-10 to the rear-panel HOLD jack. Now Hear This All the way to the left you’ll find the MENU button. (You’ve For this booklet, you can listen to your G through headphones connected already used it if you performed a factory reset on Page 2.) to the PHONES jack, or by connecting the jacks to an mixer, interface, or Pressing this button displays
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The Value Dial and Cursor Buttons ENTER, EXIT, SHIFT, INC, and DEC The five buttons below the Value dial are also important in the operation of the Fantom-G. Press the • ENTER button—to display a window or menu of choices regarding what you’ve selected onscreen, or to execute In the Workshop booklets, we refer to the operations. Pressing the ENTER button sometimes provides up, down, left, and right cursor buttons as the 5, 6, 3, and 4 buttons. a “yes” answer to questions the Fantom-G displ
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The Live Play screen appears: Exploring the Fantom-G Sounds Live Mode and Live Sets The Fantom-G is more than anything else about Live mode, where you can select “live sets.” A live set is a combination of • eight patches, rhythm sets, or sample sets, along with their patch effects, or “PFX”—from the Fantom-G’s internal memory. • up to two ARX patches—from installed optional ARX expansion boards, purchased separately. • chorus and reverb effects—associated with the live set itself. Live sets
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PRST 001:System G Let’s begin with the first live set the Fantom-G displays when you power up: PRST 001: System G. This live set does more than just show off the great sound of the Fantom-G—it also shows you how you can split and layer patches in a live set. (If System G isn’t already selected, use the previous steps Parts 7 and 8 to select it now.) This is called a “split” because the keyboard is split into two keyboard ranges that play different sounds. You can split a keyboard in a live
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Sounds in a live set don’t have to be split or layered—they can also be PRST 003:Within You assembled in a live set for quick access. This can particularly handy onstage Within You provides a group of instruments for playing Indian music. It or in a fast-paced studio session. Syn Bass Menu is a good example of this, as shows the creative ways in which you can split your keyboard. are all of the live sets with “Menu” in their names. The key to this type of live set is the setting of the KBD sw
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In G-Grand, the pads play rhythm patterns. Rhythm patterns can be great for In the Fantom-G, RPS phrases and rhythm patterns are similar, though more playing along with, onstage or when you’re composing or jamming. Press a playback options for RPS phrases are provided since they tend to be more pad to begin playback of its rhythm pattern—the pad flashes as the pattern complex. To stop playback of an RPS phrase, strike its flashing pad. plays. To change immediately to another rhythm pattern, pr
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Check Out the Fantom-G Realtime Controllers Although in Bell Mystic, the pads trigger only this single arpeggio style, each pad can trigger its own style, providing you a range of choices. As you try out patches, don’t forget to play around with the Fantom-G’s This is just another of the pads’ interesting capabilities we’ll be assortment of realtime controllers. They’re highly customizable, and you can discussing in the Power User Control 2: The Pads booklet. see in the Live Play screen wha
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Fantom-G, you can even use the pads to select Favorites, an extremely Patch Remain fast and easy way to work, especially onstage. One of the Fantom-G’s best features is its Patch Remain feature, which is • User Groups—User Groups are similar to Favorites except that they available in both Live mode and Single mode, which we’ll discuss next. Patch operate in a single mode. In Live mode, you can set up User Groups of Remain allows you to switch from one live set to another—or one patch to th
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You can play patches or rhythm sets from the Fantom-G keyboard in The Fantom-G’s Magic Controls offer another, quicker way to navigate Single mode, but for now we’re just discussing how to play patches. the Patch List screen. And—even better—a mouse lets you find a sound We’ll talk more about your options in the Single Mode in the Fantom-G by entering its name in a virtual QWERTY keyboard. We’ll talk about Workshop booklet. these features in the Power User Control Workshop booklet. 5 Once you
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2 Since right now we want to select the second mode, RHYTHM, press Playing the Factory Demo Songs the 2 pad. When you’re returned to the Single Play screen, you can 1 Press the SONG button in the LIST/EDIT area to display see the Pad Mode parameter’s now set to RHYTHM. the Song Play screen. 3 To select the desired rhythm set, start by highlighting the Single Play screen’s Dynamic Pad Bank parameter, which can be set to • USER—for your own rhythm sets. • PRST —for built-in rhythm sets. • GM (
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3 Highlight the first song, “Be In My World,” and press F8 (Load), and A Studio Part Party then F7 (OK) to confirm your intentions—the song loads. A studio set is made up of parts and effects, much like a live set. However, 4 After the song’s loaded, press PLAY to hear the song as you watch its in Studio mode, there are more parts—shown here in blue—and effects, MIDI and audio tracks go by onscreen. shown in gray. 24 Audio Parts 16 Internal Parts 16 PFX, 2 MFX, Chorus, Reverb You can adjust
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To navigate between the different types of parts on the Studio Play screen, This “INIT SONG” title is the fastest way to see in the song list if a song hold down SHIFT and use the 3 and 4 cursor buttons. song location is empty. For this reason, we strongly recommend naming A studio set also offers quite a lot of effect-processing power: your songs as you write them into the Fantom-G’s memory so you can tell if a location is truly empty later on. We’ll explain how to store a • PFX—Each of th
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3 If it isn’t already highlighted—as shown above—highlight “Studio Normally, you’d use the 3 and/or 4 buttons to select the part you Set Name,” and then press the ENTER button. want, but for now, Part 1 is the one we want, so we’re good to go. You can immediately see which part’s selected on the Studio Play screen—the part’s channel strip is red. There are faster ways to select parts using the mouse or the pads, as we’ll see in the two Power User Control Workshop booklets. In the STUDIO SET
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Phraseology You can sequence on any track from any part, but we recommend sequencing a part’s sound on its same-numbered track to keep confusion Each time you sequence in the Fantom-G, you create a chunk of MIDI data to a minimum, at least for your first 16 tracks. Obviously, since the called a “phrase.” The phrase is assigned to a track for use in your song. There Fantom-G has 128 sequencer tracks, after the first 16 parts, you’re on are two big advantages to phrase-based recording: your
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You can set the tempo by • playing it—when you tap three or four beats on the F6 (Tap Tempo) button. • setting it the BPM (“Beats Per Minute”) value—using the Value dial. To set the coarse BPM, turn the Value dial. To set the fine tempo, hold down SHIFT and turn the Value dial. 3 Press F8 (Close) when you’re done setting the song’s tempo. The Fantom-G is waiting for you to begin sequencing. It won’t actually begin capturing your playing until you press PLAY. At that point, you’ll get four c
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14 And finally, to add a beat to the song, go back to the Studio Play But First: Plug Something In screen, select Part 10, press the SONG button, and use 6 to select Track 10—you’ll find it below the 24 audio tracks on the Song Play screen. 15 Repeat Steps 12 and 13 to sequence your drums. The Fantom-G offers lots of editing tools for refining your performance. They’re discussed in the Perfecting Fantom-G Sequences and Recordings Workshop booklet. Recording an Audio Track Audio comes into t
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5 Watch your input level in the Audio Rec standby window’s meters as Selecting an Audio Track you sing into your mic or play your instrument as loud as you intend 1 Press the SONG button if the Song Play screen isn’t already visible. to. 2 Press the 6 button to select an audio track—for now, select Song 6 Reach around the back of the Fantom-G and turn the LEVEL knob Track 9, which is also Audio Track 1. located just to the right of the MIC/GUITAR jack—as viewed from the Fantom-G’s playing p
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Sampling When you recorded your audio track, you scratched the surface of the Fantom-G’s sampling capabilities. The Fantom-G is actually a full-featured sampler that lets you use sampled beat loops or any other sound in your music. Here are some of the things you can do with the Fantom-G sampler: • You can sample any audio—you send into the Fantom-G from mics, instruments, or line-level playback devices. • You can import samples—in .WAV or AIFF format via USB from your computer. 11 Press PL
