Workshop ®ÂØÒňΠ® Fantom-G Workstation Keyboard Saving Your Work on the Fantom-G © 2008, 2009, 2010 Roland Corporation U.S. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of Roland Corporation U.S.
About the Workshop Booklets Roland’s Fantom G6, G7, and G8—the Fantom-G family—set a new standard for excellence in workstation keyboards, with spectacular sounds and incredible built-in effect-processing muscle. A beautiful full-color LCD display and innovative performance features make getting around a pleasure and make the G6, G7, and G8 a dream to play. For recording, the Fantom-G contains a powerful 152 MIDI/audio track sequencer.
Got Something to Save? Right Now? How Memories are Measured Though this booklet starts by explaining how the Fantom-G handles and stores your work, it may be that you just need to know right now how to save something to keep from losing it. If that’s why you’re here, you can click the button at the right to jump to the section you’re looking for. Do come on back later on if you can, though, for a deeper understanding of what’s going on.
ROM’s where the Fantom-G keeps things such as its: • PCM waveforms—The built-in sound recordings that the Fantom-G patches and rhythm sets play when they aren’t playing samples you’ve captured, loaded, or imported. • presets—The preset factory patches, rhythm sets, live sets, studio sets. RAM “RAM” stands for “Random Access Memory.” RAM is lightning fast. Because of this, it’s an ideal place for holding things you’re working with, or working on.
It can be hard to remember if your last-selected patch, live set, or whatever has any changes you’ve made and would like to preserve. Fortunately, the Fantom-G provides a visual cue that tells you at a glance if something you’re viewing hasn’t yet been saved in its current state: When something’s been edited and hasn’t yet been saved, it has a red checkmark.
Internal or USB Flash? The project’s phrases go in here. The project’s songs go in here. Here’s why you might want to choose a particular form of flash memory as you work on your Fantom-G: • Internal memory—is handy since it’s built into the Fantom-G. It doesn’t cost any extra money, and it frees you from having to remember where you put your stuff. On the other hand, depending on how you use the Fantom-G, the amount of data it can hold may not be enough for you.
The Power of the Project You can’t work on the Fantom-G without being in a project. Even if you’ve never saved a project, when you turned on your Fantom-G, it automatically loaded a project stored in its memory, and there you are. (At power-up, the Fantom-G always loads the last project you were working on.) Samples require • sample RAM—for being captured, for playback, and for editing. Once your sample RAM is full, you can’t load or capture any more samples. Sample RAM’s expandable, as we noted earlier.
The three types of memory shown are: • SAMPLE—shows you what’s going on in sample RAM. • USER—shows you the amount of available storage space in internal flash. • USB Memory—shows you the amount of storage space available on your USB stick. Each type of memory appears as a bar graph, with relevant information shown underneath: If a sample’s already been saved in the project, it has a little page icon to its right.
Before Installing a USB Stick in the Fantom-G Before you can use a USB stick in the Fantom-G, it must be formatted as a FAT or FAT32 storage device. If you’re using: • Windows—format the stick as FAT or FAT32. • Mac OS X—format the stick as MS-DOS file system (FAT32) We’re presuming you know how to operate your computer, and how to format or erase a removable drive such as a USB memory stick. If you don’t, consult your computer’s documentation.
Performing a Load Project Operation Save Project To load a project: You may want to use Save Project frequently as you work, especially when you’re working with samples and when you’re sequencing or recording audio tracks. Save Project takes a quick snapshot of your project, grabbing all of the unsaved or edited samples in sample RAM, as well as all of your unsaved or edited phrases and songs, and storing everything in the appropriate folders belonging to the current project.
Actually, since Save Project always grabs the current state of your sample, phrase, and song lists, you can clean out a project’s folders at any time by deleting unwanted items from these lists and then using Save Project again. • • The copied project’s data is loaded into work RAM and sample RAM—so that it becomes the new current project. • The Fantom-G is pointed at the copied project’s folders—where it will put any new project data you want to store.
2 3 To store the copied project in: • internal flash—click F1 (Internal). • USB flash—click F2 (USB Memory). Click F8 (Save As) to open the Project Name window. Create Project Create Project creates a new, empty project in internal memory or on an installed USB stick. Once the new project is created, it’s loaded into work and sample RAM, and the Fantom-G is set to store new project materials in the project’s folders.
On this window, you select the memory area in which the new project is created. 2 Press • • F1 (Internal)— to select internal memory as the location of the new project. F2 (USB Memory—to choose your USB stick as the location for your new project. Since internal memory contains a single project at a time, creating a new one there clears the current internal project, permanently deleting its contents. Before creating a new project in internal memory, be sure there’s nothing there you want to preserve.
Backup Project Restore Project Backup Project lets you quickly create a backup copy on a USB stick of the project that’s currently stored in internal flash. Creating a backup has no effect on the currently loaded project, so it’s an easy and safe thing to do at any time when you’re working on a project stored in internal flash. The Restore Project operation copies the data in a FantomG.
How to Save Your Work Here’s a table of the things that are stored in a project, and the methods used for storing them. After the table, we’ll explain the methods mentioned. About Phrase and Sample Storage There are a variety of ways to save phrases and samples to flash. You can: • save the song that uses them, from the Write Menu—Phrases or samples used in a song are saved with the song when it’s written to flash.
The things you can store from the Write Menu screen vary slightly depending on the mode you’re in: In: You can store: Single mode • the currently selected patch, rhythm set, sample set, sample, song, or phrase. Live mode • the currently selected live set • the currently selected part’s patch, rhythm set, or sample set • the currently selected sample, song, or phrase.
Using the Write Menu in Live or Studio Mode 4 Create the desired name by: 1 Press the WRITE button to display the Write Menu screen. • 2 If it’s not already highlighted, choose what it is that you want to write. To write: using QWERTY naming—as described on Page 4 of the Power User Control Workshop booklet. • using the Fantom-G’s front panel controls—to move the underline cursor beneath each character in the current name, and turning the Value dial to select each desired character.
2 Click F2 (Save) to open the Phrase Name or Sample Name window in which you can name your phrase or sample. 3 Create the desired name by: 4 • using QWERTY naming—as described on Page 4 of the Power User Control Workshop booklet. • using the Fantom-G’s front panel controls—to move the underline cursor beneath each character in the current name, and turning the Value dial to select each desired character.
Edited rhythm patterns and RPS sets are always written as updates to their unedited versions. 5 When the Fantom-G asks if you’re sure you want to proceed, click F7 (OK) to proceed, or F8 (EXIT) to cancel the operation. Writing System Settings System settings are the current values for all of the parameters on the System Menu screen, as well as a number of other global settings. To write a setting from one of the System screens, click F7 (SysWrite). The End We hope you’ve found this workshop helpful.
