Workshop ®ÂØÒňΠ® Fantom-G Workstation Keyboard The Fantom-G Possibilities © 2008 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 Understanding the Symbols in This Booklet 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.
Hold It To add a sustain pedal to the Fantom-G, connect a damper pedal such as a Roland DP-2 or DP-10 to the rear-panel HOLD jack. Button Up Beneath the display is a row of 10 buttons. Now Hear This For this booklet, you can listen to your G through headphones connected to the PHONES jack, or by connecting the jacks to an mixer, interface, or amplifier attached to speakers.
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 operations. Pressing the ENTER button sometimes provides a “yes” answer to questions the Fantom-G displays. • EXIT button—to close a menu or return to the previous screen during a variety of Fantom-G operations.
Exploring the Fantom-G Sounds The Live Play screen appears: 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.
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 to select it now.) Parts 7 and 8 This is called a “split” because the keyboard is split into two keyboard ranges that play different sounds.
PRST 003:Within You Within You provides a group of instruments for playing Indian music. It shows the creative ways in which you can split your keyboard. Sounds in a live set don’t have to be split or layered—they can also be assembled in a live set for quick access. This can particularly handy onstage or in a fast-paced studio session. Syn Bass Menu is a good example of this, as are all of the live sets with “Menu” in their names.
In G-Grand, the pads play rhythm patterns. Rhythm patterns can be great for playing along with, onstage or when you’re composing or jamming. Press a pad to begin playback of its rhythm pattern—the pad flashes as the pattern plays. To change immediately to another rhythm pattern, press another pad. To stop playing a rhythm, press the currently flashing pad. In the Fantom-G, rhythm patterns are phrases belonging to the current project that play the rhythm sounds of the current live set.
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. This is just another of the pads’ interesting capabilities we’ll be discussing in the Power User Control 2: The Pads booklet. Check Out the Fantom-G Realtime Controllers As you try out patches, don’t forget to play around with the Fantom-G’s assortment of realtime controllers.
Patch Remain Fantom-G, you can even use the pads to select Favorites, an extremely fast and easy way to work, especially onstage. One of the Fantom-G’s best features is its Patch Remain feature, which is available in both Live mode and Single mode, which we’ll discuss next. Patch Remain allows you to switch from one live set to another—or one patch to another in Single mode—without hearing any glitching. To understand how Patch Remain works, it’s a good idea to understand what it’s doing.
You can play patches or rhythm sets from the Fantom-G keyboard in Single mode, but for now we’re just discussing how to play patches. We’ll talk more about your options in the Single Mode in the Fantom-G Workshop booklet. The Patch List Screen The Fantom-G’s Magic Controls offer another, quicker way to navigate the Patch List screen. And—even better—a mouse lets you find a sound by entering its name in a virtual QWERTY keyboard. We’ll talk about these features in the Power User Control Workshop booklet.
2 3 Since right now we want to select the second mode, RHYTHM, press the 2 pad. When you’re returned to the Single Play screen, you can see the Pad Mode parameter’s now set to RHYTHM. Playing the Factory Demo Songs 1 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 (for “General MIDI”)—to select one of the standardized General MIDI rhythm sets.
3 Highlight the first song, “Be In My World,” and press F8 (Load), and then F7 (OK) to confirm your intentions—the song loads. 4 After the song’s loaded, press PLAY to hear the song as you watch its MIDI and audio tracks go by onscreen. A Studio Part Party A studio set is made up of parts and effects, much like a live set. However, in Studio mode, there are more parts—shown here in blue—and effects, shown in gray.
To navigate between the different types of parts on the Studio Play screen, hold down SHIFT and use the 3 and 4 cursor buttons. This “INIT SONG” title is the fastest way to see in the song list if a song song location is empty. For this reason, we strongly recommend naming 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 song in the Saving Your Work on the Fantom-G Workshop booklet.
3 If it isn’t already highlighted—as shown above—highlight “Studio Set Name,” and then press the ENTER button. Normally, you’d use the 3 and/or 4 buttons to select the part you 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.
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 to a minimum, at least for your first 16 tracks. Obviously, since the Fantom-G has 128 sequencer tracks, after the first 16 parts, you’re on your own as to what track you want to use for a part’s data. Each time you sequence in the Fantom-G, you create a chunk of MIDI data called a “phrase.” The phrase is assigned to a track for use in your song.
You can set the tempo by 3 • 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. 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.
14 And finally, to add a beat to the song, go back to the Studio Play 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. But First: Plug Something In 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.
Selecting an Audio Track 1 Press the SONG button if the Song Play screen isn’t already visible. 2 Press the 6 button to select an audio track—for now, select Song Track 9, which is also Audio Track 1. 5 Watch your input level in the Audio Rec standby window’s meters as you sing into your mic or play your instrument as loud as you intend to.
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: 11 Press PLAY to hear your new audio recording—playback ends after your recording’s played back. • You can sample any audio—you send into the Fantom-G from mics, instruments, or line-level playback devices.
1 Select a patch you’d like to play. 2 Play anything you like on the keyboard, for about 10 seconds. 3 Press the blue SKIP BACK SAMPLING button. The Fantom-G goes back in time and creates a new sample from the last 10 seconds of your playing. Skip Back Sampling can be pre-set to grab anywhere from the last 5 to 40 seconds of music. (10 seconds is the default setting.
