VA-76 – Arranger/Music Style clinic

4.6 Arranger/Music Style clinic

Before telling you more about the Music Styles, we’d like to explain the difference between Music Styles and the Arranger. The Arranger is in fact the function (or sequencer) that plays the accompaniments you select. These accompaniments are always related to a given musical genre (or “style”), and are therefore called Music Styles. As the VA-76’s accompaniments are a lot more than just one pattern that goes on playing until you stop it, the Music Styles comprise several patterns (or divisions).

The Arranger is interactive in two respects: you can tell it in what key it should sound by playing chords; and you can also tell it what kind of of accompani- ment it should play by selecting other divisions via the front panel or the touch screen. The Arranger (the “hardware”) would be nothing without the Music Styles (the “software”), while the Music Styles would become repetitive after a while without the various divisions.

Selecting Music Styles

Like for Tone selection, there are two possibilities that can be used indiscriminately: you can work the tradi- tional way (using the buttons), or via the display – or mix these two approaches as you see fit.

Style selection via the front panel

Note: All button actions are also reflected by the display. See “Style selection via the display” on page 60 for the informa- tion that appears on-screen.

1.Tell the VA-76 that you wish to select a Music Style: press the [STYLE] button (so that it lights).

As soon as you press the [STYLE] button, it lights in green, as well as the BANK and NUMBER buttons of the currently selected Music Style. (The color for Tone selection is red, while orange is used for selecting User Programs.)

The display now looks as follows:

The name next to the [A]/[B]/[C] fields tells you which Music Style is currently selected.

Note: The numbers in the upper right corner of the display indicate the MIDI address of the currently selected Music Style (“B15 ScatSwing”).

2.Press the [GROUP] button to select the group that contains the desired Music Style.

There are three Music Style groups with 64 memories each (for a total of 192 Styles):

Group A is selected

Group B

Group C

A & B— These two groups refer to the Music Styles in ROM.

C— This group represents the Disk Link group. These are memories that can be selected in the same way as the ROM memories, even though they load Music Styles directly from Zip or floppy disk.

Note: See also the Music Style list starting on page 251 for the names and addresses of the Music Styles.

When you select a GROUP, the VA-76 automatically activates the BANK that was active in the previous group. Here is an example: if you are currently work- ing with the B15 ScatSwing Style, selecting group A means that bank 5 is automatically selected.

3.Press a BANK [1]~[8] button (so that it lights) to select a Style bank within the active group.

Each Style group contains eight banks.

4.Press a NUMBER [1]~[8] button to select a Style within the active bank.

Only now will the new Music Style be selected. You could take advantage of this system to prepare the group and bank with your left hand, while continuing to play the melody with your right hand. Then, all you

59

Page 57
Image 57
Roland VA-76 owner manual Arranger/Music Style clinic, Selecting Music Styles, Style selection via the front panel