VA-76 – Sampling your own phrases

pitch, while the phrase is actually too low. To “trans- pose” it one octave up (when you press the same key on the keyboard), you would have to select “A3” as Original Key.

Specifying the phrase’s tempo: Time Signature, Measure, Beat, Tempo

If you decided not to use the metronome while recording your sample (which also means that you did not set the tempo), the VA-76 is still unaware of the phrase’s tempo. Yet that is important for the correct synchronization of the phrase with the Arranger/Song tempo.

Note: Be sure to select the Phrase you want to edit on the Phrase Source page (see page 71).

Note: Before using Method 1, it would be a good idea to cut the phrase to the part you really need. See “Truncate” on page 72.

There are two approaches for specifying the tempo:

AMethod 1: specify the length of the sample and have the VariPhrase function calculate the tempo

Use the Time Signature fields to specify the time signa- ture of the phrase. Press the field before the “/” and enter the number of beats per measure (for a 6/8 mea- sure, enter “6”). Use the [TEMPO/DATA] dial.

Press the field behind the “/” and enter the note value of the beats (for a 6/8 measure, enter “8”).

Press the [Measure] field and specify the length of the phrase in measures. For a phrase that is 2 measures and 3 beats long, enter “2”.

Press the [Beat] field and specify the number of addi- tional beats. If your phrase is 2 measures and 3 beats long, you need to set Beat to “3”.

Press the [Calculate] field to have the VA-76 calculate the tempo (BPM).

What you do here, is in fact ask the VA-76 a question: “if I tell you that the present audio phrase is two (Mea- sure) 4/4 (Time Signature) measures and three beats (Beat) long, what is its tempo value (BPM)?” The result is displayed in the [New] field.

BMethod 2: entering the tempo value right away

If you know the tempo value of the audio phrase you have just sampled, you can press the [New] field and enter the value using the [TEMPO/DATA] dial.

8. Press the [EXECUTE] field, or go on to the next parameter.

After encoding the data, the display returns to the VariPhrase Source page.

Event Sense

This parameter is important for the Step function (see page 81). It allows you to set the VariPhrase proces- sor’s sensitivity to sudden volume drops. The (slightly more) silent passages are considered the end of a step. As soon as the volume of the audio phrase rises again, the audio data that follow will be considered a new step. As the term “Step” already indicates, this function allows you to chop up an audio phrase into smaller units that you can play one after the other. In our example on page 72, this would allow you to play a melody using the following syllables: “I-wan-na-be- phrased-by-you” (rather than “I wanna be phrased by you” in one go). This is in fact one of the most creative uses of the VariPhrase processor.

Event Sense allows you to specify how sensitive the processor should be to silences between two audio events. Here’s an example:

These could be individual steps

If the Playback parameter (see page 81) is set to STEP, the sample will play to the next event each time you press a key.

The higher the Event Sense value you set, the more steps will be generated.

9.Press the [Event Sense] field and enter the desired value (0~127) with the [TEMPO/DATA] dial.

Note: If you set this parameter to a high value, a large num- ber of steps may be detected. If you encode in such a state, the intervals between the steps may be too short and there- fore musically useless.

10.Press the [EXECUTE] field to encode the phrase. This finalizes all of the above settings (New Tempo, Original Key, and Event Sense) and turns your audio phrase into a fully functional VariPhrase.

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Roland VA-76 owner manual Event Sense, Method 2 entering the tempo value right away