This is a bit of an exhaustive tutorial on using the Roland MC-303 to sequence external midi hardware synthesizers - you've been warned! Scroll down for the table of contents.
I've seen a few people wondering about sequencing external gear with an MC-303 in various forums, and no one ever really answered the question so I decided to test it out for myself. If you are thinking of getting an MC-303 it can be a decent drum machine and it can sequence external gear, if you have the patience to learn how to program sequences on it.
The Roland MC-303 Groovebox is a ROMpler drum machine, synth module, and 8-track sequencer from the 90s geared towards techno/trance/house/jungle and other 90s electronic dance music styles. It gets pretty terrible reviews on the interweb because the preset patterns are frankly awful, but it does have okay lo-fi samples of many of the Roland drum machines and synths that people love. You can't create your own patches from scratch, you can only sort-of edit the ones that are already on it, but that's for another video...
I believe in getting the most out of whatever gear you have so I wanted to test out the sequencing capabilities of the MC-303. I've used it in the past to sequence many of the on-board internal sounds, but I wanted to test it with external gear while I save up for an MPC-One or some other modern midi-sequencer.
In this video I set up a pretty basic (i.e. monotonous) pattern to sequence a Roland MC-101, a Roland D-05, a Moog Grandmother (sorry for mispronouncing Moog so often!), and a Sequential Circuits Six-Trak. I kept the pattern simple for the tutorial but I don't think there's any reason the MC-303 couldn't sync more complex patterns. The MC-303 is limited to about 14000 notes, however, and there's no memory expansion. If you run out of space you'd have to dump the memory to a midi-librarian on your computer to save it and clear up space for new patterns.
Another thing to note is that the MC-303 cannot send bank and program changes to your external gear.
0:00 Introduction
1:14 MC-303 System and Part set-up; midi-channels; Output Assign
6:52 Rhythm (drums) set-up and sequencing the MC-101 drums
8:36 Making a rhythm track using step-recording
11:16 Recording a Part in real-time
12:23 Setting up midi-thru on external hardware
12:52 Overview of the MC-303 arpeggiator
15:13 Recording an arpeggio part to be played by the Moog Grandmother
17:54 Playing a live part over the pattern
22:33 Setting up a Pattern on the MC-303
25:40 Using Part Mute
27:40 Tweaking external devices during playback
28:32 The beginning of the full sequence on 6 midi channels plus one part being played live - it's long!
35:07 Midi CC-message (Control Change) pass-through
37:00 'One more thing' - changing patterns during a live performance
41:12 Song Mode
44:06 Sequencing the SCI Six-Trak with the MC-303 - timing issues?
51:15 Conclusion
Just a note if you are using the MC-303 internal sounds for some parts and external synths for other parts, and playing it all with a midi-controller keyboard like I do in the video: the midi-keyboard will trigger sounds of the MC-303 as well as the external gear (it will sound both devices), so you need to turn down the level of the parts you don't want to hear from the MC-303 by using FUNC & the Cutoff knob on each of those parts. For example, if you are using the drums of the MC-303 and part 1 on the MC-303, but you've got an external synth on part 2 (midi channel 2), you'll want to turn down the level of part 2 on the MC-303, otherwise you'll hear both the external synth sound and the sound of whatever tone is assigned to part 2 on the MC-303. And believe me, that will drive you mad.
**the lights and LED display on the MC-303 appear to be constantly flashing/blinking in the video but that's just an issue with the frame rate of my camera and the refresh rate on the MC-303. The lights & display don't blink like that in-person.
** In the video I mention turning on midi-thru on the MC-303 *a lot*, and I didn't think it was mentioned in the manual, but I did just find it as an addendum to the manual on the last page.
9 авг 2024
