Roland JX 3P

eggnchips · Post by **eggnchips** » Sun Jan 09, 2011 10:30 pm

Hey guys n gals,

Somebody has given me a Roland JX 3P and with it being my first analogue synth, I was wondering if anybody else here has experience with it?
Seems a pain to program with all these buttons.

STML · Post by **STML** » Sun Jan 09, 2011 11:13 pm

Yeah, it would be. They originally sold a programmer add on for them. This was common for a few Roland synths of that era.

Like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6FFUstnjwE

If you are handy with sysex, you could make your own pretty easy with any modern MIDI controller that supports sysex.

hydrogen · Post by **hydrogen** » Mon Jan 10, 2011 12:09 am

http://ctrlrv4.sourceforge.net/

This is a great place... allows you to setup a vst/au unit to communicate with your hardware. Lots of configurations available... (not all are working though)...

I'm using one for the Juno-2 and its pretty nice to be able to automate the filters on it.

eggnchips · Post by **eggnchips** » Tue Jan 11, 2011 3:10 am

Hey chaps, I'm no computer buff. what does all this mean?

hydrogen · Post by **hydrogen** » Tue Jan 11, 2011 5:59 am

eggnchips wrote:Hey chaps, I'm no computer buff. what does all this mean?

shiit... welcome to electronic music!

what don't you understand?

eggnchips · Post by **eggnchips** » Tue Jan 11, 2011 7:33 am

Ha ha thanks.
Ok, so Sysex apparently needs Mac. Mac I don't have.
The website link I have been given above doesn't really provide much information. Just seems like a load of Beta testing.

STML · Post by **STML** » Tue Jan 11, 2011 9:16 am

sysex doesn't need mac. Its a part of MIDI. Not sure what tool you would use on Win to do raw sysex, but I'm sure there are some.

Basically, sysex is a more complicated way of doing MIDI instructions that was/is used to control certain equipment. If you don't know much about how MIDI works, you may be a little screwed though

Basically, each control will have a byte string associated. You need to find out what that is (should be in the manual) and find a way to communicate what param and what change to that param you want the synth to perform at any given time slice.

The site hydrogen posted are a bunch of guys who provide that to you for free, out of the goodness of their heart (and a need they had probably). It looks like the JX3P is supported, so you would install that like any other VST, and then use that to communicate with the synth, so you don't have to learn sysex yourself.

eggnchips · Post by **eggnchips** » Tue Jan 11, 2011 2:11 pm

So I have made a little progress and managed to get the CTRLR plug up and running as VST in Ableton. Only problem is I can't seem to get it to control The JX3P.
Midi is working fine as I can play notes using MIDI out from Ableton.
I configured the CTRLR plug to use the Midi out on my soundcard but to no avail.
Any ideas?