Editing patches

Two layouts

Choose one in Settings › General › Interface. Both edit the same settings, and you can switch at any time.

• Sound Designer, the default, follows the V-Synth's own screens: an Overview of the signal path, then the groups along the bottom of the instrument's display, each with its tabs. Most settings are drawn as well as listed.
• Engineer lays the patch out as the V-Synth's MIDI documentation does: one section per block of memory, every setting in the order it is stored. Hovering over a setting shows its name and position in Roland's MIDI Implementation.

The Sound Designer layout

Overview

The Overview shows the zone's signal path: the two oscillators, the Modulator, the two COSM blocks, the Amplifier (TVA) and the three effects, arranged by the patch's Structure Type. Each box names its type and a setting or two. Click a box to open its group. Switched-off parts are dimmed.

Groups and tabs

The group list beside the editor holds Common, Oscillator 1, Oscillator 2, Modulator, COSM 1, COSM 2, Amplifier and Effects. Each opens with the instrument's tabs across the top. The tabs an oscillator, a COSM block or an effect shows follow its type, as they do on the V-Synth. An effect type with several pages of its own has a second row of tabs for them.

A group's on/off switch is the first row on each of its tabs.

Drawings

Envelopes, LFOs, filters, equalizers, the zone keyboard, the scale tuning, the Step Modulator, the arpeggio pattern, samples and most effects are drawn above the settings that shape them. Most drawings have round points you can drag. A drag changes the same settings as the sliders below it, and moves them as it goes. The arpeggio grid and the Step Modulator are painted as you drag across them.

Choices as buttons

Where a setting is one of a handful of things, such as a waveform, a COSM type or a filter type, each choice is a button, many drawn as the instrument draws them. Click one to choose it.

Zones

A V-Synth patch has sixteen zones, each with its own oscillators, envelopes, LFOs and COSM blocks, and each playing a range of the keyboard. The zone pop-up at the top of the editor chooses which zone you are editing. It is grayed on tabs whose settings are the same for every zone. A zone with edits carries an orange pencil in the pop-up.

The Common › Zone tab sets where each zone's range ends. Drag a zone's right-hand edge on the keyboard drawing, or choose Single, Split or Drum for the instrument's three ready-made arrangements. Clicking a zone's band makes it the patch's Current Zone.

The patch name and category

The patch's name is at the top of the editor. Click it to edit the patch name. A V-Synth name is up to twelve plain characters (letters, digits and punctuation, without accents). The category is the pop-up beside it.

Undo, edited marks and Revert

• Every change can be undone with ⌘Z and redone with ⇧⌘Z: slider drags, drawings, pastes, reverts, loads and Auto Compose turns. A drag is one step. Sending cannot be undone, since it changes the instrument.
• An orange pencil marks every patch, group, tab, zone and setting changed since the patch was last loaded, sent, imported, opened or saved. Undoing a change back to where it was clears the mark.
• Revert Group, above the group list, returns the group on screen to that point, in every zone. Revert Patch does the whole patch.

System and Setup

Select System or Setup under Synth in the sidebar to edit the instrument's global settings, arranged as its SYSTEM screens are. Setup's Part Patches chooses which Work Area patch each Part plays, and the Patch Palette page sets the patches the eight PATCH PALETTE buttons call up.

A setting marked with an asterisk (*) is kept only in libraries and exported project folders. The V-Synth does not accept it over MIDI. See Libraries and V-Synth projects.

A patch's Common › TT Pad tab also shows four of System's pad settings, as the instrument's does. Changing them changes System, not the patch.

Tips

• Hover over a setting to see its full name.
• A grayed setting does nothing with the current choices. Hover over it to see why, for example a setting that only applies to the another oscillator type.
• A wave row's Play button plays the sample from the patch's start offset, so you hear what the patch will play.