Can you loop on the Juno Gi?

Sorry !

The Juno Gi has neither an audio nor a MIDI loop feature.

The latest Roland keyboards are beginning to rely very heavily on external PC DAW software for those features. The object seems to be to keep the price down by not including onboard features that you may not need or want.

The Gi does have a USB audio/MIDI song player that I suppose would play back loops, but it can not be triggered from the keys and there is quite a delay from the time the play button is pressed until it actually starts to play, so it would really not be very useful for that. It is intended more for linear backing tracks, as is the 8 track audio recorder.

Oh! That's not the answer I was hoping for :-(

Without offending any Juno Gi purists,I feel like i've waisted my money as the music I make is all loop based.I'm actually gutted!!
That will teach me for not asking before I purchased. But then again this is the first Roland keyboard i've owned that doesn't loop. I did have the idea to purchase a drum machine then MIDI it up to that to get it looping? But if what you say is true then that would be pretty pointless too.

Any more suggestions anyone?

Ps Thanks by the way for the response tnicoson :-)

I am very sorry that you are disappointed in your Gi. Based on your most recent reply, I fear that I may have mislead you. When you asked about a "looper", I assumed you were talking about a DJ type looping feature for generating complete backing tracks - that is - a 16 track sequencer, which Roland has dropped in all of its latest synths. BUT . . . if drum patterns are what you are interested in, the Gi DOES have the RHYTHM PATTERN feature, which is a fairly complete drum machine with quite a large selection of pre-set patterns. See Section 6 - Page 16 of the Quick Start Guide for an overview and Page 121 of the Owners Manual for instructions on selecting and playing the pre-set patterns or Page 124 for editing or creating your own patterns.

If you ARE looking for complete backing tracks, the Gi has the Song Player feature that will allow you to play pre-arranged MIDI and audio song files, or if you are looking for looping in real-time, a DJ looper using the Gi as a sound module might be a consideration. The Gi is 4 part multi-timbral for its lead Live Sets to be played from the keyboard and has a completely separate 16 part multi-timbral sound unit to be played by an external sequencer.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Ted

BTW, you can do loops on Gi, but it's a painful process that, frankly, should have been easy and real-time.

You can select two points on a track in recorder and then copy that chunk, while specifying how many copies you need.

What Gi is sorely missing is proper continuous overdub. IMO, it's the most obvious missing feature. If Gi had it, it would be immediately more useful as a "workstation". Maybe we should petition Roland or something.

An easy to loop is to create a recording of any length, then playback and push the REPEAT A-B button above the record button. Push once for start of loop, and once for stop. It works great, hope this helps...

and has a completely separate 16 part multi-timbral sound unit to be played by an external sequencer.

Are you sure? How is that possible?

Perhaps "separate" was a poor choice of a word, as how "separate" the 16-Part multi-timbral sound source is depends on how you have the keyboard set up, but I chose that word at the time in order to counter criticisms on this and other forums that the Juno-Gi (A)-Lacked a sequencer (True) and (B)-Was not 16 part multi-timbral (False). Browsing the first few pages of the manual, which describe the Juno-Gi's 4-Tone LiveSet architecture would certainly give one the impression that the Gi was only 4-Part multi-timbral. Actually, in that respect, it is really only 2-Part multi-timbral, as the two upper LiveSet tones are paired together onto the MIDI MAIN-Channel and the two Lower LiveSet tones are paired together onto the MIDI SUB-Channel. That is the default sound source architecture of the Gi - 4 LiveSet tones (2 Upper and 2 Lower) to be played from the keyboard. True - You can not concoct a massive 16 tone layered "Performance" stack as with the older units, but that was not the Gi's intended forte. However, when the Gi is placed in MIDI Controller Mode by pressing the MIDI Ctrl button or by sending it a GM/GS reset from an external DAW/sequencer, local keyboard control of the LIveSets is switched off, and you now have a 16-Part multi-timbral sound source with a default GM voice bank to be played from an external source. So, when viewed from the stand point of switching between the two, the word "separate" would seem to fit, but it is possible to do both at the same time, and in that case, "separate" no longer applies. With the external DAW/sequencer still connected, it is possible to take the Gi out of MIDI Controller Mode and play the selected LiveSet along with the incoming MIDI data. In that case, whatever channels are assigned to the LiveSet MAIN and SUB Channels must be reserved for keyboard play leaving only 14 channels to play data from the external DAW/sequencer. By default, these are Channels 1 and 2 respectively. In this case we have a "COMMON" 16-Part multi-timbral sound source, 2 for local LiveSet play and 14 for external sequencer play. This is really no different from reserving one or two (split) channels (parts) of a straight forward 16-Part unit for local play while the rest are set up for sequencer play. I guess, in a way, we are really looking at a standard 16-Part sound source, it's just that two of the parts CAN be LiveSet parts. By the way, they can also be played by the external sequencer instead of by the keyboard.

Hope this helps. Sorry for the confusion.

Regards,

Ted