New RD2000 owner and so confused

+1 on the manual situation.

It's a great keyboard, but the manuals are pathetic for new and experienced users.

And there is no real internet support I can find beside this forum, which has only slow and limited feedback.

Very strange situation for such a capable keyboard. I bought mine when they had been out about 6 months, and though this situation would improve, but it hasn't.

There are a few people here with good knowledge of the keyboard, but the initial learning experience could be so much better with an improved manual.

Shame really, cos I love the keyboard sounds and playability.

>>I want to make a keyboard split with the upper half playing piano, and lower half an Organ sound.
I want the keys to play as is, but I need to transpose 2 octaves up for the lower half Organ. The transpose key seems to work universally over all 88 keys. HELP!!

You need to go into the MENU and look at ZONE EDIT in that menu, then go to the KBD tab to set the splits per voice (which you can select by tapping the keyboard itself and then pressing ENTER to set it), then go to the PITCH tab to set the transposes per voice. This is fully flexible and allows overlaps etc.

>>Also, whats a good Organ tone that has rotary going and allows me to slow it down and speed it up on the fly?

Many of the organs use the rotary speaker, the speed of which can be controlled by the mod wheels on the left of the keyboard.

>>I can't even figure out the drawbars. I'm so frustrated!

The drawbars can be accessed in any organ sound by pressing SHIFT+[HARMONIC BAR]. The sliders then work like drawbars until you exit that mode.

Once you have it all how you want it, you need to SAVE the entire setup as a PROGRAM by hitting the WRITE key at the right hand end of the keyboard, then selecting a BANK and LOCATION to save the data.

Hope this gets you started.

Hi rockitman.

"Sled driver" has given you the solution, another solution is possible too. You have 2 fewer clicks.

To transpose your left part "Wheel organ" you can also use the button "key range" next to the button "write" (RD 2000), you have direct access to the screen (zone / transpose / rng low / rng up).
you confirm your changes with enter button.

Cordially.
Gus

Ed Diaz has a series of extremely helpful videos.

https://www.youtube.com/diazeo

thanks for the help Sleddriver. Ok, I was able to save all of this as a program. But now I want to make it a scene for easy access. I see nowhere in the manual or parameter guide how to create or add a scene. The parameter guide has a scene utility section but it's all about rearranging scenes and deleting scenes.

HELP!!!

Hello rockitman.

see, record (scene) page 15 manual.
Gus

awwwww there it is. THanks Gus!

You'd think they'd highlight that a little better in the manual., Just sayin! :)

Gus wrote:

Hi rockitman.

"Sled driver" has given you the solution, another solution is possible too. You have 2 fewer clicks.

To transpose your left part "Wheel organ" you can also use the button "key range" next to the button "write" (RD 2000), you have direct access to the screen (zone / transpose / rng low / rng up).
you confirm your changes with enter button.

Cordially.
Gus

I am going to be picking up with a second band and I have a short span of time to learn some difficult songs . (House is a Rockin, A Little Less Talk, etc) Anyways, I'm learning Tom Petty Here Comes my Girl. It has an organ and a piano playing throughout the song. So I found a patch on the Roland , Rotary Organ 2 that sounds like a fast Leslie. I set it to Zone 4 after I created the split. Small problem for me is that most of the song is slow leslie with a smattering of changing to fast leslie for a single measure. I would like to learn how to manipulate that with maybe a foot pedal?? And my other patch of course is one of the acoustic pianos. I set a split with the bottom two octaves reserved for the organ (zone 4) and a +48 transpose setting. I have the upper half a piano (zone 1) with -12 transpose setting.
Since I have to hold out 4 measure long whole notes on the piano in the beginning, I decided to add a Pad to give it sustain of sound . I set that to Zone 2. I did notice that the Pad did not play in Zone 4, which is fine, but I only set a single split for zone 1 piano and zone 4 organ, but somehow, zone 2 Pad knew to stay in the upper split. Please explan?
To end this, I have learned here and I thank you, don't feel like a stranded survivor of a 2600 dollar keyboard! :)

Hi rockitman.
Yes you can use a pedal to activate / deactivate rotary speed.
do "shift while holding the pedal down" and then on the screen using the "encoder wheel button" choose speed rotary.
the pedal works as "on / off", the effect is incremented gradually and disincrement gradually.
For the part of the "zone 2" can you specify what you want to know?
cordially
Gus

Also, the Axial site has a great organ free download for the RD-2000... very clone worthy!!!

Yes, if you want some great organ sounds for your RD-2000 get yourself over to:

http://axial.roland.com/articles/rd-exp05/

and download those to your RD-2000.

Some really good organs in there.

Got to say, Im confused why people are struggling. Im a guitarist primarily but picked up the RD to learn piano and improve my key work (always have SOME kind of keyboard kicking around).

Despite not knowing my way around keyboards that well, I havnt really struggled with anything - it just seems so intuitive.

I did view a couple of Eds videos - assigning sub outs, but only because I was stupid and didnt see where the outs were assigned (in the volume tab).

I just went though all the menus a few times, and looked at the tabs. Even with no manual and no realy keys experience I found 95% of things just from experimenting.

That said - when I needed something specific and couldnt find it/work it out myself the manuals wernt much help (on occasion but even then confusing). eds videos helped me more than the paperwork. I guess the manuals need some (lots) of work - but ultimately its not a hard board to work things out yourself. Were not talking Kronos levels here.


Now - its not a perfect board, and I have my own frustrations. Usually this involves trying to do something that should be simple - not finding anything in the menus, then not finding anything in the manuals, then not finding anything online. Finally resorting to Roland Technical - to find its not supported.

Its happened a few times - but the one that springs to mind - The RD is built as a control board and performance board. I wanted to assign a particular function for real time control but it didnt have its own commend. NO problem (I thought) just assign the function to a CC command, then assign the controller to that CC as well - job done. errrr no. You cant assign ANTHING to a CC that isnt already assigned. Thats something thats been a basic function of keyboards for decades (evenon the odd, cheap one Ive owned in thepast)...... serious oversignt by Roland that one.

See the quick reference guide at http://forums.rolandclan.com/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=55409#p310668.

I started on a complete manual, but almost no one reads these anymore, as they prefer videos. So tried the QRG approach instead.

With a little help...?

As a new user I am also struggling to understand this beautiful instrument. And indeed, the manual is very basic, I think, so I learn so much from this forums and from videos.

One thing I still don’t understand, and maybe someone can help me with that:
Why is it that on my Roland, just after I reset it to factory settings, on the display beside of the label ‘note’ or ‘program’ there is the sign ‘edited’?