FAEbGBD:
Ah, now I get your speech software! LOL, well, that's just as cool to me. I was just curious, because I watched a program on Discovery where they featured some speech recognition software, and one of the engineers said something to the effect of "Basically, we're not anywhere near having quality speech recognition." I didn't think that technology could have advanced extremely rapidly in just a few years, but I was just checking to make sure I wasn't behind the times. That's really wicked that you're using the whole mouse/keyboard interface despite your blindness, and the way you learned how to work your XP--simply astounding! That's really inspiring, and I guess it just goes to show that you really can accomplish anything you want to do if you have the devotion to it.

To answer your question, I'm an undergraduate student (a junior) at the University of Georgia, which is located in Athens, Georgia. I love it here. This is a music-oriented town, and it's pretty diverse. Just this summer I went to see Boubacar Traoré who is a musician from Mali (located in somewhere in Africa). I thought it was wonderful that such a small town could pull in such an obscure (but wonderful) act.

One last thing: your file of "Amazing Grace" was simply fantastic!!!!! I absolutely love that song, and I'm a HUGE jazz fan as well as a closet country fan--I wish those other songs were available for download too! Where did you attend college, and did you receive music training there? Your chops are really great, man! Maybe we can work on getting more of your stuff out and available.

stigf:
After doing my research, I soon came to realize that the XP-60 and the XP-80 are essentially identical with the exception that the 80 features 76 keys and the 60 has 61 keys...oh, and the 80 would run me a couple hundred bucks more. It came down to the fact that the XP-60 had more bang-for-the-buck, so I opted for it. Also, I was really influenced to stick with Roland because I've been HIGHLY satisfied with my BOSS GT-5 Guitar Effects Processor. I knew from the manual for that what I was in for with the XP-60 (or rather, XP-80 manual), so I wasn't at all surprised when 70% of reviews said that the manual was complicated and not particularly helpful (which is a lie--Roland manuals are helpful if excercise patience with them). Anyway, thanks for the answer, as I wasn't sure where the XP-50 (which has been discontinued) fit into the grand scheme of things, and I guess it's a bit different. I just wish Roland had as many support docs for the 80/60 as it does for the 50...or was the 50 so problematic that they HAD to put all those support docs up for it? LOL.

Stalker:
Yeah, man, I thought somebody commissioned you to write a soundtrack for something of theirs. I actually purchased the Orchestral I expansion board because I intend to use the XP to produce the soundtrack to a 3D Animation by one of my friends. I may need your help in the future, since you're already experienced with soundtracks ;-) By the way, where in Germany do you live? I lived in Stuttgart for two years and my parents are now in Darmstadt. I love it over there!

Thanks, again, for the replies, guys!

Stalker:
I listened to quite a few samples as well. Now you just need to write the movie. Good stuff.

Bluesboy, I was a music major for 2 years at a college in South Dakota where I live. I quit after 2 years because I had the chance to go record my CD in Nashville, which is where that sound sample came from. We're hopefully getting set up to be able to order the CD online from the site, but we're not there yet.
Any of my more professional stuff like that could be made available for download; it's just the simpler stuff I work on at home that I'm not able to make available. The people who operate and put together my site aren't really interested in my half finished stuff and such. On the other hand, I don't want to make my whole CD available for free download either, especially since I'm trying to make a living as a musician.

FAEbGBD: Totally understandable. However, have you considered posting your songs on MP3.com? Especially ones you already have on your site? That way you can at least make some money everytime you get an MP3 play or download. People would dig it. It's a shame we can't hear your "half finished stuff" too.

By the way, can I just call you Rorry, instead of FAEbGBD? It's a lot easier to type.

Thanks a lot, really. But don't turn to much attention to me, this here is bluesboy's topic-Page .
bluesboy2003: I live in Bremen, quite in the north of Germany. I love the sea and wouldn't like to miss it. Unfortunately I've never been in Stuttgart or Darmstadt. At least an american has to tell me about these cities . Have You emigrated, or did Your parents?
By the way: my XP is not expanded at all! I am too avaricious to do that. That synth sounds very good, even when it's just the basic model.

Bluesboy, you haven't given us a link to any of your music. Have you got any? Also, you are an undergrad; what's your major? Music? Are you a guitar player as well as synthe player?

FAEbGBD is a nice jazz chord; that's all. If you would like to call me Rorry, just leave out one of the "r"s. It's only Rory.

Stalker:
Wow, man, Bremen! Since it's so far North, you must be getting about four hours of sunlight a day now! LOL, j/k. It does stay dark for so long up there, though. You have pretty mild weather in Bremen because it's nearby the ocean, don't you?

My father is in the US Military, so he is just stationed in Germany. We didn't immigrate there, although, this is my father's third time there, and I'm sure he wouldn't mind living there for the rest of his life.

And wow, I'm pleasantly surprised you got those sounds out of the onboard XP waveforms! Did you spend a lot of time working with them? I think I'm going to have to really work on some of these patches to get more suitable ones. This was also the case with the BOSS GT-5; for some reason, Roland doesn't allow their employees to spend any time working on the preset patches. I wish they would just give up putting preset patches on their stuff and just leave the room for more user patches. Oh well, I still love the company.

Rory:
Oops! I can't believe I misspelled your name! It's in huge letters on your website! Haha, who's the blind one now?
My major is currently biology. I came into college with the intention of becoming a physician, but I'm under serious reconsideration as to the course of my life. One is that I really don't seem to have the passion to become a doctor, even though I thought I wanted to be one. Another is the fact that the degree to which I get excited by music simply overwhelms the degree to which I'm interested in anything else. I have music in my head all day long; the moment I get bored of listening to my Endocrinology teacher ramble on about the physiological effects of aldosterone, I usually start listening to something in my head. It's somewhat annoying, actually. Oh, well, I take that back--I love music, but it's definitely "distracting" from other matters that I'm supposed to be doing.
Unfortunately, I'm nowhere near as good a player as I am a listener. In fact, sometimes I think I'm horrible. Looking back upon the not quite three years since I started playing guitar, I've come a long way; but definitely more in terms of appreciating and listening to music than being able to play it. Deciding my senior year in high school to go out and pick up a guitar was definitely a huge turning point in my life, and I probably would still be avidly on the track of premedicine.
I was somewhat forced to learn to play piano when I was a young kid, I think maybe, first through third grade, or so. But of course, me being a kid and not knowing how valuable that could have been in the future, I got upset with my teacher and quit piano. I probably got frustrated with practice and/or not being able to play things perfectly. Also, I'm sure it had a bit to do with sight-reading. I have astigmatism, and this becomes wholy apparent when I try to read music. I have difficulty telling whether notes are on a line or above/below it, and if that sharp is on the C note or if it's for the D note, and so on. When I was taking lessons, I would take my assigned songs, play them through once or twice with the sheet music, and then try and play it back from memory because it was much easier and I could execute it at a faster pace than I could read staff lines.
Anyway, after I quit, I didn't have much to do with music except always enjoying listening to it. Long story made short: I was really into Simon & Garfunkel my junior year in high school, and senior year I decided that I loved the sound of Paul Simon's guitar so much that I was going to learn to play one. Three years later I'm now in admiration of guitarists with mad chops and musicality: Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Jimi Hendrix, Peter Frampton, Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrell, Stanley Jordan, a whole list of players.
Unfortunately I don't have the practice schedule it takes to become one of these guys; and as much as I love them, I don't know if I would ever have what it takes to be in the big leagues and be a real musician. Oh well, that's enough of a life story.
I will say that despite my science oriented path of instruction, I did manage to sneak in a music theory class for non-music majors. It has been the most valuable course I have taken in my entire life. Unfortunately, it ended before we could even get into harmony, so now I have to go about learning that on my own. I was thinking about ordering the Berklee Music College series of harmony workbooks. I wish I could take more classes, but being a non-music major, that's all they'll let me have, and I understand, because the music school wants you to also be taking ear training courses and other cool classes (I'm sure you know).

So, what exactly is an FAEbGBD chord? I can't even analyze it, LOL. Looks like some very confused F7 with a G major stacked on top of it. Ugh, my brain hurts just looking at it. Why does jazz have to be so wonderful and yet so difficult. Oh well, I'll just leave the good stuff to you pros. Congratulations if you made it to the end of this post, and thanks for reading.

------------------

--bluesboy2003

Whoops.

"Deciding my senior year in high school to go out and pick up a guitar was definitely a huge turning point in my life, and I probably would still be avidly on the track of premedicine."

should instead read

"and I probably would still be avidly on the track of premedicine if it weren't for starting to play music again."

Sorry.

FAEbGBD is a F(11#)13. F being the root, a 3 Eb 7 G 9 B 11# D 13.

Your difficulties with reading music got me thinking about braille music. There was an individual who was very avid that I learn braille music. Thought it would open up such a new world for me. Well, I learned it, and hated it. I could learn by ear so much faster. The thing with braille music is that it all has to be memorized anyway, unless I could learn to read with my toes or tongue. That was infinitely more challenge than I wanted to undertake, and braille music was discarded.
In college I'd learn all my music by ear from CD or whatever. At private lessons then the professor and I would work out anything I'd misheard.

Ah! Right, the sharped eleventh. I forgot that jazzers like to raise it so that it fits in better (yeah, I know, that's not the technical explanation, but I never learned the why of it). LOL, I'd like to see someone do some braille music "sightreading" (I guess that's what you'd call it). You know, Wes Montgomery, my absolute favorite jazz guitarist, apparently couldn't read music at all, yet he had one of the greatest concepts of melody and harmony I've ever heard. I am constantly in awe of his work. I hope someday I can cultivate my knowledge of music and my physical chops to be able to be able to play the type of music he did. It's a shame he had to go. It seems like that happens to a lot of great musicians. Just as they begin to realize themselves, they get taken off the Earth. Oh well, I guess that's a lesson to us all to appreciate the time that we have.

Hi Bluesboy2003!
Yes, I live quite northern. Now we have sunlight from 8:30 AM to 5 PM. It's enough, in a few month this will change again to more light . But it's fantastic here, although some people do not like it because it's too rough. Bremen is situated on the same degree of latitude like Cape St Charles in Newfoundland. But WE have the advantage of the gulfstream .

Of course, US Army, why didn't I think about it??

I've heard by many people that the internal sounds of the XP would not be too good. I can't find anything wrong, these sounds are great. About 90% of my songs You've heard have been realized with factory presets, I did only change little. The newer songs contain a lot of new sounds that I did find in the net. Now I think the preset sounds in my user bank have decreased to less than 20 out of 128 sounds. There are pretty awesome sounds in the net. I can send You my sysex-file, so You can put these sounds on Your board, too. There are some freeware programs that allow You to play these sysex files via MIDI onto Your synth. I can send You an adress to such an editor software, if You want.

[This message has been edited by Stalker (edited 11-19-2001).]