Hi I'm new with a new Ax Edge and having a few sound issues.

[Chickintheband]

I"m running into a lot of issues trying to get the sounds I need from this keytar. How do you import new sounds into the editor? Am I limited to what Roland offers? I cannot for the life of me figure this out. There are so few ax edge resources. I do not wish to have my keytar hooked up to my module while I'm performing because that defeats the purpose of having one. It also peeves me that you have to use a program slot to save your sound creations and keyboard splits.

For such an expensive instrument and so many promises, there should be a user bank and places to store custom sounds. They need to make this easier to program.

How do I get my own sounds on this keytar?

 

[anotherscott]

I"m running into a lot of issues trying to get the sounds I need from this keytar. How do you import new sounds into the editor? Am I limited to what Roland offers? I cannot for the life of me figure this out.

Like the majority of keyboards, especially at under $1k, you cannot import totally new playable instrument sounds (samples) of your own. But you can save your own variations of the sounds that are already in it. Roland also offers a bank of additional sounds at http://axial.roland.com/articles/ax-edge_sound_collection_from_ax-synth/which are approximate recreations of some of the patches from their previous keytar, the AX-Synth. At this point, I believe those are the only "new" sounds you can import into the editor. Other than that, Roland has announced that the AX-Edge will be updated to support program compatibility with their various Zencore based keyboards, though we don't yet know exactly what that will and won't let us do.

I do not wish to have my keytar hooked up to my module while I'm performing because that defeats the purpose of having one.

It doesn't necessarily defeat the purpose of a keytar, because there are ways to connect to a module (or an iPad, etc.) wirelessly.

It also peeves me that you have to use a program slot to save your sound creations and keyboard splits...there should be a user bank and places to store custom sounds.

There are 1296 factory tones, which are permanently stored in the unit. However, you can edit them, and save your own variations as User tones (based on the manual for the editor). I do not know how many User tone locations there are.

There are 320 factory programs (32 in each of ten categories), which are programmed from (a small subset of) those 1296 tones. These are rewritable (user) locations. Keep the ones you think you'll use, and replace the others with variations of your own. This is an age old argument, whether companies should fill all the available user writable slots with programs (meaning you have to erase something to save something of your own), or if it's better for them to leave a bunch of them blank (which means they provide fewer possible keepable programs for you to choose from, but you can save something without erasing anything). But it is a near certainty that you won't actually care about all 32 factory programs in each category... though each of us might pick a different subset of those 32 to keep! So make note of the ones you really like and would use, and think of all the rest as your available user slots. Really, that's better than if they had provided 16 programs in each category and left 16 slots free, because the 16 you'd choose might be different from the 16 I'd choose.

They need to make this easier to program.

Yes, most users wish for a better editor than the one they have.

 

[Chickintheband]

It doesn't necessarily defeat the purpose of a keytar, because there are ways to connect to a module (or an iPad, etc.) wirelessly.

How do I do that? I don't think I could get my old Korg M3 to hook up wirelessly to my ax. I do have an ipad and iphone. I tried to use a midi cord and I cant seem to figure out how to get the midi from my M3 to play on the ax. I'll be calling Roland today to try to figure some things out. I"ve never had a keytar before and I'm using very old tech. Where I'm stuck is, I want a gong sound on my keytar for walk like an egyptian. The rest of the sounds I can figure out with the ax. I'm in a trio with no guitar. The ax has much better guitar sounds than my Korg M3. Thank you for any help there's a lot to learn

 

[anotherscott]

I don't think I could get my old Korg M3 to hook up wirelessly to my ax.

There are adapters, but since you're learning, I'd suggest start by just getting it to work with the hard wire you already have before dealing with the additional expense and complication of wireless adapters.

I tried to use a midi cord and I cant seem to figure out how to get the midi from my M3 to play on the ax.

First, make sure you get your FROM and TO terminology/concepts right, or else you will experience endless confusion. It sounds like you want to use the keytar to trigger a gong sound that resides in your M3, correct? In that case the MIDI (instructions from your key-depressions that tell something to make a sound) will be going OUT FROM they keytar and IN TO the Korg, which receives those instructions and generates the gong sound (which then comes from its own audio outputs, not the audio outputs of the keytar). Make sure that's perfectly clear before going further.

To wire that up, use your MIDI cable to connect the MIDI OUT jack on the Edge to the MIDI IN jack of your Korg. Call up the gong sound on the M3 in its Program mode, and if all the MIDI settings of both boards are still at their default settings, you will probably hear the gong out of the M3 when you play the correct key on your Edge. (This may involve shifting the octaves your Edge is set to play on, if the gong sound is out of the range of the default 49-key mapping of the Edge. You can also use the mapping capabilities of the M3 to create a Program with that gong sound on whatever key you want, that would be a bit trickier, depending on how well versed you are with the functions of your M3.) By default, the keys you strike on the Edge will transmit on at least MIDI channel 1 (though they may transmit on other channels as well); and in its Program mode, by default, the M3 should respond to channel 1. So hopefully this much works!

The next part gets trickier. You want to use the Edge for more than just playing the M3's sound. At other points in the song, you're going to want to play internal Edge sounds too. If you don't need to play Edge and M3 sounds simultaneously, you can make the desired M3 and Edge sounds two different Programs/Favorites on the Edge. If you want to be able to play the Edge and M1 sounds simultaneously, you'll need to create a single Program on the Edge that triggers the M3 only on some keys while playing an internal Edge sound on others. This can all be done. The Roland side of it is pretty much described under the section of the manual titled, "Using the AX-Edge as a Master Keyboard." The Korg side will require some setting adjustments, too. Specifically, you need to settle on a MIDI channel for the M3 that you will use when you want to trigger its sounds from the Edge (the channel settings of the two sides of this communication need to match), while ALSO making sure the M3 does NOT play at OTHER times (since the Edge may transmit on multiple channels simultaneously).

This should give you enough to chew on for a while. ;-)