INTEGRA-7 by Instruments: Getting more out of your Synthesizer

INTEGRA-7 by Instruments

Getting more out of your Synthesizer

By Michael Schlüter

Suprion Verlag (Hrsg.)

Motto

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.

Attributed to Albert Einstein

Preface

This books helps you to get more out of your Roland INTEGRA-7 synthesizer. It helps you, to recognize, to find and to access its capabilities, which otherwise probably will not show up easily for you.

Overviews for tones, sounds, instrument categories and sound banks makes it easier for you to understand the INTEGRA-7's bank collections.

This book improves your way of planning and finding desired instruments inside the INTEGRA-7 for your music. It also helps you using the appropriate subset of up to 4 Expansion Sounds. This way you avoid running out of banks.

The INTEGRA-7 organizes its tones/sounds by instrument categories, which are scattered across banks. Two tables order these by alphabet and by frequency, so you can spot bottlenecks more easily, e.g. from having to use more banks than the INTEGRA-7 allows you to. Several chapters list all banks for a given instrument category, e.g. for acoustic pianos, so you see at a glance which banks provide your desired instrument; you may also find more alternatives than you thought you had.

From the preset overview you'll know which sounds are always available from the INTEGRA-7, i.e. without prior loading Extension Sounds.

As one of its key elements this book offers precompiled MIDI Bank Select messages and one dedicated sysex message for you, which reduces errors during MIDI-programming of the INTEGRA-7: just copy said byte-string.

Examples illustrate, what you can get out of the various sections.

The bibliography gives you access to relevant documents and programs for sending MIDI-messages.

Being an e-book you take advantage of your e-book readers note- and search-features. E.g. placing or taking notes can assist your selection process of concrete instruments for a given music project. E.g. its search feature lets you discover hidden tonal treasures inside the INTEGRA-7.

Technically speaking this book uses so called responsive design, so you should be able to read it on a wide range of display sizes from mobile to stationary devices, anytime, anywhere.

Wishing you success and fun.

Suprion Verlag

Introduction

The purpose of this book is to find and call instruments more easily from Roland's INTEGRA-7. It intends to be of practical value to the electronic musician.

Background

The Roland INTEGRA-7 was introduced in 2012 [Rola12] and still is in demand at the time of this writing. The INTEGRA-7 is a versatile synthesizer packed with sounds. However, accessing them can be overwhelming.

Probably the most common approach to call a specific instrument or sound is to use the front panel and its menus to navigate sounds, e.g. by category. However, this front-panel approach tends to become inconvenient after a while.

Roland provides two versatile editors [Inte00], [Rola00]. Both allow to modify existing sounds and to create new sounds. Though both editors provide more flexibility and instant access, it is still hard to get an overview of all the INTEGRA-7's capabilities.

Problems

E.g. when currently using the iOS-version you can select from the many categories by icons, but the instruments listed still come unsorted. Well, you can load each one rapidly, but are not better of than through the front-panel navigation.

Moreover, instruments you'd like to use almost always are scattered across all banks. Did you know the INTEGRA-7 provides a total of 6.023 tones/sounds, categorized into 36 groups? When planning for instrumentation or orchestration for your music you probably want to know, which instruments you can use from several banks, how they sound together, where to find them and how to activate them with low effort.

Roland provides a Sound List [Inte12b] for this purpose, giving detailed information for the MIDI-programmer. However, this document is structured by presets and expansion sounds, or simply banks. For a given bank it's sometimes hard to know, which instruments are available.

That's what this book was made for

So the idea of this book is to make the instruments easier to access by category for you, to ease your planning. So it will give you:

a summarized view on the categories

a brief overview about the tones

some hints on loading banks

a very large chapter about each instrument category.

The first one will provide you with keywords you can use, e.g., when searching the Sound List [Inte12b].

The second one describes Roland's intention for each expansion sound. You can find it at the beginning of the tables given in the Sound List [Inte12b], but it's easy to overlook there. So here the information is presented in a more evident and compact format. Use this section as a general selection tool, which expansion sounds to load.

The third one recalls loading of Extension Sounds via the front-panel and provides the required sysex message for you, if you want to assign this task to your sequencer.

The fourth one helps you to answer questions about the INTEGRA-7 like:

which sounds do I have, say for an ‘Organ’?

which expansion sounds do I have to load, if any?

what's the tones/sounds number, when dialing through the front-panel?

which MIDI-string to send via a sequencer for quicker access?

May this book be helpful while you plan, organize and create music involving the Roland INTEGRA-7 Sound Module.

Michael Schlüter, Buchholz i.d.N. , Fall 2020

Finding your instruments

This comprehensive chapter is intended to make selection and calling of your desired sounds more easy and more reliable. Sub-chapter Categories gives you information, about:

which categories the INTEGRA-7 uses

how many instruments are in each category

which categories host the most instruments.

The Tone sub-chapter gives you some more insight into structures, presets and banks to be loaded. Distinguishing between drum- and non-drum-instruments, it also provides a more compact summary of the banks characteristics and intentions, as found in the Sound List [Inte12b].

Finally, chapter Instruments by category provides you with the promised information in detail. Its structure follows category/bank/tone.

Categories

The 6.023 tones are categorized into 36 groups, spread across several banks. So if you know the category, you can e.g. scan the Sound List [Inte12b] more easily by a search.

The tables below list the categories of the instruments or tones inside the INTEGRA-7, both by alphabet and by frequency.

Please note: The tones or instruments names can repeat part of a categories name. I.e. when you search for a category in this book, you may find more results returned than indicated here. E.g. searching for phrase finds many matches, while there is only one instrument in this category, and 4 tone name contains the word phrase.

Alphabetic order

Example 1 - Instrument categories

When combining an acoustic bass (Ac.Bass, 27) and an acoustic piano (Ac.Piano, 183), you probably want to select an interesting bass before focusing on the best piano sound for your music.

Ordered by frequency

Example 2 - Instrument frequencies

You have plenty of Synth-related sounds to chose from, while there is only one instrument in the Phrase category.

Tones - intentions and features

The INTEGRA-7 structures its tones into presets and expansion tones [Inte12a]. Presets are available at any time, so you can hear them anytime. While you need to load expansion tones from the expansion sounds first to listen to them.

You can load up to 4 expansion sounds at the same time.

Tone presets

With the starting page in the Sound List [Inte12b] given in brackets, the INTEGRA-7 provides presets as:

GM2 Drum Kit - PCM Drum Kit (p. 27)

GM2 Tone - PCM Synth Tone (p. 25)

PCM Drum Kit (p. 24)

PCM Synth Tone (p. 16)

SuperNATURAL Acoustic Tone (p. 4)

SuperNATURAL Drum Kit (p. 16)

SuperNATURAL Synth Tone (p. 6)

I.e. all banks starting with Ex or SRX have to be loaded beforehand if you want to listen to them.

Expansion tones

The Sound List [Inte12b] briefly describes the expansion sets. Please check out those short texts at the beginning of the tables in said document. Find a more concise summary here.

To make these sets more accessible they are split into drum- and non-drum sounds in this book. Please note: some sounds do provide both drum- and non-drum sounds.

Drum sounds

ExPCM HQ GM2 + HQ PCM Sound - PCM drum kit (p. 57)

GM2 set

high-quality sounds

high-quality sounds of the past

covering a broad range, from natural acoustic sounds to stage-ready synth sounds

SRX-01 Dynamic Drum Kits - PCM drum kit (p. 30)

sounds using top-level studio technology

deliver punch and reality

suitable for video and music production

SRX-03 Studio SRX - PCM drum kit (p. 32)

performance-ready sounds

keyboard, guitar, bass, brass, sax, flute, choir, synth, drum, and percussion

carefully selected collection of richly expressive tones by first-rate musicians

SRX-05 Supreme Dance - PCM drum kit (p. 38)

extensive collection of the standard sounds

needed in dance music, including techno, house, hip hop, trance, 2-step, and drum 'n' bass

collection provides sounds that can be broadly used in each of these styles

SRX-06 Complete Orchestra - PCM drum kit (p. 42)

offers all the standard orchestral sounds

also includes various choir and vocal phrases

can be used for orchestral arrangements, film scoring, and more

SRX-07 Ultimate Keys - PCM drum kit (p. 46)

includes various piano, electric piano, organ, clavi, and vintage synth sounds

provides high-quality bass and drum sounds of famous musicians

widely useful for pop music

SRX-08 Platinum Trax - PCM drum kit (p. 51)

numerous sounds for dance music (techno, house, hip hop, trance, drum n bass, breakbeats, RnB)

includes phrase loops, synth bass, synth sounds, various hits and stabs, and vocal phrases

SRX-09 World Collection - PCM drum kit (p. 55)

provides a variety of string, wind, and percussive ethnic instruments from around the world

Africa, Asia, the Middle East, South America, North America, Australia, and Europe

Example 3 - Special banks

Searching for a drum set used in pop music, this bank may be all you need: SRX-07 Ultimate Keys - PCM drum kit.

Non-drum sounds

ExPCM HQ GM2 + HQ PCM Sound - synth tone (p. 57)

GM2 set

high-quality sounds

high-quality sounds of the past

covering a broad range, from natural acoustic sounds to stage-ready synth sounds

ExSN1 Ethnic (p. 28)

SuperNATURAL expansion tones

typical ethnic instruments from Asia, Africa, and Europe

provides distinctive behavior and performance expressions of ethnic instruments

ExSN2 Wood Winds (p. 28)

SuperNATURAL expansion tones

includes an even broader variety of woodwind type instruments

useful in orchestral music and jazz

ExSN3 Session (p. 28)

SuperNATURAL expansion tones

electric guitar and bass

electric guitar sounds range from clean jazz to heavy distortion

bass sounds also cover a variety of musical styles

ExSN4 A.Guitar (p. 29)

SuperNATURAL expansion tones

various acoustic guitars

ranging from 12-string guitars to ukuleles and mandolins

covering a range of variations for each

ExSN5 Brass (p. 29)

SuperNATURAL expansion tones

providing an even greater variety of brass instruments

crucial to orchestral music and jazz

ExSN6 SFX (p. 29)

sounds using top-level studio technology

deliver punch and reality

suitable for video and music production

SRX-01 Dynamic Drum Kits - synth tone (p. 30)

sounds using top-level studio technology

deliver punch and reality

suitable for video and music production

SRX-02 Concert Piano (p. 31)

captures the sounds of a single concert grand piano, ranging from delicate pianissimo to powerful fortissimo

includes two types of microphone placement---clearly defined close-miked sounds, and distant miking that captures the ambience---each recorded in stereo at the four dynamic levels p, mp, f, and ff

traditional piano sounds suitable for classical music

includes piano layered with other sounds such as strings or pads

includes split sounds with a bass tone in the lower register

SRX-03 Studio SRX - synth tone (p. 32)

performance-ready sounds

keyboard, guitar, bass, brass, sax, flute, choir, synth, drum, and percussion

carefully selected collection of richly expressive tones by first-rate musicians

SRX-04 Symphonique Strings (p. 33)

high-quality string tones

useful with classical, rock, pop, dance, and film scores

stereo-sampled full sections

individually recorded violin, viola, cello, and contrabass sections

SRX-05 Supreme Dance - synth tone (p. 35)

extensive collection of the standard sounds

needed in dance music, including techno, house, hip hop, trance, 2-step, and drum 'n' bass

collection provides sounds that can be broadly used in each of these styles

SRX-06 Complete Orchestra - synth tone (p. 38)

offers all the standard orchestral sounds

also includes various choir and vocal phrases

can be used for orchestral arrangements, film scoring, and more

SRX-07 Ultimate Keys - synth tone (p. 42)

includes various piano, electric piano, organ, clavi, and vintage synth sounds

provides high-quality bass and drum sounds of famous musicians

widely useful for pop music

SRX-08 Platinum Trax - synth tone (p. 47)

numerous sounds for dance music (techno, house, hip hop, trance, drum bass, breakbeats, RB)

includes phrase loops, synth bass, synth sounds, various hits and stabs, and vocal phrases

SRX-09 World Collection - synth tone (p. 51)

provides a variety of string, wind, and percussive ethnic instruments from around the world

Africa, Asia, the Middle East, South America, North America, Australia, and Europe

SRX-10 Big Brass Ensemble (p. 55)

provides numerous realistic brass sounds

can be broadly used in any style, including pop, rock, classical, and film scores

includes Pop Brass (Bb Tp x2, Tb, Tnr Sax), Trumpet (Bb Tp x4), C Trumpet (C Tp x4), Trombone (Tb x4), and Horn (Hrn x4) sections, in addition to Solo Tuba

captures that instrument's performance techniques such as falls, shakes, and rips

SRX-11 Complete Piano (p. 56)

high-quality piano sounds

useful from pop and jazz, in fil scores and classical

realistic and high-quality grand piano sound that has been sampled at four velocity-switched levels for each of the 88 keys

SRX-12 Classic EPs (p. 57)

provides high-quality electric piano and clavi sounds

which became indispensable to numerous musical styles, including RnB, hip hop, pop, and jazz

electric pianos have been recorded at four velocity-switched levels for each individual note of three different classic 73-key and 64-key models

clavi sounds capture all four pickup settings as well as mute on/off settings

Example 4 - Banks for film music

Looking for non-drum tones suitable for creating film music may draw your attention to:

SRX-04 Symphonique Strings

SRX-06 Complete Orchestra - synth tone

SRX-10 Big Brass Ensemble.

Loading banks

Unless you select a tone from the presets, you have to load the bank which hosts the tone. You can do it in two ways:

using the front-panel

sending a MIDI sysex-message.

Loading via front-panel

To load an Extension Sound into one of the 4 virtual slots manually just follow the Owners Manual [Inte12a] :

press the MENU button

use the wheel or the cursor to select EXPANSION

press the ENTER button

assign Extensions Sounds to 1 - 4 virtual slots A - D.

Loading via sysex

According to [Wond18] you can send a sysex message, i.e. this byte-string in generalized form:

F0 41 10 00 00 64 11 0F 00 30 00 aa bb cc dd F7, with aa - dd being bytes taken from the table below, controling slots A - D, respectively.

To understand this byte-string let's examine its components:

F0 signals the start of the sysex message, while F7 terminates it

41 10 00 00 64 11 initiates a Data Request 1 (RQ1) command, according to [Midi12], where 10 is the default device number

0F 00 30 00 is an entry in the Parameter Address Map, which is unfortunately undocumented in [Midi12] - it seems to request loading up to 4 Extension Sounds

this request has to provide 4 bytes, aa bb cc dd

according to [Wond18] an extra byte with the calculated check-sum is not necessary, which is also verified by the author.

Please note: Loading the ExPCM bank still occupies all 4 virtual slots, i.e. any content there will be overwritten.

Please note: Loading via sysex also takes some time.

Example 5 - Loading two banks by a sequencer

To load SRX-07 into slot A, and ExSN1 into slot C, while turning off slots B and D, send this sysex-message:

F0 41 10 00 00 64 11 0F 00 30 00 07 00 0D 00 F7

Instruments by category

Introduction

This chapter will be the most comprehensive one. It structures excerpts from the Sound List [Inte12b] this way:

category (chapter)

tones (sub chapter)

tone names, i.e. instruments (table).

The tables will list:

the tones name according to the Sound List [Inte12b]

its starting page in the Sound List [Inte12b]

its tone number

a compound byte string (hex), which you can copy and send directly to the INTEGRA-7.

In the header-line a tones category is repeated in brackets for your convenience: else it's easy to get lost in the tables. This way you can see at a glance, in which category you are.

To send the byte-string given in column snd use programs or hardware like, e.g.:

SendSX [Send19]

sendmidi [Rele19]

Pure Data [Pure20]

any suitable software or hardware sequencer

any suitable DAW.

You need to load the tones bank as described beforehand to hear the tone after sending the byte-string as MIDI-message to your INTEGRA-7. If you don't load a bank, you won't hear anything though after submitting the byte-string the INTEGRA-7 displays the correct instrument.

Example 6 - Finding instruments in categories

Say you look for an organ. Going to the organ-chapter, the Organ-table tells you, there are 11 banks to chose from.

Say the tones name Jazzy B sounds interesting to you and you want to try it. The table tells you it's in the bank called SRX-07 Ultimate Keys - synth tone. So you load it as described earlier.

When using the INTEGRA-7's front panel for this bank, you know from the table it's number is 102 and you dial it in.

If you use a sequencer instead, just submit B0 00 5D 20 0B C0 67 to INTEGRA-7, as the table tells you.

The byte-string snd

The byte-string snd listed in the instrument tables:

consists of two BS-messages (starting with 0xB0) for MIDI channel 1 and one PC-message (starting with 0xC0) [Bell09]

the BS-messages are combined

both address the bank to be selected

the hex-value of PC has to be decremented by 1 to target the correct tone.

To assign an instrument to other MIDI channels n, just:

replace B0 by Bn (see table below)

and replace C0 by Cn (see table below).