How do you efficiently change sounds on the S3000 live?

[Donkeys]

Played my first gig with the S3000 yesterday.  It sounded great, but I'm concerned with how practical this keyboard is for playing live.  I mostly need it for  piano, EP and clav.  I set up Banks in Registration - each containing variations of each instrument.  But just say I play piano on one song, EP on the second, and piano again on the third.  Do I have to hit Bank 24 times to come back around to the Bank A or is there a way to step back?  Eventually, I just made a Bank with the three instruments in it, but lost the variations.  Also, what if I want to efficiently get to more than four sounds?

 

How are any of you setting up your sounds live?  Does the app provide better access to changing sounds?

[Rod Tompkins]

In Registration Mode you can use the + and - buttons to move in either direction. Hitting + and - together takes you to bank 1.

 

[Donkeys]

Thanks.  I'll try that.

[Brad Saucier]

42 minutes ago, rodmusic said:

In Registration Mode

 

Just to clarify, because I've seen people ask how to exit registrations several times in the past. "Registration" is not a "mode".  Registrations are simply a "save state" memory system.  They save simply save the current state of the keyboard at that moment in time.  

[Rod Tompkins]

Registration is indeed a "mode" or state on the PX-S3000 in the sense that when you are in it you can do nothing else but save or select registrations. You must leave this Registration mode via the function button to do anything else via the touch panel. Tone, Rhythm, Effects, etc require you to leave this mode or state to make change to the sounds or functions. Then you have to go back to the Registration mode to save your changes in a Registration. This is one key way the PX-S3000 is different from the other PX units, and why many find it more difficult to use on the gig with out the app.

[Rod Tompkins]

14 hours ago, Donkeys said:

Also, what if I want to efficiently get to more than four sounds?

 

How are any of you setting up your sounds live?  Does the app provide better access to changing sounds?

 

There are 24 banks with 4 registrations in each. Like you mentioned, keeping related registrations you might want to use within the same song in the same bank is a good idea. You don't want to be trying to change banks and registrations on the fly if you can help it. If you want to go from one registration to another in a different bank it requires changing the bank first, then selecting the new registration. This can be a little tedious, especially since registrations can't be named, so you just have to remember the bank and number for what you need. So far, I haven't been using a lot of different sounds on my gigs, a couple different pianos, basses, organs and strings, so I don't have much trouble remembering which registration does what. I tend to use several registrations on a lot of different songs. I've also been noting registration info in my set lists and in songs in my lyrics app. I can always fall back on this as I start to get more registrations than I can keep track of easily.

 

The app is great for editing the current state of the 3000, selecting Tones, Effects, Splits & Layers, Knob and Pedal assignments, and more. But, your changes have to be stored in a Registration slot on the S3000, or they will be lost as soon as you call up a different registration. You can't select registrations from the app, only from the front panel of the keyboard, so the app will be of no help for that on the gig. That would be an awesome function to have in the app, especially if you could name the registrations and easily move/copy them into groups.

[ewall]

I'm using my PX S-3000 for mostly solo piano and duo gigs with acoustic guitar.  It's just what I needed for those.  

 

I will I'll be using it for some jobs with my blues band and occasionally a cover band. 

I have 4 banks set up for this. 

Bank 1.  4 different acoustic pianos 

Bank 2.  3 Rhodes 1. Wurly (60's ep)

Bank 3.  4 Clavs

Bank 4.  4 Pianos with Layers (string, pad, ep, synth)

 

Anything more and it will become hard to keep straight without the ability to name and organize registrations.  

Luckily  I have a Nord Stage 3 Compact and will use that to do the heavy lifting

(organs, synth, Wurly, horns, etc) as an upper keyboard.  

 

This is is an amazing keyboard and a great value but it's not going to be a top candidate for a Stage Piano for people who need many sounds and set-ups to get through their gigs.  

 

If someone ever designs an app we can connect to and use it to Name, Save, Organize and Recall Registrations there would be many grateful owners and even more customers.   

[Chandler Holloway]

Quote

You can't select registrations from the app, only from the front panel of the keyboard, so the app will be of no help for that on the gig. That would be an awesome function to have in the app, especially if you could name the registrations and easily move/copy them into groups.

 

For clarity’s sake I will refer to registrations saved on the S3000 itself as “PX-regs” and registrations saved in the app as “app-regs”.

 

You can select registrations from the app, just not the registrations you’ve saved directly to the S3000’s onboard memory. When you first enter the Piano Remote Controller, you are prompted to either “send settings from piano to app” (this stores S3000’s current values to one of 4 “quick-select” app-regs) or “send settings from app to piano” (sends one of 4 “quick-select” app-regs to the S3000 via MIDI sysex commands). These app-regs only exist on your mobile device’s memory, and as such, can only be accessed when you have the app connected (unless you manually save them as a PX-reg via the front panel after loading them in).

 

If you don’t want to load in an app-reg upon opening the Piano Remote Controller, you can just select “Previous” which will take you to the Remote Controller menus while preserving your previously selected settings. If you want to use the touch screen menus on the app to configure settings and THEN save an app reg, configure everything as needed and then press the downward arrow icon at the top of the screen and you will be prompted with a similar save screen as when you enter the Remote Controller menu, except without the “previous” option now.

 

If you save more than 4 registrations within the app, you will run out of “quick-select” slots in the Piano Remote Controller, at which point you will need to load in a previously saved app-reg so it can be quick-selected within the menu. You can do this via the Files app on iOS; they are saved inside the Chordana Play for Piano inside the AppxParam folder. These files can be renamed for clarity’s sake, although the labels won’t appear within the app so it’s probably not the best solution for your concern.

 

With or without the names, that still only offers you 4 registrations to choose when selecting from the app, which is limiting for obvious reasons. A possible solution I would offer is to connect the app and then leave it on the tone screen in the Piano Remote Controller. Now when you change registrations on the S3000 via the front panel, the Tone information on the app screen will change to reflect the values saved in your PX-reg. It’s still not possible to name your regs, but at least now you can see exactly which tones make up your registration and what layers they are assigned to, which may make them easier to identify (the small screen on the front panel can only display one layer’s information at a time). If you end up using a lot of the same tones in your regs, but you vary things up with unique DSP/knob effect configurations, you might be better off leaving the Effect screen up since that will display more identifiable information than the Tone screen.

 

14 hours ago, rodmusic said:

Registration is indeed a "mode" or state on the PX-S3000 in the sense that when you are in it you can do nothing else but save or select registrations. You must leave this Registration mode via the function button to do anything else via the touch panel.

 

Yes and no. Selecting and saving different PX-regs via the touch panel will lock you out of other touch panel controls, but I wouldn’t go as far as saying that Registrations are a mode unto themselves. There is a very convenient way to switch between PX-regs without having to use the touch panel at all, which brings me to @ewall‘s original question.

 

The most efficient way to switch between registrations within the same bank on a gig is to attach a pedal and enable “sequential pedal recall” to cycle through your registrations hands free. Go into the Functions menu, scroll over to Registration and hit enter to go into the Registration settings sub-menu. In here, select “Seq Pedal Recall” and press enter again. Now select the jack you plugged your “reg switching pedal” into (either the damper jack or the exp/assignable jack) and set it to either Inc or Dec. When it’s set to Inc, a short tap of the pedal will advance to the next consecutive registration in the bank and a long press will switch to the previous registration in the bank (e.g. short tap on Registration 1 will pull up Registration 2, long press on Registration 4 will pull up Registration 3). Setting it to Dec is just the opposite, short taps go backward and long presses go forward. See page EN-42 in the manual for more info.

 

This is especially convenient if you need to change tones and effects in the middle of a song, as you don’t need to take your hands off the keys at all when you change regs with the pedal. If you have the full SP-34 3-pedal unit option, you can use the smaller SP-3 damper pedal as the reg switcher, but if you don’t want to upgrade to the SP-34, you can always use the extra assignable/expression pedal jack to handle reg cycling and use the SP-3 as the standard damper pedal (although you’d give up the ability to use an expression pedal in this case, so the SP-34 is going to provide you the most versatility).

 

What I would recommend is using one bank of Regs per song in the setlist. I’ve personally never needed to use more than 4 unique registrations within a single song anyway, and keeping all my set-ups within the same bank means I can switch between them mid-song using pedal cycling without any interruptions. If a song doesn’t need more than say, 2 registrations in it, just save duplicates of those registrations in the empty unused slots to be safe. That way if you accidentally hit the reg cycle pedal, you will still cycle onto one of the sounds that matches the song you’re playing (or you’ll at least be one pedal press away from switching back to whatever it was you were using previously).

 

I’d imagine you’re going to have time to press a few buttons in between songs, so once the song ends, you can use the downtime to advance to the next bank of Regs and call up the first registration you need to use for the upcoming song. Switching between banks cannot be done hands free with the pedal, so it’s best to avoid having to do that in the middle of a song anyway. Then play the song, and afterwards, switch to the next bank in line and select your next registration within that bank, and so on and so on. As long as you have fewer than 24 songs in your set list, you shouldn’t run in to any problems. If you know the setlist ahead of time, you can even organize your banks sequentially such that Song 1 corresponds to Bank 1, Song 2 for Bank 2, etc etc. to make it even easier to transition between them during your set. Keep a notecard handy that lists all your songs and their corresponding banks just to be safe, though; last second changes to the setlist are bound to happen so you may need to select a specific song’s bank unexpectedly in which case that info would be very helpful. I’d say that remembering 1 number (Bank #) instead of 2 (Bank #-Reg #) is easier in the end, though, so I generally recommend following the convention of 1 Song for each Bank for most folks.

 

This might seem like it would be kind of wasteful in terms of memory space, but if you use up all 24 banks, you can always load in new registration banks via USB flash drive, and these banks can be named while they are still on the flash drive (the name of the .RBK file will be displayed in the Media menu, but once they are loaded in as a PX-reg, the name disappears).

 

Hope this helps!

[Brad Saucier]

My previous post was really in reference to users who asked for an exit button to leave a registration, to leave the current layer settings, split settings, etc.... to get to a simplified "tone mode".  To that question, there is no specific exit button for it. Although, on some models (like PX-560) there is a grand piano button that sets up the keyboard for a grand piano experience, which I suppose can be thought of as "exiting" a registration.  

 

[Rod Tompkins]

5 hours ago, Brad Saucier said:

My previous post was really in reference to users who asked for an exit button to leave a registration, to leave the current layer settings, split settings, etc.... to get to a simplified "tone mode".  To that question, there is no specific exit button for it. Although, on some models (like PX-560) there is a grand piano button that sets up the keyboard for a grand piano experience, which I suppose can be thought of as "exiting" a registration.  

 

 

Understood. I think you misunderstood my reference to Registration Mode. I wasn't referring to a registration itself as a mode, but rather "Registration Mode" being the state the keyboard is switched to via the function button so you can select and save registrations, just as "Tone Mode" is where you select your tones. Along that line of thinking, tapping the function button steps through the Tone, Rhythm, Control and Registration "modes" (maybe you have a better term) that you need to move between to set up and save the 3000's many settings that comprise a registration and then save them as registrations for later recall. It is because the 3000 doesn't have dedicated buttons for these various states and the screen shows so little info in each view that you have to switch between these 4 different states. Of course, there's also the Function Mode (Casio's term) which is another adventure all its own. If you can think of a better term to describe those 4 states of the touchscreen buttons and screen, let me know. I'm calling them modes until then.

[Rod Tompkins]

9 hours ago, Chandler Holloway said:

The most efficient way to switch between registrations within the same bank on a gig is to attach a pedal and enable “sequential pedal recall” to cycle through your registrations hands free.

 

That is a great idea especially since you can move forward and back into the adjacent banks, not just within the same bank. You can use short and long presses to indicate the direction you want to go, so you only need one simple footswitch. Pretty cool feature! If you used just 4 or 5 banks on your gigs, it would be a pretty quick way to get around to all your registrations.

 

I'm not able to use the sequential pedal recall method because I already use the Damper and Expression/Assignable jacks to control Rhythm Start/Stop and Fill via the SP-34 triple pedal unit and a cable adapter. If I had my wish, the SP-34 pedals would have been designed to be assignable in the OS. Then I would use the 2 pedal jacks for expression and registration step recall. 

[Yamahacp70]

Many thanks  is it possible to access psx3000 reg memories  banks and areas   With. Sound and mostly important 

 key transpose.  Directly from the on song app,  via midi  ie onsong midi out  so each song on on song access s

 the right tone and key