8mm Forum: Roland JW50 Keyboard woes ....

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Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on March 22, 2011, 01:58 PM:

It is a sad thing when a keyboard begins to die!

I am in the process of putting the last touches on a song I'm going to market later this year, and my keyboard has decided not to save the songs on the floppy drive anymore.

The Roland JW50 is a very nice older model keyboard which to this day (being I believe, around twenty years old) has some fairly impressive sound effects and different instrument parts (I love the violins, cello's and other orchestral stringed instruments on that board), but the first thing that went on my first Roland of this same model was, you guessed it, the floppy drive.

The thing that frustrating is that it's so close to being torn apart and mixed down, beiing ready for the vocals.

Oh well, I just wanted to vent on it. Any other musicians run into that kind of thing?

Posted by Bill Phelps (Member # 1431) on March 22, 2011, 08:12 PM:

Hi Osi...I feel your pain. I also play guitar, bass and drums. I have a Yamaha 4 track cassette recorder that I have had for 20 years now. I have used it all along recording original music basically for my own enjoyment. Over the years I have made a few CD's that went out among family and friends but nothing serious. Recently, my cousin who is a singer songwriter and I have been working on a disc of new songs and the ol 4 track is starting to get fussy. Not coming on, shutting off amongst other things. We did finish the album and we are real proud of it. I did mix manually on the 4 track to tape for the feeling I wanted and then I did dump all the individual tracks on to cool edit pro and mixed everything digital. The recordings do have a nice anolog sound though. But I don't know how long the Yamaha will last, although it is STILL working It has been put through the paces and it has been good to me. I have hours and hours of jams. Sorry that you lost your song! [Frown]

Bill

Posted by Bart Smith (Member # 780) on March 23, 2011, 05:31 AM:

Do you have a PC with a floppy drive?

If so try this link - http://grunnet.dyndns.dk/test/roland2midi -, and see if it can read and convert your floppies to a standard MIDI format.

Then buy a cheapo USB/MIDI converter (ebay?), download a freeware sequencing package, and with a bit of luck you will get your songs back, but you'll have to keep them stored on the computer, not on floppies.

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on March 23, 2011, 10:31 AM:

BART!

This fantastic news! I've been wondering if I might have to figure out something else. I opened up the Roland last night and yes indeedy, it does have a floppy drive, (well I already knew that). I tried a replacement of the floppy, and it would take. However, if I can directly upload by floppy drive the files right into my computer, that will help immeasurably!

They Keyboard has been hammered by me so many times, I'm amazed that it sounds as good as it still does. I think I'll have to use my old trick of taking the guitar part from the keyboard and mic it through the guitar amp and set-up with a good ole fashioned mic and see if I can come up with some passable guitar for the demo. The high notes on a distortion or overdrive guitar (on the keyboard) actually sound quite passable but it becomes obvous that's it's a keyboard guitar when ou hit the lower notes.

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