From the Belgium Roland website I just downloaded the user manual for the G-70. Since it's only available in Dutch or French and I can't find it on any Roland website in English, I gladly volunteer to look things up for you if you have any questions.

Fot those who do master the fantastic Dutch language (or ok, that boring French ) here's the link: http://www.roland.be/downloads/files/handleidingen.asp

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Tom NL

14 Mb! WOW! I hope that everybody here speaks dutch or french AND also has a broadband connection

Well,
I just downloaded the french version, but was disappointed to see that there is not an Appendix with a list of all the waveforms (to see how many of them are derived from the Fantom X) or all the styles, etc

Downloaded the French version of the manual yesterday, and hd a quick flip through it.

Despite my limited commnd of French, it proved very useful straight away, as it has enabled me to clarify a couple of points of importance.

First, the good news:

The Rotary Speaker (Leslie) FX DOES have separate bass & treble rotor settings. The sounds on the demo that Roland has released do not seem to have made use of the available settings but, amongst other things, it has separate settings for slow & fast speed avaialble for the treble & bass rotors. The acceleration & deceleration rates for each rotor can also be individually set. So it seems possible to have the bass rotor with a slow spin up & spin down rate, whilst the treble rotor can have an almost immediate change of speed - just like the real thing does. There were other fine - tuning settings available also.

Now the bad news:

It seems that Roland have totally cocked up (technical term!) the style control section yet again.

The much vaunted "6 Fill Ins" cannot be freely triggered. This explains why you do not see six (or even 3 x 2 variations) Fill In buttons on the front panel. In fact, there is not even ONE button available to trigger a fill when you want it!

Each of the six fill patterns is permanently associated with a change from one main style variation to another, and can only be accessed by changing from one variation to another slightly in advance of the point where you want the new main variation to begin. This is done under automatic control. This will probably work OK in some musical situations, but you can bet on finding circumstances where you can't do what you want within a day of buying a G70.

There is seeming some limited addition control available via the FC7 footpedal socket, where half bar fills and fill-back-to-same-variation appears to be available. This additional control may also be partially available via other physical controls, such as the D-Beam or the programmable pads (2 of).

Further, it seems that a particular fill pattern is inextricably linked to it's associated main style variation. This means that you could not - for example - trigger a fill pattern that is associated with variation one, when changing from variation three to variation four.

The only way I can see to get round this SEVERE limitation would be to clone several versions of a particular complete style and do a rewrite on the clones. Each version would require you to copy the various fill patterns into different locations within the style divisions. What a load of hard work!

Further bad news is that, once again, there only seem to be 3 chord-driven pattern variations per style division - major, minor, and seventh. Primitive, or what! It's all very the instrument well being able to recognise umpteen different chords, but not much use if they are then mapped to a pattern which is musically innapropriate.

This is just not good enough on an instrument of this class.

I am really frustrated by these findings, as the G70 is an instrument I really wanted to like. After the abysmal VA range (I own a VA76) it looked, at first sight, as if Roland had actually paid some attention to what customers were saying and made a big effort with this one.

Even more frustrating is that they seem to have put a lot of effort into all sorts of aspects of the machine, 90% of which looks really good, but failed totally on these most basic of issues.

It's almost as if the designers have never seen any other brand of instrument. There are just so many examples out there - available for years, and at far less cost - of how to do it so much better, and simpler too!


Regards - Mike

[This message has been edited by MikeTV (edited 12-17-2004).]

The free selection of fills is a patent owned by Yamaha; that's why Roland cannot implement it (like other manufacturers cannot implement many other functions patented by Roland).
Anyway you found by yourself a way to go round the problem if you really need.


What you say it's not true: arrangement basic patterns are dynamically changed depending on the played chord; this is typical of Roland arrangers from many years and you should know it if you own a VA-76.


You define the VA 'abysmal' but you still own a VA-76 after so many years???

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The free selection of fills is a patent owned by Yamaha; that's why Roland cannot implement it (like other manufacturers cannot implement many other functions patented by Roland).
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This is great news ! :
Yamaha should send claims to Korg, Wersi, Ketron, Solton..... and all other brands, to make money of it.
O3bor : You're not serious about your statement, are you ?

You seem to know things that I would think is Roland 'inside information'.....

Patents are public informations; that's what they are made for.

[This message has been edited by o3bor (edited 12-17-2004).]

Thanks,
Can you please give me the URL where to find this one ?
Roel

Dear Members, junior or what ever,
I search for the switch to get an individual Fill-In at my Tyros. I didn't find it! So it is the same thing, but nobody is sad in this case. Who else gives to you the opportunity to create different Pattern for
major, minor and seventh except Roland and Boehm (Organ)? I think, there is a big
misunderstanding. I wonder about this. For me, owner of an VA76 too, are the critical statements unbelievable. And so,I say it to Roel: 'Inside Information are much better than wrong information'.
Regards Hanspeter

You can find whatever patent at http://www.uspto.gov/
The ones related to fills should be 5461192, 5164531,5208416 but I don't swear to it.