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#219304 - 05/06/07 02:18 PM
I ordered the ROLAND E - 80 yesterday
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Senior Member
Registered: 01/02/00
Posts: 3781
Loc: San Jose, California
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I was very fortunate yesterday to be treated to a 3 hour demo by Roland District Sales Manager Travis Mitchell at Colton Music, my local dealer here in San Jose. I have concluded that Travis must know every thing there is to know about this keyboard and some tricks that nobody else even knows yet. The President of Colton Music, Dave Gatt, my local dealer, made me an offer that was exactly the number I had in mind. They must be mindreaders as well ![](http://www.synthzone.com/ubbs/smile.gif) You will also have to be a mindreader if you expect to find out the price I agreed to ![](http://www.synthzone.com/ubbs/smile.gif) Don't ask. Just know that Colton has three stores in our Bay Area and they will deal. They also have the G 70's in stock. I expect delivery in about another week so stay tuned. I will be selling a Yamaha Tyros 2 and a PSR 9000 both with hard drive and maximum ram memory installed if anyone has any interest, just let me know. NO, I have no idea of current values so you can let me know about that too ![](http://www.synthzone.com/ubbs/smile.gif) Best to all Bebop ------------------ BEBOP Senior Member SYNTHZONE FORUMS Retired Moderator of Technics Forum. Starting member of Yamaha Arranger (tyros) Forum Bill Forrest in Central CALIF. USA ICQ # 562519 Homepage http://www.anycities.com/bebop/
_________________________
BEBOP
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#219337 - 05/08/07 08:04 PM
Re: I ordered the ROLAND E - 80 yesterday
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Registered: 04/25/05
Posts: 14212
Loc: NW Florida
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E80... fewer sounds, but better, more recent ones (G70 has a lot of older G1000 sounds for backwards compatibility).
E80... 3 MFX insert effects, on Song, Style or Keyboard Parts. G70.. One MFX on Keyboard only (although there's an easy workaround to get one more, on song/style or keyboard part).
E80... Two Master Effect (3-band comp and EQ) on Style/Song and Keyboard Parts. G70 one Master Effects on main output.
E80... text to style AND song display (with bitmap graphics display, too), G70 text to song only (sigh!).
G70... Main AND 2 direct outputs AND Vocalizer outputs, E80 Main outputs ONLY.
E80... 61 keys G70.. 76
E80 has speakers (and weighs more!)
E80.... 2 SRX slots, G70... one.
Some minor OS differences, nothing major.
Hope this helps....
_________________________
An arranger is just a tool. What matters is what you build with it..!
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#219367 - 05/11/07 10:37 AM
Re: I ordered the ROLAND E - 80 yesterday
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Registered: 04/25/05
Posts: 14212
Loc: NW Florida
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From our experience with Roland over at the Danish G70 site, I'm afraid that Roland doesn't put a LOT of weight behind what US arranger customers want.
After all, the workstation is king over here, arrangers (despite recent Keyboard mag articles) are still a much smaller segment of the market than Europe. You only have to look at the 'banishing' of arrangers from Roland's regular music shops to the gulag of the CK 'Mom and Pop organ store' limbo they currently languish in to see their 'commitment' to arrangers in the US! If an E80 isn't good enough to display on a shelf next to a Fantom, where do you think their priorities are?
The style selections are another area where it is easy to see Roland's geographical interest. Countless schlager and schlock, very little R&B, Country, Alternative, or styles in any way recognizably American... Until Roland decide quite consciously to start being more aggressive in the US market, marketing AND style-wise, I personally don't see much weight being attached to OUR needs.....
_________________________
An arranger is just a tool. What matters is what you build with it..!
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#219368 - 05/11/07 10:53 AM
Re: I ordered the ROLAND E - 80 yesterday
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Senior Member
Registered: 01/02/00
Posts: 3781
Loc: San Jose, California
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Originally posted by Diki:
The style selections are another area where it is easy to see Roland's geographical interest. Countless schlager and schlock, very little R&B, Country, Alternative, or styles in any way recognizably American... Until Roland decide quite consciously to start being more aggressive in the US market, marketing AND style-wise, I personally don't see much weight being attached to OUR needs..... Diki: Is there anywhere that the above American type styles can be downloaded or purchased that have been created by E 80 owners, etc.? One place that the Roland Sales Manager, Travis Mitchell told me about is: cybermidi.com I am told there is a membership fee of 40.00 but then you can download all the midi files there that are done by professionals, and there are lots of them. Bebop
_________________________
BEBOP
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#219381 - 05/12/07 12:23 AM
Re: I ordered the ROLAND E - 80 yesterday
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Registered: 04/25/05
Posts: 14212
Loc: NW Florida
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The main problem going from Yamaha to Roland are the Mega voices. Anything relatively recent uses these extensively in the styles, and there just is NO decent Roland equivalent. If you use Roland's styles for Roland guitar patches, it's OK, and you've got the Guitar Mode, but (IMO) there is nothing on the Roland that can quite get the Mega Voice guitar sounds.
G70 to E80 is mostly transparent, but the other way round can be problematic. Some drum sounds and time-sliced 'phrases' just can't be easily duplicated.
But basically, if you have a Yamaha style that DOESN'T use Mega voices, the Roland Makeup (style/song header editing) Tools are the easiest to optimize a non-native style to work with the voices and drumkits.
And finally.... personally, I don't like many 'song-styles', or styles made from commercial SMFs. I just find them too recognizable, or a bit 'jerky' because there is rarely four bars on the same chord in each section to get a good groove going. Not to mention four bars of major, minor and seventh chords, to provide variation. Not to mention a variety of intros and outros, break/fills, etc..
There's a LOT more to making a decent, easily usable style than grabbing a few bars of an SMF (otherwise, we'd ALL be doing it!)....
_________________________
An arranger is just a tool. What matters is what you build with it..!
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#219386 - 05/12/07 11:18 AM
Re: I ordered the ROLAND E - 80 yesterday
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Registered: 04/25/05
Posts: 14212
Loc: NW Florida
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Well, obviously at the moment Roland (and most of the majors) are developing styles for their existing customers. It's easy to see a bias towards, firstly, 'older' styles mostly usable by senior citizens, or players playing FOR senior citizens, and secondly, styles aimed squarely at European players, beer-hall and schlager, and european flavored 'pop' styles.
If arranger manufacturers want to get serious about the US market, they are going to have to make the styles FIRST, and then the sales will come. It's not going to happen the other way around, for sure....
As I've said many times, if arrangers (in the US, at least) had styles developed by the same teams that voice the arp patterns for workstations, you wouldn't be able to keep them in stock! Manipulating a style is FAR easier than trying to string a bunch of patterns together on the fly.
I tried a MotifXS recently, and while the patterns were to die for, hip, contemporary, VERY 'USA", it was a nightmare to try and trigger the patterns and fill patterns while I was still playing other parts...! An arranger is a FAR better tool for manipulating patterns, but until the majors stop giving ALL the good, contemporary patterns to the workstation line, and stop leaving the arrangers with mostly schlock and old folks home styles, this type of keyboard will never increase it's market (and slowly die out due to attrition!).
It isn't all about the $$$.... Sometimes you have to INVEST to get $$$$ in the future....
_________________________
An arranger is just a tool. What matters is what you build with it..!
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#219391 - 05/14/07 02:25 AM
Re: I ordered the ROLAND E - 80 yesterday
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Senior Member
Registered: 09/21/00
Posts: 43703
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#219396 - 05/14/07 04:31 AM
Re: I ordered the ROLAND E - 80 yesterday
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Senior Member
Registered: 09/29/05
Posts: 6703
Loc: Roswell,GA/USA
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Originally posted by Diki: Well, obviously at the moment Roland (and most of the majors) are developing styles for their existing customers. It's easy to see a bias towards, firstly, 'older' styles mostly usable by senior citizens, or players playing FOR senior citizens, and secondly, styles aimed squarely at European players, beer-hall and schlager, and european flavored 'pop' styles.
If arranger manufacturers want to get serious about the US market, they are going to have to make the styles FIRST, and then the sales will come. It's not going to happen the other way around, for sure....
As I've said many times, if arrangers (in the US, at least) had styles developed by the same teams that voice the arp patterns for workstations, you wouldn't be able to keep them in stock! Manipulating a style is FAR easier than trying to string a bunch of patterns together on the fly.
I tried a MotifXS recently, and while the patterns were to die for, hip, contemporary, VERY 'USA", it was a nightmare to try and trigger the patterns and fill patterns while I was still playing other parts...! An arranger is a FAR better tool for manipulating patterns, but until the majors stop giving ALL the good, contemporary patterns to the workstation line, and stop leaving the arrangers with mostly schlock and old folks home styles, this type of keyboard will never increase it's market (and slowly die out due to attrition!).
Diki, of course you're right (and a very good analysis of the arranger situation in the US, BTW), however it appears to be a vicious cycle; the smaller production creates artificially high prices which (for the most part) only older players can comfortably afford thus defining the market. I haven't had a Roland arranger since the G1000 so can't comment on their newest TOTL arrangers but (in my mind) only Korg comes close to producing the kind of styles you're referring to (and sadly, not enough of them). One thing we totally agree on; the styles must come first. No matter what some members say about things like sounds, navigation, harmonizers, etc., etc., in the end it's the STYLES that count most in buying decisions. There is a reason that you'll likely never (well, hardly ever) see a Ketron in the hands of a YOUNG, U.S., arranger player. For THAT market, the styles suck bigtime. There is no reason that an arranger keyboard can't retain all of it's current (crappy) styles and just add the styles that would make it more acceptable to US markets. There's no law that says you have to play Schlager just because it's included in the style banks. Just bury it in submenus so that a young hiphop artist won't accidently stumble across it and go screaming out of the store. Come to think of it, a super-duper killer-style-producing company catering to all the major brands would be the most practical solution to the problem. We all know that such a company doesn't exist. chas
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"Faith means not wanting to know what is true." [Nietzsche]
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