Hello all,

I hope I am finding you all well, it's been a while since I've posted anything, I've been a little unwell of late but hopefully on the mend again.

I booked some time off work (much needed) and I was looking around various you tube videos and so forth of many different keyboards and one that really caught my eye was the Roland EA7, it looks and sounds great. I checked the price and it's very affordable so I purchased one this afternoon and arriving tomorrow hopefully.

During my arranger keyboard journey and experience, there were two brands that I've never owned over the years - Technics & Roland, I don't know why but that's how it turned out, however, I have always been determined to own one of these at some time, if not both (I know Technics don't produce anymore but there is a KN7000 going for a nice price but I don't know if I should due to it's age).

So I am really looking forward to this Roland, I am hoping the interface is quite intuitive and comparable to either Ketron or Yamaha, even if it isn't going to become my main keyboard (the SD60 currently has that status), but it will be a nice addition nonetheless.

I have some questions for those that own this keyboard or know how the Rolands work, is there a place where I can get additional styles from like you can with the Yamaha's, and do previous Roland's keyboards styles work in the EA7? I'd love to sample some of the styles I missed out from previous models of the past, the posts here I used to see were of models such as G800, G1000, G70, VA7 (hope I got the models right but i'm sure there are many more!!). How do styles load, is it direct from a pen drive like you can with Yamaha or does it have to load into memory like a Korg?

Thank you very much,
All the best,
Danny

Danny, I just sold my Roland Ea7; it is a good keyboard. Why I sold the Ea7 had to do with my age and memory, Roland is very different. At an earlier time in my life the Ea7would have been a keeper.

Enjoy your new keyboard, I will send you what I have, if it’s not gone already.
John C.
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Hi John,

Thank you so much for your reply, that sounds very encouraging !!! The keyboard has just arrived so just going to set it up and give it a play.

I look forward to anything of Roland you send as as well

All the best to you,
Danny.

Feel free to pop in on our Roland sub-forum here with specific questions. Although I haven’t even seen an EA7, much of it is based around the BK series, which I’m very familiar with.

As to styles, basically any Roland style from the last 25 years or more should play okay. However, they will not necessarily address the best of the new tones and kits, so the section of the manuals I’d advise you get familiar with first, after basic operation and registration (Performance) storage routines, is on the ‘Makeup Tools’, which is a pretty easy to operate but quite deep Part header editor.

This is where you can change a style’s sounds, kits, effects, dynamics, EQ, and much more on a global scale for the style. So it’s easy to massage an older style to be as good as the newest ones using the newest sounds.

Best of luck with your foray into Roland country… yes, you WILL find that Roland do a lot of things differently to say Yamaha or Korg, some for the better, some not so much. But that’s pretty much how it goes across the board. Every arranger brings something different to the table…

Good luck. See you on the sub-forum! 🎹😎

Hi Diki,

Thank you very much for your reply, really appreciate it.

I spent a good few hours on it and I must say it's quite straight forward to use, only had to refer to the manual once to figure out how to use the UPG but other than that I found my way around quite well.

I'm really liking this keyboard, it's quite powerful and sounds very nice.

I will go to that Roland forum as I do have a question so I'll go there, thanks very much.

Danny.

I like the Roland very much , especially the tropical Latin . I’d like to hear some of your songs. You have a great collection of keyboards, maybe you could do a comparison?

One thing that might work quite well on the EA7 is to get recordings of some of the Yamaha Latin percussion multipads from the expansion packs, and then use the audio multipad feature on the EA7 to add them to Roland styles.

Roland did a VERY poor job of making it easy to create or import MIDI files for the multipad section, but importing audio loops is pretty straightforward. And you want to take this another step forward, there are some good live loop libraries.

Good luck with that great keyboard. Ask questions and someone here can probably help.