Sanatate si tie si numai bine!

I really really hope Roland will come back into the arranger market, may they called their future arrangers anything else. But it is indeed such a shame for them to have ceased the development in this department completely, or almost completely - I hope a new, improved and modernized series of keyboards will bring back many of those excellent features Roland always had. Modern multi-sampled sounds, updated styles for present days... Hopefully, once day!

In this thread we went into detail about Roland and its arrangers. Diki and others had some good inputs...


http://www.synthzone.com/forum/ubbthread...its_#Post510290

The thing was, Roland had a bad habit of trying to reinvent the wheel every time a new significant model change came around. Yamaha and Korg were far more incremental in their new models, very little got dropped, a few things got added, it made for a stable user base.

But from the G1000 to the VA76 was a huge divide, Vari-Phrase audio introduced, Chord sequencer axed, etc.. Then the change from VA76 to G70 was equally traumatic. Gone was the Vari-Phrase stuff (best of luck porting your styles and sequences that used that!) and a host of differences again. It got pretty exhausting as a Roland user having to start almost from scratch each time you upgraded.

Add to that Roland’s stubborn refusal to add multipad support which was a basic feature of Yamaha and Korg (so obviously non-proprietary) and which helps enormously to make styles less repetitive and predictable. Eventually, between these two factors, an awful lot of Roland players who swore by the G1000 ended up with Tyros’s or PA3x’s etc..

Once gone, most didn’t come back. We used to have endless comparisons between the brands back in the day, and fair’s fair, feature-wise it was hard to promote Roland as a pure ‘arranger’. I and many others still thought the basic ‘sound’ was very ‘live band’ compared to Yamaha, and as an only part-time user of the arranger section the sound was always my choice because back then I mostly split my time between full live bands and a few duo gigs. Roland’s held up fantastic in a live band, whereas Korg and Yamaha felt more ‘compressed’ and ‘home keyboard’ in sound.

Today I think that difference is much less. Genos’s and PA4/5x’s are pretty punchy now, and I think either of them would fit in with a live band easily.

So, bottom line, Roland’s became a bit dated as a pure arranger, and that trend continued into the BK series. Utterly amazing live band keyboards (I’ll take a BK9 over any of Roland’s stage keyboards like the Juno’s and VR-730!) but still crippled as a pure arranger with no multipads (other than you creating your own audio percussion loops for the Key Audio feature) and no sampler or ROM expansion.

In truth, if I primarily played arranger style for almost everything, I’d have a Genos2 or PA5x (love their ‘2 styles at a time’ idea!) but I still really want a keyboard that sits good in a live band or studio session as well as an arranger, and for me the BK9 still gets the job done. Roland went out on a high note… 🥺💔

I still use my G70 daily, as a hobbyist / passionate arranger keyboard player.

From a tactile feeling and overall ease of use and navigation, nothing beats it! It is still one of my all time favourite keyboards after owning over 30 different keyboards in the last 25 years.

However, the Love / hate is strong... One of the biggest draw backs for me is the fact that you cannot make any of the style parts fixed to prevent them from changing chord progressions. This is a big thing as some songs may have certain instrument tracks that do not change key while other instruments will within a certain chord progression (while still all sounding musically in key)...

The Other issue is while in style play, the bass note cant go below a certain note on the keyboard. it will only stay within a certain note range on the keyboard. - this too wasn't rectified on the BK9.

Every other arranger I have ever played and owned could do the above... every Yamaha back to the PSR 1000 could do it, all the KORG PA keyboards, even my technics kn6000 does it all.

But for me - the overall build quality, the keys, the layout, the sounds and the functionality is what has made the G70 shine and outlast everything else that has come and gone. I cant see myself ever parting ways with it, it is THAT GOOD! - if you know you know ;-)

If it wasn’t for that darn chord sequencer and the audio playback, I might have stayed on the G70, but the CS is a ‘must have’ for me to be able to play the way I do in arranger mode. I grew up in live bands, playing lots of early synths, and the bender is an integral way to solo on those. Not to mention an indispensable part of imitating horns, and basically everything not controlled by a keyboard.

Arranger mode ties up your left hand too much, so the CS (once you play in the head) frees it up to be expressive. I pretty much stopped using the G70 as a live arranger because of that. I’d still use the arranger to create SMF’s to play over, but on the gig I needed that LH free!

The inability to change basslines outside a certain range I think was a niche problem, restricted to the few that create their own styles, and for me, by the time I needed a bassline THAT specific I was happy enough to use an SMF with the bassline in its correct form. Sometimes I feel that arranger players can ignore the better solution to a problem because it makes them use the sequencer, but if you use Markers in an SMF, you regain a fair bit of the structural freedom the arranger gives.

I still haven’t found a better laid out touchscreen on an arranger yet… Early Korg’s were unresponsive, Yamaha use FAR too much screen real estate on eye candy, and to my eternal gratitude, I found out that even if the screen got exposed to bright Florida sunshine for a protracted period, even though it went black and unreadable, after a few minutes to cool down it came back as good as new. Phew! That’s a several hundred dollar part to replace!

I miss not having new Roland arrangers to discuss and dissect, but with both a G70 and a BK9, I think I’m a lucky man! 🎹❤️😎

Stefan uploaded another of his popular Arranger Comparison videos on YouTube.
In this one he focuses on the iconic chorused and detuned Piano voice in the ABBA Song – Money, Money, Money.

He plays them in this order:

Yamaha Genos2
Roland E-80
Korg Pa5x
Ketron Event

Later, he plays the full arrangement.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPW-vYuZrzU


The Roland E-80 can’t quite compete with the other 3 top of the line models.

It takes a lot of effort on Stefan’s part to create these entertaining comparison videos.
He has to reposition all his keyboards for each section, select the closest matching style and voices and level out the output volumes.

The Pa5x has the live band feeling with each instrument clearly distinguishable.
The Genos2 is washed in effects like a studio processed track.
The Event delivers the most excitement.

It would be a matter of personal preference amongst the big three. They all can sound fabulous in the hands of an expert musician.

If one wants to have it all, they could buy the 88-key piano action Korg Pa5x and place it on the bottom tier, add the 76-key synth action Genos2 on the 2nd tier and top it off with the Ketron EventX arranger module on the 3rd tier or on a side stand.

Sorry, but drenching a voice in reverb and effects is the choice of the player, not the instrument.

Comparing apples to oranges...

These demos are completely pointless to me. Sure the Ketron does have a more distinct sound in terms of clarity with the drums but you could get very very close with the other boards depending how you EQ'd the tracks and addedsd/removed effects...

Also - as we all know - with each of these boards you can change the drum kits around AND select different snare samples from the pool of snares that are available amongst other drumkits on board... And guess what - the Roland would do this the easiest and quickest using the make up tools. But none of these demos go into any feature detail... its just a like for like comparison of the same song being played. you could probably do this with 20 other keyboards and they would all sound as similar.

Switching around and re racking those heavy keyboards every time would be a nightmare...