Roland is another big player in the digital keyboard market. Their products includes a wide range of keyboards & pianos. Explore the various pro-functions on a Roland piano keyboard.
Here are the various keyboard categories from Roland.
Synths & Workstations
Professional keyboards & synthesizers for studio & stage. Checkout the competitively priced and full-featured synthesizers from Roland. Read more…
Arranger Keyboards
A wide range of arranger-style keyboards for playing or composing with ease. These give you very high quality (and some exotic) sounds and styles. Read more…
Digital Pianos
Roland Digital Pianos include professional stage pianos for studio & stage use – packed with the best features and sounds, these are sturdily built and gig-ready. They also have elegant home pianos that come with excellent musical features and are built to very high quality standards. Read more…
Keyboard Amps
Roland keyboard amps, especially their KC-series is one of the more popular keyboard amps and offers a wide range of models for you to choose from. Read more…
Roland, like Yamaha, is another brand that has a wide range of keyboards targeting intermediate to advanced players.
They may not have lot of choices for the absolute beginner, especially in arranger keyboards, but for the other keyboard instrument types they have products that have the capabilities to match the best in the market.
They’re among the top three manufacturers of digital keyboards and pianos. Roland digital keyboards usually have a superior sound source, an intuitive user interface, and many more advanced functions, on almost all their keyboards.
Roland, established in 1972, is a world leader in manufacturing electronic musical instruments.
Its product range includes electronic keyboards, synthesizers, guitar products, electronic percussion kits, digital recording equipments and audio processing devices.
Roland is known for its amazing line of synthesizers and workstations, the Fantom-X being the most widely used among the professionals; the other popular ones include the Juno series, V-Synth and VP-550.
Their sounds are of extremely high quality, even those of acoustic instruments like the Piano, Guitar and strings.
Roland also has a superb line of digital pianos. The range of digital pianos offered is great and the sounds are amazing. These digital pianos are used by both the Royal College of music and Royal Academy of Music – two of the UK’s top music conservatoires.
Amazing Sounds
The Fantom-X was a smash-hit when it was released because of its amazing sounds, including the acoustic ones.
Be it the string section, drums, guitars or the piano, the samples that have been used are of top quality. Some of the other models like the JUNO series share the same processor as the Fantom-X, so even they sound fantastic.
World Music/Styles
Their arranger keyboards score over the other competitors in this area, as they offer a wide range of ethnic sounds and music styles, including Western, Middle Eastern, and Asian cultures.
With a global array of musical accompaniments under your fingertips, you are never going to fall short of ideas to create any kind of music on your roland keyboard.
Complete Recording tools
Most of the Roland keyboards have a 16-Track Sequencer which can help you to start recording your own stuff.
As you go for the higher models, you can find lot of studio Effects, mastering tools and additional vocal tracks to help you record vocal parts. It will provide you all the tools to make that professional sounding mix using just your roland keyboard.
Computer friendly
USB ports have been provided in most of the models to make it easier to communicate with a Computer.
You can use a software sequencer like Sonar or Cubase for your recording, though the Fantom-X and the JUNO series can be used by itself to create complete songs from start to finish. You can even send and receive AIFF/Wav files which can use in your recordings.
V-LINK: Jazz up your Performance
This will surely excite the professional performers. Just imagine being able to instantly trigger video clips using your pads, or create video transitions and effects using your keyboards controllers like the pitch bender and other knobs.
It’s a live performer’s dream! Using the V-LINK technology, you can trigger and manipulate video clips but you will need a video editor like the Edirol DV-7PR.
Multi-Effects (MFX)
Compared to other brands, a Roland digital keyboard provides lot of digital effects to the user. Digital Effects are known as multi-effects (MFX) on Roland digital keyboards.
You will find Reverb, Chorus, Overdrive, Distortion, Phaser, Compressor, and many more effects.
Song Recording
Roland keyboards give you some really cool features to record as well as edit your own performances / compositions.
There are a couple of ways in which you can record your song.
In the Single Recording Mode, you can over-write a new performance onto the previously recorded notes, and record each track separately.
With the Punch-In / Out Recording Mode, you can “punch-in / out” or re-record a specified portion of a single track. In this mode, the data before and after the newly recorded portion will not be erased!
You can even use a Foot Switch to Punch In / Out! This is a useful feature to have since this lets you use both hands for your performance; for example, allowing you to use your left hand to operate the pitch bend/modulation lever while you use your right hand to play the melody.
To record in this mode, you need a separately available foot switch (Roland DP series unit or BOSS FS-5U) to start or stop recording.
Digital Pianos
The range of digital pianos offered and their high standards of quality is making the Roland Digital Pianos extremely popular among professionals and is being used extensively in studios.
Their digital pianos are also used by both the Royal College of music and Royal Academy of Music – two of the UK’s top music conservatoires. Lot of people get impressed with the excellent action, sensitivity and musical qualities of these Digital Pianos.
Sound Generator Section
Most Roland midi keyboards consists of a sound generator section, a controller section, and a song player section.
This section is responsible for producing the sound! It is a piece of hardware that is built within the keyboard and is not visible from the outside.
The sound generator section receives MIDI messages from the controller section, song player section, or an external MIDI device, and generates musical sound based on the MIDI messages that are received.
The generated musical sound is then output through the output jacks and headphone jack.
Controller Section
This section consists of the keys on the keyboard, pitch bend / modulation lever, the panel buttons and knobs, D Beam controller, and pedals connected to the rear panel.
All the performance related information that is generated when you press / release a key, or press / hold pedal are transmitted as MIDI messages to the sound generator section.
Song Player Section
The Song Player is used to play back audio files or SMF data saved in USB memory.
It can also play rhythm patterns in a variety of styles. You can play along on the keyboard accompanied by the song or rhythm pattern played by the Song Player.
When using the Song Player to play songs, you can also create a playlist, using the included Playlist Editor, to specify the order in which songs will play.
Rolands Products
Roland produces some of the most stunning keyboards for professional use. That expertise is also reflected in their other range of digital keyboards. You can expect to find superior sound and lot of enhanced functions in any of the digital keyboards from Roland.
Roland has a wide range of keyboard products spread across workstations, synthesizers, arranger keyboards, Pianos and Digital Pianos.
Most of their models are extremely popular with professionals and educational institutions. All the models have an amazing array of sounds.
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