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 Roland
E80 Review by John Romero (Music at Home Magazine 2007)
Through the years, I have had several bits of gear from those nice people at
Roland. Technically their equipment has always been excellent. Somehow though
I’ve never quite been inspired enough to keep it that long. I know there are
those that would disagree and perhaps it was the influence of the Technics KN
keyboard range, but I’m afraid I didn’t find Roland instruments very user
friendly. That said, the G800 module was my first Roland conquest of which I
have seriously fond memories. Even though it was complicated to use on the fly,
it did produce a great overall sound. Since then Roland seem to have developed a
slight change in their outlook. The G series was followed by the VA range which
then led to the G70. This was a vast improvement and much more logical in layout
than their prior instruments. The E-80 which is the subject of this review seems
to be pretty much a home version of the G70. So I think I’ll put off doing the
tax accounts just a little longer as I’d much rather write this article. I’m
going to gloss over much of the technical specifications as by the time this
issue gets to press, it will be available in many places and I’m sure will
already have been looked at by many of our readers. My desire is to try to get
more into the heart of the instrument, so for what its worth here’s my opinion.
First impressions are always important and the E-80 does make an impressive one.
Its sleek silver grey livery is classy and the display lights are not as in your
face as its main competitor, the Tyros 2. One of the Roland trademarks has
always been the good build quality of their keyboards and you certainly get your
moneys worth with the E-80. Its very sturdy but be warned its very heavy,
weighing in at 22.5kg. I suppose the argument for making a beast this chunky
probably runs, “once in place on its stand, the home user will never move it
again therefore weight doesn’t matter”. Hmmmm. Take my advice if you do ever
decide to gig the E-80 or even just move it to your local keyboard club for the
night, get a good strong roadie. I’m guessing the speakers are a fair part of
the instruments weight and they also contribute to the instrument being deeper
than the G70. The speaker quality is very good and I heard no distortion even at
full volume. With the speakers rated at 2x35W and 2x12W there’s plenty of power
to annoy the neighbours. Roland have even included a speaker modelling tool
(effects-speaker modelling-edit). Some of the presets are obvious, however I
couldn’t hear much difference between some of the settings. There is a lovely
digital bass enhancer that does make a lot of difference and once on, I pretty
much left it as a permanent setting.
Several other points do stand out straight away. Real sliding drawbars under the
screen and properly colour coded “a la Hammond” - excellent! As well as the
sliders, you have easy control of percussion and rotary settings although as yet
(without reading the manual) I have not been able to work out how to add sustain
or change the rotor speed. There are eight drawbar registration buttons on the
screen - very useful! Moving on, the touch of the weighted keyboard (which I
really like), somehow just oozes quality and has a nice resistance when pressing
down the notes. The full colour touch screen is good but I felt should have been
larger as with this much info on the screen, some of the touch boxes are a
little small. If any of the manufactures are reading this then please take note,
not all your customers have thin fingers. The dials are smooth and positive and
the buttons are nice and crisp. All in all its very robust and no matter how
much of a hammering you give it, its going to cope with ease. The top section of
the layout is pretty much standard with pattern control to the left and sound
control to the right of the screen.
Sandwiched between the screen and the keyboard are the usual global volume
controls, the sequencer (recorder) section, panel memory, play control and vocal
control centres. Far left of the keyboard is one of these combined
modulation/bend controllers (you may remember last issue, I moaned about this
with the SD5 review). There are a couple of other controls dotted around such as
the D beam control and data entry points. It has a good, clear uncluttered
layout. The E-80 gives at first glance, “just what is says on the can” and most
of the controls are pretty obvious. Don’t be fooled though, there’s a lot going
on under the cool veneer of this instrument.
It has become the fashion with today’s keyboards to include a list of songs,
each with a suggested setting to use when playing said song. The E-80 has a very
powerful database control to drive this list of songs which goes by the title
‘Music Assistant’ It’s a great place to get a general feel of the instrument or
for the novice player to start. This Music Assistant however is one of my pet
hates. No, not especially the one on the E-80, just Music Assistants in general.
This one is not as cryptic as Tyros and the song you are supposed to play is
usually pretty obvious from the short title given. My hate of the things comes
from players that tend to use these settings as if they are written in stone and
never try anything new. Simply put, they stifle creativity and every keyboard of
a given model begins to sound the same. If you are a player that uses these
things regularly then please take my advice. When using a one touch setting, use
it as a base point, edit the setting to fit the way you play and then save as a
new registration. For instance, I find the E-80 default settings very dry in the
use of its reverb. Pick a one touch or suggested setting from the Music
Assistant and then turn up the reverb on the drums, if you like this then save
it as a registration so that it will always be correct for future use. This
music database is loaded with song titles, too many to go through here. You’ll
find the obvious such as American patrol (try speeding it up a bit and use
variation three) to the obscure such as Csok Kiraly Song, for which I have
absolutely no idea what it could be, answers to the editor. This brings us in a
round about way to the styles.
Each brand has its own way of doing things. For instance Ketron have a
spectacularly clever drum mixer built in and the old Technics keyboards used to
have a great step edit function. Roland however has several little tricks like
being able to edit sounds inside a rhythm and changing time signatures across
different variations, great for some dedicated song styles. Speaking with my
“style writers” hat on, the guys that wrote the E-80 patterns truly did a great
job and there are some patterns that are nothing short of excellent. Survive
Disco really hits the groove and technically the Big Band rhythms are to die
for. Why is it then that whoever designed the instrument only decided to put one
“Intro” button on the front panel. It means that to set a rhythm before playing,
you have to press the variation you desire, the intro button and then another
variation button to select intro one, two, three or four. Doing this on the fly
with a floor full of dancers (yes I know it’s a home instrument), when trying to
select sounds before they can sit down....... you get my point. And while I’m at
it, two further things. Please can we have the half bar fill button back that
was on the G series instruments and secondly, why are there only twelve rhythm
groups? There’s plenty of room for more without cluttering the front panel.
Surely “Country” deserves a mention in its own right and there are some patterns
that I can’t work out how they could fit into the Ballroom group. Some patterns
can fit into two or more categories, but why put a jazz waltz in the “World”
group, surely it should be in the “Jazz” section. One thing I loved about the
pattern memory is that each group has its own custom memory space. Ten bays
where you can keep extra rhythms, 120 in total. Well, actually that’s not quite
true. These bays are in fact pointers to the machines internal user storage
space (27,688Kb). I spent ages trying to find out how to load a rhythm directly
into the custom bay to find out you don’t do it that way. Those familiar with
Roland instruments might have got this right away but it took me some time
referring to the manual to work out how to make it function. If you have an E-80
and not cottoned on yet, then let me try and save you some time and explain why
its so useful. With this facility you can edit an existing rhythm with the
“Style make up” tools, write a new pattern from scratch or buy a commercial
‘style’ disk and then load this into the internal memory. You then link it to
the custom bay you desire and “Hey Presto” an easily accessible rhythm which you
treat the same as any other style. Most flagship keyboards can do this in one
way or another, what I like about this way though is that you can store the
pattern in a genre group rather than a custom group where everything tends to
get mixed up.
The main reason we buy instruments is because we like the sounds they make and
I’ve got to tell you the E-80 makes some pretty astonishing sounds. You can play
up to six sounds simultaneously (Upper 1, 2, 3, Lower 1, 2 and MBS) whilst
running the styles or sequencer. It has a total of 1100 sounds which is less
than the G70. Don’t be concerned, this is not a problem as the missing ones are
mainly from older keyboards and are just not needed anymore. It also frees up
some storage room for some new sounds such as the Natural Piano which has a
lovely tone across all ranges of the keyboard. It was a pleasure to play using
the piano as a solo instrument. Many of the E-80 sounds compete with if not beat
its main rival. For instance, I prefer many of the trumpet sounds as they seem
to be sampled with both a slower and less harsh vibrato rate than T2. I also
found the Flute Exp and Pan Flutes 1 and 2 cleaner and more usable. The string
section is very good and by layering several of these sections sounds on Right
1, 2 and 3, you can get some fabulous string ensembles. The organ samples are
again very good, with the theatre and church organs probably winning the battle
of the instruments, although I would have liked to have seen a larger choice of
organ sounds. Of course no one seems to be able to beat the Roland vocal samples
and these on their own are enough to warrant buying this instrument. Their trade
mark Scat vocal is built in and is a pure delight to play with. I loved the “St
Choir Aah”. Close your eyes and your on the mountain with Julie Andrews and the
choir singing “The hills are alive”. There are just so many sounds to work
through and as yet I have not come across an unusable one. As well as all the
great sounds, this instrument has room for two expansion boards which although
they cost, will help to keep the instrument up to date for some time to come.
Important when investing in an expensive piece of technology. Having done a
quick check on Google, the Roland US web site says there are currently 12 boards
in the SRX expansion range giving new sounds and a SRG01 which gives new sounds
and thirty new rhythms as well. In the instrument there are some sounds that are
missing with the accordion and guitar groups being two obvious places to look
at. There’s no 16' Jazz Fisa accordion, no Pedal Steel or Hawaiian guitar and it
would be really useful to have a Slow Hand Guitar i.e. a Hawaiian with a slow
attack. The sort of thing Hank Marvin used to use on Cavatina or Don’t cry for
me Argentina. All the guitar sounds are great for playing solo’s, however there
is not a real time strumable guitar. Don’t fear though as all is not lost, the
E-80 has one of the toys from the G70 built in.
The E-80 guitar mode starts as a fun toy and very quickly becomes a usable tool.
Long story short, select this and play a chord on the left hand, now hit any
note on the right hand and you get an instant guitar strum, based on the left
hand chord played. Listen carefully though as each note gives a different kind
of strum. Spin the data entry dial and you get a different guitar sound. In the
space of a couple of minutes you’ll be hooked.
The D Beam is a toy that Roland users will be familiar with and yes they have
kept it on the E-80. Basically it’s a light beam emitted from an LED that is
reflected back to the instrument. What this means in practise is, move your hand
through the beam which is located above the screen and you can trigger various
effects. Everything from DJ scratch sounds to sound effects to instruments that
are in the correct pitch to the left hand notes being played. It’s another of
those toys that will keep the player amused for hours. The players spouse on the
other hand may get fed up if you keep saying “Hey honey listen to this, its
funny”. Be careful not to over use it.
The sequencer on board the E-80 is one of those sections that has some useful
tools. It is a very good midi file player. All the midi files I tried sounded
excellent. This is one advantage of using a Roland instrument. A great many
professional programmers use Roland gear so you can be pretty sure patch and
control changes will work well and sound very similar to the original intended
sound. If you load a pre-recorded midi file, it will work out the chords that
are used and scroll then them along the bottom of the screen, very useful. It
will also display the lyrics of the song Karaoke style, with realtime or foot
switch controlled page turnover. I would have preferred a different font as the
display is a bit blocky. You also have the option to choose any one or two of
the sixteen tracks and see the songs notation in the screen in either single or
double stave format. All this gives an excellent tool for learning songs, no
need for sheet music anymore. All you do is read the music on the screen. There
are ‘Mark’ and ‘Jump’ buttons so that you can pick out verse and chorus points
in a song and repeat these sections. I liked the simplicity of use of the
recorder section, its easy to use and this should encourage its use. This is
essential as it is an important learning tool. Lots of keyboards have this sort
of tool and its one that many would benefit from. When we play we do not take in
the performance the way that an audience would. Therefore what better way to
learn than to record your playing, press play and then listen to it from the
other side of the room. I promise it will in almost all cases open your eyes and
ears as to what your doing.
Both the style and recorder sections also benefit from what Roland call “Cover
and Make up” tools. Just another example of just how powerful this instrument
is. All parts of a Style or Midi file can be re-voiced, also effects, volumes
etc can be added with ease. The Cover section allows you to play a style and
select a genre to superimpose over the top. It can lead to some strange things
happening. Given some time and thought though, it can produce some pleasing
results.
One other section that must be mentioned before winding this article up is the
harmoniser. This is a seriously useful piece of kit that can be used on all
sorts of levels. The experienced singer can get stunning four part background
vocals to back their own lead vocal line, these are based on the chord played
with the left hand. You can also back your own playing of a melody line without
hearing your voice. This just leaves the harmonies in place. It doesn’t matter
how badly you sing as the instrument automatically corrects the pitch of the
backing vocals whilst playing. This gives a live choir and can be used to great
effect if sung behind a melody line played with sounds such as the Stereo Choir.
There is a whole stack of other bits and pieces on this keyboard and its hard to
do it justice with the page space that we have available. There is a lot of
attention to detail. Very small things such as a switch for the speakers that
has an LED, indicating when they are off. It has a USB connection, although a
flat connector type would have been better for the UK market. They have kept the
floppy drive. It pretty much uses the G70 style format which means there’s
plenty of commercial styles obtainable. I have to say I liked this instrument,
it feels sturdier than its competitors and feel if I had time to sit down and
reprogram it, I just might even get to like it better than my Tyros 2. It has
some great sounds and my “respect” goes to those that programmed the rhythms. I
do have several gripes though. My first is its far to heavy and this alone will
deter many from buying one. My second is as it comes out of the box it sounds
flat and spatially boring. I’ve had a similar discussion about Yamaha, where I
think their instruments are supposed to be very gentle on the ear. It feels as
if Yamaha don’t want to offend an older audiences ears. The E80 is very
different though, turn it up and it can be quite brutal. I get the feeling that
whoever programmed it did so not on its own speakers but on a separate set,
probably with the system on a bench on its own before the instrument was first
put into production. When I attached it to my studio monitor speakers I could
hear a little more of the reverb. Its not that my speakers gave better
definition to the sound, its just everything sounds as if it has been recorded
in a very small room. First impressions in a music shop count in a big way when
making a sale. I feel that a complete rebuild of the default reverbs and pans
would make this instrument a substantial threat to Tyros. There are a few niggly
aggravating things that let the instrument down. The bass inversion keeps coming
on at random times with the music assistant and when loading software which is
really frustrating. Don’t get the impression that I don’t care for this keyboard
though, it has so much going for it. It stands up well against the competition
and if you are contemplating a new instrument, to not give this instrument
serious consideration would be a crime. |
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