Art of Noise meets Roland D50

Just some fun with the Roland D550 rack...
Nothing serious but a little hommage to L'art du Bruit

AON

Roland PG-1000

Until the time I get to write a review, some hi-res pics of the Roland PG-1000 programmer, which is the dedicated interface for the D-50 and D-550 synthesizers... unless you use a software editor (which I don't find very convenient) or have the patience of a saint, there's no way you can program one of these instruments without this.

Roland D50 patches

It's patch time!

Let me say first that these aren't my sounds... with an interface that crappy, I haven't really had the time and/or the energy to get to serious programming yet.

What I've done, on the other hand, is compiling all string and pads I could in one sysex file.

This was mostly for my purposes in the short term, but then I thought it might be useful to other new owners.

The Bank

So, if you just just purchased a Roland D50 or D550, you can use this sysex to load a complete bank of great factory sounds... it's mostly strings and pads, but note that the bank also features Jarre's sounds for the Revolutions album (the "Industrial revolution" intro sound, etc...)

Please please, remember to back up your own bank before sending this sysex, because everything will be replaced!

Also, if you need a freeware to manage all that stuff, try MIDI-OX/

Moog in Filterbank mode

Another experiment with the Filterbank 2...
I'm beginning to think that it's not broken after all, but that maybe it needs to be fed a quite clean, mono signal, without too many harmonics
So I passed a simple Moog Little Phatty arpeggio through it and the results were far more musical than my first attempts

On this file, the first seconds are the dry Moog signal, which is quite low because the Filterbank acts a lot like an overdrive unit

Then I switch to 10% dry / 90% wet, and start fiddling with the knobs like a crazed sort of person

Filterbanked Moog

Un mot en français

All right, this post is mainly to french-speaking visitors, but first, some (english) words of explanation : I've been asked to do music for a series of cinema lessons.

Réalisés par Simon Dronet, ces lessons sont non seulement intéressantes sur le fond, mais tout à fait drôlatiques sur la forme (et un peu le fond aussi)...
Hautement recommandable, et pas seulement parce que j'ai fait la musique.

La Séance de Sergueï #05 - "Le Son"
envoyé par laperitel


Ici, l'épisode 5, et pour visionner le reste : http://www.simondronet.com/

Sherman Strikes Back

Another demo with the (broken?) Sherman Filterbank 2

Processed Electribe EMX and Roland Alpha Juno

Can't Go Back

In the Twilight Zone

A short "dramatic retro" instrumental...

Sample from the 1960 Twilight Zone episode "The Big Tall Wish".

Prophet 08 and Roland D550.

What the World is Made of

"Little boys with their heads filled up with dreams [...] When do they suddenly find out that there aint any magic? When does somebody push their face down on the sidewalk and say to them, "Hey little boy, it's concrete. That's what the world's made out of, concrete." When do they find out that you can wish your life away?"

Electribe EMX plus Moog arpeggiator equal Yummy

Just a little fun demo : the Electribe EMX is playing a beat, which is fed into the Moog Little Phatty audio input for some crunchy Moog filtering.

At the same time, the Moog is playing a simple arpeggio, itself synced by MIDI to the EMX

The circle is complete, as Darth would say.

(Oh, and I added some Roland Juno-1 pads in the middle).

EMX & Moog demo

Rouge no Dengon

And now for something completely different...
Originally sung by Yuming in 1975 - I tried to keep the retro feeling of the original.
Moog bass, Prophet 08 and Juno pads... and lots of guitar...

Rouge no Dengon

The Stately Trees

Originally sung by a certain Regina Mathews.

I ran across her through The Record Robot

It is a children song, from a surprisingly clever and sophisticated album, with tasteful songwriting and simple lyrics verging on the surrealistic

Proof that you can do a children record that isn't stupid and crass (I'm looking at you, every singer who is not Regina Mathews).

Small Stone guitar, piano and Roland D-550

The Stately Trees