Roland Intelligent Arranger Technology

Why did Roland start the development of Intelligent Arranger technology from Italy?

Roland, by its very nature, is a technology-intensive music equipment company based in Japan – and here is a snippet of its history.

However, do you know and are you aware – why did Roland actually start the history of the development of intelligent arranger technology in Italy?

Who has never known there are brands:

Botempy, Farfisa, GEMS, GLUE, PROEL, Visas, SIEL, Including then also Dexibell.

SIEL is a company that was later acquired by Roland to develop music equipment technology based on the world's first “Intelligent Arranger” concept following the concepts of proper music theory lessons.

And because the Roland Intelligent Keyboard was originally developed by colleagues from the Roland Italy team which incidentally is part of Roland Europe aka Roland Europe. So be like Roland E-30, E20, E10, E-all sorts of things to the point where the most powerful development was when the Roland E-86 was made.

Before the advent of Roland Intelligent Arranger technology, how to play auto chords was generally as follows:

Single / Easy Chord / 1 Finger Chord: Natural major by pressing 1 key which is the tone that determines the chord name. Example: Chord C by pressing the C key. When you have to play a new minor chord, you have to add any black key as long as it's to the right of the main note. Meanwhile, when you have to play the 7th Chord, instead of the black keys, use any white key as long as the position must be to the right of the main note. Exc So, if you're a music teacher, you can only scratch your head, right? I used to be too (",).
Roland Intelligent Chord: Natural major is the same, Minor adds notes that make the Chord a minor – for example for C minor yes C and Eb don't care left or right. For C7, press C and Bb. For C minor 7, press C + Eb + Bb. C7 yes press C + E + Bb. C Dim yes press C + F#. And so on according to music theory.
How about On Bass Chords? Activate Rev(olving) Bass / Bass Revolving, then whatever note the leftmost position of your Chord will be the Bass Tone controller. It's easy? Why don't you bother. Previously? It's impossible, and because of this, the keyboard check dung check dung or tak tung tak tung is only considered a toy. It was only later after Roland first made an intelligent keyboard series that many people were wide-eyed with awareness. And for PSW itself, it was one of the reasons for joining at that time through Jakarta Musik as the sole distributor of Roland and then asked to clean up the abandoned Indonesian style project.
Because the combination of 3 major chord combinations: Natural Major, Minor, and 7th can produce a wide variety of variations – there are more and more Roland E-series lovers. Marked by the making of the PRO-E keyboard which is more specifically for the accompaniment part, aka backing music and if you want it can be controlled using another longer keyboard via MIDI, because Roland always provides at least 1NTA (Note To Arranger) MIDI Channel specifically for external control.

Curious about what the Roland PRO-E looks like?

More info? https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=roland+pro+e+intelligent+arranger

In addition to MIDI Channels Parts for NTA / Note To Arranger, it is also usually equipped with MIDI Channels RX Only which can only be used if we use an external MIDI Keyboard Controller.

Why? Because actually hidden 2 kinds of basic concepts of keyboard2 intelligent arrangers development, namely:

Development based on the original concept of ORGAN, there must be: Upper1/Upper2/Upper3, Lower1/Lower2, Manual Bass besides of course Automatic Bass.
Automatic accompaniment tends to use the MSD-level format, namely with Parts configurations: A.Drum, A.Bass, Acc1, Acc2, Acc3,Acc4,Acc5,Acc6. And even then after a long and long discussion and "debate". Previously, before the era of the Roland E-86, there were only A. Drum, A. Bass, Acc1, Acc2. So you can imagine when programming an active style has to be busy – imagine how busy the voice changing activities are between Acc1 and Acc2, especially when there must be a melody in the Intro/Fill/Ending sections. Fortunately the Roland E-series engines are sophisticated and fast so no problem no problem.
Development based on PIANO's original concept, there must be: Right1/Right2/Right3, Left1/Left2. There is no M.Bass so when you need it, you have to use one of the Left as Bass sounds to be played manually.
The automatic accompaniment of piano base development concepts tends to use an MSA-level format consisting of: A.Drums, A.Bass, Acc1, Acc2, Acc3. It's still a bit better to add Acc3 compared to the early era of the Roland E-series until it stuck with the Roland E-70.
Roland classifies these types of musical instruments with instant accompaniment into categories: CK aka Contemporary Keyboard. And the series with the piano base development concept mostly use the KR-??? series. – while the organ base development version generally uses 2 series E, EM, G, VA, BK, EA, etc. – except for those that are a bit ambiguous aka GJ: Roland E-300, Roland E500, Roland E-600 then continue with an advanced level of confusion: Roland BK-series except Roland BK-9, Roland EA-7 except Roland EA-7M aka the Roland BK-9 module because there is no sampling. Old school intelligent modules use the RA series. The Roland RA-series is still complete with a sound engine module, while the Roland CA-30 only contains the automatic accompaniment brain to be used for synth keyboards that have LA/GM compatibility aka MT-32/SoundCanvas compatible.
Don't forget the Atelier series. Atelier in French means STUDIO, so you can imagine it in real form as a semi-PIANO ORGAN – even if it is only equipped with MSA-class automatic accompaniment technology, but because the players tend to be more sophisticated than the level of single keyboard players – yes, the sound of the game is still amazing. normal. Atelier is in the CK category, while Rodgers is in the DPO category, aka Digital Pipe Organ. Rodgers has been acquired by Johannus but it is my office where I work that is still authorized to distribute Rodgers plus additional Johannus.

Here are some examples of old school intelligent arranger products:

This is the old school master from the old E-series.

EM, EXR, GW, G, VA, BK, EA, ??? missed.

There are still EM30, EM50, EM2000, G-1000, EXR3, EXR5, EXR7, G800, G600, E80, G70, E50, E60, etc. (not massage).

The GW series is a bit unique, as it is a semi-synthesizer, semi-intelligent arranger keyboard. Since it is manufactured in China it may appear to be using the "Great Wall" of China serial code. There's GW-7, GW-8.

The extraordinary VA series with VaryPhrase sampling technology is equipped with a selection of difficult to memorize sounds: 4096 and polyphony already at 128 except for VA-3 at 64. Style Morphing technology plus several other editing facilities really greatly facilitate creativity in making musicals. There are VA-3, VA-5, VA-7, VA-76.

The EA series may be because A is the code for Asia produced by Japan. There are only EA-7 Keyboard and E-A7 eh BK-7 Module (without sampling facility).

The BK series seems to be an abbreviation for Backing Keyboard, there are BK-3, BK-5, BK-9.

That's all for now and if there are still many fans, it will continue again.

Musical greetings from: