Roland Corporation

The Roland Corporation (ローランド株式会社, Rōrando Kabushiki Kaisha) is a Japanese manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, electronic equipment and software. It was founded by Ikutaro Kakehashi in Osaka on April 18, 1972, with ¥33 million in capital. In 2005, Roland's headquarters relocated to Hamamatsu in Shizuoka Prefecture. Today it has factories in Italy, Taiwan, Japan, and the USA. As of March 31, 2010, it employed 2,699 employees. It has existed in different forms since 1960, making it relatively old among still-operating manufacturers of musical electronics. Known for hundreds of popular synthesizers, drum machines, and other instruments, Roland has been one of the top names in professional music equipment since the late 1970s.

In 2014, Roland Corporation was subject to a management buyout by Roland's CEO Junichi Miki, supported by Taiyo Pacific Partners.

Origin of the Roland name

Kakehashi founded Ace Electronic Industries in 1960, a manufacturer of numerous combo organs, guitar amplifiers, and effects pedals. He was also contracted by Hammond to produce rhythm machines for the company's line of home organs. In 1973, Kakehashi cut ties with both companies to found Roland.

Roland

Roland (Frankish: Hruodland) (died 15 August 778) was a Frankish military leader under Charlemagne who became one of the principal figures in the literary cycle known as the Matter of France. The historical Roland was military governor of the Breton March, responsible for defending Francia's frontier against the Bretons. His only historical attestation is in Einhard's Vita Karoli Magni, which notes he was part of the Frankish rearguard killed by rebellious Basques in Iberia at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass.

The story of Roland's death at Roncevaux Pass was embellished in later medieval and Renaissance literature. He became the chief paladin of the emperor Charlemagne and a central figure in the legendary material surrounding him, collectively known as the Matter of France. The first and most famous of these epic treatments was the Old French Chanson de Roland of the eleventh century.

Two masterpieces of Italian Renaissance poetry, the Orlando innamorato and Orlando furioso, are even further detached from history than the earlier Chansons. Roland is poetically associated with his sword Durendal, his horse Veillantif, and his oliphant horn.

Eric Persing

Eric Persing is a sound designer, professional synthesist and producer in Los Angeles, California. He is best known as the Founder and Creative Director of the leading music software and virtual instrument company Spectrasonics. He was a major contributor to all of Spectrasonics' products, including Omnisphere, Stylus RMX, Trilian, Atmosphere and Trilogy.

In 2011, he and his team accepted the TEC Award for "Best Musical Instrument Software" for Omnisphere version 1.5.

Eric started working for Roland Music as Chief Sound Designer from 1984 to 2004, where he worked on many influential synthesizers and music-related products such as the Roland D-50, the JD-800, the Roland JX, JV, JP, XP series synthesizers and many others. Even today, his sounds can be heard in many productions.

Important influences for Persing are Vangelis, Kraftwerk, Jan Hammer, Yes, Genesis and Thomas Dolby.

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Roland SH-101

Roland SH-101 is a synthesizer from the early 1980s, manufactured by Roland. It is a small, 32 key, monophonic analog synthesizer. It features one oscillator with 3 simultaneous waveforms, an 'octave-divided' square sub-oscillator, triangle and square/pwm waveform. It has a low-pass filter/VCF capable of self oscillation. The self oscillation filter can be used to make bass drum sounds. The controls are simple to use as there is a slider or switch available for every single parameter, and there is an external trigger input to control the speed of the sequencer or the arpeggiator. The LFO is very fast and can be used to make fast arpeggios with decay down to zero volume, without retriggering the ADSR. Another unique feature is being able to select noise as a modulation source for both pitch and the filter, resulting in distortion-like effects. External control is achieved using CV/Gate and not MIDI. The SH-101 was produced in three colors: gray, blue, and red. Contrary to legend, the SH-101 never came in white. A shoulder strap can be connected to it, and a small handgrip can be plugged into the side which contains a pitch bend wheel and a pitch modulation trigger. When slung over the shoulder it doubles as a "keytar".

Roland D-50

The Roland D-50 is a polyphonic 61-key synthesizer produced by Roland. It was released in 1987. Its features include Linear Arithmetic synthesis, on-board effects, a joystick for data manipulation, and an analog synthesis-styled layout design. The external Roland PG-1000 (1987-1990) Programmer could also be attached to the D-50 for more complex manipulation of sounds. It was also produced in a rack-mount variant design, the D-550 (1987-1990), with almost 450 user-adjustable parameters.

The D-50's capabilities could be modified through the addition of 3rd-party products by Musitronics, most notably the M-EX which made the D-50 multitimbral (the D-50 was bi-timbral), as well as a chip that improved the D-50's response to incoming MIDI commands and a system for burning custom PCM cards with user samples for playback in the D-50.

History

The D-50 was the first affordable synthesizer to combine sample playback with digital synthesis, a process that Roland called Linear Arithmetic synthesis. The engineers at Roland determined the most difficult component of a realistic instrument to simulate is the attack, so the D-50 included almost 100 sampled attacks in ROM. The synthesizer played back an attack and used the synthesizer section to create the sustain of the sound. This dual-use method was required in 1987 since RAM was so expensive. Roland did, however, incorporate a number of "texture" samples that could be mixed into the synthesized sustain-part of a patch. These sustain samples gave many D-50 patches a lush and airy quality, particularly with its heavy use of choir, wind and string samples. The D-50 is probably the first virtual analog synthesizer; the D50 was also the first digital synthesizer to integrate onboard digital effects.