I began my journey of no return with the Roland V-Synth by surveying the huge library of preset sounds and samples that lurk beneath the surface of the synthesizer. This process took me a little while. The existing patch list is quite extensive, and with the “tweakability” of every sound the list can grow exponentially really quickly. Roland doesn’t sacrifice quality for quantity, however. The existing patches are very musical, encompassing a wide range of styles and sounds. The V-Synth is packed full of usable material that can add huge dimension to any musician’s arsenal.
If you want to start from scratch and design your own sounds or import your own samples, the V-Synth is the perfect canvas to work from. You can also edit one of the hundreds of presets to make your own unique sound. As a musician the true control placed at my fingertips is really comforting and the intuitive design of the entire control surface was quick to learn and easy to use. Dedicated buttons light up and show the signal flow being used by the sound generator. This lets you quickly choose and edit the signal path for your sound and progress from raw waveforms to really cool sounds in seconds.
Beyond the full library of sounds and the powerful sound engine, the most notable features on the Roland V-Synth are the controllers. Speaking as a keyboard player and professional musician the Twin D-Beam Controller was a mind-altering experience. I played sound after sound finding new ways to manipulate the little blue beams of light. I was surprised by how natural it felt to control the sounds’ parameters directly through the D-Beam (or the Trip Pad for that matter). Both systems are optimized to provide ultimate control over your sounds while enabling your live performance to be really musical and expressive. I could make very slow, graceful sweeps across the D-Beam on a thick pad to gently alter the pitch or I could make sharp aggressive movements on a heavy dance groove to quickly speed up the tempo. In real time you can bring other sounds into the mix, change time and pitch, or bring out interesting artifacts in the processing. The choices available to you are literally endless.
Ready or not the Roland V-Synth has opened a new door into the world of synthesis and there’s no going back!
