hello, ujiie here. the roland v-combo. vr-09! what do you think? it's great! if you're wondering what was going on just then, zoom in here. i used the looper, and there's a ton of rhythms in here, so with a rhythm part going,
an 8-measure pattern, i then laid down a bass part, then electric piano, a clavinet, all audio parts, overdubbing as i went along. just playing along on top of the loop. with a live organ solo at the end. you following me? if you wonder what exactly the vr-09 is, how it's laid out, and how it works, etc. well, if you just look at it, you see how simple it is.
the v-combo. what does combo mean? well, combination, like playing in a band. so this keyboard has all the sounds and parts you need to do what a band does. ok? organ here. piano here. synthesizer here. and drums over here. each part being very easy to use, and the unit as a whole is too. and over here on the far left side we have effects.
rotary speaker and what have you. yeah. they've done a good job. well then. let's start with the easiest section to use. ok, here we have the piano section. you find the piano group here: piano, electic piano, clavinet, others. push the piano button, and you get grandpiano1 on the lcd. it sounds great!
and, there are a variety of piano sounds. rock piano and so on. an absolute ton of sounds here. excellent. right? loads of sounds. go to the electric piano group. that's got some tremolo there. kind of a vintage sound. the effects section is here on the left. reverb.
delay. very nice. now, this knob here, mfx, allows you to add effects that work well with each sound individually, which are pre-assigned effects. for example i'm using an electric piano now, ok? that's tremolo. stereo tremolo. that's already assigned for you. very nice! now, on the top row here, we have overdrive.
ok? tone. tone is really good! set at 12 o'clock, it's flat. to the left, the mid-tones are emphasized. to the right, highs and lows. it emphasizes certain frequencies. it's rather crisp when turned to the left, actually. and there's the compressor knob. the effects are really quite good. good for scratching whatever itch you may have.
and very easy to use too. very nice! ok, back over here. lots of electric piano sounds. wow that's awesome! this is a wrulitzer sound. and, of course, if you press the piano & electric piano buttons at the same time, you can instantly layer the two sounds. you see how two sounds are layered? good work, roland.
clavinet next. i think clavinets get used a lot in bands. the clavinet sounds are done very well here. you know, clavinets have tablets, and depending on how they're put together, the sound varies. they've got just about every variation too. on to the 'others' category, where we find harmonicas, etc. accordion sounds.
bandoneon sounds. ah! these too. the d-50 "fantasy" sound, right? harpsichord. celesta. so that's the piano group. let's go on to the synth group. synth! we have brass. press the brass button, and you get brass sounds. jupiter brass. man, that's crisp!
more brass sounds. sounds good! nice! can you zoom in over here for me? supernatural! just casually labelled right here. supernatural. that's why the analog synth sounds, and the piano sounds too, are so good! a hit parade of good sounds!
ok, on to strings next. right, with this kind of analog synth supernatural sound, can you zoom in right here for me? these two drawbars here control cutoff and resonance. you see? let's raise the resonance. that's hot! but look here! synth attack, decay, release. here too... we started out with a strings sound, right? yeah, that's supernatural for you!
of course, you can easily edit the sounds here, but you can also use an editor, you can hook up an ipad to it too. very nice. on with more sounds. the strings are sharp, as you'd expect. that's juno, juno strings. next, ob. ob of course being oberheim.
that's nice. lots of really good sounds here! ohh that phaser feels great! good. live strings are quite good too. take this one. and say you want to put piano on top of it. well just push both buttons... you can use the level buttons here to adjust the volume.
fantastic. synth leads next. sounds good. of course, you can use this section here, the d-beam. kind of showy. you can do pitch bend. or add effects. or as a controller. you can use that to show off a bit. there are still lots more sounds!
wow. nice. sync sounds too. bass next. i used this sound at the start. and if there are acoustic bass sounds... ...there are synth bass sounds too. a variety of sounds. now, if you press the split button here, as you can see here, you get an upper/lower split.
ok, bass on lower. piano on upper. that's something you can do. good. and you can play drum parts over here. the drum section. hmmm, what to use? how about swing? see how easy that is? somebody stop me already. ok, what's next?
pads. the pads on this are good too! choir. special effects. lots of different effects type sounds. ok. and in the "others" category here... marimba sounds etc. guitar too. so you see there are a lot of sounds. but, the thing about the vr-09 is this.
the organ! right? right here. let's take a look. now, the organ section, as you can see, has drawbars here. it's a drawbar system. so you use the drawbars, like so, to make a variety of organ sounds.
when you press the organ button here, uh, actually, you can choose the type of organ. see? jazz organ. jazz organ... rock organ. transistor organ. you can choose from one of those types. that's nice. ok so let's use the jazz organ, shall we?
and of course, you can't have an organ without a rotary speaker. slow/fast control here. you can use the button. or you can use the, uh, the pitch bend lever too. or you can even use the d-beam, set to controller. right? that's neat.
and you've got vibrato/chorus too. works like that. you can choose chorus 1, 2 or 3. vibrato 1, 2 or 3 as well. percussion too. yeah that adds a nice touch! and via the split button here you can split the keyboard. you see it here? alright so what am i doing with this?
ok for the lower part, uh, a bass, a bassy/low one ok? right? it's like you've got two keyboards. they've really done a good job with this. now if we change it to rock organ... it sounds better suited for rock music. that kind of sound. but it needs overdrive! there we go. the mfx here is a ring modulator.
boy, that really changes the sound! great! if we use the transistor organ, it sounds like a transisor organ, duh. but it sounds really good! transistor! i think you see that the organ section is great! i've actually used this in a live show before. and i got some major mileage out of it too! awesome! what was really nice, was the instantaniety! start with an organ, say.
but quickly change to a piano sound. then a synth sound. well how about a strings sound... layer piano and strings. and you can save those settings in the registration section here. this is awesome! it's instantaneous. great! all of the keyboard instruments you'd use in a band are here. on standby. in perfect condition.
ready to be called up in an instant. just awesome! well, i plan on using it. the v-combo vr-09. and another great thing about it! bottom line! it's light!!! for use as a live keyboard, it's fantastic! around 5 kilograms? that's really light!
i mean, what's 5 kilos? that's lighter than an electric guitar! well, lighter than the one i have anyway. and when you add an effector to the equation? even in a soft case, that's 8, 9 kilos. this thing is 5 kilos including the soft case! that's some awesome portability right there. the v-combo vr-09. try one out for yourselves!
the roland vr-09! translation & captions by: swcreativejapan.
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