продажа roland gw-8

The GW8 comes in a format that makes it an ideal candidate for the gigging muso: light and portable, and with a stylish control panel that makes navigation a straightforward prospect. Let's have a look at the controls themselves and see how the concept works in practice.At the far left is the USB memory stick port for data loading and saving. This has a movable flap covering the stick when inserted, and an optional extra is a lock for the flap to eliminate unwanted tampering. Next to the 61-note keyboard is the master Volume pot and Roland's customary mod/pitch lever, while the D-beam controller is at the upper edge of the panel. Below this are Solo buttons (to play the keyboard as a mono lead synth for those Minimoog moments) and Assignable 1/2 buttons to switch the D-beam on/off and select functions. Below this are the Style Select buttons, with labelled categories: Pop/Rock, Dance, Jazz/Latin, Traditional (an eccentric mix of early rock, blues, country and European styles including polka), World and User.The next section covers the backing track and song/USB memory player controls. There are buttons here for selecting the backing type (Style, Song, USB Memory Player), balancing between the backing and keyboard part volumes, viewing a part on the display, and song record.The style controls are at the heart of the accompaniment section, offering Intro, Main and Ending buttons (which light up when active), Sync Start and Stop, and a Tap Tempo button. There are four variations to each backing of increasing sophistication, with Auto Fill-In and Start/Stop buttons. These last buttons also double as tape recorder-style controls for playing back data from song lists and the USB memory, and use the Minus One/Center Cancel button for sing-alongs.The Analog Modify section is the one that I'm guessing will see the most use in real-time playing. Here we have two rotary pots that are fully assignable to Master EQ (Low, High), Effect (Reverb, Chorus), Filter (Cutoff, Resonance) and Envelope (Attack and Release). I would guess that you can have a lot of fun with quick and intuitive editing of sounds, as well as the usual real-time performances.The centre display is 240 x 64 dots, showing white on a black background, and is very clear under reduced stage lighting conditions. The main screen page shows style/song and performance parameters, lower and upper sound names, measure and tempo, and a handy window showing a keyboard indicating which keys you press in the left-hand for accompaniment and the resulting recognised chord. To the right of the screen display is a Value dial, which can be used for selecting sounds, although scrolling through the many hundreds available makes this a rather time-consuming prospect. But there are numbered instrument family group buttons (Piano, KBD/Organ, Guitar/Bass, Strings/Scat, Sax/Brass, Synth, Perc/SFX, Rhythm, World and Special) to help. Even so, it'll take some time to call up the very sound in a group that you want, although you can save favourite sounds, as described further on.The Edit section provides four-way cursor buttons plus Enter/Exit, Menu, Effects and Write buttons for navigation and housekeeping. The Keyboard section offers Octave up/down, Transpose split point (preset to C4, but fully adjustable), Split/Dual mode, Key Scale (for alternate tunings), Key Touch and Melody Intelligence (which ingeniously adds counter-melodies to top lines and solos).The Mode section provides buttons for selecting tones, performances, V-Link (for compatible video equipment), One Touch (recommended sound settings for the selected style), USB Import (to add tones and updates), a Numeric button to input values with the numbered tone-select buttons, and Lock, which locks settings such as tempo when switching performances. At the bottom right are two buttons marked 'Favourite' (Bank and On/Off), which let you select your own favourite tones and performances from the hundreds on offer. Using the numbered instrument family buttons, you can save 10 banks of 10 sounds each.Round the back of the GW8, you'll find an LCD Contrast knob, MIDI In/Out sockets, jacks for Control and Hold pedals, an External Input jack, Output R and L/Mono jacks, a Phones jack,

The GW8's 128-voice sound engine is derived from Roland's own Fantom range of modules. Onboard is a colossal range of sounds and interactive backing styles, with additional sounds and styles from around the world. Very cannily, Roland advise that the range of sounds and styles will vary from country to country, taking advantage of prevailing musical trends in different areas around the world. Roland's own popular USB memory player allows direct playback of not only MIDI files, but also MP3, WAV and AIFF files, with a handy Center Cancel feature for audio if karaoke sing-alongs are your thing. There's a newly designed graphic display, Style Select buttons and two real-time Analog Modify knobs for sound creation on the fly, as well as a fully assignable D-beam control. Included with the GW8 are Style Converter and Playlist Editor softwares on CD-ROM (for PC only at present), and there's an onboard 16-track sequencer for saving those moments when inspiration strikes. Meet the panel Connections at the rear of the GW8 include MIDI In/Out, Control and Hold pedal jacks, External Input, R and L/Mono plus Phones output jacks, and a USB MIDI connector. Connections at the rear of the GW8 include MIDI In/Out, Control and Hold pedal jacks, External Input, R and L/Mono plus Phones output jacks, and a USB MIDI connector.

Mention the words 'arranger keyboards' to many musos and you might get a disparaging reaction. After all, the musical world (and the world of education, it has to be admitted) is littered with budget keyboards for the one-finger 'play in a day' merchant. The serious muso uses a proper workstation with all the bells and whistles, does their serious sequencing at home on a computer and then loads up the results to take on the road. Well, only up to a point. Arranger keyboards take things rather further with pre-sequenced backing tracks, which not only make it easy to make a standard song your own in performance, but also let you customise and restyle your songs on the fly. As well as that, you can control the entire backing and chord progressions with just a couple of fingers of the left hand, letting you vamp, solo and otherwise fly musically with your right hand.They're also — and this is the important point — great fun to use. Indeed, there's a flourishing community of musos who are working with arranger keyboards, looking at not only MIDI files for repertoire, but also styles, which can free up your gigging approach. A good arranger keyboard can let you modify any song to a completely different idiom very quickly, without going back to the sequencer drawing board from scratch, and the top-range models offer you a bewildering range of styles to suit just about any type of gig. Which all adds up to a good thing for the solo keyboard player. Top features An optional extra is a lock for the movable flap covering the USB memory stick port, to keep it safe from unwanted tampering. An optional extra is a lock for the movable flap covering the USB memory stick port, to keep it safe from unwanted tampering.

Roland may not be quite as well known for their arranger instruments as Casio and Yamaha's all-conquering PSR range, but their instruments carry a lot of credibility amongst musicians, with trickle-down technology from their more upmarket workstations. David Etheridge

Roland GW8Workstation/arranger keyboardPublished in PM January 2009 Reviews : Keyboards+Synths

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