Roland Groove Machines

I play piano and keyboard instruments, i have been playing with computers and music for 5 years now, seriously for 2. I am not in a band since i make trance music. My style is uplifting and melodic, rich and sharp sounds. I bought this unit on Ebay, i payed around £70 pounds for it. This unit is a great groovebox, its probably not for everyone but i love it, its sequencer is tight as long as you dont have too much going on. The sounds are interesting and varied, some of them are classic sounds that i know ive heard on older trance tunes, as well as sounds ive never heard before, the drum sounds are varied but all electronic sounding, i personally love the sounds on this box, to me there a breath of fresh air, heavy drums with deep bass and rich hi's, some of the pads are exciting and full a real joy to play. I have much more respect for Roland after using this unit. The basses are wonderful and varied some of them are very deep, others are just interesting, some of them sounds classic when filtered. The filter is rich and you can make some beautiful sounds with this unit, (the fiter does step however). The D-pad is fun and really adds some excitment to the mix, you can do things like reverse the beat in real time, play arpeggiators and adlib instruments using your finger, use the filter etc. I could really go on for ages since there is so much to this unit! it does pay to read the manual and dig a littler deeper since they have put lots of interesting functions on this groovebox. I love the effects, perhaps there not as high end as a pro would expect, they all sound pretty sweet to my ears, like the reverb is quite satisfying and it doesnt muddy up or make a big mess of sound. My favourate use of it is to make a heavy and hard beat with a strong filtering bassline accompanied by lush strings all run through the limiter. That for me gets me going , sometimes i can just listen to a groove ive made for a good 15 minutes filtering and muting certain parts, its that satisfying for me. The sequencer is fun and easy to use. I prefer it to software sequencers. You can record your D-pad movements (like filters, adlibing etc). Well, The Echo isnt a left right ping pong, rather it is mono, it can be routed to the reverb though, which gives you a reverb echo, which i dont use much. The compressor is not flexible enough for me to use it seriously plus it does not give me the sound i desire, it dulls the sound and does not give the puch that i desire. Its a shame that the filter is not smooth but steps, however this still sounds good! the lack of any knobs can sometimes make you feel like your missing something, Also its missing a good detuned synth for main trancelines and euphoric breakdowns, although it does have a good-ish substitute which actually makes your tunes quite unique sounding. i sometimes feel that i would like at least one more effect to be usable simultaniously ( you can use 3 at once max ) also sometimes ill just get a tune really going and realise that ive used all 8 parts, this is actually not that bad seeing that its just a groovebox, however you can make some pretty decent tunes with just 8 parts, and this also encourages you to be more creative with your actual music. Construction is fine seeing there arent any moving parts on it, pretty solid and it feels quite satisfying to hold and move around. The quality is pretty good, perhaps not high-end or top notch, but its not bad either! This is a great tool to have, i quite like it and i think i will always use it in someway in my setup, i havent really used much gear, namely a Mc-303, a Korg Ms2000 and a Korg Poly800, I prefer the D2 to the Mc-303, And the synth sounds of the D2 are more limited but higher quality in my opinion than the Ms2000, however they are not better than the poly800 (it is an analog synth, DCO), yet i feel the basses are stronger on the D2 than all of the above. I love it because of what it does, rather than hate it because of what it does not do. I would check out the specs first to see if its for you, it has 600 sounds, that sounds like alot but there isnt much difference between alot of the sounds and there are a few in there i would never use. I find it a big refreshment to play with this unit after using computer software which in my opinion is weak and does not make tunes like i remember hearing them when i was younger, the D2 however, does. God bless guys, make wise decisions, enjoy the good blessings in life and take time out to make music and be Joyful what you do. Amen This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com