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Advice on Roland RD2000


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I've agreed to do a live taping event for an old friend. They want the musicians as close to the artist as comfortable and are requesting "small footprint" set ups. The producer has suggested I do it all with his Roland RD2000. The songs will call mostly for piano, Wurli, Rhodes, pad and maybe organ. I know I can get top quality versions of all of those sounds with my session rig, but if I can be accomadating, I'd like to make this easy for them. I don't know this board at all. I assume it's got reasonably decent piano and EPs. How uncomfortable will I be with it's organ sounds?

Thanks as usual.

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It"s got a lot of bread and butter - you can cover all this with it but you"ll want to get there early to tweak. Especially the acoustic piano - you at least need to scroll the presets for something that works. The organs sound like Roland presets sound - good enough for comping and you"ll find a lead sound for licks.

 

Ed has some helpful videos.

 

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I"ve played this axe a handful of times, you should be okay. I suspect you will be able to dial in a nice AP, ditto for pads. I find the Roland EPs to be somewhat flat/dull, but serviceable. Never really explored the organs outside of a couple of early stock programs, probably will never be confused with an upper-level clone.

"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing."

- George Bernard Shaw

 

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I JUST played one. The piano felt sonically soft and washed out. Too much verb. It may have have been the speakers at the store. I would be prepare to strip out the verb.

 

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I would be prepare to strip out the verb.

First thing I do when approaching a KB is to kill the effects.

 

I know why manufacturers smother the sounds in that sh8t but it's totally unnecessary.

 

Reminds me of people who use too much salad dressing.

 

Have some salad with your Ranch dressing or in this case piano with the reverb.. :laugh::cool:

PD

 

"The greatest thing you'll ever learn, is just to love and be loved in return."--E. Ahbez "Nature Boy"

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The organ sim is fully editable on the RD-2000 (drawbars, percussion) except for chorus/vibrato which is missing.

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With the caveat that I am no how qualified to give someone like you advice on how anything to do with keys, and especially how they sound...

 

For organs, I'd make sure that the RD-EXP05 expansion pack from here: http://axial.roland.com/category/rd-2000/ is installed and go for that on the EXP button rather than the standard installed bank of organs. If you use drawbars, familiarize yourself with how the UI works because it doesn't just go into drawbar mode when you pick an organ preset. Presumably both of these are things the owner can assist with. (The default thing the drawbar like controls do is control volume of layers/splits IIRC.)

 

My take is it has a very good piano like action. Maybe not to everyone's taste, but it isn't for lack of quality. It is a board that should definitely be able to do the job you need to do. I recently played both a vintage Rhodes and Hammond, neither in great repair, and came away with a much greater appreciation for the modern stage keyboard :-)

 

As someone else posted, you can save a plethora of presets on the RD2000 so it can be configured in advance and one buttoned from thing to thing, including splits/etc. But the details of doing so, and the process of fine tuning exactly what you want, will definitely require some time sitting in front of it. All of the effects are on dedicated UI to the left which is intuitive enough that you can get reverb and the like under control just by looking at it.

 

-Z-

 

 

 

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Hi Steve,

 

I owned and gigged an RD-2000 for about two years; used it a lot for single keyboard gigs. Did a local, piano-based session on it; but ended up adding a simple TW organ track as well.

For the gig described, I think you'll be fine with it. I still use a separate SN piano (FP-50), even do part of my teaching on that. I find Roland SN piano very playable for a digital instrument. I have a Lester K that I put on the RD's TW organ for that local session; not sure if you'd need something like that for the gig, but if you have an outboard rotary sim, you might bring it.

Feel free to PM me if you have any questions about the RD-2000 - layout, sounds, etc..

'Someday, we'll look back on these days and laugh; likely a maniacal laugh from our padded cells, but a laugh nonetheless' - Mr. Boffo.

 

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If this is still up for discussion, I have always been an advocate of Roland organs.

 

I had VK8m module for a long time and loved many things about it including the CV and overdrive.

 

I did hear the RD2000 organ briefly and liked it. It's miles beyond anything that I have heard from Yamaha and Korg.

 

If a player like Steve Nathan gets his hands on this, it can be made to work I am sure. The drawbar tones and percussion are all there. There is an art to making these things sound convincing, which has always been interesting to me.

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