Roland V-Combo VR-09

[knewdood]

I am in real bad need of the bagpipe, sadly for only one song. Can you tell me how you were able to create that sound? I have the ipad editor in case that is needed. I "had" a juno-DI that imo had a great bagpipe sound. Any help on this is greatly appreciated. Thanks

[Kevmo]

Maybe use the accordian patch?

[brenner13]

Wow! Bagpipes are not easy to emulate. Accordion layered with oboe is obviously a bad suggestion.

 

An hour of tweaking with the iPad app, got something close. My programming skills are only slightly past beginner, possibly novice. Wave number 116 is bagpipe, and I used all three partials. Gave each of them a fast and slight envelope pitch slide. Detuned one up, one down, and one center. Same for panning. Spent the longest time with the filter cutoff and resonance on all three...got lots more to do there.

 

MFX set to pitch shifter and dialed to about 9:30, DELAY is set to 3tap pan for now and dialed to about 8:30. REVERB is on hall dialed to 11.

 

Managed a decent top lead tone, but the low drone sounds very synthetic. May need to program two different patches and split them. Oh, that way the top could be set to unison/mono to provide some nice trill action and an even thicker sound. T'would love to do lots more but am getting tired after a hellish week.

 

I hope Roland is still working on another update so we can load individual registrations soon. I'd love to share some of the ones I've come up with and hear what others are doing with the deep capabilities of this synth.

 

One needs to find a preset that is not needed for any other registration and one that is capable of being edited with the iPad. I think I used one called Hover Dive under the SFX button. Be sure to save often to a registration during editing...it is way too easy to accidentally nudge that dial and loose all the tweaks with an inadvertent patch change.

[Kevmo]

What is wave 116? I say apply these efx tweeks to accordian gets you close

[brenner13]

I suggested accordion and oboe in the post prior to the the one I quoted above and later surmised that the actual bagpipe PCM #116 in the iPad app provides a better starting point.

As you suggest Kevmo, accordion might work well...perhaps best for the drone notes once it is tweaked a bit with the filter cutoff and res and ADR envelope. A little pitch envelope on the attack might help, too. Might give that a try if an hour of down time can be found in the next few days.

[Kevmo]

Thanks

Is there a list of all the PCMs /names

[brenner13]

They are the same PCM's that are in the JP50 and 80. There's 363 of them and the list accessible on the iPad app even when it's not hooked up to the VR09 but of course no sound until hooked up to the keyboard...Apple's camera kit works great for me.

Bring up the app, hit the SYNTH button at the top, press the WAVE button several times to get the red light next to PCM, press the number box to make it turn blue, press it again to bring up the list. Press CANCEL or SELECT to close the window.

[iluvchiclets]

Hey ToB3,

 

I know it probably goes without saying, but when I have used the Ep's the most instant thing I can do to them is use the "Cutoff" drawbar to affect the tone. It is the farthest white drawbar to the right. I found it made the too-bright bell Rhodes timbre turn instantly into a darker and funkier vintage Rhodes tone.

 

Actually I felt the EPs were kind of poor until I fooled around with this setting. Now I think they are great! Very under-rated keyboard for the money...

[grapite]

New sounds at Axial ,The Cover Band Collection, nice too!

Regards

[Kevmo]

I'm gonna change my name to vr09 any other power users ? Lately I'm getting complements on the grand v and wurly and strings

I love the VA lead synths

[To B3]

New sounds at Axial ,The Cover Band Collection, nice too!

Regards

 

Those sounds are not my cup of tea (more of a 70's rock, blues, soul kind of guy) but it's good to see that the VR is included on the AXIAL. If anyone downloads it, tell us if it's good.

 

And one idea: how about some Dave Weiser programmed vintage pianos, clavs and EPs?

 

[Craig MacDonald]

Hopefully we'll see lot's more registrations appearing.. for now I suspect that Roland is trying to demonstrate the capabilities of the VA synth by providing some great, and recognizable, synth patches. A drawbar organ + reasonably good AP/EP and other sounds, along with a really capable VA synth is a killer combo at this price. I think that ability to download registrations, and these sounds, are like the icing on the cake. Killer keyboard at this price.

 

For anyone interested, here's the link to the axial site

 

http://axial.roland.com/

 

I will load these in shortly and report back later.

[Kevmo]

Hopefully we'll see lot's more registrations appearing.. for now I suspect that Roland is trying to demonstrate the capabilities of the VA synth by providing some great, and recognizable, synth patches. A drawbar organ + reasonably good AP/EP and other sounds, along with a really capable VA synth is a killer combo at this price. I think that ability to download registrations, and these sounds, are like the icing on the cake. Killer keyboard at this price.

 

For anyone interested, here's the link to the axial site

 

http://axial.roland.com/

 

I will load these in shortly and report back later.

 

Craig I downloaded these to iPad with the vr09 editor . How do I use them ? Where did they load to?

[To B3]

So, I was thinking... How about a new thread with user edits showing how to obtain certain sounds that are missing... Or song specific sounds... At least the main parameters (MFX, Tone, Compressor, etc).

 

Some cool possible first entries:

 

- Mellotron Strings

- Mellotron Choir

- Mellotron Flute

- Aproximations of clavinet Pickup Combinations.

- Darker/Dirtier/Worn Out Electric Pianos

- Some Song Specific Synths.

- and many more...

 

As the VR09 has already great starting point sounds and is a hands-on instrument, those things would be easy to show how they can be obtained... What do you think?

 

[Craig MacDonald]

Hopefully we'll see lot's more registrations appearing.. for now I suspect that Roland is trying to demonstrate the capabilities of the VA synth by providing some great, and recognizable, synth patches. A drawbar organ + reasonably good AP/EP and other sounds, along with a really capable VA synth is a killer combo at this price. I think that ability to download registrations, and these sounds, are like the icing on the cake. Killer keyboard at this price.

 

For anyone interested, here's the link to the axial site

 

http://axial.roland.com/

 

I will load these in shortly and report back later.

 

Craig I downloaded these to iPad with the vr09 editor . How do I use them ? Where did they load to?

 

Kevmo, sorry to be slow responding.. we've had an ice storm up here (a few days ago now) but power has been off/on a bit for me today. First of all, you don't download these sounds to your ipad/editor, you download them to a PC because you need to transfer them to a USB stick to load them into the VR-09. The instructions are part of the download.. the files are compressed so once you open them you have a sound list, and instructions (one in English and one in Japanese I think) and two files:

 

1. VR09_001.UPG

2. VRSYN001.DAT

 

IT's these two files that you load onto a USB stick and then you can easily load them into your VR-09 using the Media Utility. Be careful to save your existing registrations because the Cover Band Collection will overwrite both your registrations AND I believe your synth data.. (more on that in a separate post).. suffice it to say, copy your own registrations onto a USB stick and use a separate USB stick for your Cover Band Collection.

 

Hope this helps.

[Craig MacDonald]

Regarding the new Cover Band Collection, be careful to back up your own personal registration on a separate USB stick, and do NOT load the Cover Band Collection on the same USB stick.

 

I while back I have experimented with my VR-09 and tried to save multiple registration sets on the same USB stick and what you find is that the VR-09 saves multiple registrations (with file extensions .UPG) but only one synth data file (called VRSYN001.DAT). So I surmised that the .UPG file is the actual registration file, and the .DAT file is actually the deeper synth data (which doesn't specifically get saved with the registration but it has to get saved somewhere!!).

 

When I first loaded the Cover Band Collection (CBC) on my USB stick I also saved my own registrations on the same USB stick and when I loaded the CBC Registration, a lot of the synth sounds had no resemblance to the songs they were named after which seemed very strange. However, I quickly realized that what I had inadvertently done was overwrite the CBC Data file (the actual synth data) with my own synth data. SO I saved my own registrations onto my PC and reloaded JUST the CBC files onto the USB stick and loaded them in and there were all the sounds!! (with one exception The Tom Sawyer synth sound doesn't work).

 

SO, be careful not to overwrite or lose your original synth sounds (if you have edited them and stored them into registrations) use two separate USB sticks one to store your original registrations and one to put your CBC registrations on.

 

So how do they sound.. have to admit they're NOT blowing me away.. in most cases they're close approximations to the sound but not killer.. I'll provide more of a review on the sounds tomorrow when I have time.

[brenner13]

EGAD! Thanks for the tips and reassertions, Craig. Quirkiest board of the year award? Still like it.

 

 

Copied from the other thread so to keep it congealed.

 

[Craig MacDonald]

Brenner, yes a bit quirky, but I still like mine too.. I think that Roland has really tried to "cripple" the VR-09 in certain ways.. this inability of the VR-09 to create multiple registrations using the same base synth sound (but different synth settings) kind of boggles the mind.. Especially when they've created this great iPad editor program.. Very curious. Also, what I have discovered, which is the fact that you can save multiple "registrations" sets to USB stick but only one synth data file is also curious..? Why not increment the data files in the same manner as the registration files.. That really stops you from saving two distinct registrations on the same USB stick.. you can save different registrations but they must all share the same deep synth parameters..

 

However, because they have named the synth data file as vrsyn001.dat (with the 001 designation) suggests that they may enable storing of multiple deep synth data files in the future..

[Kevmo]

Wow jump thru hoops back &forth from PC to ipad. Hope not to erase my patches. Only to get some meh new sounds........?

I'll hold off till the brave sort it out

Still love this board . As a ex Juno 106 owner I love the VA more allthe time

[Craig MacDonald]

Kevmo,

 

I've sorted it out.. just use a separate usb stick for your own registrations.. don't combine your registrations with the Cover Band Collection on the same USB stick otherwise one registrations synth data will overwrite the other!!

 

I'm going through the sounds one at a time and comparing them to the original and the sounds are better than I originally thought.. I'll will post my review shortly.. I think they're definitely worth loading in if you have room and requirement for any of them.

[Dr88s]

I think they're definitely worth loading in if you have room and requirement for any of them.

 

Well therein lies the problem. I may have the room in terms of unused registrations but I do not want to mix my own registrations with the axial ones, as above.

 

Unless 'having room' means having a spare USB stick around

[Craig MacDonald]

DR88 definitely do NOT mix your own registrations with the Axial Cover Band Set.. the reason being that Roland has made changes to the various synth programs used in the collection, and if these are synth programs that you used, or modified in your registrations, your deep synth parameters may have changed and been overwritten by the Cover Band Collection VRSYN001.DAT file. I say "may" have changed because the 32 registrations in the Cover Band Collection only use/modify certain synth programs.

[Craig MacDonald]

OK so hear is my review of the new Cover Band Collection for the VR-09 that I've just downloaded from the Roland Axial site.

 

First off I will say that they actually all sound quite authentic.. I compared each and every sound to the original song and I have to some props to Roland for the collection. It's pretty good.. Generally speaking some sounds need a bit of brightening up (for my liking) so I crank the tone control up on a number of the sounds..

 

The sounds are all pretty good, with the odd exception.. "House of the Rising Sun" is awful, but that's because the transistor organs in the VR-09 suck (they have no bite/balls). I'm a little disappointed because there are no splits/layers in the collection, and in some cases I was disappointed that Roland chose to emulate a pad sound rather than a more dominant sound in the song.. One example where I was disappointed would be the "Tom Sawyer" registration.. I was hoping for the intro synth sound with it's big sweeping filter but instead the sound was the rather wimpy synth sound from the middle of the song.

 

I also thought that they could have created some splits with multiple sounds (for songs with multiple keyboard parts), but that was not the case (I guess they're leaving that up to us). Even with the drawbar organ registration "Green Onions" I would have expected a keyboard split so the upper part could be controlled in real time separately from the lower/bass part.. but that was not the case. BTW, I think the original recording was an M3 using a single speed leslie, on stop, but this registration used a regular leslie and the Twin Rotary effect in chorale mode.. It sounds good but it's not quite correct.

 

Other sounds were a bit lacking as well such as the "Sweet Dreams" registration which left me wanting to layer some synth strings (like the OB Strings).. Same with the "billie Jean" registration which I wanted to add some strings or synth brass to add some body to the sound.

 

Some sounds were excellent.. for example I couldn't stop playing the "Take On Me" registration, it was bang on, as were a number of the synth sounds, such as "The final Countdown" and most of the other synth-pop sounds were very accurate!

 

So all in all, pretty good set of sounds.. some of them are great and very authentic sounding (about half the sounds) and there are a few that could stand a bit of tweaking (mostly to add a bit of body or brightness to make them cut better), and a couple that could/should be converted to splits or layers to better cover the original.

 

It strikes me that who ever designed the sounds did exactly that without thinking about how they would be played/used in a live situation.. Hence there were no splits, despite the fact that us keyboard players are often covering more that one sound at a time. Creating ONE sound from a synth-pop tune like "Relax" or "The Reflex" or a Howard Jones or Gary Numan song is like only leaving a job half done!

 

All in all, a very good collection, and it's free!! How can that not be great! Hopefully we'll see more registrations from Roland they'll start providing some registrations with useful splits and layers!!

 

(yes I've posted this in two different VR-09 threads)

[brenner13]

I have yet to try the Axial sounds...my new Digitech iStomp just arrived...Whoa ho HO! The choruses, flangers, tremolos, and delays really are superb and so much more tweakable than the internal ones in the VR09. However, combining them is total gas, too.

 

I like the phasers better in the VR09 and even though there's been so much flak about VR09's overdrive, but find it way better than any of the OD's for the iStomp. Admittedly when I want overdrive, my ears like the Uriah Heep and Jon Lord sound. Most of the iStomp distortions and OD's have higher frequency artifacts that are possibly more authentic and controllable with guitar and guitar amps, but they are irritating to my "organ-ic" ears through headphones. However, the FUZZY pedal is wonderful.

 

Oh...I just noticed last night that the TwinRotary setting in VR09 MFX changes speed with a touch of the Fast/Slow button, even when actual rotary sim is off. I'm pretty sure the parameters are fixed, but still pretty cool ramp up and downs.

[Craig MacDonald]

brenner,

 

I never liked the Twin Rotary effect when I first tried it.. however a couple of the Cover Band Collection sounds used it.. and it didn't sound bad and what I noticed was that it was used in conjuction with leslie type 1, which I never use. However, it didn't sound bad in that combination (Type 1 leslie, plus twin rotary).. I may try experimenting with this myself.

 

From my perspective the biggest problem with the VR-09 overdrive it that it kicks in like an off/on switch.. there's not enough subtlety to it..

[brenner13]

Neat. I find the Type1 Rotary is best with non-organ sounds when one wants a massive swirly chorus on their synth lead or faux-guitar.

 

Anxious to try the new sounds...gotta go get some small capacity thumb drives in bulk so I can see just how deep I can get into the synth engine. Might have to fire up the PC and make an excel work sheet to keep track of all the changes I make to which presets...good thing I like "quirky".

[Craig MacDonald]

brenner,

 

I was going to go in and note which synth presets were used/changed by the Cover Bad Collection.... that might be helpful to know before loading them in.. I think it would give you an idea whether or not the CBC sounds can co-exist with your own registrations.. if they don't edit any synth programs that you use, you're OK.. Otherwise you might have to make some minor changes to your own registrations to accomodate them.

[Kevmo]

Just played a well attended jam Dead etc. with Nord.Electro 3 via MS stereo amp I was put thru same

Amp then PA. The Nord sounded very good but like some say like a blanket was placed over it my Vr09 was crystal clear which was a def benefit in that setting.

Both organ & keys my $850 VR Stomped the expensive Nord

[brenner13]

 

I am quite pleased with my own tweaks and modifications, but Daniel Fisher gives great examples of more possibilities of this versatile tool. I've taken one of his ideas and have begun layering different AC Piano presets to fatten the sound...I get happier and more pleased with this board all the time.

[Kevmo]

Wow a demo my band mates can understand.