Roland V-Combo VR-09

[xKnuckles]

Ok Staticstate, here is a video of my band with me playing the transistor organ sound (among other things). It is not particularly good quality as was filmed from quite far away, but maybe will give you a bit of an idea of how it can sound. If you find it hard to hear, there are other ones..... For this song, I want quite an OTT queasy, ghostly sound; so I have the rotary on fast and have also adjusted some of the other settings. It is not the typical transistor sound which I use, but maybe will give you an idea how the VR can sound.

[video:youtube]-zVxhCE8-E4

[brenner13]

Personally, I find the VR09's transistor organ too clean...modeled directly from Roland's own VK09 which itself was a step away from the grinding buzz of Farf/Vox that had gone out of style by then and a step closer to a warmer Hammond like tone. My guitar player has a road-worn VK09 and playing them side by side the VK still had slightly more...beef to the sound. However we were able to get them to sound nearly identical with similar drawbar settings. Adding a touch of overdrive and chorus to the VR helps give it more girth.

 

Point being the VR09's stock sounds give you a solid starting point but have to tweak 'em extensively to make 'em shine, which is fairly fast and easy and can be a lot of fun.

[xKnuckles]

Yes, and straight out of the box, the transistors don't cut. But with tweaks, they are amazing. I just had a look through my little collection of "gems" which I have come across in this forum and saved for future reference. There was one, by Craig MacDonald was particularly helpful to me, and I used it as the starting point for my transistor tweaks. They absolutely cut like a knife now.

 

To save you searching, I will repost what he said. Perhaps you may also find it useful:

 

"Again, I don't know much about combo organs but I've spent a bit of time with the transistor program and here are a few tips that you can try ....

 

Volume - First, turn the volume up to 12 (from the default of 10)!! Every little bit of volume helps..

 

Compressor - I find that with the compressor on (or up near 9 as Brenner suggested) the overall sound/volume fades in and out depending on whether you're playing bass notes, and this is just a major distraction for me, so I set the compressor to zero

 

Tone - For me I think the transistor organ needs to be way brighter so I turn the tone right up to the top, all the way clockwise.. this gives me the brightest tone that I can get out of the VR-09 (at least through my QSC K10's).

 

Vibrato - select V3 vibrato because the vibrato on the Vox Continental is very prounounced. In the mix with a band, I think it's OK to overemphasize an effect like this so that it's heard in the mix.

 

Sparkle - Rather than using the leslie to give it "girth" (as Brenner did), I use the Chorus MFX and dial it up to about 12:00. To me, this gives the transistor organs a bit of sparkle that I don't hear in the basic samples.

 

Now this is important.. to help the transistor organ, sound more authentic and cut better, you have to back off the 16' and 8' drawbars a bit.. If you listen to the Vox Continental demo here you'll see that the basic tone is pretty close but the real Vox is just way brighter:

 

 

So after I've done all of this, I do one last thing and that is to turn up the highs on the VR channel in my mixer to achieve that piercing brightness that the original Vox Continental has that the VR-09 seems to be missing. So turn the treble up in your amp or your monitor this will help the overall tone sound more authentic AND help it cut. This is a bit of a pain because adding brightness to your amp/mixer will affect your other sounds as well.. but if it's not convenient to adjust this during a performance, you can turn it up and simply eq out some of the highs on your other sounds/registrations..

 

If you watch the demo closely and follow it on the VR you will notice that there are a couple of distinct differences between the VR design and the Vox Continental.. eg. on the VR one of the tones is "folded back" on the lowest octaves) but now that I've spent some time with it, I think that it's possible to get a pretty good approximation of the Vox Continental tone. Hopefully you will find my suggested tweaks helpful, but it's not perfect by any means.. hopefully this gives you a place to start to come up with a Vox sound that you're reasonably happy with!!"

 

_________________________

Craig MacDonald

 

(Thanks Craig!!)

 

 

[staticstate]

thanks guys! I appreciate the enthusiasm most of you have for this keyboard. I also noted that that "cover band" pack for this machine has a monkees tune and that house of the rising sun as well which is approximately the tone that I'm going for. anyone on here have that pack and care to play a couple for me? thanks again!

[Giancarlo Robles]

After a long while I managed to take some time and try the VR-09 yesterday for close to 2 hours. I wanted to give my impressions for this board based on my needs as part of a worship group.

 

First of all, the sticking point of most: the keybed and action. I have definetely gone with those that say that the action is good. I find it to be responsive, easy to play, and very fast for organ parts. It is also good enough for piano and EPs. No, it will not have the level of playing depth compared to a fully weighted keybed, but it does allow a great deal of expressive playing once you familiarize yourself with the keybed. I didn't have any problems with the keys themselves. The black keys might be a bit smaller than a regular keybed, but I found no problem when it came to playing.

 

Sounds are very good for me needs. I will be switching between the Grand Piano V1 for softer worship music and Grand Piano V2 for faster playing. Each of the pianos have their own character and the two grands are the best IMO. One additional thing: the mono piano is horrible in this board. Avoid it at all costs.

 

In terms of EPs, I really like the very bright ones with a bell like tine. I found the EP2 sound close to the end to be amazing! I seriously couldn't stop playing it. The rest are really good but I don't think I would be using them much.

 

Strings: really good. It is a bit sad that most if not all are synth strings. I do like synth sounds but for church it doesn't work. For my use I did find some strings that closely resemble a real string ensemble. Just added some cutoff and got the sound I wanted.

 

Brass: the hybrid brass setting works great for worship. Very nice, loud and real enough.

 

Pads: The only ones I could potentially use for Sunday services are the Softpads 1, 2, and 3. However I would have to work with them because of a situation (I will explain below).

 

Synths: Wow! This board has amazing synth sounds. Too bad it doesn't have an electric guitar sound, but that's no problem! I can just use a synth lead sound if needed!

 

Organs: I use organs mostly as background, mostly in a pad sort of way. I did like both the jazz and rock organ modes. But both definetely need tweaking in order to sound better. I found the leslie to be too fast when triggered. Apart from that the sound is really good to work for church.

 

Overall impressions: this board is perfect for what I need to do at church, especially since I do not play piano most of the time. Great organs and very good strings, organs, pads, pianos and EPs. I will be buying the board this coming Friday and will be leaving it permanently at church. That allows me to keep my Casio Privia PX-5S at home and carry both boards whenever I need a 2 rig setup.

[Giancarlo Robles]

Regarding the pads, I would like to know if it is possible to keep the volume the same while holding down notes. From what I played yesterday, when I held down the notes softly at first the volume was perfect but as I kept holding them second after second the volume gradually kept rising on and on. After 20 seconds or so the volume was excessively loud. Is there any way to eliminate this? I usually use the pads in church as a meditative low volume sound with piano, but having a pad that gradually goes up would not work for that purpose.

[brenner13]

Yes, and straight out of the box, the transistors don't cut. But with tweaks, they are amazing. I just had a look through my little collection of "gems" which I have come across in this forum and saved for future reference. There was one, by Craig MacDonald was particularly helpful to me, and I used it as the starting point for my transistor tweaks. They absolutely cut like a knife now.

 

To save you searching, I will repost what he said. Perhaps you may also find it useful:

 

"Again, I don't know much about combo organs but I've spent a bit of time with the transistor program and here are a few tips that you can try ....

 

Volume - First, turn the volume up to 12 (from the default of 10)!! Every little bit of volume helps..

 

Compressor - I find that with the compressor on (or up near 9 as Brenner suggested) the overall sound/volume fades in and out depending on whether you're playing bass notes, and this is just a major distraction for me, so I set the compressor to zero

 

Tone - For me I think the transistor organ needs to be way brighter so I turn the tone right up to the top, all the way clockwise.. this gives me the brightest tone that I can get out of the VR-09 (at least through my QSC K10's).

 

Vibrato - select V3 vibrato because the vibrato on the Vox Continental is very prounounced. In the mix with a band, I think it's OK to overemphasize an effect like this so that it's heard in the mix.

 

Sparkle - Rather than using the leslie to give it "girth" (as Brenner did), I use the Chorus MFX and dial it up to about 12:00. To me, this gives the transistor organs a bit of sparkle that I don't hear in the basic samples.

 

Now this is important.. to help the transistor organ, sound more authentic and cut better, you have to back off the 16' and 8' drawbars a bit.. If you listen to the Vox Continental demo here you'll see that the basic tone is pretty close but the real Vox is just way brighter:

 

 

So after I've done all of this, I do one last thing and that is to turn up the highs on the VR channel in my mixer to achieve that piercing brightness that the original Vox Continental has that the VR-09 seems to be missing. So turn the treble up in your amp or your monitor this will help the overall tone sound more authentic AND help it cut. This is a bit of a pain because adding brightness to your amp/mixer will affect your other sounds as well.. but if it's not convenient to adjust this during a performance, you can turn it up and simply eq out some of the highs on your other sounds/registrations..

 

If you watch the demo closely and follow it on the VR you will notice that there are a couple of distinct differences between the VR design and the Vox Continental.. eg. on the VR one of the tones is "folded back" on the lowest octaves) but now that I've spent some time with it, I think that it's possible to get a pretty good approximation of the Vox Continental tone. Hopefully you will find my suggested tweaks helpful, but it's not perfect by any means.. hopefully this gives you a place to start to come up with a Vox sound that you're reasonably happy with!!"

 

_________________________

Craig MacDonald

 

(Thanks Craig!!)

 

Craig is certainly a wealth of knowledge and is very much missed on this forum. Excellent tip about volume to 12.

 

My original post intended compressor at "9 o'clock" meaning just a little...not 9 as in nearly all the way up or you get this flutter effect Craig describes.

 

Unfortunately the Tone knob turned all the way up also boosts the bottom end and can make for very boomy low drawbars and left hand. Think of a five-band EQ: Tone knob all the way up = smiley face...or scooped mids; Tone knob all the way down and you get a pyramid shape with crazy mid boost. It takes some menu diving, but there are both High Gain and Low Gain parameters available for registrations that use the organ engine. It's definitely worth finding and tweaking those. MENU, ORGAN, arrow down several times and dial that High Gain to 8 or 10, or to taste.

 

Craig nails it with V3 vibrato.

 

Yep, Chorus gives it depth while keeping the tone more present than with the MFX rotary. However the main rotary set to Type 1 maintains the brightness and can be used in conjunction with the chorus for an even more elaborate sound. Not Vox authentic but again, models the VK09 very well.

 

Craig's tips are fantastic. Thanks for finding those for us xKnuckles.

[Marillo]

Anyone else think the VR-09 is likely to be updated soon? Might we expect the next iteration at Winter NAMM?

[brenner13]

Regarding the pads, I would like to know if it is possible to keep the volume the same while holding down notes. From what I played yesterday, when I held down the notes softly at first the volume was perfect but as I kept holding them second after second the volume gradually kept rising on and on. After 20 seconds or so the volume was excessively loud. Is there any way to eliminate this? I usually use the pads in church as a meditative low volume sound with piano, but having a pad that gradually goes up would not work for that purpose.

 

The first three draw bars switch to Attack Decay Release control for synth tones. Perhaps this particular pad has long attack/decay settings? One should be able to dial in a stable soft patch and save to a registration.

 

In your previous post you mentioned that the fast rotary being too fast; I wholeheartedly agreed that the stock settings are such. A quick menu dive provides many parameters available for adjustment. There's a free iPad app that brings most of those parameters to a single screen and is wonderful for organ editing. It has a synth editor too but it is a bit tedious to maneuver. However I've managed to pull out a few sounds that are missing from the preset buttons like bagpipes and sitar.

 

There are a couple of electric guitar presets under the SYNTH LEAD button (Punker and LP Dist) but they are pretty crunchy. Also they don't respond to vibrato on the pitch stick, only pitch bend. The OTHERS button in the SYNTH section contains a few nice, cleaner electric guitar tones as well as a couple of acoustic ones. I've been wanting to explore the iPad app some more to program my own guitar sounds. You've given me inspiration to do so...THANKS!

[xKnuckles]

Craig is certainly a wealth of knowledge and is very much missed on this forum. Excellent tip about volume to 12.

 

. Thanks for finding those for us xKnuckles.

You are most welcome Brenner! Glad it is also of use to you. Yes, I also miss Craig Very much. Particularly in this discussion.....

[xKnuckles]

Great review Giancarlo. You and I have the same keyboards.

[brenner13]

Oh man, I see what you mean about Soft Pad1, Giancarlo. I think it must have a slow filter envelope that opens very gradually. I've tried messing with the Decay and pulling down the cutoff slider but it still noticeably swells. This may require the iPad app to calm down that sweep. I'll try to squeeze in some studio time tomorrow to see if it can be adjusted.

[brenner13]

Yep, as suspected there is a nice bit of filter envelope going on and with the iPad editor, one can move the envelope depth slider to zero to negate the effect and save to a registration. Nice to know.

[Giancarlo Robles]

Brenner13, thanks for the info. I thought the effect in that pad was weird when I tried it. It's good news that it can be dropped to zero. Do you know if the envelope depth can be changed from the VR-09 itself? I can always ask someone to lend me their ipad for a few hours to make the change, but I would prefer to make modifications in the VR-09 itself.

[brenner13]

Only the iPad editor provides acces to the deeper synth parameters. I still use iPad2 with an authentic Apple Camera Connection Kit (third party pieces often don't work with all OS updates). This app uses very little CPU so even first gen iPad will suffice if you come across an older model for cheap.

 

However, the next tone under Soft Pad1 is Str Pad and seems to not swell nearly as much and responds quite nicely to the filter cutoff slider.

[Soul Forever]

Is it possible to move existing registrations to other banks?

 

Yes - and I'm assuming you mean, for example, move registration 18-1 to 20-4. Navigate to registration 18-1. Then press and hold one of the four registration button, and then use the arrow buttons to select the bank/registration value, and change it to 20-4, then press the ENTER button or the MODE [sYNTH] (Write) button.

 

I thank you so much !

[tgeorges]

Just as an FYI on the iPad app if you don't already have an iPad - I purchased a 1st generation iPad, running iOS 5, and it runs the VR-09 software like a champ. You can get them from eBay for around $100 or perhaps less.

[roygBiv]

Anyone have any luck with or tips for changing VR09 patch registrations using external MIDI program change messages?

 

I'd like to have my iPad app "ForScore" send change commands, so that when I pull up a song, I could have the change occur automatically on the VR09.

[Dr88s]

Anyone have any luck with or tips for changing VR09 patch registrations using external MIDI program change messages?

 

I'd like to have my iPad app "ForScore" send change commands, so that when I pull up a song, I could have the change occur automatically on the VR09.

 

I've never tried to do this, and, googling it for you, am stunned to learn that it doesn't seem possible to do this to call up registrations, only the basic tones. If so, what an oversight!

 

One site seemed to imply that this could be done with sysex messages, but I'm not sure your iPad app would be able to do that.

 

See the Q&A at http://www.justanswer.com/electronic-musical-instruments/8n4ei-helloi-currently-use-midi-patch-changer-device.html#re.v/173/

[xKnuckles]

About a year ago I looked into using my PX5s to change the registrations on the VR-09 and it turned out not to be possible. Yes a big disappointment for me also. Fortunately, there are only about 8 registrations which I use, so I developed a little code which I incorporated into my PX stage setting names, so that I can make extremely quick programme changes. My system works beautifully (but it would have been even better if I had been able to send programme change commands.......

[Dr88s]

I can't imagine why Roland left out this functionality. This should come standard on any non-entry-level board.

[borntohang]

Quick question for anyone who has installed the 'Cover Band Collection' registration pack available on Roland's website: which registrations do these install to as default? I already have a bunch of custom ones I don't want to set up again in the user patches and don't want to overwrite them.

[WesG]

If you wanted to send me your UPG file, I can merge the two for you if you'd like. Providing you have not done any deep synth edits.

 

 

[jstrauss]

You can definitely send sysex messages with ForScore.

[WesG]

FWIW, here's what's in the Cover Band UPG. And thanks for the reminder that I need to investigate this myself!

 

Bank: 1

1 - LongDivision

2 - 80sPwrLuvP

3 - Bay Area B3

4 - DirtSawLd

 

Bank: 2

1 - TheWrldIsUrs

2 - Sweet Dream

3 - BrassnOrgan

4 - DoomsDayBrs

 

Bank: 3

1 - Blues B3

2 - Progger B3

3 - Jazzer B3

4 - Voxy

 

Bank: 4

1 - PnoBsSplit

2 - EPBsSplit

3 - DlyPnoSplit

4 - TrptPadSplit

 

Bank: 5

1 - EP Pad

2 - Comp Piano

3 - 1HandSalsaP

4 - Follow you

 

Bank: 6

1 - DirtSawLd

2 - XtremeDLead

3 - Native Lead

4 - Fugue n Lead

 

Bank: 7

1 - VoxStrings

2 - ThickVoxStr

3 - PreJMP84

4 - Euro String

 

Bank: 8

1 - StingBubBs

2 - LstNBasSpace

3 - Dist Drum

4 - Comp Drum

 

Bank: 9

1 - Believer

2 - No Cry

3 - Rising Sun

4 - Green Onions

 

Bank: 10

1 - Take On Me

2 - Sweet Dreams

3 - Billie Pad

4 - Radio Star

 

Bank: 11

1 - Axel F

2 - Rock It

3 - 1999

4 - Don't U W Me

 

Bank: 12

1 - Final Count

2 - Cars

3 - New Song

4 - Sussudio

 

Bank: 13

1 - Tom Sawyer

2 - Tainted Lov

3 - Runaway S

4 - I Just Can't

 

Bank: 14

1 - Make Me Feel

2 - Blue Monday

3 - West End G

4 - Heart Of G

 

Bank: 15

1 - Runaway BJ

2 - The Reflex

3 - Relax

4 - Separate Way

 

Bank: 16

1 - Maneater

2 - Don't You

3 - Enjoy Silenc

4 - Heartbeats

 

Bank: 17

1 - Regist me

2 - Regist me

3 - Regist me

4 - Regist me

 

Bank: 18

1 - LongDivision

2 - 80sPwrLuvP

3 - Bay Area B3

4 - DirtSawLd

 

Bank: 19

1 - TheWrldIsUrs

2 - Sweet Dream

3 - BrassnOrgan

4 - DoomsDayBrs

 

Bank: 20

1 - Blues B3

2 - Progger B3

3 - Jazzer B3

4 - Voxy

 

Bank: 21

1 - PnoBsSplit

2 - EPBsSplit

3 - DlyPnoSplit

4 - TrptPadSplit

 

Bank: 22

1 - EP Pad

2 - Comp Piano

3 - 1HandSalsaP

4 - Follow you

 

Bank: 23

1 - DirtSawLd

2 - XtremeDLead

3 - Native Lead

4 - Fugue n Lead

 

Bank: 24

1 - VoxStrings

2 - ThickVoxStr

3 - PreJMP84

4 - Euro String

 

Bank: 25

1 - StingBubBs

2 - LstNBasSpace

3 - Dist Drum

4 - Comp Drum

[brenner13]

Here's a link to Roland's download page for the Cover Band Collection shared by Sven in another post:

http://axial.roland.com/articles/the-cover-band-collection/

 

...and Craig MacDonalds observations later in the same thread:

"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!!

_________________________

Craig MacDonald

Hammond BV, Franken-B (A100 in a BV cabinet), Leslies 122/147/44W, Crumar Mojo, Korg Kronos, VR-09, Roland GAIA, Burn, Ventilator"

 

 

 

Man, I really miss Craig on this forum.

I recommend keeping different VR09 sound libraries on separate thumb drives which help me from accidentally overwriting my own deep synth edits I've done with the iPad.

 

Others have discovered that is is possible to create different folders on the same thumbdrive, but one must move the desired folder to the top of the list while the drive is connected to the computer as the VR09 only recognizes that top folder.

 

There're several sounds in this collection that I enjoy and need to find some slots in my own collection to save them to. One should probably consider most of these sounds as starting points for a user to modify further to one's own taste and memory of the tones they are intended to replicate.

[Key Master D]

I want to use my vr_09 as my top keyboard and sometimes trigger it from my PC3, but I've had no luck in getting the midi functions to work. I've tried everything in both manuals. This is actually my second one. I returned the first one I had and Sweetwater replaced it. I've spoken with Roland tech support but they were no help. Anyone else having this problem?

[Ken Beaumont]

I have used my SV1 as a lower manual on the VR-09. haven't had any issues with midi. What do you mean by 'midi functions'?

[Dr88s]

I want to use my vr_09 as my top keyboard and sometimes trigger it from my PC3, but I've had no luck in getting the midi functions to work. I've tried everything in both manuals. This is actually my second one. I returned the first one I had and Sweetwater replaced it. I've spoken with Roland tech support but they were no help. Anyone else having this problem?

 

I presume you've tried all three of the MIDI IN modes?

 

Edit: Hooray! 100 pages!

[Key Master D]

The vr doesn't play when midi'd to the Kurzweils. I've tried every midi channel. The "keyboard" setting makes no sound. The vr setting for GM2 will play 1 piano sound but the patch doesn't change though midi when it is changed on the vr. I'm stumped!