this is the Roland SK 88 Pro the sound
canvas keyboard it was released in 1997
for somewhere around $600 this was the
second of three models in Roland
short-lived line of sound canvas
keyboards the first was the huge and
boringly designed SK 50 and the latter
was the seemingly superior sk 500 with
more sounds that are higher quality as
well as a USB interface but it's 49 key
keyboard seems like too much for a desk
and it's lack of physical controls in
connectivity makes it less usable on its
own it doesn't even have a MIDI import
this leaves the SK 88 Pro almost
unchallenged as the best all-in-one
sound canvas songwriting experience
before we get into that though this
video is sponsored by Linode and when
they reached out I was actually kind of
excited because I've been using their
services since 2018 so I'm already very
familiar with them and their quality
Linode is a virtual private server or
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entirely for remote access my virtual
server for the ordering page for my ATX
2 PC junior kits is running ubuntu
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$5 a month getting it installed was easy
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WordPress Linode is a us-based company
but they have data centers all over the
world so in almost no matter where you
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where you are if you want to try out
Linode which I would recommend then you
can use the link in the description to
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about four months of hosting for an
anode like mine this k 88 pro was
clearly designed more with music
production in mind rather than live
performance right from the start with
the box you were greeted by a giant CRT
monitor keyboard and mouse instead of
trying to sell you on how awesome you
look playing like creative did with the
product keys I looked at a while back
but it does have a grounding as a
traditional keyboard featuring a full
complement of the midi i/o you would
need to be able to use it for almost any
task the only exception being that it
lacks an internal speaker but with its
traditional IO unlike the USB Prodigy's
or SK 500 you don't have to worry about
setting up drivers to use it on a modern
system you can use any standard MIDI
capable interface to get it working with
any computer and from there using it is
as easy as any other MIDI keyboard but
the charm of the SK 88 pro isn't in its
usability it's in its lineage as a sound
canvas device so you'll probably at
least want to try hooking it up to an
older computer
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it can do a pretty good impression of
the venerable SC 55 it comes with an SC
55 compatibility mode that changes the
sound mapping to try and get as close as
possible it is a good imitation but it
isn't perfect that's because the SK 88
Pro is much more akin to the SC 88 Pro
than it is the SC 55 which uses a
different chipset under the hood now
related to that is something I'd like to
set straight if you read up about the SK
88 Pro online you may see comparisons to
the SC 880 from what I can tell that
stems solely from what I've seen as the
only surviving original review of this
device in a 1999 sound on sound article
which upon reading is nothing short of
wildly inaccurate the SK 88 Pro has none
of the extended features of the SCA 80
like more patches performance storage or
most obviously the higher resolution
icon based display I don't know if this
review was just phoned in based on a
cursory look at the device or if they
had some kind of prototype revised model
but their descriptions do not match my
unit or any of the other ones I've seen
online including their picture of one at
the top of their own article so I can
safely say that it's based on the SC 88
Pro and not the SC 880 with that in mind
there are some differences between the
SE 88 Pro and the SK 88 Pro but first
let me mention the pro part of the name
the SC 88 Pro was an elevated model over
the standard SC 88 that added nearly
double the number of sounds a second
stereo output and insertion effects
while the SK 88 shares the pro name and
features there isn't a non pro model so
I'm gonna go ahead and stop saying Pro
now just so I can make the name a little
bit less wordy changes from the SC 88
are mostly down to the user interface
the push buttons for changing the eight
basic filter effects have been replaced
with knobs that feel much more natural
for what they do and some of the button
combinations for accessing menus have
been simplified by adding additional
buttons the original combinations do
work on it as well though this is nice
because you don't have to remember as
many arcane shortcuts but I kind of wish
they've taken it a little bit further if
they'd added a d-pad Enter
cancel buttons and a rotary input as
well navigating the menus would be much
less cumbersome compared to the weird
way everything is laid out here and
unlike the SCA da you're more likely to
be changing these options with the
controls since you're almost constantly
interacting with the device directly
they did however add one other feature
to the controls the three knobs and the
ambiguously named control slider can all
be remapped to different functions the
slider can choose from several preset
options and all of them can be bound to
a cc message value which gives you a lot
of flexibility then of course it is also
a keyboard with the usual options that
go along with that I find the 37 key
keyboard to be the perfect size to give
you enough room to play for the type of
person who wants an all-in-one solution
the octave Shift keys let you easily
shift around the notes if you need to
anyway the keys themselves are velocity
sensitive but not after touch capable
even though the sound hardware is and
the velocity sensitivity is easily
configurable with the control slider
rather than needing to dive into a menu
the pitch Bend wheel on it is pretty
nice but the modulation feels kind of
like an afterthought it does seem to be
analog but the travel is so limited that
it may as well be on or off
at least that is one of the presets for
the again handy control slider so it's
pretty easy to ignore it another thing
you may ignore is the dual module nature
of the device like the SC 88 the SK 880
can have up to 32 active channels and 64
voice polyphony the problem is that MIDI
only supports 16 channels over a single
connection so it has to have two MIDI
imports and act as a separate a and B
module for each one as a workaround the
second stereo output is optional if you
want each module to function
independently now it isn't really
standard to have separate MIDI outputs
on a single interface so this isn't the
most practical thing to use with most
computers you can manually set the parts
on the B module to respond to the a
modules channels letting you layer more
sounds but I don't think there is an
easy way to configure this over USB
making it somewhat tedious to use
because you have to input all of the
settings manually on the keyboard every
time you want to use it but if you lean
into the tedium there is something kind
of funny you can do with it each part
has an option to set a low in
Aiki ranged used appropriately this lets
you split the keyboard by sharing a MIDI
channel with multiple parts but if you
take it to the extreme you can set each
part to an individual key meaning 32 out
of the 37 keys could all be a different
instrument something completely
unnecessary but kind of fun now when it
finally comes to writing music with the
sk 88 that experience is almost
essentially identical to the SC 88 Pro
it has the same 1117 sound options EFX
filters patches and everything else that
can all be set with the controls or via
software over a MIDI connection now the
eleven hundred and seventeen sounds are
split up between the native sounds the
SC fifty-five map SC eighty-eight map
and the percussion sound some of the
samples have been repeated between the
maps so in reality there are fewer total
unique samples but there are still a ton
of them there are also some sounds
sprinkled in there that you will
undoubtedly recognize outside of PC
games because Roland since were quite
popular at the time
for example the SC 55 map for music box
is the same sample for the piranha plant
lullaby song from super mario 64
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it's kind of fun to stumble onto
something you recognize in there while
playing around so it's very much worth
exploring as many sounds as you can
while working with the keyboard over the
last month I've settled into a fairly
stable routine for my Linux based
workflow I am by no means experienced at
writing or playing music but I have
played several instruments on and off
throughout my life and music is
important to me in a very particular way
my workflow for writing music with a SK
88 is currently centered around the
program seq 24 and a spin-off of it
sequencer 64 it is a looping performance
sequencer that makes it easy to write a
single measure or a little more and then
loop it and play around with it you can
play some multiple parts like clips on a
timeline and for the song out of the
pieces it works really well for me
because I like to mentally
compartmentalize things like this and
let's go ahead and check out some of the
things that I've written so far using it
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being able to loop apart makes it really
easy to play around with the effects and
filters the last example was made mostly
using the cutoff filter coupled with a
healthy amount of resonance which can be
used for some really interesting effects
it's easier to play around with stuff
like this if you assign the control
slider to CC value 6 the more smoothly
adjust the amounts on the fly in
addition to those more common filters
there are the 64 insertion filters that
you can use to change the sound they can
vary a lot from phasers lo-fi eq's and
overdriving as just a few examples it's
definitely something that you should be
experimenting with constantly when
playing with it when you've come up with
a sound that you like after playing with
the different filters and effects there
are a few ways that you can save them to
reuse later you can save 16 user patches
that will hold the settings of the first
two parts there are 16 spots for
customized insertion effects and 256
changes to instruments can be saved as
new sounds but they tend to override
some access to the SC 55 and
eighty-eight capital sounds from the
native Maps so I don't really like doing
that personally I like to bulk dump the
settings of all the parts and save them
with the project on my computer then I
don't have to worry about making sure
that I have every little detail save and
I'll never run out of space on the
keyboard itself overall the SK 88 Pro
has met or exceeded all of my
expectations I wanted it for a solid and
simple music reading experience for
sound canvas style music and I don't
think I could ask for a more ideal
solution than what it provides for me
it's also made all the sweeter because I
struggled for a more affordable solution
to get one of these by buying two of
them that were broken in different ways
and making one unit that was fully
functional I think I didn't get the
second one working as well now that I
have a functional reference but that's a
job for another day for now I'm just
happy with what I have if you're looking
for an all-in-one solution for writing
sound canvas music I think the SK 88 pro
is a fantastic
solution it's a bit large and costly for
just using it with DOS games so it's not
some kind of hidden gem for that but in
its element it's great I hope you
enjoyed this look at the SK 88 pro and
if you want to support the channel I am
on patreon but for now that's it and
I'll see you next time
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