Hi guys, my name is Mark Watson and I'd like to welcome you to the Roland
Australia Youtube Channel And I'm very Excited today to show you through
the brand new Roland FA series workstations. These awesome machines come in two models
we have the 06 which is right here in my hot little hands
this is the 61 note keyboard and then there's the FA-08 which is an 88
note weighted keyboard These workstations are well laid out, well
designed and really easy to get around. They are built on heritage sounds from Roland
with Jupiter, SH, XV and all of those synths at your fingertips
there is a non stop sequencer which means your workflow is not going to stop. To keep
building on your song without stopping and pausing the sequencer
and there is a built in sampler so you can trigger your own sounds as well as import them
OK! lets have a look at some of the great sounds that are built into the Roland FA series.
There's 2000 sounds and they're broken down into three different categories.
There's the SUPERNATURAL sounds which come from the INTEGRA-7, PCM sounds which come
from models like the XV-5080 and then there are also the Wave Expansion sounds which you
can download from the AXIALwebsite.
So, without any further ado lets have a look at some of these great sounds starting with
Grand Piano
Really good acoustic sound, it responds very well and I'm going to have a look at electric
pianos.
This one is called 76 Pure, obviously based on a Fender Rhodes sound and you can hear
the tines being hit by the hammer.
That's great, really good sound and great response.
Classic guitar I'm gonna show you, again it's a SUPERNATURAL sound but this also shows you
performance modelling as well.
so you can hear the musician sliding his finger up and down the fretboard.
A lot of the SUPERNATURAL sounds all respond differently depending on the instrument, it's
a great thing to play.
So lets look at some of the PCM sounds as well, these are sample based sounds that come
from classic synths from Roland.
Big fat Jupiter 8 sounds, really juicy. Super saws as well.
The Drums in these babies come in two categories as well. You have SUPERNATURAL sounds based
on V-Drum technology and also the PCM sounds so lets have a look at some of the SUPERNATURAL
sounds.
Big fat sounds, and then you go to PCM sounds and get things like 808s and 909s, there's
tons of them there.
So the thrid Category is the wave expansion sounds and with this category you can actually
go online to the Roland Axial website and there are a ton of extra synth sounds that
you can download and put into your keyboard. It's a really good way to expand your palette
for creating more sounds.
So lets have a look at the keyboard layout. So with the keyboard layout, at the moment
I've just got a piano sound selected.
If I hit split it will give me two sounds on either side so that will give me a piano
on the top and I've selected strings on the bottom.
and then if I hit dual. I can layer both sounds across the keyboard.
Which brings us to the third keyboard mode, Studio sets. This is older technology which
Roland has brought back which I'm really happy to see.
What it does is gives us 16 channels on the screen which you can use to sequence your
songs and your different instruments can be called up. You can play them back on your
different MIDI channels.
You can also use studio sets to create massive patches so you can assign all of those layers
to the keyboard and put different sounds together to create a wall of sound. Great big landscape,
lets have a listen.
Lets move on to the effects section. There are 67 Roland multi effects units that you
can choose from to be assigned to your sounds and also to your different channels when you're
sequencing.
Each channel has it's own effect which is great so you can have so many different effects
on different sounds happening at the same time.
Plus, the 68th hidden one is an extra Vocoder so you can plug a microphone in and sing along
and play and it'll make that classic vocoder sound.
There's also something new called TFX that Roland have introduced into these keyboards.
This stands for Total effects.
These are assigned to the output of the keyboard. So with the total effects it gives you things
like master compression and filters and loopers and DJ effects as well. So with these you
can create these sorts of sounds.
So that's on the master output. That one is called "filter + drive". and that is the typical
sort of breakdown filter sequence that would be used by a DJ or something like that. So
that's on the Master output. That is the effects wrap up.
So lets move on now to look at the multifunction pads. These little babies over here are set
up for triggering samples. When you're triggering samples there's 16 pads there. There are 4
banks as well so you can actually wade through a whole plethora of samples.
But if you go into pad utility and pad mode. I can actually reassign pads to do different
things like part select, muting your different channels on your mixer, soloing your different
channels on your mixer, as well as numeric input and selecting different parameters when
you are programming your sounds. So these are very conveniently used to operate the
different parameters in your keyboard.
So that does bring us to the sampler. The Sampler is really great, it's so easy to use,
you can record anything that you are performing, live on your keyboard or from your sequencer
loop that you've put together. You can also record something into the inputs on the back.
Guitar for example or a microphone. There's a smaller Jack input to be able to record
something from an iPod. Then we have the SD card input. So with the SD card input you
can import from your DAW, Your collection of wave files etc. Import them into the keyboard
and then assign them to one of the pads here.
So let me show you how quick and easy it is to sample something into the sampler. Let
me select sample. I will select a pad, hit auto trigger and then just play a little riff
and hit stop.
It's now assigned to this pad. Sampling at it's finest. Easy.
Ok so lets have a look at sequencing. The Sequencer built into these babies is great.
It's got a fantastic new thing called non stop loop recording which means that you can
keep the loop going around and add or audition as you are ready.
I'm also going to incoroporate a sample in this that I have sampled before. and use the
rhythm pattern as well. There are heaps of facilites, heaps of editing features and lots
of things that you can use. But at the moment I'm just going to show you how it works in
the real world.
So I'll push record. We get the metronome counting us in.
I'm selecting automatic rhythm start and lets go.
Ok so I take it out of record mode which makes it easy for me to audition another sound.
Ok we'll go with that one, that sounds good, put it back into record mode and away we go.
So I'll select another sound and I'll actually at the same time bring in my sample.
And there we go, we can keep on building on that. Auditioning and recording as we go and
creating.
It's a very creative way to record your sequences and that is the fabulous sequencer built in
to the FA-06 and the FA-08.
So that brings us to DAW integration. So for your Digital Audio Workstations. The FA via
USB can communicate by exporting individual wave tracks of everything that you've recorded.
MIDI as well.
So to be able to export all of your recordings into your DAW Fine tune them in there, and
then bring them back for live performance is a really excellent thing to have. There's
also the facility to control your DAW through USB, it's got templates for Logic, Cubase
and Cakewalk. So there's seamless integration for your DAW and that makes it another ideal
instrument for your home studio.
Thanks very much for watching guys. Look the FA is a great keyboard, it's well laid out,
it's intuitive, it's creative, it's fat, it's great for performance.
Just go on out and try one, go and have a look and have a play. You will love it.
I'm Mark Watson for the Roland YouTube Channel and thanks for listening.