Zeale here and I am super excited
to show you AIRA Compact.
These are innovative, fun, and
easy-to-learninstruments that put
Roland's creative magic in
the palm of your hands.
AIRA Compact is a family of portable
instruments packed with powerful
features and a huge sound
suitable for any budget or skill
level. In the line, we have the T-8
beat machine, the J-6 Chord Synth,
and the E-4 Voice Tweaker.
Tap into unique and inspiring
workflows using a collection of
sought-after sounds, powered by
Roland signature Analog Circuit
Behavior technology.
Easily connect and sync AIRA Compact
together for on-the-flyjams,
add other gadget instruments, or
integrate with a DAW using the
extensive I/O, which includes
MIDI, audio, and
sync in and out, plus USB-C
for charging and connecting to a
laptop or tablet.
AIRA Compact is powered by
a lithium-ionbattery, giving you
hours of battery life to jam
anywhere.
Just flip the switch and go with the
flow. Now let's meet the gang.
Take six tracks of banging TR
drums, add a TB-303 bass
track, and what do you get?
The T-8 beat machine: a
rhythm factory that fits in your
pocket. Boasting decades
of modern musical sound, the T-8
gives you the power to create
infectious tracks in seconds
flat.
Crack off-the-dome bangers with the
intuitive 16-step sequencer.
Shape sounds with the onboard
controls. Flip and dice
beats with simple tools designed to
spark all kinds of ideas.
Let's get to know the T-8 by
starting with any of the 64 preset
patterns.
The T-8 comes with a curated
collection of TR-808, 909,
and 606 sounds across
six drum tracks.
Bass drum.
Snare drum.
Handclap.
Toms.
Closed hi-hat and open hi-hat.
Plus a very tweakable track
of TB-303-style
bass.
Next, let's check out the
easy-to-learn hands-oncontrols.
Finesse the sound of your drums
using the tuning and decay controls.
Shape your bass with five dedicated
controls, including pitch,
decay, cutoff, resonance,
and envelope modulation.
Add some effects with the delay and
reverb controls here.
Freak the beat with on-the-fly
performance tools like step loop and
pattern shift. When
you're ready to create your own
beats, clear a pattern and dive into
the simple 16-step sequencer
for programing tracks manually.
Or record in real-time.
Now that we got some drums, let's
add some TB-303 bass.
Roll the dice and generate a random
bass pattern here.
This is a great way to come up with
ideas and create a flow.
I can record the bass in real-time,
either using the keyboard mode to
play notes, actions, and slides
or
program the bass step by step.
The T-8 has some depth in its
advanced programming and effects
capabilities, such as effects
sends per instrument, velocity,
shuffle, and more.
In this pattern, I've added shuffle
to swing the beat, sub step for
trilling the hats, and probability
to randomize playback.
Last step allows you to create
interesting loop points and keep the
sequence fresh.
Turn on overdrive to add grit to the
bass or drums
and make the mix pump with
sidechain.
Next, let's check out the J-6 Chord
Synth an amazing-sounding pocket
synth, great for creating inspiring
chord changes and musical phrases.
The J-6 has a ton of uses
from a standalone synth to a
MIDI-based chord generator for other
instruments to a powerful
songwriting companion.
It's packed with chord sets known
as genres plus
styles and variations for creating
arpeggios, chord rhythms, and
other musical phrases.
I can play single notes in this
mode.
I can also switch to Genre mode to
audition any of the 100 chord sets.
The sound on the J-6 is big
and rich.
Modeled after the legendary JUNO-60
and powered by Roland's acclaimed
ACB technology, I can explore
64 preset sounds and
use the Hold button to sustain my
notes.
I can then shape the sound using the
Filter and Envelope knobs and add
delay and reverb with the dedicated
controls.
Style mode creates a ton of
auto-generated patterns.
There are controls for the basic
style--nine in total and 12
variations per style, which include
things like arpeggios, chord
repeats, and strums.
The J-6 also comes equipped with
a powerful chord sequencer
that helps plot out and program
ideas.
Each sequence or step can hold a
single note or four-note chords.
I can also program styles and
variations on each step.
Now the entire chord sequence can be
played back and looped with a
variety of phrases.
Each step on the chord sequencer can
be set to a different measure length
and patterns can be programmed up to
64 measures.
The J-6 is an amazing standalone
machine but also has a ton
of other uses.
Using the USB-C or MIDI port,
I can connect to my DAW and use the
chord sets, style and variation,
or chord sequencer to control
software or hardware synthesizers.
Now let's check out the E-4 Voice
Tweaker, a wildly jammable
effects box that harmonizes,
auto-pitches, vocodes, loops,
and glitches anything you feed it.
Create
stacked harmonies, robot effects,
beatbox ensembles, or whatever
else you can think of.
Since the
E-4 works with a dynamic mic, which
plugs into the quarter-inch input on
the front. You can remove unwanted
noise using lo-cut filter and
the noise gate.
The slider controls on the left
allow you to change the pitch and
formant, and the slider on the right
can be assigned to control reverb,
echo, delay, or chorus.
Auto Pitch can be used for subtle
pitch correction or hard-stepped
vocal effects.
You can assign key and scale to
match your song or lock the pitch
to a single note for robot effect.
The harmony feature allows you to
add up to three harmonies at
different intervals that can lock to
the key in scale that you set
previously.
Finally, there's a vocoder, which
adds a wide range of synthesizer
waveforms, including sawtooth,
square, pulse, or noise.
The E-4 also has a versatile looper
with up to 24 seconds of recording
time.
Just
use this to create multiple overdubs
or quickly undo and redo ideas.
Further manipulate loops or live
audio input using the Scatter knob,
which applies tempo-linked effects
like slicing, panning, filtering,
bit crushing, and pitch effects.
The E-4 will automatically detect
the BPM of any loop or
lock to the tempo of my other AIRA
Compact instruments.
You can easily connect AIRA Compact
or other instruments together using
the mix, sync, and MIDI jacks.
Chain audio, sync tempos,
and use MIDI clock to lock in stop
and start actions.
Plus execute seamless program
changes for extended live jams.
I can also use the USB-C port
to connect to my laptop or tablet
for routing audio or MIDI directly
to my DAW.
For more information about AIRA
Contact, visit Roland.com.