Re: GEAR Question: Roland GR-700

[buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)]

>>[GR30] sounds much better, tracks MUCH better, and can be had new
>GR30's internal synth is sample playback, right?
>Since the GR-700 is analog, it will likely sound
>totally different. Whether it's better or not depends
>on what you want to do. I usually find sample playback synths to be
>completely unsatisfying, especially from a guitar controller.

[caveat: one person's opinion]

I bought a GR30 recently, and compared to my experience with
a friend's GR-700 years and years ago, I'm disappointed.  (Only
relatively, though; I'm content with it nonetheless.)

I very much dislike the effect of multisample playback
on the guitar.  Notes which are pitch bent very far lose
all their tone (since they don't switch to the "right"
sample, and it might even be that the internal filter doesn't
follow it right), which pretty much trashes my guitar style
with lots of slides of a fifth or an octave (or in between).
I would love to be able to slide-without-retriggering a
good violin sound, but I'd rather be able to do a poor
analog psuedo-violin sound then a violin sample which
loses all high end when slid a fourth.

And I can't even get a good classic Fripp sound since there's
aliasing in a lot of sounds if you transpose up an octave
and play on the high frets.

I can understand where switching samples is probably hard
if not impossible, and why most synthesizers wouldn't
bother doing it (pitch bending is a wacky not directly
musical effect!), but when used from an electric guitar
controller (or perhaps a violin controller), pitch bend
is directly musical, and it would have been nice for them
to actually tackle the problem of making the output musical,
instead of providing 4 different ways to accomplish pitch
bends that don't sound very good.

I'm going to supplement my GR30 with MIDI synths, and
I wonder how long it will be before I simply don't use
the GR30's sounds anymore.  The classical guitar patch
is pretty and perhaps useable; one of the acoustic guitars
has an annoying wrong tonality in one region, and the cello
(or one of the strings like that) has one sample whose
attack is a very noticeably different note than the loop.
The drum samples might as well not be there (no cymbals
since they didn't want to waste the sample memory on it).
So, of the samples I've explored seriously, I've only
found about half to be useable.

This would argue for getting a GI10 or whatever it's
called and simply skipping the GR30's internal sounds,
its goofy arpeggiator, etc. in the first place.

This discussion is of course probably more appropriate
to the Digital Guitar mailing list.

Sean Barrett