My Old Friend, The Roland D50

Man this was a cool keyboard! It was was first really big, new synth purchase…over $2,000! But, boy did it turn out to be worth it.

Roland D50

Not only did I record with this keyboard, I toured and played live with it for more than a decade without one single failure! Now that’s roadworthiness.

But more importantly, there was the quality of the sound! At the time everyone was raving over the Korg M1, and it was okay. But when I laid my hands on this piece of gear, it was magic to my fingers and my ears. Once I got a hold of many of the top aftermarket patch cards for it, it really took it over the top. Layering it with my Roland U220 was also a scream. Talk about thick!

Here’s a great breakdown on this powerful synth from the Vintage Synth Explorer blog:

The D-50 is an all-time favorite digital synth that’s still just as popular today as when it first came out in ’87. Once Roland’s hottest digital synth, it competed against the Yamaha DX7, and was much easier to use.

By joining 8-bit PCM samples with “LAS” synth-generated sounds, the D-50 is capable of unique and complex sounds. The PCM samples contained the attack transients, while the rest of the sound came from the Linear Arithmatic Synth (LAS) section which sounds very analog, with subtractive-style synthesis and low-pass-resonant filters.

Built-in chorus and (for the first time) digital reverb are also included for giving your sounds space and life! It also has a joystick controller for real-time timbre manipulation. The D-50 was great for new and non-acoustic, percussive, ethereal and beautiful pads & sounds.

The Roland D550 Rack Mount

Both the D-50 and D-550 benefit from the PG-1000 external controller which gives you very plain and simple slider/fader type control of all adjustable parameters of the synth.

The D-50 includes MIDI on all 16 channels but because it is monotimbral you can only use one channel at a time. There is an upgrade which will give the D-50 and its rackmount version a full 16 channels of simultaneous MIDI multitimbral data communication.

This popular synth has been widely used in all forms of music. Eric Clapton, Enya, 808 State, Jean Michel Jarre, Vince Clarke, Apollo 440, Eat Static, LTJ Bukem, Fluke, Information Society, Lab-4, Gary Numan, Rick Wakeman, Kitaro, Rush, Vangelis, Richard Barbieri, Boston and Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran are just a few of the many satisfied users.

I’m glad I decided never to sell this important part of my personal music history.

Related posts:

1. The Roland KR-33 Digital Piano – Sleeping Giant