D-Beam

[Laura]

Anyone have a keyboard with a D-beam? My used Roland RS50 has one and the Roland Juno-D has one too. In both cases it is really a piece of crap. All it does is turn off the keyboard so you have to restart it. Or am I doing something wrong?

 

[Rolandwarmen]

hello. Laura

i have the Roland Juno-d and the D-BEAM can me asighned do doing things like modulation and things like that mine has never turned off the keyboard, so mabey you are doing somthing wrong i would read the manual and make sure your doing it right or in the worst case the d-beam might be broken.

eather way i find the D-beam to be a gimmik not a realy handy tool i have never used it once durring serious playing ony to show friends that my keyboard has a hi tech infer-red laser on it. lol nothing more!
pitch bend is the only tool i need!

hope this helps!

 

[Laura]

eather way i find the D-beam to be a gimmik not a realy handy tool

I imagine it was something to do with the 'assignable' parameters. A few more times it turned off the keyboard for me.

I was wondering how you liked the Juno D. There were very few synth/keyboards in my price range ($500). Basically nothing but the Juno D and the Yamaha MM6. The Juno D seemed hard to use in comparison with the MM6. The salesman at Guitar Center told me that "the Juno-d is geared toward the hip-hop, urban, dance, DJ sort of player." I'm not sure what he meant, maybe just it had a lot of those kind of voices.

Plus it didn't appear to have a sequencer. The MM6 had a small sequencer, and is set up to play along with yourself. I realized I really needed that play-along function because while I have an ear for music and can pick out chords, I am really a beginner at keyboards and need basic training.

The end of this story is that I traded in the used Roland RS50 ecause the store says you can trade in an item within 30 days of sale. And I bought the MM6.

People who write reviews seem to not like the MM6 because it is not as advanced a machine as some of the pro synths. Well I figure it is a 'beginner synth." It has some basic synth features, some basic workstation features, lots of awesome sounds, and it's not as cheesy as the 'home keyboards' that you buy for your kids. So it is a good choice for someone like me!

 

[Rolandwarmen]

I had the same price range problem i got the juno cuz it was good quality for the price and i love how you can patch mod. on board with out a computer or anything. very cool i love the board all in all but now im getting sick of it i think it has a "cheap" sound to it the Harpsichord is TERRIBLE! lol but i made it work. im trying to get into heavy synth racks now.

so you traded the rs50 for the juno ? do you have the juno now?

have you ever played the Roland d-50?

 

[Laura]

I had the same price range problem i got the juno cuz it was good quality for the price and i love how you can patch mod. on board with out a computer or anything. very cool i love the board all in all but now im getting sick of it i think it has a "cheap" sound to it the Harpsichord is TERRIBLE! lol but i made it work. im trying to get into heavy synth racks now.

so you traded the rs50 for the juno ? do you have the juno now?

have you ever played the Roland d-50?

I never saw or played a Roland D-50. I'm getting the impression that there are a lot of old boards that aren't being made anymore, like the RS 50 and the Triton. Like I said I would have loved to buy that Korg Triton LE but I'm glad I didn't. The salesman said it was "fried". That would have been discouraging to buy it and then have it die on me.

I had the Roland RS-50 for about 10 days. I liked the sound a lot and you could modify patches, but I never really got into that in the short time. I traded it in for the Yamaha MM6.

I did think the D-beam was a cute little gizmo. Of course, just a toy. Kind of like arpeggiation!

I played the Juno-D in the music store. It was the only other synth in the same price range. And I liked the functionality of the MM6 better. (It was $100 more.) It was just easier, I liked the LCD display better and the filter knobs were on the left hand side, plus it had lots of great ethnic sounds which I like to use. It does have an incredible library of sounds.

As I said, I'm a beginner, I need to learn basic piano chords & riffs, and want to record instrumental "spacy" music but I really don't understand much about MIDI and rack mounts & suchlike. Perhaps I'll learn one day. I'm hoping I can still write good music even if I don't have a million effects.