Anyone using a Roland D110?

So I had this Roland D110 sitting around for years but finally decided to take it out and have a play with it. Let me just say patches are pretty awful . However it was used by Drexciya amongst others so probably missing a lot of its benefits. I know it's has 6 separate outs. I will keep it definitely because I used it at school some 25 years ago however further insights would be welcome!! Cheers.

A friend gave me one a couple years ago, I like it but don't use it enough.

Tim Blake (ex Hawkwind) recorded an album in the early 90s with nothing but a D10 (keyboard version of the 110), microphone, sequencer and tape recorder. Allegedly written in one night inside of a windmill during a thunderstorm. Sounds like mostly presets, and makes me think of an FMV game about wizards.

Ever consider that maybe Drexciya used it as a laptop stand or something?

It's one of the things not on my watchlist, but I'll be damned if you can't make something cool out of it. If you can make something out of the 1010, you ought to be able to do something with this and an editor.

Exactly. I think a few people have produced editors for it bringing it into the 21st Century. I saw this pretty ace demo last night on Youtube which showcases the D110 and to my ears its a massive improvement over the presets.

This seems to be the only decent editor I could find for the Roland D110 and its for Ipad / Mac. Luckily I have an Ipad!!

https://coffeeshopped.com/patch-base/editor/roland/d-110

i have one, it's not terrible, actually.  the architecture is weird, tho.  patches are built upon tones, and tones are where you can tweak filter settings, waveforms and such.  i mostly just tweak the tones and leave patches as is.  i could probably get some pretty huge sounds from it by embracing the architecture more, but the synth takes a bit of patience.

i still don't understand the envelopes very well in it, but i've been able to get some good sounds out of it.  i typically use it for pads and leads, though i've gotten decent bass patches out of the unit as well.  it's got a nice digital sound to it, but it's pretty sterile sounding as well.  the drum sounds are ok if you like that kind of late '80s sound, but they are pretty weak otherwise.

in the past, i used a behringer bcr 2000 to design patches, but after that was broken, i just tweak the settings by hand nowadays, though i don't do much sound design on it for now. 

  On 6/17/2020 at 6:29 PM, TheBro said:

This seems to be the only decent editor I could find for the Roland D110 and its for Ipad / Mac. Luckily I have an Ipad!!

https://coffeeshopped.com/patch-base/editor/roland/d-110

 

Patch Base is graphically the best interface for a lot of vintage synths, by a long shot. You're in luck! 

Got a d110 a couple of weeks ago but haven’t dug in yet. Wanted to get patch base but can’t install it on the version of osx I’m running and don’t have an iPad, midi quest seems to be the only other editor available but even the most basic version is more than I paid for the d110, so I’ll try to bungle something together with m4l. 

I like the choir pads that it has, quite into weak sounding late 80s drums but haven’t checked those out yet. 

  On 6/17/2020 at 9:55 PM, user said:

Got a d110 a couple of weeks ago but haven’t dug in yet. Wanted to get patch base but can’t install it on the version of osx I’m running and don’t have an iPad, midi quest seems to be the only other editor available but even the most basic version is more than I paid for the d110, so I’ll try to bungle something together with m4l. 

I like the choir pads that it has, quite into weak sounding late 80s drums but haven’t checked those out yet. 

Midiquest has a really bad rep from my understanding. A lot of folks say the software freezes and is buggy. 

How much you pay for yours out of interest?

yeah midiquest is basically a scam. it doesn't actually do anything.

  On 6/17/2020 at 10:55 PM, TheBro said:

Midiquest has a really bad rep from my understanding. A lot of folks say the software freezes and is buggy. 

How much you pay for yours out of interest?

If their website is indicative of how they designed their software it must be a nightmare. 

I paid 90,- euros for it. 

  On 6/18/2020 at 1:22 AM, user said:

If their website is indicative of how they designed their software it must be a nightmare. 

I paid 90,- euros for it. 

Not bad man. Mine isn't in perfect condition but I seem to recall paying £35 for it.

Just had a little jam with it. The drums are truly horrible but nothing a bunch of effects can’t fix. 
 

Had some nice results sending a sequence from a m4l ryk-a-like to one channel, playing some stuff over/under it on another and having the stereo out going through a modulated filter plugin. 
This is the first time I made use of a synths’ multitimbrality as the uncool associations with lonely old dudes playing songs on arranger keyboards on Christmas Eve in the supermarket were always too strong but now that I’ve accepted that I’m one of them it seems like a good way to get cohesive layered melodic stuff going. 

  On 6/18/2020 at 4:24 AM, user said:

a m4l ryk-a-like 

What's this thing? Is it free?

Cordially,

lonely old dude playing songs on arranger keyboards.

  On 6/18/2020 at 3:27 PM, thawkins said:

What's this thing? Is it free?

Cordially,

lonely old dude playing songs on arranger keyboards.

You can download it for free from the m4l device library website;

https://maxforlive.com/library/device/6376/qlabs-ql-185-ml-185-sequencer-reboot

If you can get a D110 free or nearly free, it might be worth investing in a PG-10 if you can find a good deal on one (Look to Japan for that, because when I was shopping for one at least, US sellers wanted like $300+ and that's not even close to worth it).  With the PG-10 it's actually a really fun, tweakable synth although the multitimbral architecture is still a bit weird to navigate.

The eBay prices for PG-10's right now are stupid, but if you look at sold, in the USA at least the last two went for abotu $100 and about $150, and if the total cost for a PG-10 and D-110 is around $200 or less it's a solid value IMO.

But the PG-10 doesn't have a backlight, so depending on how your studio's set up you might not be able to read it.  That's the main reason I underuse mine, actually - there's no place in the room where I can actually read the PG-10 display without using a flashlight and some of the buttons on the front panel are almost dead so it's even more horrible than usual to program that way (the + button usually jumps values by a few steps so I have to press pretty hard to get it to work at all, then it'll add like 5-10 instead of 1 to the parameter I'm editing, then I have to use the - button to go back down to what I was actually trying to enter).  It's possible to swap in a backlit display but not many people have bothered and nobody has documented it yet.

I think somewhere in this 11 page thread there's a finished CTRLR panel for the D110 but I didn't know about that until just now:

https://ctrlr.org/forums/topic/roland-d-110-panel/

Also you hold your tongues about lonely old men with arranger keyboards.

  On 6/18/2020 at 4:39 PM, TubularCorporation said:

If you can get a D110 free or nearly free, it might be worth investing in a PG-10 if you can find a good deal on one (Look to Japan for that, because when I was shopping for one at least, US sellers wanted like $300+ and that's not even close to worth it).  With the PG-10 it's actually a really fun, tweakable synth although the multitimbral architecture is still a bit weird to navigate.

 

The eBay prices for PG-10's right now are stupid, but if you look at sold, in the USA at least the last two went for abotu $100 and about $150, and if the total cost for a PG-10 and D-110 is around $200 or less it's a solid value IMO.

 

But the PG-10 doesn't have a backlight, so depending on how your studio's set up you might not be able to read it.  That's the main reason I underuse mine, actually - there's no place in the room where I can actually read the PG-10 display without using a flashlight and some of the buttons on the front panel are almost dead so it's even more horrible than usual to program that way (the + button usually jumps values by a few steps so I have to press pretty hard to get it to work at all, then it'll add like 5-10 instead of 1 to the parameter I'm editing, then I have to use the - button to go back down to what I was actually trying to enter).  It's possible to swap in a backlit display but not many people have bothered and nobody has documented it yet.

 

I think somewhere in this 11 page thread there's a finished CTRLR panel for the D110 but I didn't know about that until just now:

 

https://ctrlr.org/forums/topic/roland-d-110-panel/

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I agree people are trying to sell hardware for silly prices now on Ebay and elsewhere. I can think of so many different bits of gear that have had a massive inflation in price without justification. The only example of a piece of gear that I believe is undervalued is the Roland TR707 which I think is great for the price and I paid £250 for my one although I see some sellers on Ebay trying to sell them for £600-1k!!!  Although I think the going price is actually £350-400 for a pretty mint condition one.

  On 6/18/2020 at 4:46 PM, TubularCorporation said:

Also you hold your tongues about lonely old men with arranger keyboards.

 

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Goddamn, what a post combo! Thank you.

His channel has over 34K subscribers but that video only has 179 views? What a crazy world we live in.

  On 6/18/2020 at 7:53 PM, user said:

Goddamn, what a post combo! Thank you.

 

His channel has over 34K subscribers but that video only has 179 views? What a crazy world we live in.

He's my second favorite arranger/auto-accompaniment keyboard channel, after the mighty (but completely overlooked) ORGAN FAIRY

EDIT: to be honest, Organfairy utterly transcends "arranger keyboard guy."

Psah. No man with an auto accompaniment keyboard can beat Mambo Kurt.

I don't know, I kind of prefer the idiomatic purity of someone like Alan Lees (who used to go by the superior name Mr. Wurlitzer Mad).

EDIT: for posterity, this is probably my favorite Kawee Jongjitt (formerly Mr Nong) video:

I didn't take enough time to find it for my earlier post.

  On 6/18/2020 at 4:29 PM, user said:

You can download it for free from the m4l device library website;

https://maxforlive.com/library/device/6376/qlabs-ql-185-ml-185-sequencer-reboot

 

Nice, thanks!

  On 6/18/2020 at 11:02 PM, TubularCorporation said:

I don't know, I kind of prefer the idiomatic purity of someone like Alan Lees (who used to go by the superior name Mr. Wurlitzer Mad).

 

 

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Anytime I see one of these arranger keyboards I feel like they're just waiting for someone with the right mindset to come along and make facemelting tracks with them. Going super-deep with just one bit of kit was how a lot of the great '90s Warp stuff was made (give or take), and I feel like there's a lot of potential for creative use/abuse going unexplored with these, if someone decided to take it beyond the cheesy dadcore market they're aimed at...