Thanks for this presentation! 72 year old rock and blues keyboardist/synthesist here, still have a D-50. Also a Korg MS-20 and SQ-10 seq. along with a Yamaha CS-60 which were bought brand new in 1978! Nostalgia for sure 😉. Its great to see the D-50, a ground breaking instrument STILL getting the love all over youTube 👍.
I walked into a music store in London to get a pair of drumsticks early summer of 1987...shell-shocked, walked out with a D50. Played it to a friend of mine, he went straight in there and bought one. I still have it, with the M.EX upgrade. I had a Korg M1, and an M3 as well, and whilst they were inexplicably more popular I sold mine early 90s but kept the D50.
Same. A band member had a DX7, but I thought it was too plinky-plonky. I went into a music shop and thought this was the future due to sheer lushness and musicality. Though I didn't have the money to buy one.
@@jeffblack5024 Haha, I hear you, it left me broke for months but it was so astonishing that it was like being in a trance. The store I went in had it plugged in to some decent monitors and you could hear it the second you walked in. There was a little crowd, all looking at each other in disbelief. I bet they just unloaded em off the lorry at the back, and wheeled em straight back out the front door. Then every album that dropped for the next bunch of years was just those sounds. Foreigner, George Michael, Enya, Jean-Michel Jarre, Prince, and as you say, that reverb was just sublime, it was the first synth that sounded like a finished recording rather than a sound source. Good times!
@@jeffblack5024 And I always loved the plinky-plonky FM vibes. 😊 Yes, perhaps the D50 was the more (out of the box) "musical" synth but the DX7 opened completely new grounds of digital synthesis. It was much more experimental, so to speak.
This is why sometimes as synth heads we forget that it’s the composition that counts. Back in the day very few people tweak their synths. You focused on your melody and chords/harmony
Never got my hands on the D-50. I did get and still own the D-110 on which I spent hours playing with LA synthesis. Those sounds were way advanced. The concept was so simple. A complicated initial sample followed by a simpler sound. The best feature was it remembering which patch you last used automatically on power on.
Great video! I have had a D-50 for decades and still love it! Thanks for bringing the D=50 back into the light again. And, great playing on your part as well!
Great Video. I have never owned the D50, but back in the eighties I owned a Juno 106, which I played with a Band, performing at many Pubs and Clubs in Fife Scotland. I used the presets plus my own creations, it was especially good for Dire Straits songs. Great memories.
Bought a D50 in mint condition for $800 back in 91. Loved the tonewheel organ emulations with the Valhalla Screamin B3 ROM card. The choir loved it too
It cannot be overstated how much of a quantum leap this axe was at the time. In the studio, we were arriving at these complex sounds through stacking various synths and FX, but now this was available in one package - ready for the road. It was like the world, previously available to Fairlight users exclusively, had just opened up for a relatively small price. Changed my touring arsenal exponentially…
WoW !!! You played all my favorite patches. Spent hours just goofing off back in the early '90's. Now I have to pull my D-50 out of the closet this weekend !!!
Listen to Rich Mullins song While The Nations Rage released in 1989. The intro and outro…I’m hearing Roland D-50! Appreciate you Pierre and greatly respect your incredible gift in music!
Had one when I was 17. Paid $1500 with the four cards at Sam Ash. For over a year to get it. I remember DLR's Skyscraper album and screaming, "That's a D50!" Man I loved that board.
I love the D-50! It was my first keyboard. Mom bought it when I was 13 back in 88. I used it to play aux keys with our choir. I still have it although I let our youth group borrow it and it was damaged. I was told it probably wouldn’t be worth getting it repaired but I miss playing it. Thanks for a great trip down memory lane. Subscribed!
There's a song "Violet" by Seal, which begins with "Soundtrack" preset. I don't know what patch is the solo that follows, but to my ear it's D50 as well.
Thank you, Pierre, for introducing this great piece of technology to us. It is so nostalgic to listen to these sounds bringing back memories from the end of the last century. And the PS sound is stunning!
Yes definitivly my synth highlight in the 80s, I have a Roland D 05 cause the old ones are hard to find in good condition.. As the budget came out then, I grab it. Cause I missed my D 50 I once sold.. The D 05 has the benefit to have all sounds from all rare Original Roland cards inside plus an additional new Bank only made for the D 05.. The good thing is also that these Sounds all are preset in ROM, you never loose them cause you overwrite change them.. The D 05 has a seperate RAM area to save your own patches.. wich is quite cool. Also I have from DTronics the new just came out DT 1000 in original PG 1000 size with also faders now.. Very comfortable duo. I love it.
I have both my original D-50 and a D-05. It is really great to use the D-05 as a sound bank for the D-50, works like a charm! I have them chained with the PG-1000 so it is easy to adjust sounds too on both synths.
@@patsonmusic cool that sounds great.... Yeah unfortunately I dont have my D 50s more .. I had 3 of them over almost 10 years.. 2 once at the same time in the 90s.. But one of these I sold my brother in change for a Minimoog .. The other then I sold to a good friend of mine somewhen, needed money for buy another synth.. I think it was the Alesis Andromeda then.I wanted so much.. Later then after many years I found a third D 50, I bought, but that was with some 3rd party extension I dont know more exactly what that was... 🤔 But this was a crazy unit I think about that.. I had only problems so I sold it again only few months later ... Then came the D 05.. I am really happy Roland created this Budget.. maybe the best Budget they did.. For the D50 that formfactor works quite well..
@@progwaver Yes, I also had 2 D-50s at one point, but kept my original in the end. And D-05 is really nice, works great and is very portable, easy to bring along :-)
I own a D70, which was made as a step up from the D50 with having almost 7 octaves. It also has great sounds, but when the bass is split, it's quite difficult to programme. The internal power supply gave up a few years back, so now I use a Jupiter 50, which is excellent and less than half the weight.
It's incredible that a factory patch is used for the PlayStation start-up sound! When I think that I own a roland d 50 and I hadn't made the connection 😅
I see someone lauding a D-50, I subscribe...lol. Awesome video, took me back to those iconic sounds. To be honest, we got so used to those same sounds being used on so many songs because it was real pain to program. It took me a loooong time to get deep into it to really create my own sounds, but the scope of what is possible once you get under the hood is amazing. Same experience with the Korg Wavestation I also used to have. Fortunately they had awesome factory sounds so they were very usable sounds straight out of the box.
The nostalgia is off the charts. Great playing on a legend of a synth. Which song is played with the Stereo Polysynth patch here? Thanks for making excellent content.
I own the Roland Cloud emulation. Basically like having that minus the weight and the space it takes up. I do various types of pop music and use D-50 a fair amount. Sometimes I enjoy just scrolling through the several factory banks and seeing what happens when I play chords or engage aftertouch.
thanks for this time travel! at the beginning of the 90's a fellow student of mine had a D50 and we spent many hours sitting in front of it, exploring and improvising, over several glasses of ouzo😅. I personally had a Yamaha SY-22...somehow a similar technical league, but not so popular. I loved mine, but sure sold it somewhen...
I had a s/h D-50 in 1993 but with its keyboard it was almost impossible to trigger AT. When played with a Korg T1 weighted keyboard, it sounded way different. Thus I got rid of. Several years later, I got a D-05. What amazes me is that D-50 and D-05 sound still actual.
I remember seeing and trying this in a music shop back in the day, blown away. Back when new synth patches had character, and you could still be in awe. Luckily, I can recreate many of those sounds on my dear Juno-Di, which still uses a sort of that 4-partial system.
As a student I bought a D20 used (all I could afford 😅) It was more versatile than I thought, even TB-303 it could do pretty convincingly. It also had floppy as a sequencer. Due to on how sounds are created (parts) note stealing can be an issue though (particular sounds with long tails). The D50 I was not that fond of untill I read that Enya used it for the most part on her Watermark album (still a nice album 👍). At the moment I got a Jupiter 50 a.o. and is a bit of a hidden gem. It got mixed reviews and the concept of a performance orientated instead of workstation didn't catch on. Bought that for a third of retail 🤠
Still a great synth, have a few 3rd party cards. Bought mine around 1989, still have it. Had to replace the internal battery, not too difficult. Had several custom patches in internal memory. Backed up but haven’t had time to reload. Thanks for the post
Stereo Polysynth is 100% trying to be a Sequential Prophet-V. Outstanding copy of that sound. Listen to "OCOE" by Pages (1981, the sound this patch is copying) that's it to a T.
The late 80's big 3 - DX7, M1 and the Great D-50. Although I loved the "external processed" sound of the DX7, it was weak without using external processing. The D-50 and M1 were massive sounding keyboards right out of the box, and by far my favorites. I have an original D-50 and M1. I also have the D-05 that I use regularly for the D-50 sounds. Great video as always!
I have (almost) all of them from that era: DX7 IIFD, M1, JD800, and a D50. The D50 is just sooo lush sounding, even today. Really, nothing else sounds like it IMO.
I had a D-10. I recreated the L.A. architecture for two favourite sounds on my K2000. It sounded better on the K2000. Now, the D-50 sounds better than the D-10, but the Kurzweil will still blow it out of the water on both sounds and capabilities.
I know nothing about keyboards. I'm just a self taught piano player since 2020. But since this is a Roland video, I have several videos playing the Roland Piano at Costco and I might buy it when it goes on sale tomorrow? My cheap keyboard has only 5 sounds but the synth sounded good when I played Jump. Wish I could play like you Pierre. 🎹 👍
I’ve got a Roland FA06 and it’s got all the D50 presets you played as well as Juno, jupiter all the TR drums. Loved all the old 80s tunes you were playing, I’ve had to subscribe 👍🏾
Best thing about Roland boards is the joystick-style pitch/mod control. So intuitive and playable. Why anyone puts out boards with dual wheels is beyond me. And these days it seems like 90% of keys have the wheels (which I HATE!!! If I haven't made that clear😂) The ideal setup, in my opinion, is a YAMAHA MODX8+ on the bottom and a Roland Fantom-06 on top. Total about $3500-$3700. You get the superior Yamaha sounds on all the patches that don't need bend/vibrato and you get MUCH simpler bend/mod plus the lighter, spring-loaded keys for playing faster, more expressive solos.
7:34 after Peter Gabriel used a Shakuhachi sample in Sledgehammer, EVERYONE and their mother wanted a piece of that. Hence why you couldn’t escape that sound for about 10 years after that.
Great video! DX7 e D-50 are my favorite synth. I love the 80's sound's and these synth express at their best the wonderful sounds that could be heard in the songs of the time and for example ( staccato heaven ) of the D-50 is a beautiful sound.
Totally love my D-50. Running it through a decent reverb pedal like a Strymon, Empress, TC etc. makes it a cinematic pad powerhouse. I also recommend the Hcard 750 that comes with 20 banks of categorised, useful and great patches. I offers a total of 64 banks (4096 patches).
Love the songs you played to demo each patch. My Korg X5 has many of the same sounds. I'm fascinated how each manufacturer handles general midi sound quality.
These old instruments have a so warm and clear sound... seems like today's chips can't replace old capacitors, diodes, inductors or whatever. They could take today's storage sampling capacity and put this old tech on some instrument.
