I was a product specialist for Roland UK in the 90's. We all tried to avoid demonstrating the PDA-5 because it was so frustrating to use and sounded truly awful! Thanks for the painful memories! ;) xx
I thought it was ingenious. Super-quick to compose on …but yeah I had to really study’s that manual. Know it thoroughly now and still use it occasionally :)
Awesome, i learnt sequencing with the PMA 5, i used to sit in class and make music with it. The teacher found out, took me to the principal, the principal heard my music and told me to make the national song music for morning school assembly. I made the music and all the kids started singing the national song to my music every morning 😄
Bro, this is one of my best kept secrets. I purchased mine back in the 90's and won't sell it today! You wouldn't believe it but this thing has some of the same sounds as Roland's JV series. It's portable enough to take with you on sessions as a MIDI rack because it's multi timbrel. It's also a great writing tool. I think it has 808 sounds as well. Brilliant!
I got one when they came out - used to make little jams with the stylus while stuck in the server room babysitting updates, etc. it's basically a portable Roland Sound Canvas and with real MIDI jacks I used to use it at home as a general MIDI box there is a standalone mode which makes it great for MT-32 like sound and music box for old Sierra PC/Mac games :-) the demos were impressive out of the box adjust your contrast in the soft menu!
There was one of these on my local Craigslist for a long time. Probably could have picked it up for peanuts but it just *looked* frustrating. Thanks for confirming.
Actually it isn't as frustrating as one would think. You have to remember we are in a different time now and navigating things seems more intuitive but that's because we are so use to what we are using today. Think of it like this; Give someone who's only used Windows '95 all this time, Windows 10. They would think that it's rocket science. The Roland's functions are close to the sequencers of that era such as Alesis MMT-8
Killer little machine! I have one, and love it!! I even modded it myself to have a backlight. It is kind of the predecessor of the MC grooveboxes (pattern mode and song mode, channel mutes, mixer,etc) but besides adding reverb or chorus, you can´t edit the sounds externally unless you use it as a sound module (16 voice multitimbral - but you lose the sequence capability). Soundwise is an extended GM/GS module, with a couple nice synth sounds and lovely drumkits (has 808 and 909 sounds). You can sequence external modules with it via MIDI, you need to enter the MIDI function (top right corner) and set the midi tx channel for each part and that´s it (you get 4 parts in style mode and 8 in song mode). Great for sequencing volcas and similar, since each user style can be 8 measures long and there is 200 slots!!! And then you can jump from style to style seamessly or arrange several on a song that can be 999 measures long. Oh, and you can upload standard midi files to it and download patterns and songs to your computer with the PC editor (Mac/ Win XP though). Nice as a drum machine + sequencer in a DAWless setup. Vince Clark of Erasure used to play a whole song live using nothing but this lil´ fellow. Tip: Remember to calibrate the touchscreen once in a while!
OMG!! Soooo, THIS is what My best friend's neighbor used to have growing up! Now that I am recently into producing my own "sounds" about a year ago, I been racking my brain/diving me crazy trying to remember even just what it looked like exactly. And not knowing what to call it/type I couldn't even come up with a place to start my search to find it. You have MADE MY DAY and brang back soooo many memory's! Back in like 1998 this V thing blew my mind hearing what that dude could make ONLY using this box! Now since you made this video I bet the prices have skyrocketed!?!? Something I'm sure no one really wanted. But now everybody wants, lol. All because of you making this video! LOL
Autechre wrote Maphive 6.1 on one of these handhelds. I did not realize it was that difficult to use, because that song is pretty damn majestic considering its source.
In the 90s, the computer WAS the down side. Windows 95 bootcycled if you tried to run it with a MTAV and a network card. Microsoft driver bug that never got fixed. Sending too much MTC to your MPU401 could make it crash too. You can fit about one weekend's worth of sessions on a hard drive before you had to spend 4 hours backing up to exabytes or CDROMs. And it takes about 5 seconds for an ADAT-XT to turn on, but if Cakewalk crashed, you'd send your session guys out for a breather, because with 16M of RAM in a 40MHz machine, you're gonna be booting for a while.
I still have my PMA-5 I got on clearance back in the day. I actually wrote some songs on that thing! Now I'm going to have to dig it up and see what's still on it.
I did just that and mine is still working perfectlay. It is like traveling back when I tought music was better with to many notes and syncopated beats... I gess I was trying to make up the best I could dealing with the lack fo interesting sounds... Tho I did pick up one very good stilish melody I did back then.
Roland .... Breaking trends accidently .. making the future of music accidently..... The most ridiculously idiotic user interfaces for programming ever intentionally Thank God Korg came along ..
Hi Sam. I had one of those in the 90s, very awkward machine to use but I made several tracks while travelling around on the underground. Nice to see one again.
I was looking at the bokeh background while the focus was on the Roland, and was going to make a smart comment thinking that it looked like rows and rows of translucent Game Boys, then carried on to the end - yep, rows and rows of translucent Game Boys…
This is giving me flashbacks of 20ish years ago after I finished a few allnighters in a row making 2 opposing armies of over 100 plastic lunar festival toys hanging under a mirror perspex archway into the Big Day Out music Festival in Oz. They were triggered by a midi sequence to go off in waves. The nature army was led by the monkey king and had flapping dragonflies, weird dragons and bubble blowing flowers, and the machine army led by spiderman had tanks, spinning propeller planes and odd war toys. All pearlescent bright colours with flashing lights inside and all with super noisy sound effects and tinny music, they were so annoying, the punters going into the festival jumped up about 3 metres and trashed the lot after only a few hours. Madness! I love the relay setup and just the sheer absurdity of them all together waving in turn. Great work Sam :)
I've always had mad respect for Roland for having the balls to release this very forward thinking device when they did. The PMA-5 has a lot of capability for such a small device! A friend of mine used to make convincing (at the time) backing tracks for his one-man-black-metal project.
I'd love to have one of these. I mean it's literally turns a musician into a Operator with a Pocketcalculator. Damn that onboard MIDI Wavetable sounds MASSIVE. If Roland actually cared they could work this out again, give that lil bugger a colour touch LCD, making it easier to use, giving it a USB connection and sell it it like hot cakes. If the price is right. Nice to play the MIDI instruments almost like a Stylophone.
I have one of these in mint condition with all of the original paperwork and inserts, even a VHS tape instructional video that originally came with it! I don't use it often, but it's such an oddity I can't imagine getting rid of it!
So I am completely new to the world of synthesizers but now I am convinced that they have to be the coolest instrument ever. No argument. Thanks Mr. LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER I think your channel is really cool. Keep up the stellar work man I wish you the absolute best from the bottom of my heart.
I actually LOVED this machine. The thing with these beasts, once you get past the learning curve, the workflow actually feels more natural and gets into your creative side faster. I've made quite numbers of song and demos with just this gear, most of it made only in minutes. I just wish there is a PC software version of this music making method.
cool little box for the time, I like the sounds you got out of it, it is a tribute to Roland the company, they are still in business while so many others have bit the dust.
I used this when it first came out and played shows all over the world and people were always asking me what was I writing on stage 😂 And to this day I'm still asked about this bizarre little instrument!
@@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER Both as a sequencer to drive a Yamaha SY22 sampler, as well as using the percussion on there and playing it live! Limited options regarding sounds but you'll have to remember this was a time when there were no iPads and all synths were giant expensive monsters!
LMAO that bit at around 3:20 reminds me of those Star Trek: The Next Generation handheld bio scanners, the ones everyone used to examine foreign environments.
This is like every soundtrack to kid comedy/adventure films of the 90s. Huge bowl cuts, uptight nagging parents and chimps with baseball caps come to mind.
Dating me a little, when I was a kid, living in a house full of synths and keyboards and such, I was obsessed with getting one of these back then, right when it came out. I guess I’m glad I didn’t get one. I have an OP-Z and an OP-1 now, so I’m much better off! Great video and I commend you on taking the time to learn such an antiquated device, because YOU are now the resident EXPERT!
Reminds me a lot of my Yamaha QY10 and QY70. Love them both to pieces. Both take a bit of getting used to but they're both part of my DAWless setup. The QY70 has killer on board sounds. I use the QY10 to split out to 4 Korg Volcas. I loved it so much I wrote a whole blog post on it titled "How to Use The Yamaha QY10 as a Hardware Sequencer." Catchy title, I know, but I felt like more people need to know about it. It's fun to take on the bus or train and make music wherever you go. This Roland unit looks like the same idea, but the QY series at least comes with a mini keyboard. That stylus looks like a pain.
My first gear was a qy 20. Later I bought a qy70 when it appeared. In the meantime I've got 3 of it. A qy 10 was a bycatch, when I bought a Korg sr1 digital recorder from someone.
I used it as a secondary sequencer storage with it's nice bank of sounds, used it as a midi sound module on stage, and now use it as a midi controlled sound module in the studio.
I love the leather cover, it opens manga style XD But seriously, this PDA is nothing compared to some of the stuff we had to suffer on in the '80s. The transition from analog to digital gave birth to the most absurd "user interfaces" ever.
So true. Sadly, I came into music tech right when the hardware digital age was in full swing. No knobs anywhere, tiny LCDs, and PCs were just starting to have sound cards and MIDI options. Worst time ever to start.
Nah, us 90s ravers wore what we wear now. Tshirt and jeans mostly. Throw in the occasional person drugged up and painted silver. At least that was what the NW US clubs and raves looked like. The padded suits were for 80s preppies and 90s late night talk show hosts.
I used this thing all the way trough my academic music learning in the 90's. Being able to make play along on the spot was just crazy futuristic back then. I remember using it figuring out all those interlocking rythmes from cuban traditional latin jazz and jazz fusion odd key signatures... Fun times!
That thing was always a nightmare.. and You nailed when you said the interface was NOT intuitive.. Absolute nightmare, but in its defense... Roland was on to something but just missed the mark.. kinda ahead of its time...
General midi sound set of the day very much reminded me of the first piece of hardware I ever bought a yamaha qy10... I hated the sequencer on the thing then I found cubase on ST and nevet looked back 😁
I thought about the same thing, even though this is a bit different due to the PDA format. I still have and love my QY10 and QY100 ;) Amazing sequencers, the 100 even works as an amp sim.
It was. The QY was already out when this poked its head round the curtain. I had a QY10, then a QY20. The latter was with me on the tube every day and I got a good amount of composing done on it, to drive my analogue synths when I got home. I went up to a QY700, but unlike the usable and comfortable QY20 the QY700 was baffling, every move required reference to the manual (exactly like my Korg S3 - leafing through the manual every 30 seconds). I still have the QY700 in the attic.
The connector at 2:05 is a proprietary, multi-purpose interface from Roland. I had a XP10 keyboard that had the same connector and remember having soldered a cable to interface it with the COM port of my computer (there was also a driver to install).
I downloaded the XP-10 service manual, and sure enough my gut feeling while watching this video was confirmed. It's basically a standard old Mac SE-era serial port. It might or might not need "null modem" wiring to swap the TX/RX to an old Mac at the other end, but it's not quite so proprietary after all. On the other hand it might use a proprietary protocol, but if you can find the software and an old Win95 PC or OS9 Mac to run it on, you could get it to work. It would be funny if the "protocol" on that serial port was MIDI with a bunch of SysEx being thrown around.
I’m so old I remember when this pseudo PalmPilot had reviews in that catalog-masquerading-as-magazine Future Music. They always made a big to-do about Vince Clarke using it.
Have you tried the KORG DS 10 for Nintendo DS? This reminds me of that the way you can change the sequences while it plays, but the ds had much better screen and ability for live performance from the looks of it.
me, like a month or two ago: haha man, this reminds me of when I used to make chiptune. subscribed! me, while watching this video: hold on, I have to go back, I was soldering
Like, legit, I now own an AS3340 and I'm working on getting all the other components (and a 15+- power supply of some sort...) to put together that VCO module on your site. thanks for making these schematics etc public, it's been a good learning resource!
Roland. Yep Roland are the experts of making machines that are incredibly frustrating to use. How they went from Jupiters and Junos to their '80s '90 '00s impossible to use stuff (sometimes with great capabilities trapped inside) is crazy. Even now they can't get it right. Their stuff is still annoying as hell. All they have to do is re-release their analogue classics and they'll conquer the world. All they do is make stuff with similar styling and names. To my mind if you can't walk up to it, fiddle around with it for five minutes and get it rocking, it's not worth the effort, If only Roland understood their own classic products and what made them so pivotal!
Far from being a joke these things were really a God send. Like many people I got the Yamaha version the QY70 after Bjork was famously seen using it on a TV documentary walking along a beach playing it with headphones whilst also sporting a teapot for hand bag. I remember Tricky was also a user, as was Jah Wobble. At a time when buying studio equipment to get the same functionality would cost literally thousands these were revolutionary in their own way and very attractive to people who just wanted to get ideas down or easy access to sounds. The QY sequencer was excellent and had very good swing. The sound set was great (even the basic GM stuff) and sound editing was also powerful and easy. The weak point for both makes were the drum sounds which in an era of crunchy sampled drums sounded really dated and were too weak to use in a finished track. With better drum sounds people could have done finished backing tracks in them no probs. I did demos and remixes using just an MPC3000 and the QY as a sound module and I’m sure people did the same with the Roland because if anything the Roland sounds would have been better.
I remember seeing QVC in the UK trying to sell these, while flipping through the channels on satellite TV I stumbled across QVC and saw this being flogged with a guy from Roland trying so hard to show how easy it was to create a song while on the train or plane. I thought it was a very odd product to sell, let alone on a shopping channel.
I have one that I bought when it was almost new. As it had good sounds & Styles, & proper Midi in & out sockets, which is at least a massive improvement on many modern keyboards with their virtually bloody useless (on a gig!) USB midi !! I thought that it would read chords played on a Midi keyboard in real time like an arranger keyboard ( as did the very similar Yamaha 'hand held' QY series) but it sadly only reads step input chords. However, I played about with it & had some good results. The Piano is particularly good (for the time!) & I used it for several years as a piano module as it was a better sound than my old 1988 Yamaha Pf 85 & had a 'whopping' 28 notes of polyphony compared to the Yamahas 16! ( my current piano has 256!!) the backing patterns & sounds were of a professional quality by 1996 standards & yes you can (& should!) alter the contrast as the one in the demo is virtually unreadable, no wonder you had so much difficulty with it!!
Crazy stuff. Damn i still could bite my ass for having missed your show in dresden. (in den Hintern beissen könnte ich mir). + I dont know if anyone suggested this already, but that faint display could be due to too low lcd-driving-voltage, which may be caused (over time) due to deteriorating capacitors in the voltage-pumps, if i recall correctly. (i am no expert, just recall to have heard that old lcd-watches can have similar problems). Anyway, love your stuff! greetings
I've still got mine, and it was very useful on long commutes and courier work at the time. You are not doing it justice, although it can be frustrating until you get used to the interface. There are a few youtubes on it: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-s-ni8o3PeQc.html Incidentally, Autechre used one for Maphive 6.1: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-RrcUBgzcNT0.html
I too was intrigued by this product about 10 years ago and bought it cheap at an auction. After skimming the manual and trying a few things I gave up and sold it back on the same auction. I suspect yours might even be the same one. In the same way that there is a theory that there is only one electron in the universe there is probably only one of these in the UK but many of us have tried it and then sold it on.
The switch I assume you flip to Midi to get the ports working but if that doesn't work maybe there's something in the menu that has to be changed too. Also the port on the side looks like some kind of compact serial port, I could be wrong though. That's definitely to connect to a computer and the switch is to flip between inputs or computers. Another thing I thought of, some midi devices won't work without external power, because, if your using it all day or whatever it can drain the batteries pretty quick. So maybe it needs an power adapter for the midi ports to work?
The small serial port is an RS-422 Mac serial port. Pre-G4 Macs had that as a printer/modem connection. And the switch was on the Mac position when he tried to use MIDI; maybe the PMA can't use both protocols at once even if on different ports.
the sounds are actually surprisingly good if cheesy(though that's also true of a lot of old ROMpler type stuff, we expect it to sound as bad as early midi soundfonts), i wouldn't mind a soundpack of it for the laugh
Those screens have a plastic polarization filter that degrades over time, that happens to the gameboys, too. Stilll easy to find a replacement for the Gameboys, though.
the lower part of the main page looks like known from the old akai mpcs... (S/sequence & P/program:) but ey seriously... back then, the pma must have been "the" shizzle^^ - well it would have definitely kept me busy.
Curious little question: If you plug this into a synth, sequence it on a loop and then turn it off mid loop does it cause the turning off downwards drone that some old sequencers cause?
Several of the older Roland devices have that same MIDI/PC1/PC2/MAC setup (the XP-10 was my personal encounter with it)... If the switch isn't set to MIDI, it's not going to output MIDI. The other settings are for transmitting midi data over RS-232/RS-485 serial instead, the switch basically sets the baud rate.
Most of the problems with new tech stuff is that it's just as hard to get the user interface right as it is to get the hardware and software behind it going. And then they assign an engineer to design the interface and a bean counter to make sure it's cheap.
