Roland Keyboard History

Significance

From its lowly beginning in 1972, the Roland Corporation, founded by Ikutaro Kakehashi, has forged ahead as the keyboard and synthesizer front runner over the years. Now completely digital, Roland pioneered the analog industry in its early years and helped bring the industry to a purely digital terrain. Kakehashi received an offer immediately after establishing the company from the Hammond Organ Company, who wanted to buy 60 percent of the Roland shares. The middle-aged founder confidently declined and pushed forward with his plan to build a successful company.

The story of Roland can be helpful to keyboard and synthesizer players who want to better understand the history of their instrument.

Roland began in a rented shed with $100,000 and seven staff members to the company name. At this point, the company didn't have a product to sell or customers to buy it. The company's first product was the TR77, a long and flat drum box that did not stay on the market long. The box allowed users to bring together different rhythms, offering two-beat and four-beat tempos in a variety of vintage drum sounds, and was typically used to accompany drummer-less musicians. Although the TR77 didn't stay on the market for long, the minor success and innovation explored by the first few Roland employees was an indication that the company was well on its way to greatness.

For the next year, Roland continued to develop effects boxes, including the AF100 Bee Baa, a fuzz box, and AS1 Sustainer, one of the first sustain and compression pedals on the market. Looking back on it, experts say these inventions were overpriced, but greatly contributed to the advancement of synthesizer technology.

The company made $300,000 in its first year.

Analog Effects Box
By the late 1970s, Roland was one of the main rock 'n' roll instrument companies, manufacturing instruments for guitarists, keyboardists and bass players. Some of these products included the Jazz Chorus amp, Boss effects pedals, GS500 guitar synthesizer, rhythm machines and the list goes on (Roland had about 120 products by this time). Another 1979 highlight was the release of the VP-330 Vocoder, which shapes its filters by the sound fed into it, most commonly a voice or drum loop is applied to a synth pad, creating that famous robotic sound heard on a handful of recordings over the past 20 years.

The '80s brought about synthesizers like the Jupiter and the Juno, which were discontinued by the late 1980s, but these two keyboards made a huge impact on the music world. The Juno 6 was the first Juno, but soon after its release, the Juno 60 was created. The Juno 60 offered programmable sounds, one of the first glimpses at the digital future that loomed over the synth and keyboard industries. By 1986, the Juno 8 had come and gone, but not without a fight. A handful of musicians still use Juno synths today because of their retro and vintage sounds.

The rest of the '80s brought about the invention of MIDI (musical instrument digital interface), further advancements in the digital world, and Roland's last attempt at creating a great analog synthesizer, the Super JX-10. The switch from analog (refers to an internally programmed synthesizer, more or less, taking the sound wave and using it in its original form) to digital (refers to the analog wave being sampled and then turned into numbers, making a digital synth more controllable than an analog synth) was half the journey to where we are today in the synth world. The 1990s were spent tweaking digital synthesizers, releasing new products along the way, paving the way to where we are now.

Roland has been and still is one of the leading manufacturers and distributors of musical equipment, including keyboards and synthesizers, guitar and bass equipment and more. Roland helped bring the analog synth world to the digital age, and set the framework for other companies to expand on their discoveries.

If you're a keyboard or synth player, understanding the origins of such a groundbreaking company, including the technology behind analog and digital sounds, can be inspiring and helpful as you try to become a better musician.