Smileys are used to indicate how he feels about each preset
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One of the videos that sold me. Excellent channel btw. Great resources for those wanting to learn sax.
Keep in mind he was playing the presets in the context of Blues and Jazz licks. Many of the presets werenāt intended for those genres at all so of course they wouldnāt sound pleasing in those contexts or play styles.
As @adamc articulated earlier, each preset has its own character, dynamics, textures. As such, one might do better to look at each scene/preset on Aerophone as an individual instrument or collection of instruments.
For example, he began with Mo Betta Blues. The legendary title song from one of my favorite movies by Spike Lee. A few of the presets were chords so they sounded terrible because they were intended to be harmonious not melodic. This happened throughout the video.
He also never hit the S1 or S2 buttons which changes rhe sounds toggling harmony modes, different expressions, macros, etc.
Many of the sounds I didnāt initially like are now my favs because I understand the contexts they were intended for. Also, many of the presets are actually intended for you to tweak into something unique. They are just reference type of tone you want to build upon.
Aerophone is a synth like any other. There are tons of sound shaping tools, parameters and effects available on the device or in the editor app to design the exact sound you need to express your ideas.
I was thinking similarly when he went through the M-Rotate presets but failed to activate the harmony functionality. I have practically zero background playing wind controllers, sax, etc. but Iāve heard a bit about the Michael Brecker chord rotate thing.
I play guitar most of the time and so had some interest in the Boss GM-800. OTOH, the Aerophone mini-community on this forum is kinda selling me on getting an AE-20 instead. Iāve learned a few horn melodies on guitar. But from messing around on melodica and ocarina, Iām aware that playing a melody on the guitar is not quite the same experience as playing it with oneās breath as the main driver.
I see Roland has an app for teaching new owners how to play Aerophone too.
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Ah ok. The fact that you already play an instrument and understand that they all articulate differently is a huge advantage.
You have the Aerophone apps and also great resources like academia.edu for free sheet music downloads, apps like MuseScore, Tomplay, YouTube sax community and Us!lmao
This video is a great example of home instrument bias when it comes to synthesized sounds.
He dislikes saxophone sounds but loves the trumpets.
The trumpet players on the forums hate the trumpet sounds but quite often like the saxophone sounds.
M-Rotate already has harmony in the sounds as it rotates through different intervals.
Also melodies on wind instruments donāt require potentially switch hand positions like they do on guitar. I find it much more comfortable to sightread as your hands stay fixed and you just work the octave mechanism/fingerings.
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But he didnāt play the harmony. Hereās one example I cued up:
The preset appears to be M Rotate 1, but he is only playing 1 of the 4 partials of the preset, assuming P01 Synth Hard Lead is a partial.
This implies he might not know how to play the M-Rotate preset(s) as intended. Alistair Parnell OTOH clearly knows how to use them
Nah heās either not playing it or the display is wrong. I just pulled up M Rotate 3 on my AE30 and it rotates without effort like the other ones.
21 is Saws Lead Dly 2 on the AE30 and if you notice how similar it is to the one before thatās probably whatās actually being played.
Maybe he didnāt like result of his attempt(s) to play the rotate preset(s) and tried to edit those out.
Or he turned off the 3 other partials whenever he came across a rotate preset, to avoid playing harmonies - assuming the AE-30 is using the same 4-partial/preset scheme as the MC-707/101
He went out of his way to only feature solo playing - no harmonies. I can understand why, as he probably wanted to feature his backing tracks too, since selling them is part of his business.
Not sure but it doesnāt even sound like one of the parts/partials, it sounds like a fairly basic Saw lead so it could be something else in the bank.
M Rotate 3 is very flutey as Alistairs demo shows and thatās what happens as I load up the sound. You donāt need to press S1 or S2 or anything, it just plays rotators that advance every note.
Yeah, either way he did not demonstrate the M Rotate presets as they were intended to be played - I was fooled by his display of the AE-20 display being out of sync with his playing.
@KingMidas could probably double check the AE20 M Rotate patches.
I only have an AE30 and it definitely plays the rotator patches.
Guys, donāt trouble yourselves, just because some Youtuber made a relatively minor mistake involving MRotate presets in his video. Your time is valuable, and deserves to be spent more productively.
Iāll get an Aerophone sometime soon. First thing Iāll learn to play, aside from the Aerophone app lesson materials, is āSound! Euphoniumā. A bit of a pain to play on guitar because the control over volume, vibrato, envelope, etc. isnāt the same. If I donāt like the euphonium preset, Iāll try French horn or something
Just waiting to see what happens Black Friday.
I havenāt seen those yet. Perhaps those are exclusive to AE-30 due to lack of motion controls on 20.
One thing that really bugs me is the scene management. Or shall I say, lack thereof.
All official Roland Cloud sound packs, Expansions, patches created in Zenology and scenes tweaked and saved by users gets dumped into the same unsortable User banks.
There doesnāt even seem to be a way to edit the names of the User Banks to make them a possible 12 additional categories.
So, once scenes are imported, I have no idea what sound pack they came from or what instrument type it is unless its name gives it away. Many donāt.
Roland really needs to show us some love. I have some sort of condition that makes this type of disorganization very distracting.
If you would like to be able to better organize your user patches so that you can quickly find what sound youāre after, please contact Roland support and request more file management options.
In M Rotate the M stands for Michael Brecker and they donāt require any extra controls. The motion sensor ones on the AE30 typically use the M/S suffix.
They are in the first couple banks of synth sounds and heās testing them on an AE20 in the video (but out of sync).
You can choose where to put it in the User Banks on import but itās a bit clunky. Iāve got my scenes near the end of the banks just so I donāt need to deal with that on import.
You can sort banks however you want and thereās the Aerophone App Librarian section to back up and store banks off the Aerophone.
There are no user editable bank names on Roland products, if you want a name make the first patch the bank name. This isnāt a problem exclusive to the Aerophone.
Nameless banks other than 1,2,3 or A,B,C are the standard on synths atm so you usually have to figure out your own convention like anything else.
Scenes can also be moved around by writing it to the different location and writing an INIT to the old location (delete) or moving another one to itās place. Just a bit cumbersome if you have a ton so you should be organizing as you go.
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Should be Scenes 08, 09, 20, 21
The current $899 price is tempting. I suppose waiting for Black Friday will prove to be more of an exercise in self control than anything
Confirmed. Thereās such a difference and sound it had to be deliberate. Heās playing Mo Betta Blues so while the M Rotate patches are amazingā¦they would have sounded horrible in this context because theyāre chords.
However, he went on to play the same lick with other harmonic patches that werenāt disabled so canāt say what happened. Didnāt watch through to find out if they appeared later out of order.
Kinda unfair to Roland for those judging the sound now that I think of it. Theyāre actually really really good patches.lol.
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BTW if you download the Scene List you can look through everything and it lists out all the additional controls available.
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Just saw that last night while trying to figure out how to organize all of my patches. Itās actually a great general resource and guide for learning how to best map Aerophone to control any synth.
It would be great if theyād implement shortcuts and button combos to skip right to specific user banks. Seems like something Roland would do.