G-70 reviewed by Keyboard Player Magazine
Written by Andrew Gilbert for Keyboard Player Magazine
Friday, 24 June 2005
There's just so much that leaps out of this instrument, grabs you by the scruff of the neck and says I'm great, listen to me, play me, buy me!", that I can't do anything other than give it a very hearty thumbs-up.
I've had the G-70 at home for a short while (they're still thin on the ground, it would seem) and been able to explore it a bit further. It's quite some instrument and there isn't enough space here to cover every aspect of it's potential. In any case, if I did I'd almost end up re-writing the brochure so, instead, I'm going to take a different approach and tell you about the things that impressed me the most, plus a few points that I'm not so keen on.
Before we go any further, a quick correction to last month's overview article, but only a minor one! I said that the G-70 had a basic wire music rack. Well, the one I looked at did, but it turns out that the wrong one had been put on. The G 70's real music rack is rather more posh, made of metal and Perspex. It looks good, but the comment about the width still stands.
Here we go then and, to start with, let's look at those drawbar organ sounds again. I commented on the quality of their tone last time so this time I'll explain a bit more about how they work. Most digital drawbar systems are controlled by touch screen 'sliders', a system that Roland uses on the larger Atelier organs, or by up/down buttons under the display. A select few use real sliders though, for technical reasons, there are often only eight of them.
Roland has gone a little further, in that they've put on nine sliders, and made them look and feel like real drawbars, right down to the colour coding. This makes them really easy to use for the Hammond player and I'm pleased to say that the response of the G-70 is instant. As soon as you move a slider you hear the difference in tone and, unlike a few makes, holding notes while moving a slider, or even a handful of them, results in smooth transition of tone with no sudden jumps or drop-outs.
By default, if you hit the 'Easy Organ' button, you'll get 'upper' and 'lower' drawbar settings to either side of an adjustable split point and it's easy to get to these settings from the main screen display. There is also a third group of drawbars, or rather pair of drawbars, which provide the C3 type pedal sounds. You can always play these from the left-hand section of the keyboard or, if you plug in a set of MIDI bass pedals, use these instead. That means that the G-70 can easily emulate a two-manual-plus-pedals drawbar organ both in tone and playing style. Incidentally, in 'Easy Organ' mode, the slow/fast rotary setting is togged by the mod lever. When you're using this control for its normal purpose, it's very quick and easy to set one of the two assignable switches to do the job. Once you've got a drawbar setting that you like you can store it in memory and there are eight slots for this purpose.
Of course, you can always add the live drawbars to the other organ sounds and a quick run through some of these will take me neatly into an exploration of some of the other sound groups. There are numerous B3 and C3 names to be found, most of which provide variations on the classic 888800000 setting, with overdrive, percussion and rotary effects to suit most requirements. One of my favourites has to be Dyne Rotary, which switches between fast and slow rotary depending an how hard you strike the keys. Takes a little practice, but the sound is just perfect for the Focus hit Sylvia. Other types at organ inc Al Skate, a typical 'ice rink' or perhaps 'ball game' full organ and Leslie combination. Then come the usual thundering church organs, but there's a rather nice flute, with or without tremolo, and one Theatre Organ borrowed from the Rodgers side of the Roland family.
I mentioned the X-Piano last time, and it continues to impress. The trouble is that some of the other acoustic pianos, though they're darned good, seem a bit pale by comparison! I'm not complaining though, in the field of electric pianos, there is plenty of each type but I really feel for the two Wurlies and the twangy Clavinet that really bites. I'm not that taken with the Harpsichords. There are a few on offer, but they all seem to have a slight slow attack as well as the initial pluck, and that doesn't seem right to my ears.
There's a whole section dedicated to accordions and harmonicas of all shapes and sizes (going for the Euro market, no doubt) and you won't find any duffers here. The harmonicas and blues harps particularly impressed, and a combination of touch response and a little pitch bend makes for some expressive playing. Guitars abound, not surprising for any keyboard these days, and there are some crackers on offer. The V Nylons and V-Acoust are superb and there's a great Mandolin Trem that sounds each time you play or release a key, allowing for very fast trem effects with surprisingly little effort. If you can't manage this, there's another Mandolin with the tremolando already built in! in terms of electric guitars, no stone has been left unturned, with some excellent leads and basses, but I love the V-Jazz guitars most of all.
Strings, especially ensemble, are a vital part of any keyboard's armoury, and the G-70 has lots. I have to say that, surprisingly, a fair number of them are a bit nondescript. Thankfully, there are plenty et others that de shine, such as Slow Stereo Strings 3, a rich moody sound that's equally at home in movie music or classics such as Orchestra 4, just right for powerful numbers like Jeff Wayne's Eve of the War. As well as a good Chamber Strings voicing, it's nice to see a nod towards Baroque sounds in the form of Straight Strings a large ensemble playing without vibrato This is usually a recipe for disaster in a keyboard, but the G-70 carries it off very well indeed. There are some good solo strings, though some of the solo voices struck me as being a bit weak. Again, those that stand out tend to makeup for this.
Moving on to vocals, I again encountered this odd mix of some rather bland fare and some truly excellent voicings. I've heard some better vocals (and strings, for that matter) in the AtelierAT8OSL and I wonder why they aren't to be found here. Those vocals that do stand out include the inevitable jazz scat sounds, available individually or in the normal multi-velocity split, and some rather good choral sounds. Boys Choir, Rich Choir and Humming are three that are underlining on my list.
Big Band sounds get split into Brass and Sax/Trumpet. and Roland has covered the bases very well. I've noted the V-Trombone and Stereo Orchestral Brass as being two of the very best. Blow Alto and Blowed (sic) Tenor are excellent and there's the inevitable Harry James' and Mariachi style trumpets, though someone should have told Roland to sample a few more notes below Middle C. That sample seems to be used for a H notes below this point and the resulting reduction in attack and vibrato speeds makes both voices unusable below Bb. There's only one Sax Section, and it isn't one of the usual ones that give that 'Miller' sound or the close harmony group required for sax 'stabs'. Instead, there is a great octave sax combo. No use for chords but, oh, what a solo line it produces.
Woodwinds include a couple of what Roland term Folk Clarinets which are in the Acker Bilk area, a lovely V-Flute Traverso and V-Flute Exp, and a very tasty Oboe Exp. There are some useful orchestral ensembles too, in particular Quad Winds, a combination of, er, four woodwinds. Sounds like Bassoon, Oboe, clarinet and Flute to me and, once again. it's great for carrying off a strong melodic line.
When it comes to synths, the names used could mean just about anything, I suppose, and most comments about them would be purely subjective. However, those marked MG and OB (Moog and Oberheim) hit the mark fairly and squarely. Some of the pads are intentionally thin, reproducing various lesser makes of early polysynth, but some are gloriously rich and sweeping. There's enough here to satisfy anyone. The FX division provides the usual suspects from Helicopter (a Huey, no less!) to Kitty, Thunder and various explosions. You also get the usual round up at Ethnic sounds from Fiddle to Bagpipe and from Koto to Shamisen. One that caught my ear was Uillean Pipe, a truly haunting sound when played properly. One of my students wanted a virtual set of these for a project the other day so if you're reading this, here they are!
On the whole this is a pretty impressive bunch of sounds and where some degree of blandness creeps in at times, it's very much counterbalanced by the excellence of other sounds in the same division. I do have one niggle, though. I first heard the 0-70 through a pro PA set-up and the voices sounded fine. Through the home system of Sony PA and Rogers Studio monitors, the results were the same. However, I did most of the review work at home using professional, studio-quality headphones and I was a little surprised to hear some digital noise and what sounded like high speed loop - This occurred on just a few of the voices, mainly on the strings (noise) and solo strings (looping and noise), only on certain notes (mainly higher ones above C4) and only when played f or ff. In normal playing, with other sounds being used and a style playing, this shouldn't be audible.
Now, if all this isn't enough and you want extra sounds, I mentioned last time that you could install one of Roland's SRX expansion boards. These are, to all intents and purposes, similar to the sample libraries that you might use with a sequencer and titles inc Ultimate Keys, Symphonique Strings, Dynamic Drum and World Collection, so the sound palette is very wide. You can only install one board at a time and this does involve opening up a panel on the underside of the instrument. Instructions are given in the manual on how to do this (right down to which way to turn a screw to loosen or tighten it!) and it isn't a hard job, but board changes 'on the fly' are definitely out. I'm delighted to say that, when installed, an SRX board's voices can be called up just like any other group of sounds, and there's a dedicated group button on the panel.
It was good to see that Roland has included some basic Tone Edit functions. Nothing fancy or over complex, just filter, envelope shaping and vibrato, but enough to tweak, say, an over-bright sound into something that fits your requirements a little better. So to the styles and with 285 on offer in 12 genres, it will perhaps suffice to say that, in terms of range, just about every area has been covered. All the styles are eight-part and, for the most part, I think they work very well. I've got my own personal favourites, such as Beach Surf, Classic Big Band, Cool Tango, Sunny Pop and Ensemble Swing, and I singled out the Live Band group for special last time, I'll stick with these as being some of the instrument's best styles, especially Cool Live Band and Unpkigged Ballad, They're nicely 'loose' with a good human fell to them.
When it comes to the others, I do detect this slight 'curate's egg' tendency again though, with some styles, though not being in any way bad, being a tad on the bland side. it's easy, perhaps too easy, to make direct comparisons with patterns from other makes when there are several identically-named styles. Orchestra Swing, Gypsy Swing and Jazz Club are the main culprits and I'm afraid that they just aren't as good as their namesakes. However, I do have to say that this is once again largely counterbalanced by the high number of styles that do make the grade.
One thing I definitely must mention is the way that the G-70 handles the chords you play. It features what Roland calls Adaptive Chord Voicing and relates notes played in one chord to the next. For example. If you're playing a C chord and the Strings in a particular backing are playing the E a Third above the Tonic, when you change to an F chord on other keyboards, those Strings will jump up a perfect Fourth to A. This is not very realistic or musical at all. When you play the same chord change on the G-7O, the keyboard will work out what to do next musically, and the Strings will just slide up a semitone to F. it handles all chord changes in the same manner and turns Strings parts in particular into very passable countermelodies.
Just as with the voices, you can tweak the styles, and this time you can do so on the fly, using methods taken from Roland's DisCover series instruments. In moments you can revoice parts, change their levels and panning, and add effects and so on. You can, of course, store the results. Going further you can make your own styles by copying. The final ways of getting extra styles involves much less work as you can simply buy 'off the peg' styles from Roland or third parties. One possible route would be to craftily convert styles from other makes. There's no style conversion software on board the G-70, there are programs like Style Works Universal for PC, which does the job with ease. (Let's face it and be honest here, there are always styles 'to die for' on someone else's keyboard!) At the time of writing however, Style Works doesn't feature the G-70 as a destination style, but maybe converting to another Roland style format will work.
Looking at some of the other features of this instrument, I start with the sequencer, which is a full 16 track affair that can operate as a Quick Recorder for grabbing ideas fast, or as a fully-featured system with comprehensive editing facilities. It's note or event capacity isn't stated anywhere as it's limited only by the amount of Flash memory available. (This memory is shared between styles, songs, sounds and registrations and the less you use for one thing the more you have for the others.) It's a doddle to operate and the only drawback I can find is that, although the main page resembles the classic sequencer 'arrange window', when it comes to detailed track-by-track editing, we're back into host edit mode. Surely someone is going to realise that a graphics mode like a computer based system is a far easier and, given large co displays quite practical option. Maybe there's a bit of pragmatism going on here, though, with the realisation that almost all owners will have a PC or Mac and even the cheapest sequencers (around £30) will outperform any internal ones.
Nice touches here include the ability to select, when starting to record a song from scratch, one of several different genres of music, and have the keyboard set up suitable sounds automatically. The G-70's sequencer will also play SMF's, of course, and once again the DisCover 'rearranging' options are available to tweak, bend or totally transform a song. Mark and Jump functions let you mark suitable points in any SMF and then set the keyboard to jump between them and repeat them as required. Very handy for extending a song for that extra icos that you know you'll be asked to play! Karaoke style lyrics can be shown on the screen and there's an RGB video output for a TV or monitor. What's more, the sequencer even has facilities for adding lyrics to songs that don't already have them.
No high-end keyboard these days is complete without some form of vocal processor and Rolands is called the Vocal Harmonist. As usual, it takes the mike input or line input, then processes it, adds all sorts of extra harmonies and finally adds DSP effects. lt's good to see that you can use a line input to provide the vocals as well as a mike. These could be pre-recorded (though synching would be an issue here) or from one of the various sub outputs on an external mixer. You can select the gender of the input voice and then choose from a wide range of small or larger vocal ensembles. You can then pitch correct (if needed) and add vibrato, if yours is poor.
One feature that did appear new to me is Ensemble Edit, which gives you the ability to change the gender and octaves of each of your backing singers. There are also some useful vocoder effects, if you're into that robotic sort of thing! Apart from Ensemble Edit, there's nothing really radical in this section and Roland, and others, have been doing this for years, but it is done with some aplomb, and its very controllable. I have to say that, as with many of the G-70's functions, that touch screen is the key to ease of use here.
Aftertouch has been around since heaven knows when, but few keyboards seem to implement this incredibly useful function. The G-70 does though, and does it with style. You can assign aftertouch to any division of the keyboard except the Manual Bass and decide what I will do to each of those parts. When applied to keyboard sounds it can vary the volume of a tone, open or close the filters, bend the note up or down or add modulation. That pretty straightforward but, when applied to the Arrange section, it can trigger fills, intros, endings and even change between style variations. Now that's a new trick and a very neat one.
The G-70 is absolutely laden with DSP units. Certain sections of the instrument, like the Harmonic Bars and Vocal Harmonist, have their own dedicated effects. Then there are separate Reverb and Chorus units for sounds and styles. The sounds can also have Multi Effects applied to them (and there are dozens of these covering every base from chorus to flangers to delays and distortion) and the external inputs have similar, but again separate effects on tap. On top of all this come the Master Effects that can be applied to the entire output of the keyboard, and here were talking about EQ and Compression. I don't think I've ever seen quite so many effects an any one instrument. The variety and flexibility is staggering.
For many years flow quite a few Roland instruments have featured the D-Beam controller, where you pass your hand through a light beam to control various effects. I've run through these in previous reviews but it's worth doing so again. Set to DJ Gear, the D-Beam will trigger all sorts of DJ-oriented sounds, like scratches, cuts, vinyl noise and the sound of turntables speeding up and slowing down. Set to SFX and, well, you can guess that it brings in some of the sound effects I mentioned earlier.
More interesting are the next three areas at control. Set to instruments, it will add in extra notes based, not surprisingly, on the notes you're currently playing on the keyboard. You get a fair old choice of sounds here inccluding Bell and Harp. Set to Control, it can trigger fills, fades, rotary slow/fast and open or close the filter. Interestingly under the Control heading is a setting called Instrum (Roland's spelling) that sort at duplicates the effects found under instruments, but with a bit more variety and the ability to choose your own sounds (set in the Lower 2 sound group). Brass stabs, guitar chords and arpeggios are some of the results here. At times the manual has to be a bit vague when describing exactly what will happen using D-Beam as everything is dependent on how you move your hand through the beam. It's a bit of trial and error, but trying is great fun!
When it comes to matters MIDI, the G-70 will happily jump through just about any hoop you care to hold out for it, and just about everything is adjustable, so incompatibility problems are highly unlikely. A read through the manual reveals that you can customize everything you need to and then save all the settings you've made as a MIDI Set. You can store eight of these and instantly switch between them. I didn't get a chance to try this, but the operation, like so many things on this instrument, looks pretty straightforward.
At this point I'd like to give a few words of praise for the way the operating system works, and by that I mean the interaction between the touch screen and the many, many buttons and controls. Roland has got the balance just right for this sort of instrument and tasks that could have been fiddly have been made simple. Transpose and Octave shifts have their own buttons, there's a data wheel to backup the on-screen choices and, if you push the data wheel, up pops a numeric keypad on the display, allowing you to key in a value instead. That alone saves a lot of time. Those drawbars I praised earlier also act as variable controllers for many of the on screen variables and, on those occasions when you do have to delve into the menu system, you'll find that if as logical and intuitive as they come. Full marks to Roland for this!
In case you missed my words on the keyboard action itself last time! Let me reiterate that this is superior to other Roland (and most other) products. It's slightly deeper, more positive action makes it very suitable for piano stylings but thankfully doesn't go as far as the proper weighted action of a digital piano. I say thankfully because many people find it a bit of an unnatural feeling playing trumpets or violins from a fully weighted keyboard. This is a great 'halfway house' and the more I play it, the more I like it.
At the back of the G-70, as befits any professional keyboard, is a whole raft of connections. The keyboard is directly mains powered, no adaptors needed, and the power switch is, quite correctly, next door to the power socket. Then come ¼" stereo audio outputs and assignable outputs (you can direct any signals away from the main outs and to these instead), stereo line inputs, a mike input (using a combined ¼" jack and XLR connector) and audio output for the vocal harmonist. There's nothing in the manual to say if the outputs are balanced TRS sockets or unbalanced, So I'd guess it's the latter. Pro gear really ought to use balanced connectors for the best quality sound and it's easy and inexpensive for manufacturers to do. Then the MIDI ports, a USB B port, effects pedal and sustain pedal sockets, not to mention the video output and a PCMCIA adaptor slot. Another pro touch is the provision of a separate metronome output. In a group situation this can be routed through a suitable external mixer to give the drummer a dick track to follow, without anyone else hearing it. The floppy is around at the front along with the headphones socket.
You have 50MB of internal flash memory, and you can save all the G-70's data to a PC via USG. But there's no provision for an internal hard drive. The PCMCIA socket means you can use, with the appropriate adaptor, Smart Media or Compact Flash cards, Microdrives and Memory Sticks. The addition of a simple USB A socket would have given more flexibility with external devices such as hard drives. There's a CD with the keyboard that not only has the USB drivers for Windows 98 but also a complete set of factory data should you need to do a total reset.
So, it's summing-up time, and there's no doubt at all that this is a superb keyboard for the pro or semi pro entertainer. There's much more than I've had time or space to tell you about and, as I said at the start, this article just covers the highlights. Okay, I've had a few niggles about some of the sounds and styles being a bit bland, perhaps, and I'd really like to have seen balanced audio outputs and a USB A socket, but they are the only real downsides. Overall, there's just so much that leaps out of this instrument, grabs you by the scruff of the neck and says I'm great, listen to me, play me, buy me!", that I can't do anything other than give it a very hearty thumbs-up.
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