In the late 1980s I made so many commercials and background scores using that same techno disc floppy. It’s paid for a lot of the gear I’m still using today! Great memories.
So much nostalgia from the 80's contained in this one video. Hints of all sorts that takes me right back to some classic film and music moments from that time!
I owned a W-30 in the early 90's and used it for sampling for radio production. I never could do anything like this. Pretty awesome. I always enjoy your videos.
Great job. As someone who grow up with Amiga tracker modules in the 90s it's just in recent years I've realized how many samples were straight from late 80s early 90s romplers and workstations :)
I had a W30 for 3 years from 1989 - £1600 it cost with a fur-lined case. It weighed a ton, had the most solid sequencer of the day, all channels on separate 6.5mm outputs to guitar multi-FX units (noisy though). The nicest keybed action - after I sold it I spent about ten years trying to get one back in mint condition - biggest mistake I ever made was selling that and two boxes of 3.5” floppy disks, a Shure Mic for sampling - the only issue I ever had was it’s sample time: just shy of 14s at 120bpm meaning you couldn’t loop commercial 4-bar tracks from S-Express, Technotronix etc, and despite some great sample editing features, you couldn’t time-stretch without changing the pitch back then; but until I got my Kronos it was the most productive time I ever had on *any* workstation - the drums were fantastic, and so was the resolution - no quantise swing though, I remember stealing the beat from Enigma Sadeness, such quality was mind blowing. And it had a primitive synth too! Fond memories ❤ 👍😉🇬🇧
That was the sound that made me pick up my S-50 in 1988, a sophomore in college (although I thought it was called "Voicey"...?). That S-50 is still sitting three feet away from me as I type this. (And my roommate HATED the MIDI bells sound, the poor guy...)
bro, just found your youtube page. i'm your new biggest fan. this "quick" song you made is a legit 80's SMASH hit. i used to be 80's radio DJ and billboard hot 100 director. r-e-a-l-e-s-t 80's music recreations i've ever heard. gonna try and rock this with vocals. zd
Haha, I still have one from 1989. No effects, built in synth, and the most sounds I got in at one time was 14. It weighs more than my car - it’s the best keyboard I had until I got the Triton Extreme, then the Kronos. It still has beautiful key action with aftertouch. I had 4 at one point - all the outputs were fed into guitar multiFX and mixer. I’ve used it as a master since the Triton Extreme for all Roland modules worth having, I have a Yamaha Montage and I really miss the W30 being my baby because I spend more time searching sounds now instead of making the best of the 1MB memory it had - may have been more, but the patches were Kb I know that. Great video!
This is basically the S550 + the Director-S sequencer in a keyboard (with a bit less memory I believe). Best sounding 12-bit samplers. Bright, punchy, heavy, adds a sort of metallic feel to everything you put into it. Great for late 80's style pop/dance music. Think Michael Jackson "Bad" and Janet Jackson "Control"/"Rhythm Nation."
Unfortunately it's more like the S-330. Only two banks of 7.2 seconds each. The S-550 has double memory than that. They are not bright (only go up to 30kHz) but they are very punchy. I'm a big fan of this line of samplers and sequencers and have several of the models in the line.
Liam's (The Prodigy) favourite instrument. All the big/early hits were written on a W-30 I believe. Younger people today have the luxury of huge monitors and don't get eye strain from staring at a tiny screen for hour after hour and more importantly have a practically limitless length of available sample time. I loved my S-760, it could read Akai discs and IMO it sounded better, very underrated bit of kit.
I'm still loving mine, but then it has the OP monitor out so no squinting! Not putting a monitor out or even an option for one was Roland's biggest mistake with the W-30.
Thanks - the W-30 has 16-voice polyphony and auto and manual VAL/VAF/FIX V1-V22 voice allocation (last note priority, first note priority, and manual allocation of voices per patch).
Great work! You know your styles! Maybe worth mentioning that the W30 is 12 bit. While a step down from cd-quality it's a good tradeoff for saving the precious memory. Same scheme was used in the AKAI S950, my first sampler :-)
Love the W-30 - had one for a while. Great gritty 8 bit sampler. Liam from the Prodigy uses one of these extensively. By the way, the later Roland Samplers were good enough for Drum and Bass maestro 'Dom and Roland' to name his 'band' after one. They are supposed to have a fuller fatter more rounded sound than compared to the Akai's which had more sheen, apparently. Don't know about that. I'd probably get an Emu if I was going to delve in to old - school sampling.
Doh, the W-30 is a 12-bit sampler. Stupid mistake on my part. Sorry. That was an incremental leap up from 8-bit. Even more than 16-bit was from 12-bit. Unforgivable mistake, apologies. ;-)
This would've been perfect for The Running Man when the show was starting and all the dancers were doing their routine. We've got the next Harold Faltermeyer here!
So I tend to listen to music and sort of visualize a scene of a movie or TV show in my mind. So as I'm listening you see a night club (in the 80's) and typical 80's dancing then we could to a cocaine deal going down in the back between a Columbian drug lord and some gangster who controls all the East Coast. Next we see a SWAT team arrive in their trucks get out open the backs and start suiting up and pulling out these large suitcase things with their weapons. Strapping them on and we cut back to the night club dancers completely oblivious to what's going to go down. Next we see a henchman give the drug lord a package, which he slides across the table to the gangster. Next we see the SWAT team finish arming themselves and move into position. In the back room the gangster slides a briefcase back to the drug lord. Suddenly the manager walks in and whispers into the drug lords ear. He signals to his men who out out a couple of AK-47's when the gangster take into his coat and then promptly dives under the table as bullets start to rip through the club. The FBI busts in and all the dancers start to panic... All from listening to this 80's riff
Hi Paolo! Would it be possible to play those Roland S-50 sample disks in an Akai S1000? And if so, how would the Akai S1000 sampler color the sound of the samples differently?
Wow. I had this sampler in 1992. Came with a bad floppy drive and it couldn't read any disks that I got anywhere else. The reseller wouldn't exchange it or fix the floppy drive and after six months I got pissed and sent it back. Got a sh*tty JV-30 instead. That's when I got into computer sequencing.
Great 👍 the brass hits and bass/drum groove is getting on for early SAW type of sound. Excellent variations towards the end yeah pretty darn good. All sequenced in the W30? How long would you say it took?
Similar sounds, but ABC used the Fairlight. Many of those sounds (or similar) ended up in numerous sample libraries. I love that whole album - it was unlike anything else at the time and is unfairly overlooked these days.
Hey.. I just found your video here, and am impressed. You basically made an 80s freestyle song within minutes with it seemed very little effort! So now i have to ask you if you might live in or around, or even nearby the NYC area? And if so, or not so far away, i would like to talk more with you about the possibility of you playing synth with/for me, on 3 full albums of fresh, new, pop/rock music with a very 80s sound. ( particularly some freestyle music that i am recreating! ~ And some of the other opportunities im offering. including pay ofcourse too. Im not joking, so when you see this, if you would like to talk more? please get back to me. ~ Thank you
I seem to remember the original Fairlight sample from which that was based had a very audible loop. It's what makes old school sampling cool. It's imperfections make it more "organic"
Hi PaoloMay I suggest you do new camera angles such as one camera set up far away but in the room so we can get a wide view of the room and what you are doing.Great video - Good work.
I have a question about some really rare Roland commercial music from the 80’s. I have some vids on my channel, any idea of the year or any additional info on these songs?
Ha! :). Actually, nop... I wasn't channeling Cameo's Word Up, at least not consciously anyway! I was just improvising with the sounds on the diskette, but Word Up is from 1986, so it's definitely in the similar era / style ! That song was the bomb when it came out! We played it a lot at parties with my DJ friends
W-30 was an S-10 with 16 voices/track sequencecer & 3.5 flopdrive unique sound hard to come by even these days difficult to duplicate that '80's-90's stuff still today on newer equipment something to be said for that with all this analog eurorack module kick the kids are ondoin' in ye yore presently!? folks
To be correct, it was more like an S-330 plus an MC-500mkII and a basic sample ROM. The S-10 was only eight-voice polyphonic, four-part multitimbric, no real-time filter, 256k of memory. The S-330 (and W-30) had sixteen-voice polyphony, eight-part multitimbrality, real-time filter, 512k of memory and other enhancements.
....pretty much what I said 'cept forgot about the ROM set. What was that based on pretel ? But ur description is more of auh precise nature if you midi daisy chained a MC5c mkII, S-10 & S-330 all together you'd have a W-30 pretty dealy it's really the first decent workstation IYAME better than the (non-sampling) M1 IMHO folks
....or u could just midi a S-50 to the MC500mkII that combo would be close to the W-30 but with no(non-realtime) 4 pole filters, random arpeggio or the ROM set which is what makes the W-30 unique no matter what Roland midi combi's u can dream up how 'bout this: A-80=>W-30=>MC50 =>VP-9000 that would be a flagship 88key V-Synth basically folks
Hello paulo, you think you could make a video about the xylophone technique of the song's: Heat the beat - Sal Wood and Heart of the city - Chris Luis.
AHHH can anyone tell me from what synth|rack that "steamer flute" sound originally is?? This sound caught my attention for the first time YEARS ago on The Cure's song Dressing Up (from The Top, 1984) and I never found its real source.
![เปิดใจ พี่ญา คนรุม หลังทัวร์ลง หนักสุดในชีวิต!! l [Nickynachat]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/2-OJZRtclro/mqdefault.jpg)
![[กูเพิ่งซื้อมึงปิดหนี] 20 นาที ผมรีวิวเกมที่แย่ที่สุดในโลก CONCORD](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/XhC-3q3Ii7I/mqdefault.jpg)
In the late 1980s I made so many commercials and background scores using that same techno disc floppy. It’s paid for a lot of the gear I’m still using today! Great memories.
Thanks for sharing!
This takes me right back to some old school SEGA games! They always had bomb soundtracks!
VGSoundtrackGuy agree lol btw I need to chat with u about some kontakt libraries
especially Ecco the dolphin
They used one of these even several games, actually! Sonic the fighters and Daytona USA use a few samples from this system.
I wish I had the talent to just wake up and make great songs out of thin air like you do... always a pleasure to watch!
This put a massive smile on my face.
I grew a mullet whilst watching this.
ha, already have one.
Hahaha!!.. Had one back in the day! Was 15yo
Mullets are rad as hell
I genuinely had a mullet the 2nd time it was fashionable. Around 2001 - 2002.
The sound of 80s pop music. Thanks for the demonstration, it's always great to know how all the hits were made.
mikosoft late 80's pop. Not early 80's.
So much nostalgia from the 80's contained in this one video. Hints of all sorts that takes me right back to some classic film and music moments from that time!
I owned a W-30 in the early 90's and used it for sampling for radio production. I never could do anything like this. Pretty awesome. I always enjoy your videos.
The Roland S-50 patch “Snare Drums” was heard in the song “Man in the Mirror” (1988) (where the Korg M1 internal programs patch “Piano8’” was heard).
12 bit sampling still rocks!
Yeah it does! dude
Great job. As someone who grow up with Amiga tracker modules in the 90s it's just in recent years I've realized how many samples were straight from late 80s early 90s romplers and workstations :)
Exaclty, I immediatly thought of my AMIGA-days :-)
So true!
Wow tracker ...the gold old days and some good demo
Couldn’t sound more 80’s if it tried! Awesome 😊
Great work with that oh so 1980s sounding demo!
In the song "Every Little Step" (1989), the Roland W-30 drum patch is heard.
Liam from prodigy, a W30 master.
Thank you Paolo, you are great ! You should make a video about your studio (like a FM studio tour).
Yes please 😀 we would love that
Paolo is the man! As another commenter said, I wish I could just sit down and crank these jams out like you can!
I Wanted One Of These In The 80's
I had a W30 for 3 years from 1989 - £1600 it cost with a fur-lined case. It weighed a ton, had the most solid sequencer of the day, all channels on separate 6.5mm outputs to guitar multi-FX units (noisy though). The nicest keybed action - after I sold it I spent about ten years trying to get one back in mint condition - biggest mistake I ever made was selling that and two boxes of 3.5” floppy disks, a Shure Mic for sampling - the only issue I ever had was it’s sample time: just shy of 14s at 120bpm meaning you couldn’t loop commercial 4-bar tracks from S-Express, Technotronix etc, and despite some great sample editing features, you couldn’t time-stretch without changing the pitch back then; but until I got my Kronos it was the most productive time I ever had on *any* workstation - the drums were fantastic, and so was the resolution - no quantise swing though, I remember stealing the beat from Enigma Sadeness, such quality was mind blowing.
And it had a primitive synth too! Fond memories ❤ 👍😉🇬🇧
I love it! Sounds like the 80s! That first riff I thought it was INXS!
What mastery .
My first synth - still got it, great to hear a video of it in action 😁
Roland "Voices 1" = Fairlight "Sararr"!
That was the sound that made me pick up my S-50 in 1988, a sophomore in college (although I thought it was called "Voicey"...?). That S-50 is still sitting three feet away from me as I type this. (And my roommate HATED the MIDI bells sound, the poor guy...)
bro, just found your youtube page. i'm your new biggest fan. this "quick" song you made is a legit 80's SMASH hit. i used to be 80's radio DJ and billboard hot 100 director. r-e-a-l-e-s-t 80's music recreations i've ever heard. gonna try and rock this with vocals. zd
Zuma Dogg, thank you!
That sounds pretty awesome! Great track and sounds :)
Simply fantastic!
Bro, you are amazing.
Those tom's... :) Reminds me of the tom's in the Miami Vice theme song.
The toms remind me of the ones Konami used in TMNT arcade.
Haha, I still have one from 1989. No effects, built in synth, and the most sounds I got in at one time was 14. It weighs more than my car - it’s the best keyboard I had until I got the Triton Extreme, then the Kronos. It still has beautiful key action with aftertouch. I had 4 at one point - all the outputs were fed into guitar multiFX and mixer. I’ve used it as a master since the Triton Extreme for all Roland modules worth having, I have a Yamaha Montage and I really miss the W30 being my baby because I spend more time searching sounds now instead of making the best of the 1MB memory it had - may have been more, but the patches were Kb I know that. Great video!
Alas, my baby 707 and the MPC60 is sleeping peacefully behind...
I love these videos
Grato pela iniciativa de nos mostrar essas maravilhas !! Eu tenho um Roland S-10, um MC 303 e um Roland D 110 !!
Reminds me of the soundtracks from a lot of early 90's arcade games.
Now that's what I call music!!!
Huge thanks for regular reference to 1980's theme-)
great video
greetings from Brazil
Thank you, Tory~
This can be described using just one word: Cool.
This is basically the S550 + the Director-S sequencer in a keyboard (with a bit less memory I believe). Best sounding 12-bit samplers. Bright, punchy, heavy, adds a sort of metallic feel to everything you put into it. Great for late 80's style pop/dance music. Think Michael Jackson "Bad" and Janet Jackson "Control"/"Rhythm Nation."
Unfortunately it's more like the S-330. Only two banks of 7.2 seconds each. The S-550 has double memory than that. They are not bright (only go up to 30kHz) but they are very punchy. I'm a big fan of this line of samplers and sequencers and have several of the models in the line.
Liam's (The Prodigy) favourite instrument. All the big/early hits were written on a W-30 I believe. Younger people today have the luxury of huge monitors and don't get eye strain from staring at a tiny screen for hour after hour and more importantly have a practically limitless length of available sample time. I loved my S-760, it could read Akai discs and IMO it sounded better, very underrated bit of kit.
i still rock a s-760
I'm still loving mine, but then it has the OP monitor out so no squinting! Not putting a monitor out or even an option for one was Roland's biggest mistake with the W-30.
Even though I used software for making music these days, I'm still finding myself sequencing on my Korg Kross from time to time.
Made my day. Thanks mate :-)
Cue the 90’s Cop Buddies TV series.
Beautiful
excellent. Surprisingly good polyphony for a pre JV1080 roland product
Thanks - the W-30 has 16-voice polyphony and auto and manual VAL/VAF/FIX V1-V22 voice allocation (last note priority, first note priority, and manual allocation of voices per patch).
Every Otto Walkes Film in the 80s... :D
i just purchased a S550 and can't wait to make something like this.
Pinball Fantasies
That pan flute is spotted numerous times on early Cusco records.
Really great, i love it!
Great sounds
excellent video
Great work! You know your styles! Maybe worth mentioning that the W30 is 12 bit. While a step down from cd-quality it's a good tradeoff for saving the precious memory. Same scheme was used in the AKAI S950, my first sampler :-)
The S-50 was indeed 12-bit, but with either 15 KHz or 30KHz sample rate... not quite just a "step down" from CD quality. :)
100 times better than today's pop
All the sounds of my youth.
Love the W-30 - had one for a while. Great gritty 8 bit sampler. Liam from the Prodigy uses one of these extensively.
By the way, the later Roland Samplers were good enough for Drum and Bass maestro 'Dom and Roland' to name his 'band' after one. They are supposed to have a fuller fatter more rounded sound than compared to the Akai's which had more sheen, apparently. Don't know about that. I'd probably get an Emu if I was going to delve in to old - school sampling.
Doh, the W-30 is a 12-bit sampler. Stupid mistake on my part. Sorry. That was an incremental leap up from 8-bit. Even more than 16-bit was from 12-bit. Unforgivable mistake, apologies. ;-)
@@123ubuntu666 we'll forgive you just this once! 😂😂😂😂😂
I think I heard some patches from The Karate Kid movie.
Heathcliff This would be the montage song when the local punk skater kids are building a homemade tank to rescue their friend from the mafia.
hahaha. Incredible how quickly he got a B-movie soundtrack up and running. Great tutorial.
This would've been perfect for The Running Man when the show was starting and all the dancers were doing their routine. We've got the next Harold Faltermeyer here!
Nice demo 🎼🎶🎹
Love it
The sound track of the 80's.
Ted yellowstone LATE 80's.
Great music! I use one of these as well! It has really nice sounds.
I have a bunch of s series samples on my MV 8000 it made the machine way better
Were all these sounds in memory at once? That's pretty impressive.
Nice! Makes me want to make sounds like these, i just need a synthesizer like this hahaha
Anyway, good job on this demo!
Somebody Please make a DJ-70 series of videos in english.
So I tend to listen to music and sort of visualize a scene of a movie or TV show in my mind. So as I'm listening you see a night club (in the 80's) and typical 80's dancing then we could to a cocaine deal going down in the back between a Columbian drug lord and some gangster who controls all the East Coast. Next we see a SWAT team arrive in their trucks get out open the backs and start suiting up and pulling out these large suitcase things with their weapons. Strapping them on and we cut back to the night club dancers completely oblivious to what's going to go down. Next we see a henchman give the drug lord a package, which he slides across the table to the gangster. Next we see the SWAT team finish arming themselves and move into position. In the back room the gangster slides a briefcase back to the drug lord. Suddenly the manager walks in and whispers into the drug lords ear. He signals to his men who out out a couple of AK-47's when the gangster take into his coat and then promptly dives under the table as bullets start to rip through the club. The FBI busts in and all the dancers start to panic...
All from listening to this 80's riff
Hi Paolo! Would it be possible to play those Roland S-50 sample disks in an Akai S1000? And if so, how would the Akai S1000 sampler color the sound of the samples differently?
(Puts on sunglasses, starts engine, drives into the sunlight)
PS. Crockett's theme?
Wow. I had this sampler in 1992. Came with a bad floppy drive and it couldn't read any disks that I got anywhere else. The reseller wouldn't exchange it or fix the floppy drive and after six months I got pissed and sent it back. Got a sh*tty JV-30 instead. That's when I got into computer sequencing.
Great 👍 the brass hits and bass/drum groove is getting on for early SAW type of sound. Excellent variations towards the end yeah pretty darn good. All sequenced in the W30? How long would you say it took?
Thanks! It took about 15 minutes, I know the W-30 inside and out and I'm very fast on it.
Got married that year, remember those sounds & beats so well, nice one.
Will we be seeing a Boutique W-03 from Roland.. ? ;)
i would love that
That would be cool!
No.
Any ideas how 2 unlimited made the 'no limits' leads/bass would be good to see how it was done.
I recognize that brass from Yu Yu Hakusho!
Awesome, most of these sounds I swear are heard on a song called How to be a millionaire by ABC
muzixco nope. This synth was not out in late 1984.
Similar sounds, but ABC used the Fairlight. Many of those sounds (or similar) ended up in numerous sample libraries. I love that whole album - it was unlike anything else at the time and is unfairly overlooked these days.
Agreed!
Hey.. I just found your video here, and am impressed. You basically made an 80s freestyle song within minutes with it seemed very little effort! So now i have to ask you if you might live in or around, or even nearby the NYC area? And if so, or not so far away, i would like to talk more with you about the possibility of you playing synth with/for me, on 3 full albums of fresh, new, pop/rock music with a very 80s sound. ( particularly some freestyle music that i am recreating! ~ And some of the other opportunities im offering. including pay ofcourse too. Im not joking, so when you see this, if you would like to talk more? please get back to me. ~ Thank you
Sounds like something Martika would sing along to.
Man this was cool. Do you know of any (NYC Latin R&B) Freestyle Songs?
I would love to see a tutorial on some of those joints.
Wow, the loop is awfully audible on the voice sample :)
I seem to remember the original Fairlight sample from which that was based had a very audible loop. It's what makes old school sampling cool. It's imperfections make it more "organic"
Hi PaoloMay I suggest you do new camera angles such as one camera set up far away but in the room so we can get a wide view of the room and what you are doing.Great video - Good work.
Like a '80 TV action series soundtrack
I have a question about some really rare Roland commercial music from the 80’s. I have some vids on my channel, any idea of the year or any additional info on these songs?
those patches sound *very* familiar.
I think you must've been chanelling Cameo (Word Up) when you did this!
Ha! :). Actually, nop... I wasn't channeling Cameo's Word Up, at least not consciously anyway! I was just improvising with the sounds on the diskette, but Word Up is from 1986, so it's definitely in the similar era / style ! That song was the bomb when it came out! We played it a lot at parties with my DJ friends
SynthMania No worries! Word up is cool as is your track.
Where is best place to get those discs?
need a modern remake of this with all the disk. kinda how the did the d50
Where can i find this disk image? Should i search for Roland W30..or Roland S-50 ??
I have an s-50, just learning. Dj-70 too. Can you do a deep dj-70 video in english? All are Italian.
could you please upload the drum sounds anyway??
EUROBEATARIFFIC 😀
How many bars you recorded
W-30 was an S-10 with 16 voices/track sequencecer & 3.5 flopdrive unique sound hard to come by even these days difficult to duplicate that '80's-90's stuff still today on newer equipment something to be said for that with all this analog eurorack module kick the kids are ondoin' in ye yore presently!? folks
To be correct, it was more like an S-330 plus an MC-500mkII and a basic sample ROM. The S-10 was only eight-voice polyphonic, four-part multitimbric, no real-time filter, 256k of memory. The S-330 (and W-30) had sixteen-voice polyphony, eight-part multitimbrality, real-time filter, 512k of memory and other enhancements.
....pretty much what I said 'cept forgot about the ROM set. What was that based on pretel ? But ur description is more of auh precise nature if you midi daisy chained a MC5c mkII, S-10 & S-330 all together you'd have a W-30 pretty dealy it's really the first decent workstation IYAME better than the (non-sampling) M1 IMHO folks
....or u could just midi a S-50 to the MC500mkII that combo would be close to the W-30 but with no(non-realtime) 4 pole filters, random arpeggio or the ROM set which is what makes the W-30 unique no matter what Roland midi combi's u can dream up how 'bout this: A-80=>W-30=>MC50 =>VP-9000 that would be a flagship 88key V-Synth basically folks
Hello paulo, you think you could make a video about the xylophone technique of the song's: Heat the beat - Sal Wood and Heart of the city - Chris Luis.
And arpeggios.
Yep- I put it on the to-do list
SynthMania
that would be great!!, thanks Paolo!
AHHH can anyone tell me from what synth|rack that "steamer flute" sound originally is?? This sound caught my attention for the first time YEARS ago on The Cure's song Dressing Up (from The Top, 1984) and I never found its real source.
From the Fairlight CMI i think, the SARARR sample is definitely from the CMI.
Amazing! Is it possible to make stm file?
1:59 That's one of the Rugrats music.
How did you create the vibrato bass line ?
There's no vibrato in the bass line - do you mean the pitch bending?
Just like the music I'm producing currently lol
You are mad Scientist
Damn! Add a delorean and a vocalist and you would be a millionaire today :)
Can someone please rhyme on this?
Is there the same disk for sale online
They're now all in the public domain, i.e.: gamelay.usami.com/~netboy/w30/sites/w30.msoft.it/s50.html
when you need to get real good real fast