Roland D-50
Info
This is the Roland D-50 or better known as "The Pad Machine". It came out in 1987 and is famous for its wonderful pads, but it can do bass and leads just as well. D-50 is an all-digital synthesizer, but still it sounds analog and dirty. It makes sound using short PCM samples combined with a digital analog synth generator. The keys are velocity sensitive with aftertouch. A downside with the D-50 is programmability. It's just about impossible to program sounds directly on it, you have to work your way thru endless amounts of menus. Lots of music and movie soundtracks made in the late eighties and early nineties have D-50 all over it. For instance a couple of my favorite movies; Robocop and Peter Jackson's Bad Taste clearly have D-50 action going on.
Audio samples
- Arco Strings If you're a fan of splatter movies, you may recognize this sound from Bad Taste.
- Digital Cello Bad Taste tension music.
- Future Pad And now some Bad Taste action music!
- Pizzagogo The pizzicato pad from Enya's Orinoco Flows.
- Nightmare This sound brings me back to the days when I played Alone In The Dark 3.
- Dense Forest Awesome jungle ambience factory preset.
- Devildom A creepy-cave kinda sound.
- Twilight Zone Excellent horror movie tension sound.
- Digital Native Dance A D-50 classic.
- Digital Atmosphere Very cool D-50 pad.
- Soundtrack Another D-50 classic sound.
- Spacious Sweep One of my favorite D-50 factory presets.
- Reso Release It's nice with velocity sensitive keys!
- Intruder FX Spacey sound effect.
- Star-Trek Voices A chord played with the superb Star-Trek Voices preset.
- Deep bass This one can blow your speakers!
- Oberheim sound Typical Oberheim fatness.
- Motor Orchestra Industrial Revolution intro.
- Clockworks Industrial Revolution Overture rhythm.
- Marshy Zone A D-50 preset Jean Michel Jarre used at the start of Calypso 2.
- Computer Weekend The main lead Jarre used in Computer Weekend.
- Alien Cam More D-50 in Computer Weekend.