This weekend I purchased a very gently used Roland VR-09. This is a massive upgrade from the Roland XP-50 I bought a few years back. The XP-50 was released in 1995, and the one I bought had been well used for those 25 years it existed. The high B-key worked sporadically, the dial-selector was equally inconsistent, and many of the buttons needed very deliberate selection to be used. The patches on the board are great though, and I’m glad I spent the money and time on it and get further back into music.
The VR-09 was originally released in 2013, followed by the VR-09B in 2017, which is identical to the original except for some cosmetic changes. I purchased y unit from a wonderful, pleasant musician from northern Massachusetts who kept it in pristine condition and shared some knowledge with me while in a Starbucks parking lot on a cold Saturday morning. This synth can actually run on batteries, which made me fear it was more amateurish, like the Casiotone MT-40 I once had, but that feature was handy in giving the unit a quick run-through, an option i did not have when buying the XP-50 in a parking lot, and perhaps gave too much trust to the musician selling me that board (I don’t really blame him though, he was selling it as-is and it was 20 years old).
I was actually specifically looking for the VR-series thanks to a Sweetwater article discussing top picks for virtual dawbar organs. My journey as a wanna-be musician has led me through many phases – piano lessons, including classical and “adult oriented rock” for a few pre-adolescent years, jazz band piano and concert band ‘bass’ (on a under-appreciated by me at the time Juno-60…oh to have board again) through high school alongside a rag-tag band doing covers and originals allowing me to discover playing the bass was thoroughly enjoyable as well as some rhythm guitar. After a long hiatus, returning to a covers band in a cliche dad-band I have found myself returning to the keyboards and finally appreciating the wonderful sounds of rock organ – from Styx and Yes to Allman Brothers and blues-rock. The VR has physical drawbars and a decent reputation for the organ patches available. I have a lot to learn, and this appears to be an intuitive entryway to the world of rock/jazz/blues organ.
After a brief session of playing with my new synth last night, I am very happy with the purchase – the built in instruments will certainly meet most of my needs; all of the hardware is working great; and most pleasantly surprising to me is there is a vibrant online community around the VR series. There are third-party vendors making desktop software providing access to even more functionality within the unit. I am feeling the excitement and happiness that music should bring you again, not the dread of a button not working or the challenge of getting to the right patch.
Scanning some of the FAQs on my phone instead of sleeping last night I realize I have a lot of work to do – I get to upgrade the firmware, learn how to manage registrations better. There is management planning I should be considering. Perhaps a year from now I’ll be dreading these types of tasks but for now it is actually drawing me back to the keyboard to spend some more time learning about it. I look forward to becoming a bit of a nerd about it, and nerd-dom is something I feel I have been lacking the past few years, so I think jumping in with both feet is going to be the way to go. As part of that nerdity I hope to also keep myself documenting here; replacing some less-productive bad habits/mindless surfing with consideration and documentation will have big dividends down the road.