D-Beam (open letter)

[Maximus]

Roland has put the D-beam in every synth they make, from a commercial point of view it makes sense, its considered as an added value since it is a propiertary technology, but does anybody uses it live .

The idea was developed by an independent company in the late 90's as a stand alone controller and roland bought the technology and they've been put in it on everything since

recently i have tried to incorporate this technology on my performances and have gotten mixed results, i think every kind of control added to a synth is a bonus however it is only as good as the implementation on the synth itself.

unfourtunally i think roland has FAILED on the implementation of the D-beam on every synth they make, the idea is good, but the modulation matrix on roland synths its not the best and when you add a complex modulation source like the D-beam it shows.

2 small examples
It can't be used as a toggle switch
It can't be on or off depending on the patch/performances , it has to always be on or off.
and there many others witch i will not post because they may vary from model to model, but these 2 are common on a juno-G and a Fantom-G

this kind of things rub me the wrong way because it shows laziness on the part of the programers, anyway.....

[osiris]

I agree with you completely. They really need to make it more intergrated to each system and more useable.

The only time I use it effectively is on the Sh-201 on the filter setting, on one of my bands songs I play a riff in the intro and use the d-beam to close it and gradually open it up when the guitars hit a certain chord.

Other than that, I can't think of any other way I use it effectively.

I'm all for different and unique controllers on keyboards, but they're only useful if they're flexible to use. Take ribbon controllers for example, on Kurz instruments they can be assigned to alsorts. Also XY controllers are very useful, I have one on a Novation controller than can control upto 4 things simultaniously!

Roland need to either sort out the D-beam or replace it with something more useful.

[PinkFloydDudi]

I thought my buddy showed me on his VK7 that it can be used as a toggle switch to turn on the Leslie sim?

[Devnor]

Geoff Downes used D Beam controllers like crazy on the last Asia tour.

I never use mine.

[el mae de las teclas]

In fact I use it mainly on my VK-8m to toggle on or off the leslie, since it just requires a fast hand movement over the module. Very rarely I use it for ring modulation, as a special effect. I think it would be nice if it could be associated to the leslie speed, as in closer to the module, the faster the leslie, but it can't.

[Gianni]

Richard Barbieri uses the D-beam all the time and does great stuff with it.



this kind of things rub me the wrong way because it shows laziness on the part of the programers, anyway.....

That's pretty much it. It's the users that don't fully apreciate the extra controls like Time Trip Pad or D-beam.