Bad Gear - Roland Sound Canvas SC-55 - Vintage Gamers Synth???

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Welcome to Bad Gear, the show about the world's most hated audio tools. Today we are going to talk about the OG Roland Sound Canvas SC-55. Is it the ultimate vintage gamers synth? Will it run Doom?

[AudioPilz]

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[SycamoreGlitch]

For a split second there, I wasn't sure if this was going to tick all the boxes.

[LGR]

Liked for the fresh Sound Canvas compositions, great stuff 😁

[lelluc]

The phrase "Welcome to bad gear the show about the
world's most hated audio tools" always makes my day, keep it up!

[AlexBallMusic]

I have a strong urge to go on a three-day bender playing Wolfenstein, Rise of the Triads, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Wacky Wheels, Nascar, Grand Prix 2, Hexen and Quake.

[realitycheck]

The Soundcanvas was created in a time where every pizza place and bar had a band playing. I had friends who used to play on two venues the same night. If you were a keyboard player, you would have two synth on one site and two synths on the other site, OR you would switch with another keyboard player. So you would bring the Soundcanvas and connect the midi ins from each synth outs and have the set of the band recorded in the player and you are all set. For that sort of job it was a miracle. You could have two very cheap "synths" like casiotones or any cheap Yamaha and have the quality of the Soundcanvas. It was meant for that era.

[DarkSideofSynth]

Teacher: What do you want to do when you grow up?
Florian: Invent crazy long music genre names and spike up prices of old gear

[mudia]

I was expecting a picture of "General Midi" when I saw the titles and... This channel never disappoints!!

[secretterminal]

Watching these has become my favorite Friday ritual

[virus]

That ADSR pic... too real man. Too real.

[SpeedySPCFan]

Yessss I've been waiting for this episode!!! I love this thing and did a whole video on it myself, it's fantastic! A couple small notes though:

2:19 The SC-55 doesn't use LA synthesis at all, that's a rumor that's been falsely spread based on a misunderstanding of Roland literature. The actual synthesis chip inside is a completely PCM based digital model.
2:30 Any SC-55 can be updated with GM support - it's more accurate to say early firmwares are incompatible. I have the same model as you and it has proper GM support, since someone got the 2.0 firmware in it.
5:14 You can't do anything more than what you can do from the front panel sadly, the internal engine is locked off as it is on every SC unit.

[marcoabyss]

Q: what do you call someone who hangs around musicians?
A: Lars Ulrich

[aegisd]

Your command of diverse made up but spot on musical genres remains impressive.

[lo-firobotboy]

This series hits home yet again. Since I bought it new in 1989, my main studio tool, main MIDI controller and bread-n-butter sound library has been the ROLAND JV-35. It's essentially the same sound engine as the SC-55 in a proper keyboard format. It also adds envelope and filter controls plus the ability to add sound and voice expansion cards.

Most of the sounds are retro-gamer cheese but with a bit of tweaking there are some real gems. the 8080 samples are great but I prefer the "power" drums with a pitch-shifted snare.

As always, love the series!

[matthewgaines]

There's real quality to these productions. There is wittiness with the host. The musical creativity is here. This guy is fire that hasn't caught on yet.

[PaulisMediocre]

Ok that image flash of an "amateur musician" is now the greatest thing you've ever done

[DJ_TideWave]

Wait, they used this to make the soundtrack for one of my favorite DOS games Descent? Fun fact: In 1996 I was on no. 38 on the official Descent ladder. I remember I lost 3-10 in the MP level Minerva when I challenged the person on rank 3. His nickname was Satan...no wonder why I lost 😄

[alphabeets]

The SC-55 really wasn’t too bad. And the Sound Brush was cool too!

[TheReimecker]

I have the SC 155 in my Studio it is the same but with faders and mute buttons. I love this device.

[aeravan]

that good feeling when there is 15 minutes of musical memes content packed in an 8 minute long video review