The Roland D-50 // Songs and Sounds From an 80's Icon

In this video, I will explore the amazing sound of the Roland D-50 and explain why it still matters today!

📘 Books I’ve authored /co-authored:

00:00 How it works
02:10 "Fantasia" Patch
02:27 "Soundtrack" Patch
02:45 "Man In The Mirror" ("Afterthought")
03:04 SONY Playstation Startup Sound ("Spacious Sweep")
03:15 "Orinoco Flow" - Enya ("Pizzagogo")
03:15 "Digital Native Dance" Patch
03:45 "Another Day In Paradise" - Phil Collins ("Metal Harp")
04:00 "Living Calliope" Patch
04:14 "Simpsons" Theme ("D-50 Voices")
04:30 "Combie Strings" Patch
04:52 "Straight Up" - Paula Abdul ("Slap Brass" Patch)
05:02 "Pipe Solo" Patch
05:21 "Basin Strat Blues" Patch
05:47 "Stereo Polysynth" Patch
06:40 "Say You Will" - Foreigner (Staccato Heaven)
06:55 "Shakuhachi Patch"
07:22 "Father Figure" - George Michael
07:37 "Slap Bass and Brass" Patch
07:43 "Pianissimo" Patch
08:01 "Future Pad" Patch

📷Gear that I used in this video:

Yamaha CP40
Yamaha MG12XU
Yamaha HS5 (S2)
MacBook Pro (Running LPX and FCP X)
Garritan CFX Piano VST
Sony ZV-E10
iPhone 14 Pro
Sennheiser MKE600 Shotgun Microphone
Neewer NL660 Lights (X2)

#music #piano #sheetmusic #musiceducation #education #teacher #teaching #musictheory #musicnerd #pianolessons #pianotutorial #pianoteacher #pianomusic #pianoplayer #pianist #keyboards

[pascalalloin]

Quelle nostalgie... j'ai acheté un DX7 en 1986, 87 et un D50 en 88.
Ces sons me rappellent des belles années où ces nouveaux claviers nous semblaient magiques. Merci pour cette belle démonstration 🙏

[SamSilk]

From what I know, the D50 hadn't been publicly released yet while BAD was being recorded. thing is Eric Persing who was among the Roland crew brought the synth with him under the condition he would be the one playing it in the album. Eric Persing is still famous today for being the guy who produced Omnisphere and Keyscape.

[TL-wuid]

Man, the "sailing" sound is so attractive. Beautiful guitar sound.

[EscutCavaller]

Wow, the "Sailing" D-50 homage was amazing!

[garysmith]

Thanks for this presentation! 72 year old rock and blues keyboardist/synthesist here, still have a D-50. Also a Korg MS-20 and SQ-10 seq. along with a Yamaha CS-60 which were bought brand new in 1978! Nostalgia for sure 😉. Its great to see the D-50, a ground breaking instrument STILL getting the love all over youTube 👍.

[rodterrell]

66 years old, I had one of these, a Dx7, Matrix 1000, Korg Poly six and a few other boards back in the day. Does bring back memories of this keyboard.

[PlasticCogLiquid]

I bought one of these for $5 at a flea market in the middle of nowhere Colorado back in the 90's. It was gummed up by beer or pop but after cleaning it worked fine and I loved it.

[jamesdudley]

This brings back many great memories. OMG!
I bought my D50 in 1990. I still remember how hard it was to lug it home on the bus. 😂😂😂
It absolutely OWNED the airwaves back then. Everybody had one. And if you had the extension cards from Valhala, you were THE MAN! Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

[MrKersey]

Still have this synth and it still sounds amazing!

[seaningram]

3:07 Yes! I remember that one.
5:22 Sailing, by Christopher Cross
8:03 Live to Tell, by Madonna

[daddiodave]

Listening to you is like stepping into a time machine. You definitely have one of the best channels on YouTube!

[issiewizzie]

This is why sometimes as synth heads we forget that it’s the composition that counts. Back in the day very few people tweak their synths. You focused on your melody and chords/harmony

[helloscammer]

In the late 80s I could turn on the radio and name the D-50 patches by number.

[Jhihmoac]

This, and the Yamaha DX7, _WERE_ the "go to's" for performance synths all through the 80s and well into the 90s!

[loudspider]

I walked into a music store in London to get a pair of drumsticks early summer of 1987...shell-shocked, walked out with a D50. Played it to a friend of mine, he went straight in there and bought one. I still have it, with the M.EX upgrade. I had a Korg M1, and an M3 as well, and whilst they were inexplicably more popular I sold mine early 90s but kept the D50.

[timandmonica]

I was just a teenager and knew hardly anything about synthesizers when this came out. Our church leaders took me to the big music store in the '80s to help them decide on a new synth. I was extremely drawn to the d50, but we ended up buying the Ensoniq EPS. We did one church service with it and that's all it took for them to know they didn't want to. Took too long to load a new sound.

We immediately returned it and we went ahead and got the d50. I spent so many nights alone in that church messing around with it, never reading a manual, just pushing buttons and figuring it out. I can't tell you how many hundreds of hours that must have been over a period of a year and a half.

It's really interesting to see what you play with each patch! I couldn't play very well then either and didn't have a large sense of how to translate what was in my head to the keyboard. I played some similar things on some of these patches, but you did some things I never would have thought of trying before!

[vitale]

WoW !!! You played all my favorite patches. Spent hours just goofing off back in the early '90's. Now I have to pull my D-50 out of the closet this weekend !!!

[Cadmeus]

I love Eric Persing's work, he's a legend. I'm a bit too young for a D-50 but I had a JV-1080 when I was studying music at school, amazing sounds for the limited memory they had. It was so exciting when Eric managed to get some D-50 patches into Omnisphere, still sounds great! The Playstation sound blew my mind btw, I had no idea it was a default patch.

[Thea-dg]

Whatever you played in this video, each melody brings back Steve Porcaro 🙃 I love this guy...

[MatthewChristianMurray]

I own the Roland Cloud emulation. Basically like having that minus the weight and the space it takes up. I do various types of pop music and use D-50 a fair amount. Sometimes I enjoy just scrolling through the several factory banks and seeing what happens when I play chords or engage aftertouch.