Roland Prelude

Today we are going to talk about the Roland Prelude 61-key keyboard. The Prelude is a clear and close cousin to Roland’s GW-8L keyboard. It’s housed in a very similar case however the color of the color is slightly different. In contrast to the GW-8L the Prelude has built-in speakers. The casing itself is black on white with the control buttons to the right and are somewhat transparent that glow when the keyboard is powered on.

The Prelude features 896 sound patches of which 256 are from the GM2 sound bank. There is nothing new from this series of sound patches which is pretty much the same as previous Roland keyboards.

Some of the usual suspects in terms of the sound patches include a primary grands including warm and grand sound and eclectic sort of electric, Wurlitzer and other pianos. It would be remiss to not mention the fact that it also includes organs, clavinet and instruments such as the celesta. These are but a few of the instrument sounds are available.

The Prelude is also equipped with vibraphone and steel drums which have been grouped with the pianos section which is a bit of a oddity since these should be grouped in the percussion section. Other sounds include pipe organ but they aren’t that great. I and her guitar sounds are incorporated including bright, mellow nylon string guitars. A string section is also included that encompasses violin, cello and full orchestra.

Roland has always been well known for its brass instrument sounds and instruments here are no exception. The Roland Prelude lists a comprehensive bank of synthesizer sounds probably in the hundreds.

As with many keyboards and this synthesizer can be split and layered as required. The keyboard is equipped with 128 voices of polyphony.

There are over 32 rhythms sets on this keyboard. You will

At the back of the keyboard there a number of ports including a USB memory port, scanner jacks USB MIDI and USB memory, two headphones, pedal connectors and 2.0 hi speed flash memory ports.

The keyboard comes equipped with preset memory including 130 styles + world and 100 user memory styles and over 200 songs.

See more info and feedback here