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The Evolution and Philosophy of Guitar Synth: Roland GR-55

I wasn't always a guitar synth guy, and I have NEVER been anti-guitar. I also have never been formally trained in guitar or piano and I don't feel the need to choose sides when it comes down to it. However, I fondly remember that fateful day when I first discovered a mid '90s Roland GR-30 covered in dust and stored away in my girlfriend's parent's attic and my universe changed for the better. That was two years ago, and back then I had no idea what guitar synths were or what they were capable of doing. I surmised and later confirmed that her dad dabbled as a hobbyist in sound composition sometime in the '90s as I pieced together a long-forgotten collection of several other mid '90s consumer grade Roland products stored away in the attic, unused for over a decade, and shrouded in a fine layer of dust. A full-size U-20 laying inconspicuously on a stack of boxes, a D-50 with two library ROM cards still peeking out of the back panel's expansion slots, a SoundCanvas 1/3 rack unit with GK and MIDI i/o just sitting in the corner. Some sort of mixer to tie things together. I could only imagine the scores of suburban soundtracks that had once flowed through these units like lifeblood coalescing into a common identity. I would have enjoyed hearing those lost sessions, but that was another day. Now it was my turn. I took the GR-30 as my own and set off on my journey.

Flash forward two years to the current day and I have now developed an entire philosophy of sound based around the tonal possibilities provided by a guitar synth (the same GR-30) played through a ton of pedals and finally a Jazz Chorus. Much like a DJ who is constantly mixing records, I constantly mix levels and juggle competing tones of every possible variety, beginning with the most basic dry guitar sound and finally adding in all sorts of wet synth patches, which in themselves are usually mixes of at least two layered PCM tones. The knob twisting never ends I tell ya. Which is why I am inspired to introduce you to the new Roland GR-55 Guitar Synthesizer which debuted at NAMM '11 in January, and is currently in high demand amongst guitar synth enthusiasts.

But first, a little introduction to guitar synthesis for the novice. With just a little non-invasive (or invasive if you prefer) modification to your guitar you will be able to recreate the cathartic sounds of popular '80s favorites like Tarzan Boy. That was supposed to be a joke. But really, there are a few things you need: A special guitar pickup usually a Roland GK-2a/GK-3 or a piezo pickup. Connected to the special pickup is a control module that is small but kind of obtrusive and will mount via velcro, sticky tape, or screw directly to the guitar body. The control module has a 1/4" or 3.5mm analog input jack where you are supposed to patch in your normal guitar output. These two signals, which represent your dry guitar signal and your GK pickup signal are sent together with a few control signals to the synth floor/rack unit through a special proprietary 13-pin cable which is both expensive and prone to going intermittent from continued abuse. Definitely my least favorite part of the whole ordeal. One last thing, from the control module you can adjust all of the main parameters you require to quickly define and fine-tune your sound such as synth volume, change program patches, and switch between different mix modes (gtr only, gtr+synth, synth only). Although I have been testing out a new mixing mode where synth volume is controlled via the expression pedal and guitar volume is controlled via the volume knob on the guitar.

When you use a guitar synth you are putting out a wide variety of tones that each have a unique frequency spectrum that is much different from your typical guitar tone. More high end in other words. The creators of the GR-55 know this and they have offered several output settings that as far as I can tell just affect the tone of the output signal. The output options include Lineout/JC-120/Small/Combo/Stack/Return/BassAmp and a few others. I play into an effects board so I chose JC-120. For the best sound and speaker performance it is recommended that you play through what is known as a keyboard amp or any similar amp with a flat frequency response, rather than your typical tube amp that has a characteristic midrange boost which is flattering for guitar tones, but not so much for synth. I play through a JC-77 with the stock "icepick" speakers for a shimmery crystal tone. If you ever plan on swapping out your speakers keep in mind that the vast majority of speakers are designed for guitar sounds, not synth.

The Roland GR-55 and the entire GR series isn't really designed to go in front of a pedal board setup like most shoegazers would have it. Instead they were designed with the mindset that this one floor unit would cover all of your tonal needs and you would preferably go from the unit directly in to an amp, or preferably two amps. Roland obviously didn't survey my friends when designing that feature, and I feel rather insulted. What I do is send my synth outputs into the pedalboard and finally into my rack setup for further processing. On the other hand, there is much to gain by running the synth output directly into a stereo amp configuration. Unfortunately I use a mono pedal chain so I lose out on that luxury. I'll also say that if you thought pedals sucked guitar tone, wait til you hear what they do to guitar synth. It really takes its toll on patches that contain a lot of high end sparkle and gradient-like shimmer. Ditto for the mono feature, you end up losing some dimension to your sound. In addition to the synth tones they have built in amp modeling (a feature of the VG-99) and several of the amp models sound good to my ears, but not quite the real thing. The Twin Reverb was pretty close to nailing that compressed scooped tone minus the warmth. The amp models sound terrible if you put effects pedals after the GR-55 so I won't be using them too often in that application.

Let's take a look at the I/O on the GR-55. From the screenshot above there is a Roland GK 13-pin input, stereo or mono unbalanced mix out, Guitar out which can be assigned to be a mix of your dry guitar signal with additional COSM modelling applied if you have it enabled (more on that later). You can set Guitar out to just normal pickup, just COSM, or both. There is MIDI in and out, USB, which is used to transmit midi or digital audio, and a headphone out, which is nice. Also on the side of the unit is a door that opens up revealing an internal flash drive slot, which opens up a lot of possibilities for backing tracks and sampled material. Roland also recommends you use the flash storage to backup your patch data. Since I am not a laptop musician (yet) I like being able to toy around with the idea of using backing tracks without having to haul around yet another piece of gear like a sampler, laptop, or even iPod. Cocteau Twins used to play their backing tracks with a reel-to-reel, but flash just seems more reliable to me. There are also four stomp switches which can be assigned to change patches, start the backing tracks, control effects, or anything. And lastly there is an expression pedal which can do typical volume stuff, wah, modulation and more.

Roland did not include any software with this unit for easy patch editing via midi/usb so the lovely interweb community of DIYers contributed to the creation of a wonderful open source patch editor program written to take advantage of the GR-55's endless list of customizable parameters and patch options. The project is ongoing and it is already functional with constant updates. The software is called GR Floorboard. Remember that name, a lot of work has gone into this program, including the author reverse engineering all the midi specifications himself using user contributed data. The dedication to detail and functionality shows. The level of customization for GR-55 patches is simply ridiculous, which to me means that you can control more parameters than you would ever want to. And as far as I can tell, this software editor may be mandatory if you plan on keeping your sanity while editing patches. GR Floorboard makes it all possible via your PC. For example, look at the screen shot below detailing the PCM Synth A edit screen. Keep in mind that the GR-55 has two PCM synth engines meaning that, yes, we are looking at only one half of the equation in this screen shot, and there is also a PCM Synth B waiting to be chopped up and edited. Not to mention the multi-fx that can be added in any conceivable configuration and routing order. LFO and filter controls allow for things to get as wobbly and cascading as you want them to be. My favorite synth tones usually have multiple LFOs that are tuned to play off of each other, and I can see myself fine-tuning the fuck out of this thing.

For the first few days with the GR-55 I have been editing using the onboard editing engine and I'm actually up to speed on where everything is located and it isn't that bad. Naming patches is annoying as expected but you only have to do that once per each new patch. Each patch is made up of 2 PCM tones, 1 COSM modeling tone and the normal guitar pickup tone. There are 910 PCM tones available to choose from, with several different categories such as brass instruments, pianos, electric pianos, organs, vox choirs, synth pads/lead, bass, winds, acoustic instruments, ethnic percussion, metalic tones, and for the indescribable, other. To me each of these tones sound like they were composed themself from two other more basic tones, meaning the 910 PCM tones are more complex than you would expect. I was unable to easily replicate some of my favorite GR-30 patches in spite of all the available parameters and options. The GR-55 stomp switches (including the expression pedal and GK buttons) are all assignable to any parameter which are patch specific (you can also default to global settings if you don't need such specificity). Also per patch, you can have different string tunings, apply tones 1/2 to any specific combination of strings, adjust various gain and balance levels, change guitar sensitivity if you are expecting to change guitars for the song, route the multi-effects differently for each PCM/COSM/dry tone and so on and so forth.

What's missing from the GR-55 is the harmonizer and the arpeggiator features from previous versions. I was fully expecting an arpeggiator, and am saddened to hear of the loss. I never really figured out how to work the arpeggiator on the GR-30 and was hoping that they would release an easy-to-use arpeggiator on the GR-55 but I guess they just gave up on the idea. You can crudely approximate both functions with the use of the built-in delay and pitch shifting effects, respectively. Although, I'd gladly trade the COSM functionality for arpeggiator. It's almost like they were trying to make this unit a jack of all trades but a master of none. They did include a tuner with multi-string or single-string tuning functionality and mute, and a looper that I will probably never use, because I have a RC-20XL and you can't use the built-in looper and audio playback at the same time. The GR-55 defintiely tries to be a guitar synth first and foremost, with some limited guitar modeling options included, some basic looping and playback options, and a multi-effects engine that covers all the classic effects, like flanger, phaser, vibe, wah, eq, distortion, overdrive, compression, tremolo, vibrato, chorus, delay, reverb, etc. The huge LED is nice. I like to stare at my song names. Presets are mandatory in this age of complex tunage. The unit is now metal and no longer hard plastic like the former GR-33/GR-20 units so I don't feel like I will break it anytime soon. However I did get a defective unit on my first try, right out of the box the 13-pin connector was internally damaged on the unit and strings 3-4 were really low volume and fuzzed out to hell and back, then they just died and I couldn't get any signal from strings 3-4. I had to bring it back to the store and exchange it for my current and fully functioning GR-55. I'm excited about the prospects of exploring analog synth like sounds because these are modeled much more convincingly than my MicroKorg. Tones inspire me to write music and that's what this thing is doing for me lately. I've had the GR-55 for about 2 weeks now and already love it but sadly there are not enough hours in the day to fully explore all of the sounds in this box if you have a day job. Less blog posts. More GR-55 patch editing. G out.