Pros
Awesome sound. Awesome keyboard action on G8 model. Extremely powerful synthesizer, sequencer, and multitrack audio recorder. Mouse input makes for really speedy workflow. Audio input handles phantom-powered mics as well as guitars and basses. Large screen is a pleasure to work with. ARX expansions are specialized synths with their own processing muscle, not just sounds on a card. Manual is quite good.
Cons
Roadie not included with G8 model. Screen can lull you into thinking all functions are accessed there (some aren’t), leading to confusion. Standard MIDI file export won’t be implemented until version 1.20. Sleek aluminum livery is scratch-prone.
$4,299
Roland,
www.rolandus.com
Who needs a Fantom-G8? Jordan Rudess, Rick Wakeman, Howard Jones, and Valdez Brantley, for starters. Pretty diverse list — a neoclassical rock chops monster, the neoclassical rock chops monster, an electropop songwriter chops monster, and a gospel-rooted A-list touring sideman chops monster. There might be a common thread there. The question is, do you need one, you rabid chops monster, you? More accurately, if you think you want one, what can I say here to (A) help you convince your babymama/daddy that there’s plenty of time to rebuild the college fund, or (B) get over the gear lust and be responsible? Don’t know how much help I’ll be with (B), actually. If you’re really looking for “one with everything,” this might be it.
GIGGING
Though its smaller siblings, the G6 and G7, qualify for the adjective “portable,” that isn’t one I’d apply to the G8. Roland uses the word “luxury,” so think luxury car, as in Bentley or Mercedes S600. Horsepower beyond reason, yes, but imposing mass as well. If you gig with it, invest in a case. With wheels. My gigs saw the G8 transported nude in a proletarian Scion xB, loaded on a folding hand truck, and when my bandmates pretended not to notice my calls for help, lifted on and off stands with much grunting and sweating. My chiropractor made a few bucks.
In the G8’s Live mode, the Set List feature (hit Live, then F5) was a big help in preparing for and doing the gigs. I knew what songs we’d be doing, but not necessarily in what order, so I threw together a rough list of patches I liked in the usual categories — piano, Keane-style electric grand, Rhodes, organ synth pads, bells, strings, sine monosynth with portamento. It’s all there, and the Patch List has a helpful category directory that speeds finding what you’re after. At many of the casuals we play, the bandleader asks different things of me depending on which guitarist is on the gig. Grant plays Dominic Miller-type atmospheric guitar, so with him I might comp rhythm on a snarly Wurly sound. If I’m opposite Greg, who’s more rock and blues, I may Benmont Tench it on an organ patch or cop Philly strings. At rehearsal, I was able to drop unused patches and re-order my preliminary set list into the final one in a jiff. With 512 user locations for Live Sets, named however you like, you could set up for all kinds of different gigs. Worth mentioning here is the fact that the effects engine is extremely robust. There are two insert effects on the Patch level that migrate into layers or splits with their associated patches, global chorus (or delay, you choose), and global reverb. Unless you’re an effects megalomaniac, you won’t bump your head on the effects’ ceiling when building splits and layers.
The “Ivory Feel” keys have a lovely silky touch, perspiration doesn’t render them slippery, and they look dead sexy. Particularly when playing piano, Rhodes, and Wurly sounds (duh), the keys were an unmitigated pleasure — musical, predictable in the right way, and immediately familiar. Through hours of rehearsals, gigs, and work in my studio, this action was never fatiguing or in any way a hindrance. On the flipside, I’ve always considered weighted keys a bummer for just about any sound other than piano or EP, but on the G8 it was, at worst, tolerable for playing strings and such. The feel says fine instrument rather than musical appliance, and in my opinion, it’s the current champ among weighted workstations. For comparison, I played a G6 at a local music store and was surprised at how light the synth action felt. It was still very predictable and musical, but much lighter and faster than my fave Roland synth action, the one on my vintage JX-8P.
COMPOSING
In Studio mode, the Fantom-G really shows off; there’s a 128-track MIDI sequencer onboard, along with a 24-track audio recorder that rivals standalone DAWs when it comes to editing features. It records audio in sample RAM, not to a hard drive, but the base 32MB was enough for me to record a full-length mono vocal track (silences and all — I could have been more frugal). You can add DIMMs to expand it, up to 544MB. Check the Gory Details chart on page 70 for how many minutes that gives you, then pick your jaw up off the floor. Can a fully-maxed Fantom-G do most of the work of cutting a homebrew record? Is Miley Cyrus overhyped? Via resampling, you can even mix down entire songs — with great-sounding multiband compression applied — to a USB thumb drive. The possibility of an end-to-end music production facility in a broom closet is not at all far-fetched here.
The Fantom-G proved to be a worthy songwriting accomplice. The “Higher Grand” preset perfectly suited a fairly dynamic part that I needed to play, with a dark, sweet color when played softly, and a brassy rock ’n’ roll edge when spanked. I laid down a scratch piano track against the Fantom’s ding-click-click-click metronome (you can change this sound) to draw the roadmap. Then I put in drums with sounds from the ARX-01 expansion board. Now, in the June ’08 issue, I raved about Sonic Reality’s Ocean Way Drums software library. Even in light of SR’s achievement with that product, the ARX-01 knocked me flat with its fantastic depth of editing and the way in which you can almost build drums from scratch (see “Build Custom Drums” above). On kicks, snares, and toms, you can specify the shell depth, head tuning, muffling, mic position, and buzz. Each of these parameters exerts strong control over the resulting sound. Hi-hats and rides give you a size setting, so you can go from John Bonham or Ringo all the way to stacked 6” splash hats à la Peter Gabriel’s “Digging In The Dirt.” Sustain is the only other parameter for hi-hats and rides, but it’ll yield sizzle rides, garbage can lids, sloppy hats, and uptight outta-sight hats. As if that weren’t enough, you get a pseudo-analog drum synth as well, which starts off in TR-808 territory and wanders into “pyoo-pyoo” space from there. Did I mention that the ARX engine offers compression and EQ for each Tone (drum or cymbal) in the kit? Plus, you get two multieffects from a menu of 47 flavors including sick stuff like step and vocal formant filters, lo-fi radio and telephone effects, and even a rotary speaker. Coolest of all is that the ARX board itself runs these effects, so using them steals nothing from the G’s already-copious effects power.
After rabbit-holing in drumland for hours, I remembered I was trying to write a tune. I chose “Alterna Kit” from the ARX-01’s preset menu and laid down a track that attempted equal parts Stewart Copeland and Dave Weckl. Among the G8’s awesome acoustic, electric, and synth bass sounds was a bass guitar called “AL SoftBs/Nz.” It made me think of Abe Laboriel, so I laid down a bass part containing a lot of syncopation, positional shifts, and a few double-stops, all of which came off as completely realistic.
The bridge needed a shift in texture away from the grand piano, so I turned to the other expansion board Roland sent, the ARX-02 (see “Excellent Electric Pianos” on page 68). I promptly lost another few hours applying virtual dirt to virtual Rhodeses and Wurlies. You can do really perverted stuff like taking that hoary, tinkly ’80s DX7 EP, putting it in bad “Condition” to add hum and noise the likes of which no DX7 would ever have spit out, jacking it into a model of a Rhodes Mark I preamp, and taking that into a virtual Fender Twin amp. Hey, I said it was perverted. The upshot is that it actually makes that clapped-out old sound kinda hip again.
For the tune’s final chorus, I employed “X StrSection” to lift things up before the outro. Like many of the Fantom’s presets, this one employs velocity to give you many different articulations; play softly, and you get strings that sorta sneak in. Hit a little harder, and you get pronounced bowing. Really go for it, and you get a rosin-y marcato shower scene.
Audio recording is easy as well. Plug in a mic (dynamic or condenser, as the G does phantom power), set your record level using the meters onscreen and the gain knob on the back (though this is a bit fiddly from a workflow perspective), and go. I even recorded guitar straight in. A good selection of guitar-oriented effects is on hand, and the input can match impedance with guitar outputs, which is important for avoiding tone suckage. I didn’t see much need to mic up a guitar amp for 90 percent of what I was doing.
ISSUES?
Frustrations in working with the G8 were short-lived. Initially, Initially I was gobsmacked to find no Undo/Redo function in the sequencer, but the version 1.10 OS update (download it from www. rolandus.com/support) took care of that oversight. I initially had a hard time getting around on the G8, but it turned out I was making it hard. I chased my tail for a good 20 minutes trying to figure out how to save anything, before I sheepishly noticed the prominent Write button to the upper right of the display. See, the huge size of the screen tricked me into thinking I’d find every function there. Lesson: Read the manual. It’s actually well organized and quite helpful, and though it lacks a proper index, all the eye-glazing megadork stuff is at the back where it belongs.
At present time, the G’s sequencer can’t export Standard MIDI files. If you need to, say, bring projects into your DAW and swap out sounds, or you create content for SMF platforms, Roland plans to add file export in the upcoming version 1.20 update.
CONCLUSIONS
I’m pretty bowled over by the Fantom-G. I couldn’t find a single dud among its presets, the ARX expansions are jaw-dropping, the embarrassment of riches in the effects area meant I didn’t have to make compromises when layering and splitting sounds, and the sequencer is highly capable but easy to use. As for audio recording, the Yamaha Motif XS (reviewed Aug. ’07) supports more RAM (up to 1GB), but on that machine, you sample a phrase, then trigger it from a MIDI-based sequencer track. On the Fantom-G, the bona fide audio tracks make it feel more like working with a computer DAW. The Korg OASYS is the other major workstation keyboard that handles audio this way, and it does record to a hard drive . . . but lists at around $8,000. Look, my Pro Tools LE rig sat six feet to the right of the G8, and in the course of my songwriting, there wasn’t much occasion for me to wish I using it instead.
The possibilities the Fantom-G series offers are impressive. If you’re ready to spend the G8’s price, there just isn’t anything significant to make me recommend against it — it really is one with everything. If you’re on a tighter budget and/or need a more portable workstation, take a look at the G7 or G6, which differ only in size, action, and number of keys. Whatever the case, if you’re shopping for a workstation, you simply gotta log some major hands-on time with a Fantom-G.
VITAL STATS
OS VERSION REVIEWED 1.10.
KEYBOARD 88-key weighted, graded action with simulated ivory texture, velocity- and aftertouch-sensitive.
DISPLAY
8.5” TFT backlit LCD, VGA resolution.
POLYPHONY
128 voices, shared with sampling section.
POLYTIMBRAL PARTS
16 internal, 16 external, plus 1 for each ARX board installed.
SEQUENCER/AUDIO RECORDER
128 MIDI tracks, 24 audio tracks.
AUDIO OUTPUTS
A: L/mono and R 1/4" bal. B: L/mono and R 1/4" unbal. Stereo 1/4" headphone jack.
AUDIO INPUTS
L/mono/mic and R 1/4" unbal. line-level, XLR-1/4" combo jack w/ phantom power and high-impedance input.
PEDAL INPUTS
Sustain with half-pedal recognition, 2 assignable switch/control.
SOUND EXPANSION
2 ARX slots. ARX-01 Drums and ARX-02 Electric Piano ($499 each) currently available.
EXTERNAL
STORAGE
USB port for thumb drive.
DIMENSIONS/
WEIGHT
G6: 42" W x 17" D x 6" H, 32 lbs.
G7: 51" W x 17" D x 6" H, 37 lbs.
G8: 55" W x 20" D x 7" H, 74 lbs.
GORY DETAILS
WAVEFORM
MEMORY
256MB.
AUDIO RECORDING RESOLUTION 16-bit/44.1kHz.
AUDIO RECORDING TIME
Factory (32MB): 360 sec. mono, 180 sec. stereo. Expanded (544 MB): 108 min. mono, 54 min. stereo.
DIGITAL AUDIO I/O
Stereo coaxial S/PDIF.
EFFECTS
Patch Multi-effects: 16 effect generators, 76 types. Multi-effects: 2 generators, 78 types. Global chorus: 3 types incl. delay. Global reverb: 10 types. Input effects: 1 generator, 67 types. Mastering effect: 3-band compressor.
