Another Keyboard
Posted By Scott on December 25, 2009
Part of the fun of playing keyboard is finding nice old vintage keyboards to play with. I recently picked up a 1989 Roland PRO-E Intelligent Arranger keyboard on EBAY. With shipping this guy cost me just $70. I was wanting a small sized board I could easy take with me anywhere and at just 25 1/2 inches wide this guy really fits that ticket. Now I need to find or modify a keyboard table as what I have is too wide, so for now I added a wood board under it to bridge the stand arms.
Roland PRO-E Intelligent Arranger - vintage 1989
When I looked closely at this guy I was shocked at how much technology was in a keyboard made over 20 years ago. The auto accompaniment features are great with around 36 built in styles with dazzling drum intros and endings. You can save I think 48 setup registrations. It can even record midi songs or loops but I need to buy the optional 32K memory card. Those vintage cards go for anywhere from $25 to $99 so it might take me a while to find one on the lower end of that range. There are many more features this old board has and to learn about them see the PRO-E manual on this manuals page at the Roland Web site.
The only little problem I’ve noticed so far are two high keys don’t have any velocity control to them, they just sound loud when pressed. Some day I’ll get brave and take the cover off to see if I can clean inside it a bit. The big benefit I’ve found with playing on a keyboard with just 37 keys is that it is forcing me to use chord inversions all the time. In split mode either hand can’t wander at all and I’m starting to get into the chord inversion practice this guys gives me. I should soon have a demo PRO-E song recorded for your listening pleasure.
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