Roland Aerophone Unboxing!

 

This has been sitting in my studio for the last 24 hours, and I’ve been itching to open it for you guys.

This is the Roland Aerophone AE 10G, the new graphite model. In this video, I’m going to unbox it, I’m going to find out what’s inside, and have a bit of a play with it. I’m also talk a little bit about why electronic saxophones or electronic wind instruments are a great idea.

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The Roland Aerophone AE10

This is the Roland Aerophone AE10. They’ve sent it over to me to have a look at, and I’m excited about checking it out.

Now I should just say I’ve not been paid by Roland, this is not endorsed at all. I just asked Roland to send me one of these because I thought it’d be interesting to show it to you guys.

So I’m excited to check it out and show you this today.  And I also want to have a bit of a chat about why you should look at a Roland Aerophone or electronic wind instrument.

Electronic Wind Instrument

Now I’ve been excited about electronic wind instruments since the 80s, I suppose. The first thing I heard was, Michael Brecker playing In A Sentimental Mood on an EWI.

I think it was an early version of the EWI. Have you not heard it? Check this out. 

It was amazing. It changed my world. I remember hearing that and thinking, ‘I’ve got to check out one of those’. In fact, I went out and bought an EWI. 

So, I’ve had a couple of different EWIs. It’s an awesome instrument, and when you hear Michael Brecker play it, it sounds amazing. But it’s hard to play, and I think that’s the thing a lot of people struggle with.

However, I think the Roland Aerophone is going to solve a lot of the problems that most people have with the EWI. Anyway, let’s get started.

Unboxing the Roland Aerophone

Okay, so let’s have a look inside.  So it’s all nicely packaged. And actually, a cool thing straight off the bat that I love about this Roland Aerophone is it comes in a case which is something my EWI never did.

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So you get some paperwork in here, and this is going to be the important instruction manual. I’m not very good with manuals, but I might have to read it for the Aerophone, because I think there’s lots to learn. 

Okay, we’ve got some notes about what to do with the mouthpiece up here as well. Also in the bag, we’ve got a little elastic thing to put around the mouthpiece. I think that will come in handy in a minute.

The Aerophone

Alright, this is the exciting part. This is the actual Aerophone. Let’s get it out of the box. 

 

It’s pretty portable.  There’s a handle on the top, it’s got a shoulder strap,  that is super cool.

You know, there’s something that I get asked a lot by my Sax School students. I got a question just this week actually. Someone was saying that they live in an apartment and they have a hard time practising because they worry about volume.

So, is this an answer? Possibly.

Practice tool

The good thing about an electronic wind instrument is that the key work is the same as a saxophone. So, you can be working on your technique, without making any sound at all. That’s pretty cool.

The other thing that’s good about an electronic wind instrument is that you can travel with it. I mean, it’s much smaller than a soprano.  You’d definitely get on an aeroplane with that.

Inside the case

I love the way the case is so well made. Inside  there’s a mouthpiece cap and a neck strap.  And there’s a charger. It’s a British charger too. That’s good. It drives me crazy when you get stuff these days, in England at least, and they’ve got the European plug and then you’ve got to put an adapter on it.  I hate that. 

And this is the actual Aerophone.  I love the suspense of this, because not only is it in a box, in a bag, in another bag,  it’s in another bag! Look at this! It’s a kind of a weird, sexy shape too. 

The Key Work

Now one of the things that people struggle with on the EW is the fact that the keys were touch sensitive. I know I struggled with that too. And so that meant you had to learn it like its own instrument really, because you had to have a different technique to the way you’d play the saxophone in order to avoid any extra glitchy notes in there.

Roland have done a very clever thing where all the buttons on the Aerophone actually move. The buttons move in and out. They’ve even got little pearly finishes on there, which is cool.

So on the Roland Aerophone you’ve got the same key layout as a saxophone.  So the keys feel familiar there’s a B flat key, and the bottom keys like on your saxophone.  You’ve got the extra F sharp, you’ve got the side keys, you’ve got the palm keys here. And you’ve even got this stack – so all the key work is the same as the saxophone.

Powering the Aerophone

I’m going to get some batteries so I can get powered up, and we’ll have a listen to it. 

So the Aerophones takes six AA batteries. Of course, you could use the power adapter as well, but it’s kind of cool that you can run it from six batteries as well. I guess the whole point of this is that it’s a portable instrument.

Enriching your sax playing

I think there are a bunch of reasons why people would want to play an electronic wind instrument. The first is convenience and I guess being interested in trying something new. So it’s an another way to enrich your whole experience of learning the saxophone.

You’re not only playing a normal saxophone, but you can also have some fun with something like this. It’s portable and you can take it with you when you’re travelling.

But then, of course, the other side of playing an instrument like this is that it is its own instrument. So it expands the whole experience of playing saxophone. And not only can you play saxophone sounds, but you’ve got access to all these other sounds.

And I was keen to try this because I know Roland makes amazing sounds.  Think about all the classic Roland keyboards. I’ve always loved the sounds that they have. So, now we’ve got access to some of those sounds, inside something that I can play like a saxophone.

I’m not a great piano player, you know, but I’m pretty good at playing saxophone. So I’ve got these skills and I can apply them now and access all these other sounds. So that’s interesting to me.

Testing the Aerophone

Okay, so I’ve been having a good play with it. It’s a pretty cool instrument. There’s so much you can do with it. I think it’s one of those things that the more you play with it, the more you’ll discover.

So you do play with a reed, and you actually use the reed like you would on a saxophone. And actually, it feels like you’re playing a saxophone. So you have to use embouchure control, and you have to think about using vibrato and your intonation. And it’s all done with that reed on the mouthpiece. So it’s very similar to playing a saxophone.

And while there’s no substitute for actually playing a saxophone, but it does feel more like a saxophone than anything else I’ve played before.

The sound

Now the saxophone sound does something that annoys me actually. I don’t know if you can hear it, but there’s a, there’s a little scoopy thing at the start of the sound. 

But I did discover that you can go into the settings and you can change all those sorts of things. And there’s a setting in here, which is called ‘vibrato down’. If I take that off, that seems to sort it out. 

The fingering is the same as a saxophone, and the keys do move, but it does take a couple of minutes to get your fingers used to the movement. You still need to be very accurate with it. I’ll show you what’s happening in the back. 

Changing the Octave

So, here is the octave key. You’ve got octave up, and octave down. And you’ve got a 2nd octave up and a 2nd octave down. How this works  and it depends on the sound.

So for example, in the saxophone sounds, you only get the normal 1 octave, and then you’ve got altissimo fingerings like you would on a real saxophone. But for all the other synthy sort of sounds, you can actually go up and up again, and then down and down again. So you get 5 or 6 octaves if you use your altissimo fingerings.

I was a bit confused by this little joystick, at the start. On the thumb here, there’s a little joystick there, which does lots of things. If you push it one way you get like a growly sound, then you’ve got bending up and bending down.

But on some of the sounds you can actually do a movement with that to get an octave, double or a whole chord. So that’s really cool.

Now, in the back here is where you adjust the sounds. And all of the settings.  So everything is all contained, and I like the way that you’ve got a display as well.

The speaker

Now actually it does have a speaker in it. I’ve got it plugged into my speakers in the studio here. But if I unplug it, then it will work just through the speaker here. It sounds a bit tinny,  but you’ve got that option. And if you’re travelling, that might be really useful. But of course, you could also plug headphones in here. I think that’s probably going to sound better. 

Connecting with your device

Another great feature is that is you can connect your iPad or your iPhone, or whatever device you’re using to play a backing track, straight through the device.It plays via mini-jack straight into your Aerophone. And then the sound that comes out of the Aerophone includes the backing track. So, you can mix the two things together.

So, if you wanted to use your Aerophone for gigging, or even as a practice tool. and I think that’s where it’s more powerful – you can play it straight through.

The Roland Aerophone sounds

It’s a bit of a dodgy saxophone sound, but have a listen. 

There are some cool sounds in here. And I think, to be honest with you, the sounds other than the saxophone sounds are the ones that I’m most excited about. There are some great lead synth sounds and some other instrument sounds too, like flutes and bagpipes and trumpets. This is a cool one, number 8.  And of course it’s got a trumpet sound as well –  a muted trumpet. You’ve always got to have one of those.

I think the Aerophone is an awesome instrument, and the more I play it, the more I like it. But it does take some getting used to. And there are some quirky things in there too about the saxophone sounds. But I’ve never ever discovered a great synth saxophone sound.

I think the magic with an instrument like this is finding a way to use it to get the best out of those sounds. So I’m going to be having loads of fun with this over the next couple of weeks, trying to make some good music with it.

Final thoughts

So that’s the Roland Aerophone. If you’re using it, let me know – or if you use a different electronic wind instrument. 

And if you want improve your saxophone playing, don’t forget to check out Sax School with our 14 free trial. Click below to get started.

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