BOOK REVIEW:
Inspire The Music: 50 Years of Roland History
by Kim Bjorn
If you’ve got a synth nerd in your family of friend-sphere, this might just be the perfect gift. Or, if you’re like me, and you’re a synth-obsessed nerd yourself, you’ll need this for your own bookshelf or coffee table.
We’ve been super impressed by everything BJOOKS has published to date, and this exhaustive history of Roland, from the 70’s to today, might just be the feather in their cap. Beautifully printed, featured a treasure trove of information, background history, technical details and an amazing array of vault photos, “Inspire The Music” takes you behind the scenes and through the decades to celebrate Roland’s impressive achievements in the world of musical instrument innovation.
You start the journey looking at the detailed history of Roland drum machines and their importance in the world of dance and pop music, then quickly segue to drum controllers and effects pedals before getting to the highlight of the book: the synthesizers and keyboards. Everything you’d ever want to know is here, including background an analysis on all the Junos, Jupiters, Vocoders, Modular ‘Systems,’ rackmount modules, sampling synthesizers, keytars, boutique modules all the way to current-day production synths and grooveboxes.
It’s a testament to Roland’s inspiring commitment to pushing boundaries that at nearly 400 pages, you never feel tired of learning a new nugget of info with each turn of the page.
It’s a wonderfully designed book jam-packed with the incredible history Roland has paved out for themselves over the past 50 years. Hopefully BJOOKS will continue their excellent work with future installments focused on other important companies in the synth world. *Cough*SequentialPlease*Cough*
As if it weren’t evident, this book comes highly recommended.
FOR MORE INFO, PLEASE VISIT https://bjooks.com
