Roland celebrates 50th anniversary with new website
The new microsite documents the creation of some of electronic music’s most iconic kit
Roland will turn 50 years old in 2022 and to celebrate they’ve launched a new website, covering the development and emergence of some of their most influential hardware of the past five decades. The new site covers the 70s through to 2020s, with equipment like one of the first preset synths, the SH-1000, the iconic RE-20 Space Echo and the gigantic System 700 modular, which still fetches crazy prices second hand. Roland’s first polysynth, the Jupiter-4, also gets a shout out, while the ’80s say iconic kit like the TR-808, Jupiter-8 polysynth and the king of acid, TB-303.
The list goes on, including the SH-101, Juno-6, TR-707, the D-50 and the emergence of samplers.
Scrolling through the site, you really get a feel for the dominance and importance Roland’s equipment had on electronic music. Across the year, Roland says they’ll be celebrating their anniversary throughout the year, including a “50th model slated for debut this year on April 18, the date Roland was founded in 1972.”
