The instrument
The E-96 Intelligent Keyboard belongs to the 4th series of E synthesisers, which was on the market from 1995-1998. The first series with the models E-20, E-5, E-10 and Pro E had already been released in 1997. In the meantime, Roland had changed the sound generation from LA synthesis to GS synthesis. The company flooded the market with the numerous E models, whose trump card was the ‘intelligent’ automatic accompaniment.
Details
The E-96 is a polyphonic, 28-voice synthesiser with a 61-key velocity-sensitive keyboard. It is 16-fold multimodal. The sound generation is based on the GS, the Generation Sound System. There is MIDI and built-in 2 x 7.5 W stereo amplifiers, a 15 W bass amplifier and loudspeakers. There are 241 programmed sound colours, 8 drum sets as well as digital reverb and chorus with eight different settings. The automatic accompaniment has 64 styles, four user styles with variation and eight tracks. The keyboard can be played in Upper, Lower, Manual Bass, Arranger, Manual Drums and Effects modes. The control functions are Master Volume, Pitch Bender / Modulation, Tune, Fill-In, Arranger, Keyboard Split, Transpose, MIDI Select, MIDI Part, MIDI Data, Kbd Velocity/Scale. The sequencer is a direct-to-disk recorder/MIDI player with an additional chord sequencer. The RAM memory is programmed for 192 performance memories and eight user styles.