Acoustic & Electronic Instruments, Musicians, News, Tutorials, Videos & Interesting Finds
Acoustic & Electronic Instruments, Musicians, News, Tutorials, Videos & Interesting Finds

Roland BK-7m backing module offers versatile accompaniments and voicing [NAMM11]

Unless your musical style is dance, electronic or some other highly synthesised genre, surely the ideal backing band is a live one. In reality, though, that’s never practical — humans are temperamental, they tire easily, and most don’t do what you want all (most) of the time.

Enter auto-accompaniment. Whether it’s built into your keyboard or is a standalone unit like this new Roland BK-7m backing module, you get a band in a box that will do pretty much what you tell it, whenever you want.

Auto-accompaniment has moved on quite a way, and you’ll certainly get something good enough to help you in the composition and initial layout stages, possibly even beyond into final recording, depending on your requirements.

Roland’s MIDI-compatible backing module includes over 1,000 tones, 57 drum kits, and 128 voice polyphony.

roland bk-7m backing module

Additionally, over 400 high quality music styles, each featuring four one-touch settings, mean you should be able to find something that inspires you.

Rhythm families, from which further variations can be selected, include 8-beat/16-beat, live band, rock, disco dance, ballroom, 50s and 60s, jazz blues, latin, boss samba, and traditional world.

Over 900 music assistants cover a huge range of musical genres.

The BK-7m will play back standard WAV, audio and MIDI files. There’s even a video output for displaying lyrics or chords.

The USB output can be used to record 44.1kHz/16-bit linear format audio direct to a USB storage device.

Exact pricing and availability to be confirmed.