Roland Aerophone Pro AE-30

Import/Export of Scenes
Intelligent Harmony
Alternative Mouthpiece

The AE-30 is a wonderful instrument to meet the needs of many different musicians. It’s a highly versatile Electronic Wind Instrument, packed with good sounds that you can customise fairly easily. You can get it to play in a natural and expressive way, and to sound very close to a whole range of classical and traditional instruments. The custom fingerings feature is very empowering. At around €1600, it needs updates to work better.

Import /Export of Scenes

I already had an AE-20, and I was attracted by some extra features promised in Version 3.00 of the AE-30. Roland published a Notice of Added Functionality that states:

You can now export user scenes or import user scenes from another AE-30 or AE-20.

That sounds great. I should be able to get all my modified instrument sounds from my AE-20 straight onto my new AE-30, without having to reset every parameter by hand. But no, actually, despite Roland’s claim, they have not updated the AE-20 to export scenes. So I have to do it the hard way, cumbersome, laborious and annoying.

I asked Roland customer service to update the AE-20 to export scenes, and they replied that they couldn’t promise anything. But they already did promise, and didn’t deliver.

Intelligent Harmony

I wanted the new Intelligent Harmony feature on the AE-30, because the previous harmony feature wasn’t usable for live playing. It was stuck in either major or minor chord mode, and you couldn’t change over while playing. Intelligent Harmony harmonises a scale, i.e. as you play the notes C, D, E, F it plays the chords C major, D minor, E minor, F major etc. That’s wonderful, as long as you have selected C for your playing key, and C for your Intelligent Harmony key. Next, you may want to play a tune in G, for instance. You transpose the instrument with the Transpose Key, and begin playing chords. But now your Intelligent Harmony key doesn’t automatically follow the instrument key, and the chord-types are all under the wrong fingers.

In order to play chords in the key of G, you can transpose the instrument to G, and then you have to delve into the app on your phone, open Settings, then Common, then scroll down to Intelligent Harmony Key, open that, scroll again and select G. This is cumbersome, laborious and completely unnecessary. It’s a major design fault. The instrument key and Intelligent Harmony key are in conflict.

Roland customer service told me that this is a complex problem. But Yamaha PSS-F30 got this right in a €66 toy keyboard.

Alternative Mouthpiece

There is an alternative mouthpiece for the AE-30 and AE-20, named OP-AE01MP. It’s a simple conical mouthpiece without a reed. For me, without this mouthpiece the Aerophone instruments are unplayable. I’m not a saxophonist, and these instruments are not saxophones. I’d rather kiss a duck than play the standard Roland Aerophone mouthpiece. But Roland refuses to sell the alternative mouthpiece to its customers in Europe. I have one OP-AE01MP mouthpiece, bought for me in the US and posted to me by a friend. I can swap it around from one Aerophone to another. Again, this is cumbersome and laborious and annoying and unnecessary.

Roland customer service just insist that it’s not available in Europe, without any explanation or intention to supply it. I find that quite rude.

Digital Wind Instrument or Wind Synthesizer? I would opt for Wind Synth as the sound engine(s) are vast and can be expanded. A lot of the "voices" can be digitally edited, to some extent via the onboard menu, but to a greater extent by the external Aerophone Pro Editor app.
The MIDI capabilities are also extensive and they, too, can be edited via the Editor.
If you've ever played a saxophone the keys fit neatly under the fingers just where you expect them to be. If you prefer flute or recorder settings, these are available too, plus single-handed or custom settings.
The mouthpiece controls, like wind pressure and bite, can also be tailored via the onboard menu system from 'beginner' level up to a close approximation of the dynamics you can achieve on an acoustic sax.