Roland HP101

Roland have been making digital pianos for decades now and their newest range, the HP series, are better than ever seeming to cater for almost everybody in the market. As you look up through their range, you see an increase in keyboard realism, sound set size, basic functionality improvements, speaker power and size, and choice of colours until you hit their newest addition, the HP109 which is basically the HP107 encased in a polished ebony mini grand shell. Today we'll be looking at their most compact model; the entry-level HP101.

With the HP101 you get a well built piece of furniture, a progressive hammer-action keyboard, a metronome, 2 headphone outputs, a sliding lid, variable touch sensitivity, alternative tunings, transposition, and several effects, one of which is damper resonance. Sound-wise you have all that you could ask for; several piano sounds, 2 electric pianos, vibraphone, harpsichords, organs, strings and more. It's also possible to layer two sounds together and adjust their relative volumes, or set up a split point to split the keyboard at a chosen pitch into two separate areas of sound. It's worth mentioning that the primary piano preset sounds very rich and full by covering a large proportion of the frequency spectrum so it's ideal for solo performances. If you're interested in playing with a group of musicians, there's a more transparent sounding piano preset that will slot nicely into a mix. One slight downside to the HP101 is that to select a different sound you have to hold the 'tone' button down on the left panel whilst pressing one of the keys in the lower octave, although this won't bother too many people as it always defaults to the main piano sound which is the only sound required for many.

Damper resonance is perhaps the most interesting effect as it does a lot to increase the realism of a performance. When dampening the notes with the damper pedal, you hear a faint mechanical sound as if the damper is being released or pressed to and from all the pianos strings. This effect adds so much realism to a performance and it's completely optional with the ability to emphasise the effect over eight stages. If you've never experienced damper resonance first hand I recommend trying it wherever possible as it really does make the keyboard stand out from the crowd.

However, if its recording and production you're involved with, like most digital pianos the HP101 doesn't contain the highest quality of sounds available today. That's not to say it's not a great sound, it is a great sound, but in a high fidelity situation there are a number of more realistic alternatives. If you're familiar with computer based recording it's easy to take advantage of the HP101's realistic hammer-action to trigger much higher quality sounds such as those found in a number of todays software plugins Native Instruments Acoustik Piano, Steinberg's The Grand II, or Synthogy's Ivory all offer an incredible amount of detail with gigabytes and gigabytes of samples. If this is a route you're willing to try, you'll need a fairly modern computer with a good soundcard and a fast enough hard drive (7200rpm) in order to stream the plugin's sample data at a rate that doesn't compromise your performance. If you've lucky enough to own a laptop you could even use the HP101 as a desk!

Finally, I do have one criticism with this piano; there is no recorder on board so unless you have an external recording device (such as a minidisk recorder) you won't be able to listen back to your performances from an audience's perspective. Apart from this minor criticism the HP101 should cater for the needs of most pianists on a budget, beginner or professional. It sounds good, has a high quality progressive hammer-action and looks fantastic. With the added realism of its damper resonance effect the Roland HP101 is hard to beat.