ROLANDAe-30 Aerophone Pro – Professional Digital Wind Instrument with Advanced Zen-Core Synthesis System And Supernatural Tones. Traditional Saxophone Fingering, Bluetooth, Editor App

I have played a Yamaha WX11 and an Akai EWI before, but neither has felt as close to playing a real saxophone as the Aerophone does. The 128 voices include a lot of really useful sounds. They do also include quite a lot of wierd Asian instruments that I am unlikely to ever use, but i guess it is made in Japan! I have recorded baritone sax parts with it for saxophone quartet arrangements and fooled other saxophone players in to thinking I had actually bought a baritone. I have also recorded all the trumpet and trombone parts for a virtual big band with it and again it has fooled a lot of people. The built-in speakers are a bit tinny, but they are very useful for practising. I have even used them with my latin jazz group for an acoustic jam.A few negatives, but nothing too serious. The neck strap they provide is rubbish, but most sax players will have their own straps anyway. Whilst the key layout is generally good, I would have preferred the octave keys to have been further apart and more resistant - it is still too easy to hit them by accident, although they are vastly better than the horrendous octave system on the EWI! Overall the construction is a bit too light-weight plastic for my taste. Your first impression is that it is some kind of toy, but once you start playing it you are soon converted. I would have been prepared to pay a bit more to have had a more professional finish to the instrument. Roland could benefit from making it look more like a Yamaha. However, it sounds good and is easy to play. It has to be the best affordable wind controller so far.

I've been a lifelong professional musician ( keyboards) and in my retirement wanted to play a clarinet, so I bought one from Amazon. I'm making good progress but decided I wanted something easier as well. I decided to buy one of the electric wind instrument that are less than £100. It was a waste of money; it played sounds but they were completely random , so after a lot of thought and utube videos etc. I decided on the Roland. Since I already own a couple of their fantastic keyboards it's a name I trust, and the trust was well founded here. It's great! It's not a toy, but it's easy enough for children and absolute beginners as well. For anyone who already has musical knowledge it's a doddle. It sounds good, especially the 50 extra sounds on the app, and everything works just as it should. After a couple of hours I was well away. It connected to Bluetooth on my Samsung phone immediately. My iPad took a bit longer but I got there in the end. Two criticisms that crop up a lot in reviews are well founded:It's crying out for some sort of case, but Roland do not provide one, even as an optional extra. Also the thumb rest could have been better designed - it's a bit uncomfortable.Apart from these I have no criticisms whatsoever and wholeheartedly recommend it to both children and adults alike

I bought this so that I could practice while travelling. It fulfills that function well.The instrument fits in my suitcase, and is small enough for carry-on luggage.In hindsight I should have bought the AE20; its too big for carry on but would fit in a large suitcase.The instrument sound samples are not very good, either through headphones or the onboard speaker.. However that's not a problem for me as I have no intention of using this for performance or recording.

I think Bill Bailey uses one on stage as part of his act. Good for older children and adults. It may be a little heavy and large for very young children to play for a long time but they could certainly easily use it. The software is easy to use too although, initially, I didn't find the navigation between instrument sounds and sounds on the device itself as intuitive or as easy to use as it could be and there wasn't much in the manual about this. The software comes with a very easy to understand technique too, which can help people learn to read music.I think it would be very useful for schools.

So I decided to try this out as I've been interested in getting something like this for years and I'm still not that bad on a descant recorder.As far as it goes, it's fairly light to hold though it does come with a lanyard. To be honest though, the thumb rest on the back seems a bit flimsy so be careful of that. The power comes from either AA cells (rechargeable recommended) and/or a USB feed via a cable provided in the box. I tend to use a large USB power bank for this, partly for convenience and partly because I already had one floating around!The mouthpiece will be very familiar to anyone that plays clarinet or saxophone, although the whole thing, including the reed, is rendered in 24-carat plastic! The embouchure needed to get this working would be the same as on a clarinet but you should be careful not to bite down on the mouthpiece for all sorts of reasons.The keys are clicky and noisy. You may find it a little less of an annoyance if running the device through headphones or speakers but overall it didn't sound that good, no matter which of the six voices you chose. As far as the fingerings go, it seems to accept many of the recorder fingerings but there were glaring problems with certain notes which, because of the design, can't be used in the normal way. A good example is D' which, on a descant or tenor, you get to by covering 02 but on this instrument you HAVE to cover 123123 in ALL registers. To switch registers there are two buttons arranged around the left thumb rest; the top button raises the register by an octave just as a pinched rear hole would do while the lower button drops by an octave. Of course this means that D', C#' and C' can't be gotten in the orthodox way.Another issue is that to get to some sharps and flats requires you to use two buttons situated between the left and right hand buttons which makes it awkward though the device does appear to know some fingerings used on a recorder, for example F#, G# and Bb. It does mean, however, that switching to this instrument from a standard recorder can be difficult.In all, it's a bit overpriced and under-functioned with six voices, all of which sound a bit too fake overall though I've yet to try it on amplification. If you are comfortable on a recorder tuned to C or possibly a saxophone then you may get something out of it but I'm not sure if it is really worth the expense.