Roland "We design the future" MC-202 Microcomposer brochure, 1983

Roland "We design the future" MC-202 Microcomposer 8-page colour brochure from 1983.

Happy 2/02 day! And I got a doozy for ya. Behold the magnificent MC-202 "We design the future" brochure.

Over the last couple of weeks, we've heard a lot of about hedging. In particular, GameStop's share price skyrocketing, messing with hedge funds that poured huge amounts of cheddar into shorting Gamestop's stock. And then those hedge funds having to hedge those shorts by buying stock at an ever increasing price, making the stock go even higher. Or, at least that's how I understood it. Don't @ me if I'm wrong.

Point is... Hedge. And I'm thinking this MC-202 brochure is kinda symbolic of Roland's hedge against MIDI. I'm not saying Roland was against MIDI - NOT AT ALL! They were definitely on the forefront of the technology. I just think, like any good company would and should, they were hedging their bets. 

More on that in a bit. But first, for some background info (and because its simply amazing!), we need to flip through the brochure.

Like most of the "We design the future" brochures, we get that classic front page - a large red title, large artistic image, that lovely logo top left. Flip to page 2 and 3, and we continue Roland's classic brochure format with a large image of the featured piece of gear and some great marketing info. Yum!

But then something weird happens. We turn the page to what should be the back of the brochure.

WHAT THE? 

More info? That's right - no back page here. Instead we get two more pages on how to use the MC-202 specifically. So awesome. Lot's of diagrams. Lot's of info. Read through that an you are pretty much an expert on programming the MC-202. 

*throws manual in garbage* Thank you very much. 

Okay...  NOW let's flip the page and take a look at what's on that back page...

SHUT THE FRONT DOOR! EVEN MORE INFO!

First a page titled "Play Bach" that puts those programming chops we just memorized on the previous two pages to work to actually churn out some Bach on the MC-202. No kidding.   And across the street we get a page devoted to the "Expandability of the MC-202" which includes a Who's Who list of kick-butt Roland products while describing what's going on on the back panel of the 202.  

Wicked. 

Then. FINALLY. We turn the page and get the classic brochure back page that Roland is known for. Info on Roland's TB-303, TR-606 and SH-101. 

Interestingly, all these devices on that page have one thing in common (besides being Roland gear):  

No MIDI. 

MIDI was just around the corner and by 1983 Roland, who was a big developer of MIDI technology, had already started on the design of Roland's first MIDI interface - the MPU-401. But what if MIDI didn't take off? What if it was a dud? 

I believe Roland spent significantly more resources, print ink and page real estate on this MC-202 brochure to hedge that MIDI bet. I realize, in the grand scheme of things, the cost of this brochure would pale in comparison to the cost of the development of that MPU-401 interface. It's really more of a symbolic hedge after spending significantly more money on developing Roland's next gen non-MIDI gear - the TB-303, TR-606 and SH-101. 

Yeah, sure, I have no data to back any of this up. It's just a hunch. 

But I did just hedge my comment by saying I have no data to back any of this up. :)

Aaaaah. Hedging.

Roland MKS-50 Polyphonic Synthesizer Module "The newest Juno synthesizer..." brochure, 1987

Roland MKS-50 Polyphonic Synthesizer Module  "The newest Juno synthesizer..." four page colour brochure from 1987.

Oh man - first post of 2021 - and what a way to start! The MKS-50!

Like the Alpha Juno 1/2 brochure that came out the previous year, and that I blogged about back in September 2019, this little feller follows Roland's classic (and consistent) "We design the future"... eeeer... design. My favourite part being a lovely front page that includes a large title and creatively placed featured piece of gear.

In this case the MKS-50 is floating above what looks to be silvery sheets of paper of some sort. This ties back nicely with the photograph used on that Alpha Juno brochure where the two synths are sitting on top of a similar type of paper.  

Okay - let's talk about the elephant in the room. That huge burn mark that starts on the front page, and actually makes it's way to the second and third page as well. It was sent to me this way. Honest. I don't even smoke. Now, usually I would do a little photoshop magic to remove these types of blemishes, but in this case I kept it in. Sure, that's partly laziness on my part, but also because its indicative of how many brochures are sent to me in this type of condition and, well, I kinda cool in its own way. This brochure has seen some dark times. It encapsulates 2020.  Poor thing. 

Thinking back, I'm pretty sure the MKS-50 was my first Roland module. I had a a few Roland keyboard synths including an Alpha Juno 2 at the time, but as space started getting slim, I began to actively hunt down rack version of synths that I already had and then would dump the keyboard version when I found it's rack equivalent. And it was when I stumbled across what eventually became my MKS-50 that I first came in contact with another most incredible piece of gear - the PG-300 Programmer (it's in the brochure, too!). 

I cannot stress enough how important Roland programmers were to me and many of my friends. You gotta understand that many synths from this time period replaced the visual feedback that came with one-control per function operation for some type of small display - the DX-7, Sequential Six-Trak, Korg DW synths, Kawai K's... the list goes on.  The Alpha at least had the giant alpha wheel to help quickly dial in the specific parameter you were looking for, but it was still annoying as heck.   

Having that PG-300 gave me the immediate visual feedback I'd been missing with the Alpha Juno - and I was hooked! And it's built like the MKS-50 - like a tank! I started tracking down other programmers for my other synths, managing to grab the PG-800 for my MKS-70 as well as the PG-1000 for my D-550 before the secret was out of the bag and prices of the programmers started to skyrocket. Never managed to grab an MPG-80 programmer for my MKS-80 and now that prices are hovering around the $2000 mark, chances are slim I'm ever gonna get one. 

I don't even think there are any hardware alternatives. I've read that the Virus TI can be programmed to pump out the right sysex to program an MKS-80, but like I've already stated above... I'm lazy. 

And don't even start on software editors. Ugh.

ARP 2600, Omni-2, Piano and Quartet infosheets, 1979

Set of ARP 2600, Omni-2, Piano and Quartet infosheets from 1979.

Catalogues, info-sheets, brochures? I just don't know which is which anymore. I definitely haven't been consistent over the last 11 or 12 years that I've been yapping on and on through this blog. And my tags are a dog's breakfast because of it.

In my head, catalogues are usually larger marketing documents that contain a little bit of everything, bound together in some way. Saddle stitch, glue or whatever.

Love 'em. 

I got a lot of 'em. 

Roland. Korg. Casio, Akai... they even have covers that say "catalog" or "catalogue" on 'em with a year/date and volume number - very official looking.  But scanning large catalogues takes a lot of time and I'm an "efficiently lazy" person by nature, so you don't see a lot of them on the blog.  

Info-sheets, on the other hand, are those one-pagers (often two-sided) that contain a lot of information and specs on one instrument. Often, they are part of a larger group of similarly designed info-sheets like the ones above.  And usually I scan these similar documents all at once, and then spread out their posts over time so that in my head I feel like I'm being more productive. 

I gotta tell ya, lately I've been feeling like I'm running out of things to say. 

How many times can I say...

"Lovely!" 

"Consistent design!"

"Logo!" 

"Font!"

"Large photo!"

"Diagram!"

"Did I mention diagram!"

Now, I gotta say that all of the above applies here and posting them all at once really shows off the lovely consistent design with large photos and diagrams. I could literally post a scan and just write LCLFLDD underneath the images and call it a day.  

There isn't much else coming outta my head these days synth-related. 

Hence, lets continue on with my original thought. Where was I? Catalogues. Info-sheets... oh right...

Brochures. 

Brochures, in my head, are usually smaller that catalogues, but larger than info-sheets. Maybe stapled if they are more than two pages. 

Sometimes they tell the company story and feature more than one instrument - I'm thinking in particular of that 1974 "Arp Story" brochure that I had posted earlier this month. 

But, isn't this just a catalogue? 

To make it even more confusing, each of those pages can also be found in the wild as individual "info-sheets", and ARP even created addition info-sheet inserts for this brochure of newly released instruments to increase the shelf life of the original brochure. 

But how about those Roland "We design the future" brochures I fetishize over?

Drool. 

*tick tick tick*

(Its literally two hours later because I started looking at these lovely beasts. I still have so many to scan from this series.)

Anyways, like those ARP info-sheets above, these Roland brochures feature one instrument and usually contain a diagram or two, some specs, and are part of a larger group of similarly designed documents. The only real difference between those ARP info-sheets and these Roland brochures is a fold. Seriously. A FOLD. 

I guess my point is that I have no standardization. 

Hey... I'm surfing around the blog now... what about this ARP "promo/datasheet"...?

Or these Moog "reference sheets"... ?

Do I go back and change them all to "fact sheets" now? 

So much work. 

Double ugh.   :)

ARP "From Jimmy With ARP" advertisement, Downbeat Magazine 1974

 

ARP "From Jimmy With ARP" half-page black and white advertisement from page 41 in the June 20, 1974 issue of Downbeat Magazine.

Well, look at this! I hope you are noticing the trend. As part of trying to get all my 2020 ARP 50th anniversary celebration posts... eeer... posted, I've been uploading quite a few ARP pieces this month, including two of the many ARP advertisements from the time period that used a very similar half page, black and white format. 

And now... I've posted the third. With more to come.

I love that all three of these ads all fit into a theme, but yet they are all very distinguishable from each other. There isn't a stagnant "photo/artwork at top" - "text in the middle" - "Logo in bottom right" format to them. Each of the ads has kept a unique look. As unique as the different artists that are featured in each one. 

One other thing I like about all three ads is they all contain one of those little cookies I went on about in my last Carpenters ad. This earlier ad uses the code "DB-620" (Downbeat June 20), but curiously leaves out the "year", unlike that those other 1975 ads included (DB 1-16-75). Looking at a few of the other earlier ARP ads like the Edgar Winter ARP ads that appeared around six months earlier, they too used the earlier cookie format that didn't include the year. No real other comment to make on that fact - just interesting that they changed the format.

Another little thing that separates this earlier ad from the others is the little picture in the bottom right hand corner of three of ARP's products. This little photo also appears in Edgar Winter's Frankenstein and Freeride ARP ads, but not in Billy Preston's Space Race ARP ad or Stevie Wonder's WonderArp ad (none which I've posted yet). Once I've mapped out the timeline for all these half-pagers, it will be interesting to see when exactly they were added and removed. 

My past experiences of 'Zep run along the same lines of The Who. I didn't really understand or 'get' the synth influences first time around. The one thing I do notice when looking back, is that fans of Townsend were much more accepting of the band's use of synthesizers where Led fans weren't so sure they shared their favourite band's love for them.  Just my observation - your mileage may vary. 

Now, where deeper knowledge of most Zeppelin songs flew over my head (except for the mandatory ever butt-grabbing Stairway to Heaven), there was one song I was always willing to get behind...

Carouselabra. 

For some reason I've always had an affinity for that one. Maybe it was the synths that first got me hooked? Maybe?  It could also have been that some of the dreamier parts reminded me of Alan Parson's stuff.  I dunno. Hard to say. But I can tell you when the topic of Led Zeppelin came up with friends at a party, I would turn the convo towards that song, and trying to convince them to play it on whatever stereo system was handy.

Just for fun, I googled the song to see what others had to say, and this rather interesting post on Cheatsheet.com came up - "What Robert Plant Regretted About Led Zeppelin’s ‘Carouselambra’". It takes a little bit of a deep dive on the lyrics of the song.  

Go Cheatsheet! Go Carouselabra! 

And okay... go Stairway to Heaven!

ARP "Meet the Carpenters new string ensemble" ad, Downbeat Magazine 1975

 

ARP "Meet the Carpenters new string ensemble" black and white advertisement from the March 27, 1975 issue of Downbeat Magazine 1975.

I'm a cookie addict. As someone who likes to eat. As an online marketing professional. As a curator/archivist. Yum! But more about that in a sec...

Following hot on the heels of my post about ARP's 1975 advertisement that featured Pete Townshend of The Who and his 2600 is this lovely promo featuring the Carpenters and ARP's String Ensemble. As far as I can tell, this advertisement showed up in various issues in a few different publications in 1974 and 1975, but I've even seen it referenced in 1976 as well. 

It's interesting that it got so much page time, so rather than blog about The Carpenters, a band I unsurprisingly know very little about, I thought I'd take a look at the marketing side of things. In particular, the little "cookie" that followed this, and many other ads around like gum on a shoe to tell the company where someone saw this advertisement.

In a way, it's similar to the common digital cookie that can end up following you around the web, annoying you with an ad for a Home Depot lawn mower you were looking at earlier in the day. ARP placed a cookie in the mail-in section of many of their ads, so if you bothered to fill it out and mail it in, ARP knew you were responding to this very specific advertisement.  You can see that cookie in the close-up below (red box). 

DB 1-16-75. 

Downbeat, January 16, 1975. 

I can hear you say "but you said this advertisement was from the March 27, 1975 issue!" It sure was, but the advertising campaign or budget utilizing this ad probably first appeared in the January issue. Smart. 

If you look closely at the Pete Townshend ad I posted, it has a DB 6-5-75 cookie, so that particular ad campaign probably began in the June 5, 1975 issue of Downbeat - the one I scanned! And, if you compare it to the same ARP/Pete ad that appeared in the May 22, 1975 issue of Rolling Stone, you can see it uses a different code - RS-142. 

So, RS = Rolling Stone. But what the heck is that 142? Well... 

I'm not sure. No, really. Not sure at all. 

The May 22, 1975 issue of Rolling Stone was issue 187. Since Rolling Stone was produced bi-weekly (I think?!?!) at that point, it would mean that if that number referred to the issue number, the first appearance of this ad would be almost two years before. Which doesn't appear likely. So, yeah. Still a mystery. 

But the point is, when all those cut-out return forms start making their way back home, those little cookies let ARP have a better idea of which ad in which magazine worked best to get you to respond.  

When I first started noticing these cookies in magazines, I first thought maybe the code wasn't a company code at all - maybe it was included by the magazine as a courtesy or to show the company that got the form back that the reader saw the ad in that particular magazine. To try and solve this question, I started looking at other ads that included mail-ins. 

Sure enough, many other ads included a little cookie in their clip-out sections as well. But, the cookie in different ads were often in different formats. For example, in that same issue of Rolling Stone that the ARP RS-142 cookie is found, we also get the company below using a fictitious department called "Dept RS" as the cookie. This is interesting because if the reader decides they don't want to cut out the form from their precious magazine, they would still use this address to write to the company and the company would STILL know how the reader found them since the address on the letter would have included the cookie. 

Another ad for a reggae record from the same Rolling Stone mag used the PO Box (Box 6/RS) for their cookie:

"Feelin' High". Ha! Yes, I'm nine years old. 

And finally, this Monty Python ad below from the same mag has just a little "rs" in the bottom right corner. Adorable. 

I've seen them in all manner of magazines. Those I collect - like Contemporary Keyboard/Keyboard, Electronic Musician, Electronics & Music Maker,  etc... as well as magazines I just happen to be flipping through at a friends house or online. From the 70s to the 90s and beyond. Those little cookies are everywhere. 

I get especially excited when I see an ad with a cookie, but the cookie is for a different magazine entirely. It's like someone forgot to update the ad for the new mag.  That's pure adrenaline! Makes my day.

Once I started looking for them, I couldn't stop, and to this day I still look for them.

Now you will too! You got lots of time during your covid lock down anyways.