Roland Corporation (ローランド株式会社 Rōrando Kabushiki Kaisha) is a Japanese digital music equipment and software producer.
Alongside Yamaha and Korg, Roland established itself as a leading edge manufacturer and pioneer of digital music equipment and software in the 1980s and 1990s.
Roland had a profound impact on the personal computing gaming industry from the late 1980s through the early 1990s as it's Multi Timbre and later General Midi sound standards became the de facto highest achievable personal computer generated music peripheral.
Roland partnered with Sierra Online (computer game producer: King's Quest, Space Quest and so on) in marketing their computer based synthesizer products (notably the Roland MT-32 and Roland LAPC-I) from the late 1980s.
As computer storage capabilities increased significantly with the perpetually lower cost of hard drives and CD-ROM, General Midi was phased out as a music source for computer games as playback of full music recordings had now become possible.
Roland continues to be a market leader in digital music equipment at present.
Alongside Yamaha and Korg, Roland established itself as a leading edge manufacturer and pioneer of digital music equipment and software in the 1980s and 1990s.
Roland had a profound impact on the personal computing gaming industry from the late 1980s through the early 1990s as it's Multi Timbre and later General Midi sound standards became the de facto highest achievable personal computer generated music peripheral.
Roland partnered with Sierra Online (computer game producer: King's Quest, Space Quest and so on) in marketing their computer based synthesizer products (notably the Roland MT-32 and Roland LAPC-I) from the late 1980s.
As computer storage capabilities increased significantly with the perpetually lower cost of hard drives and CD-ROM, General Midi was phased out as a music source for computer games as playback of full music recordings had now become possible.
Roland continues to be a market leader in digital music equipment at present.