The Roland VP-330 is a paraphonic ten-band[2] combined digital/analogvocoder and string machine manufactured by Roland Corporation from 1979 to 1980.[1] While there are several string machines and vocoders, a single device combining the two is rare, despite the advantage of paraphonic vocoding, and the VP-330's synthetic choir sounds are unique.[citation needed] Despite the VP-330's electronic string and choir sounds being less realistic than those of the tape-based Mellotron, touring musicians used it as a lighter and more robust alternative.[3]
The Roland SVC-350 is a similar vocoder in rack-mount form designed to accept external inputs.[4]
Architecture
In addition to vocoding and generating string sounds, the VP-330 can also play four different choir sounds, each of which uses four bandpass filters, shared from the same pool of seven total.[2] Like Roland's other string machines of the era, such as the RS-202, it features a BBD-based ensemble effect that thickens the strings, and optionally the choirs and vocoder.
In 2016, Roland made a digital recreation of the VP-330, named the VP-03, as part of their Boutique range. In 2019, Behringer released their own VP-330 clone, the VC340.
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