VP-30

Vintage Strings & Choirs

The Roland VP-330, or Vocoder Plus, is a late-70s vocoder and string machine that became a studio staple due to its unmistakable string, choir, and vocoder sounds. The VP-330 helped shape the sound of electronic music in the late 70s and early 80s, with its lush strings used by Vangelis in the Blade Runner soundtrack and its distinctive vocoder featured in tracks like Queen’s Radio Gaga, Stevie Wonder’s I Just Called to Say I Love You and Phil Collins’ In the Air Tonight.

The VP-330 remains popular in modern music, with its analog choir and other signature sounds appearing in tracks by artists like Beach House (Once Twice Melody), Goldfrapp (Number One) and Dua Lipa (Levitating). The VP-30 pack faithfully captures these classic Roland VP-330 sounds, bringing them directly into your DAW.

VP-30 contains 1050 individual samples recorded directly from an original Roland VP-330 mkII, meticulously captured through a pair of Rupert Neve Shelford Channels. Every note was sampled without crossfading, preserving the sound quality of the original instrument, ensuring that the rich strings, choirs, and vocoder tones of the VP-330 are faithfully reproduced.

Sampler Patches

VP-30 includes patches for both Native Instruments Kontakt and Decent Sampler. These include a main patch for layering and keyboard splitting, replicating the Roland VP-330’s performance setup, as well as five individual sound patches: Strings, Male Choir, Female Choir, Mixed Choir and Vocoder. All patches emulate the functionality of the original keyboard, including built-in vibrato, auto-glide, and attack/release envelope controls. The Kontakt version requires the full version of Kontakt 6 or higher.

For those who don’t own Kontakt, the Decent Sampler version offers identical patches and functionality for the Decent Sampler plugin, which is 100% free and compatible with Windows, Mac, Linux, and iOS.

Ableton Live Racks

For Ableton Live users, VP-30 features seven Instrument Racks that cover layering, keyboard splitting, and individual patches for the VP-330’s core sounds. Each rack includes macro controls, allowing easy sound manipulation and quick integration into your projects. These patches work with Ableton Live 11 or higher, and utilise the Macro Variations feature to let you easily choose layering or keyboard split configurations.