Roland Aerophone AE-01 Mini Digital Wind Instrument

I am a 56 year old semi-pro bass player with training in piano for several years. I played the flute for a year or two in elementary school as well. I have been actively gigging for hire in mostly jazz genres for over a decade, can read music and know how to improvise jazz on the bass.I have wanted to get casually into a wind instrument to play jazz standards and the melodies to my own music with backing tracks. I wanted it NOT to be time consuming given my age and many responsibilities. I tried the AKAI USB wind instrument and that proved way too complicated when I started reading the instructions out of the box. I then bought a flute, tried it out a few times and never went back to it. Then I bought the Aerophone AE-01 - the bottom of the line instrument in Roland's Aerophone line.I love it -- it's exactly what I'm looking for to enjoy as quickly as possible. The fingerings are easy and intuitive, much like a flutophone or a recorder. I was able to play the first verse of Fly Me to the Moon, complete with one flat note within a 1/2 hour of opening the box. The controls are EASY and you can play it without hooking it into anything or reading the manual. The speaker in the instrument sounds just OK with the on-board sounds (sax, flute, clarinet, trumpet, violin and synth). But the instrument sounds MUCH better when played through headphones.I had trouble putting it down and I expect I'll be learning to play the songs in the online app you can download until I can play all 12 notes competently.With this purchase, I FINALLY feel like I found something I can get into fast and see results early to motivate me to invest the necessary time to play it in the time I have left on this planet. It really does get around a lot of obstacles that new players face with wind instruments -- tone, complicated fingerings, etcetera. With fast early progress, I feel motivated to pick this instrument up and start learning. I will probably sell the flute and the Akai USB instrument which I hung on to previously -- hoping I would get the motivation to learn them. With the Aerophone AE-01, I have the motivation and no longer need those other two wind instruments cluttering up my house.In spite of the glowing review here, I do have a couple things I would change about it. It comes with a sock that goes at the bottom of the mouthpiece. This is apparently to prevent saliva from dripping down the instrument and going into the electronics. I am glad they have addressed this issue, but I would rather it didn't have the ugly sock on it. The sax sounds pretty awful through the built in speaker, but OK in the headphones. The other sounds were all fine through the headphones. I noticed in all the demos that the instrument sounds much better when played through a sound system and good speakers, so bear that in mind when you play through the built in speaker. It may sound like a toy and definitely not worth hundreds of dollars -- until you plug it into a good speaker/amplification system.I am not worried about the fact there is no known case for it. I want to build my own case as it's pretty small and there are a lot of videos on YouTube that show you how to do it.I will update the review as I gain more experience with the instrument. I still need to try out the app and the lessons. I am looking forward to trying them out!Thanks Roland for taking a chance on a beginner model.****APP Review 1/5I am reviewing the app separately. I downloaded it easily enough to my phone. There is a self-confessed delay between the fingering and the sounds produced through your phone -- it was more pronounced with some sounds compared to others, so I don't think there is a good use for the sounds on the app. How can you play along with a group or a backing track if your sounds are delayed from your fingerings? I found the songs in the app passable, but I don't think I could learn the songs they way they show one note, then the fingering, then the next note, and the fingering. It would be better to have the notes to the songs printable or viewable for the whole song on the phone. Then I could practice the song while looking up the fingerings. Later, after having learned the big picture, I could then play along with it as intended. The metronome is the bright spot of the app -- easy to use and important for learning to play in time. So, I hope Roland fixes the sound delay problem on the app -- I was really disappointed. There were quite a few usable sounds in the 50 given, but the delay makes them problematic. I'm surprised they released an instrument with this delay problem at all -- they should have fixed it before releasing this admittedly expensive starter instrument!*****Update a couple months later....Still going stronger and stronger with this instrument. I am finding it easier and easier to pick up new songs, primarily jazz. I have played it three times with a band now. Once live before an audience at a jazz jam (Swingin' Shepherd Blues), and twice at a piano trio jazz practice, doubling parts with a violin player. One thing -- if you want other musicians to take it seriously, you need to run it through a PA system. The internal speaker on the instrument itself, while a stellar feature to encourage convenience, doesn't do the instrument justice on the sax, clarinet, and trumpet settings. I did have one player, someone with a personality I'm not that fond of under the best of circumstances, call it a toy, but the other musicians found it sounded good. One with ears I respect indicating he really liked the sound of it. I expect to integrate this into my live, paid gigs as I gain more and more experience with it. I absolutely love this instrument, and consider it credible even in a paid performance environment.By the way, I lost the black saliva sock within a month of owning the instrument. It is loose and falls off easily, so to this day I have no clue where it went in spite of myself and a family member looking everywhere for it. So, I bought children's wrist sweat bands, which come in a lot of different colors instead. I also had Roland send me a new one, but it cost over $8 for one black, ill-fitting sock when I could buy two for the same price here on Amazon. Here is a link to the sweatbands that fit the instrument better than the actual Roland replacement sock I ordered:https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01G9BVTVC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1The blue ones actually look pretty good. I tried orange, black, and blue, and the blue ones look the best with it, and fit better than the Roland sock.

Wonderful sound. Easy to learn.

I am playing flutes from more than 30 years this is my opinion. Blow is hard. The key makes lot of clicking sounds. When you try to make a YouTube tutorial video the click sounds make it annoying. Also I believe it’s over priced.

Other than the sticky keys (key 1 and 2) issue, I like the AE-01 very much. Oh, there is another problem which is design related. That is, one of the four springs in the battery compartment is longer than it should be. It is obvious because that spring gets two more windings than the other three. That makes the AA battery difficult to insert. Removing is not any easier. Usually, I need a small screw driver to pry it out.However, the support staff has been nice and patient. Unfortunately, they can't fix either of these two problems mentioned above. I can live with the long spring, but the sticky keys, though intermittent, have become annoying. To avoid down time, they even suggested getting the seller Amazon to send me a replacement unit after the "return" period has expired. I've yet to write to the Amazon support and am not quite sure whether they'll be receptive to this idea.

A little of my musical background. I learned to play sax in middle band but became an organist, pianist, and keyboardist (my primary instruments). I am self-taught on all the keyboards and am not a professional musician (although I do play for my church). I also used to own a Casio Digital Horn back in the day.I've been playing the Aerophone Mini for about a week. It was purchased in April for my birthday in July. Other than testing it when it arrived, it was not played until my birthday.The fingering is enough like the sax that it came back quickly. I was easily able to play "Amazing Grace" when I tested in in April.Pros:- Portable and battery operated- Easy (for me) to play. It helps to know the basics of reading music, etc.- Built-in speaker for playing anywhere- Built-in voices sound good when played through (even cheap) headphones or external speakers- App for helping learn and 50 additional voices- App voices sound great through external speakers or headphones- Latency of voices not in issue with my iPhoneCons:- Small built-in speaker resulting in built-in voices not sounding very good or having much volume without external speakers or headphones- Few songs (11) in the app (This may be fixed if the app is updated.) and they tend to advance somewhat rapidly in difficulty from one to the next- Even through external speakers the built-in sounds not quite as good as those in the app- Latency of voices is an issue with my Kindle Fire rendering the app useless for playing the additional voices of the appEven though there is a issue with latency of the voices in the app on the Kindle, if you use the built-in sounds with learning the songs in the app, the app works fine with the Kindle.Overall, I am very satisfied with the purchase. At this point in my life, I don't plan on becoming a professional or semi-professional horn player. This instrument allows me to enjoy another facet of my hobby (music).I hope this review helps others.Enjoy making music on this or any other instrument. To steal a phrase from a friend: "It's not what you play. It's not how you play. It's the fact that you're playing that counts."