At 7:39 in the video titled "AR Rahman & Firdaus Studios: A Scoring Stage For The 21st Century," A.R. Rahman mentions that he purchased a Roland MC-500 Micro Composer during the early years of his professional career, as documented by Sound On Sound magazine.

Don Airey, a renowned keyboardist, uses the Roland MC-500 Micro Composer as evidenced by his statement: "Ian kept copies of all the stuff he'd done on an FB01 for the album, although I'm using an MT32 triggered by an MC500." This information is sourced from an article titled "Living in the Past" published in MT February 1988. Airey emphasizes the authenticity of his performances, noting that, "It's not as though the whole show is sequenced - only one number is actually sequenced - and there are two little bits I do on my own and they use a bit of sequencing. There's nothing on tape, no cheating at all, everything's for real. Whatever's on the record I've had to find a way of doing."

As listed in this 1990 interview on the Music Magazine Archive

What kind of gear were you using when you did your seminal Cybotron track, Clear, at the beginning of the 1980s? "Well, I wasn't using no software! We were using a Korg SQD1 [Korg's groundbreaking MIDI recorder/sequencer], then I moved on to the Roland MC-500, one of their MicroComposers. That was a really good sequencer.

This is a four-channel (!) MIDI sequencer with one MIDI in and two MIDI outs. People laugh when they see it but it was the bees knees in 1986 (Go West had two and so did Michael Jackson) and I've been using it so long that I can really work fast on it. My fingers go all blurry when I am quantising etc. It works, the timing is really solid, better than a computer, the small screen is crap but I like it. I bought it out of Loot in the early 90s and went round the guy's house in New Cross to pick it up, we ended up making a piano-rave track together which I've still got somewhere on tape. You don't get that with eBay!

"As the Detroit style matured, the techno minor triad was featured in front of minimalistspiralling keyboard riffs and the rat-a-tatting of the Roland TR-808, as in the classictrack ‘Off to Battle’, a more sophisticated effort by Atkins, now working under the nom-de-microprocessor Model 500. (He took the name from the Roland MC-500 MicroComposer, one of the first affordable digital sequencers.)" - page 16

Eric Persing has had a unique and influential relationship with Roland Corp for two decades. He started as a product demonstrator in 1984, showing some of Roland's first MIDI instruments. He quickly became involved in the R&D side with Roland Japan, earning the title "Chief Sound Designer", and began contributing his design ideas, real-world studio experience and sound design expertise. Persing's skills have left their mark on countless classic Roland instruments.

He is the originator of many legendary Roland sounds that have become part of the vocabulary and lexicon of musical sound. These include the Factory D-50 sounds such as Fantasia, Soundtrack and Digital Native Dance, a majority of the JV/XP/XV series Classics, all the Factory JD-800 sounds, the original Juno "Hoover" sound and thousands of others.

Here is a partial list of the Roland instruments that Eric has contributed his sound design, sampling and design consulting skills:

Juno-106 Alpha Juno 1&2 JX-3P JX-8P JX-10 Jupiter 6 Super Jupiter D-50 D-550 D-110 D-10 D-20 D-70 MT-32 U-110 U-20 U-220 Sound Canvas JD-800 JD-990 JV-80 JV-90 JV-1000 JV-1080 JV-2080 XP-10 XP-50 XP-60 XP-80 XV-3080 XV-5050 XV-5080 Fantom JP-8000 JP-8080 S-10 S-220 S-50 S-550 S-770 S-760 S-750 MC-303 MC-500 MC-505 VP-9000 MSQ-700 MSQ-100 MKS-20 MKS-30 MKS-50 MKS-70 MKS-80 R-8 R-5 DR-660 DR-770 R-70 V-Drums V-Drums expansion board SRV-2000 DEP-5 RSP-550 R-880 SRV-330 SE-50 SE-70 VS-880 VS-1680 SR-JV series expansion boards SRX series expansion boards Sound Canvas Project series CD-ROM libraries Archives series CD-ROM libraries Composers series CD-ROM libraries

In a Reddit thread, user jellysgroove provided a list of gear identified in a picture of Hiroshi Yoshimura's studio, confirming the use of the Roland MC-500 Micro Composer.

"There were no DATs or anything back then, you see. We brought a Roland MC-500 sequencer and played back everything from that."

The instrument appears on the list of instruments on official artist's website (http://olszak.pl/).

Paul Hertzog used a Roland MC-500 Micro Composer while working on the official motion picture soundtrack for "Bloodsport." Hertzog stated, "I got a final edit sometime in March and a deadline of April 27th to deliver the recorded score. I sat in my little rented guesthouse in the San Fernando Valley with a Roland MC-500 sequencer, an Oberheim DMX drum machine, a Yamaha DX-7 and TX-7, an Oberheim OB-8, and an Ensoniq Mirage sampler and went to work."

This is a four-channel (!) MIDI sequencer with one MIDI in and two MIDI outs. People laugh when they see it but it was the bees knees in 1986 (Go West had two and so did Michael Jackson) and I've been using it so long that I can really work fast on it. My fingers go all blurry when I am quantising etc. It works, the timing is really solid, better than a computer, the small screen is crap but I like it. I bought it out of Loot in the early 90s and went round the guy's house in New Cross to pick it up, we ended up making a piano-rave track together which I've still got somewhere on tape. You don't get that with eBay!