Roland began studying classical and jazz clarinet at age 9 under the tutelage of his
Grandfather, Lawrence Denton who is a renowned virtuoso clarinetist and conductor. At 14 he formed a vocal group and produced his first vinyl as Roland Young and the Velveteers. The following year he formed an improvising jazz woodwind trio with Roland on bass clarinet and two high school classmates, one on alto saxophone and one on baritone saxophone. He performed with both his vocal and woodwind groups at local Kansas City venues.

After high school Roland joined the U.S. Navy. With his clarinet faithfully by his side he would play on the ships at night as he sailed through out the Pacific on various military assignments.

Upon his discharge from the Navy he settled in San Francisco. It was the 1960s and creativity and exploration permeated all aspects of his life as well as the lives of the members of the creative community around him. It was during this period that Roland began playing saxophone and exploring sounds from the infinite source. Africa, Asia, Europe, and Native America became the source material, space and silence became the structure, and composing, improvising and the continued development of instrumental facility became the tasks.

During this period Roland also became a top rated disc jockey on the premier San Francisco underground FM radio station, KSAN. He was one of the originators of the mix of musical genres segued in seamless flows and undulations of sounds while demonstrating the oneness of music and the fallacy of strict musical categories.

He was fired from KSAN for his radical political commentaries on the hot social issues of the day. After a stint at radio station KMPX, also in San Francisco, Roland then joined the first free speech listener-sponsored radio station in the U.S., Pacifica's KPFA in Berkeley. It was during this period that he perfected his concept of eclectic cross-genre universal acoustic and electronic music mixes. He, simultaneously, incorporated this concept into his own music compositions. This concept has become the integral aspect and defining characteristic of his music to date.

Roland formed the improvisation ensemble, Infinite Sound that recorded a groundbreaking album in 1974 for 1750 Arch Records entitled INFINITE SOUND.

While performing with Infinite Sound and participating in experimental and improvisational projects with various musicians Roland, simultaneously, developed a unique solo comprovisational concept which incorporated acoustic/electronic sounds which some have attributed to it being one of the creators of the genre thusly known as “ambient electronica” which may be documented on his first solo recording ISOPHONIC BOOGIE WOOGIE released in 1980 on his Flow Chart Records and re-released in 2005 on the Japanese label EM Records and followed by a remix by DJ ALTZ.

Roland relocated to New York and initially worked on the avant-garde jazz and cultural scene performing with many renowned composers, performers and dancers. The 1980s
in New York had some of the vibrancy of the 1960s in California but with a different twist. Music and people from various cultures and artistic concepts began to collaborate. These juxtapositions led to some very creative performance possibilities that encouraged Roland to express his then current concept more completely. During this period Roland joined the Offs and produced their “First Record” on 415 Records.

He produced two more albums for Flow Chart Records I-Land and Hearsay Evidence; both were re-released as HEARSAY I-LAND in 2013 on Palto Flats.

In 2005, EM Records in Japan, (emrecords.net), re-released the historic ground breaking ISOPHONIC BOOGIE WOOGIE with all of the original 1980 tracks plus the inclusion of two bonus tracks recorded in 2004 and 2005. This was followed by a remix from DJ ALTZ.

He has since released 3 albums on EM Records: ISTET SERENADE (2009), MYSTIPHONIC (2013) and CONFLUENCES (2015).

Roland relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2016 where he is residing, absorbing and composing music in his Isophonic studio in preparation for his next projects.