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Hello, Ujiie here again.
The Jupiter-6!
Here it is.
I've been wanting to demo this one someday.
The Jupiter-6 is a renowned synth from the Jupiter series.
And it's finally here!
Of course, the Jupiter-8 is the really famous one,
but the Jupiter-6 is cool too.
Ok maybe it is the little brother of the Jupiter-8,
but in any case it's a hell of a 6-voice analog poly synth.
You've got Bank and Number sections here.
Patch storage is a given.
I love sounds that have warmth to them!
Analog drum sound!
That's a nice percussion sound.
Ah, this would be the famous Jupiter Brass.
The layout of the synth is straightforward, as you can tell by looking at it.
You've got two VCOs here,
the mixer section here,
you can control the balance between VCO1 and VCO2.
Then the VCF next,
followed by the VCA,
and the two envelope generators last.
Extremely simple.
Ok. Now, this sound...
Jupiter brass.
VCO1 sounds like this.
It sounds like there's a pitch envelope on it.
Hear it?
It's got a kind of bend on it.
VCO2 sounds normal.
Nothing fancy. But mix them together and...
the attack has a split-second of detuning.
And that is what's special about the Jupiter brass.
That's the secret!
Being able to tweak the sliders and knobs and edit the sound
immediately is SO nice!
Ah, I used this electric piano sound a lot!
Ok. How about we raise the release a bit on this?
Yeah like that.
Let's look at the assign section next.
This is an important part!
There are Poly-1 and Poly-2 modes.
Seeing as the synth is 6-voice polyphonic, you'll usually use Poly-1.
It's quite good...
How it decays like that.
Now, Poly-2 is kind of special.
The decay gets cut off when you play another key.
This mode here
doesn't let the release play out to the end.
So that's what Poly-2 does.
There's a Unison mode too.
Um… Solo mode last.
When set to Solo mode...
it's totally monophonic.
Back to Unison.
For each voice there are two VCOs, so
6 times 2 means you've got a 12-VCO stack.
12-VCO sound.
An interesting feature is this,
the sound will change depending on how many keys you play.
It automatically allocates the voices.
And there's the unison Detune *** here.
And, as you'd expect, there's an arpeggiator.
Yep, the arpeggiator is a powerful weapon in the Jupiter arsenal.
This is an imediately useful asset. Fire when ready!
Another very important feature of this synth is
Glide!
The way portamento works on this is just beautiful.
And there's glissando.
With glissando, the transition is in steps,
applied chromatically.
This is really nice.
Excellent.
Next, let's look at this section here.
This section lets you add expression to the sound.
This button here,
well first of all there are two independent LFOs,
and when you push the button...
LFO-2 modulates the sound. You set the rate and such here.
You can target VCO and/or VCF.
Right? It's on the VCF.
There's this *** too, Rise.
Can you zoom in here? Rise delays the activation of the LFO.
Like delayed vibrato.
Right? That's how that works.
And here you've got your pitch bender,
and you can set the bender target here too.
This is neat. You can choose VCO1 or 2 or Wide.
And there are sliders for VCO and VCF.
Let's activate VCO-1 and 2 and give it a go.
Push the Wide button and...
The range of the bend gets REALLY wide.
Let's deselect VCO-2 and just bend VCO-1.
VCO-2 is not being bent.
Only VCO-1 is bent.
This is similar to a guitar technique,
what is it, choking? Play a chord
but one string gets really pushed.
You can do the same kind of thing.
Or you can put it on the VCF.
Control the cutoff via the bender.
Quite well-designed.
Ok, next. Let's check out some sounds.
What do you know, a piano sound.
Here we go! Jupiter strings!
This. This soft kind of sound is really nice.
Actually, I've got it hooked up to an effects processor.
Of course, synths from the Jupiter-6's day didn't have on-board effects.
The idea this time is to program WITH effects,
and what I've got here is a TC Electronic pedal
the famous Chorus +
and it's an analog chorus.
It's active now. Turn it off and...
the sound goes monaural. The JP-6 is monaural by the way.
Turn it back on...
and right away the sound expands,
it just opens up a whole new world.
This unit here, it's also a TC Electronic effector
and I've added just a touch of delay and reverb.
Programming WITH effects,
is essential, especially for pads and brass.
it works wonders.
This piano sound...
really surprising!
It just sounds like a piano, right?
The JP-6 is 6-voice polyphonic, so I can play 4-note chords with my right hand,
and root octaves with my left hand.
It's just what you'd expect from a proper piano,
at least as far as polyphony is concerned.
Play it just like a piano. Fun!
Electric piano.
Oh yeah. Jupiters are known for sync sounds.
You control sync here. It forces VCO-2 to follow
the cycle of VCO-1. Turn it off and...
now the pitch is being LFO'd.
Turn the sync back on.
You can get some flashy sounds like that.
Nice!
Organ.
So, you can see there are a variety of sounds.
But there's one more point. The Patch button!
What exactly does that do, you ask?
Well, look over here. You've got your Key Mode section,
which allows you to do things like put one sound
in each of the Lower and Upper sections,
so you can use two different sounds at once.
And you can take those sounds and make a split,
with the voices split either 4-2 or 2-4,
so your splits are covered. Or,
you can put both sounds across the whole keyboard for a layer.
You can do that too. Take this one for instance.
The upper and lower sounds are active at the same time.
What about this one?
Ah, this one has only the lower sound active.
Ah, here's a split.
Ok now THIS sound here,
has both upper and lower sounds,
but the key mode is Unison AND Solo,
for a 12-VCO monophonic monster!
Ah, the lower sound is being arpeggiated.
Synths of this era had an auto-accompnay feature?
Not really. But this is nice!
I'm sure you see how fat this synth can be.
And the bell sounds...
really nice.
This is another split.
Let's speed it up a tad.
Very interesting! Jupiter-6!!!
Right? What can I say?
If you understand analog synthesis you'll be fine with it,
and it's got a variety of functions,
which I find phenomenal, especially when you
consider the age of the synth. Fantastic!
As a pure analog synth, the Jupiter-6
is an awesome source of DNA
for future Roland synthesizers.
I mean, wouldn't it be great if we were presented with
a whole new world of analog synths?
The Jupiter-6!
Translation & Captions by:
SWCreativeJapan.