Getting DIY ads out of YouTube is all the rage these days, but when it comes to certain time-tested synth names, let’s just say the audience is a little different. You love the gear, you make music with the gear, you praise everything that’s brilliant and you’re unafraid of criticizing what’s not. We covered the Roland “How Do You JUNO” contest launch back in April with a look back at the JUNO line through the years. Check out comments for some frank, nostalgia-immune commentary from synth geeks about the high points and low points of the various models. And so, we wind up, oddly enough, with high-production-value ads for even vintage Rolands like this Alpha Juno 2. (Hmmmm… maybe Roland should have set up an eBay affiliate account).

If anyone doubted it, there’s no question: even in the age of computer soft synths, keyboards are beloved items. The video at top is — well, pretty crazy, as you can see for yourself. Check out the crew they put together to make it after the jump.

You still have time to submit your own video to the contest, JUNO owners, if you haven’t already. The entries end tonight, Tuesday, at midnight.

Roland How Do You JUNO Contest Page
YouTube video group with the competition

Voting starts tomorrow (Wednesday) on that same contest page.

If any CDM readers have submitted videos you want to point our way, we can help you rig the contest because we love you um, get the word out.

Disclosure: Roland has generously sponsored CDM for this contest. That allows us to keep the servers humming and to have the unique pleasure of shamelessly pimping discontinued Roland keyboards from the 1980s. (I still want to see what some of you are doing with the V-Synth, which is my favorite current Roland model, but that’ll have to be a separate contest.)

This is my entry to the “This is How I Juno” contest where I explain the many unique features of my Roland Alpha Juno-2.

Producer, Editor, Sound Designer/Editor, Co-Writer, Lead Actor: Henry Borchers
Director, VFX Supervisor, Co-Writer, Actor, Associate Fight Coordinator, Stunt Double: Erik Kjonaas

Extra Special thanks to Alex Champion and the rest of the crew.

Alex Champion: Boom Operator, Voice Actor, Grip

Alex Rott: Fight Coordinator, Stunt Double, Voice Actor, Grip, Sound FX Assistant:

Ben Mayer: Key Grip

Brett Schilke: Sound FX Assistant

Thanks for the helpful participation of Jonathan Fung

For more music by Henry Borchers, please check out www.myspace.com/henryborchers

Previously:
Roland Wants Videos of Junos New and Old; A Look Back at the Juno Line
Keyboard Geeking Day: Roland Answers JUNO Questions, plus 2.0 Sampling on JUNO-G

The Roland JUNO-G has attracted some interest from CDM readers since I mentioned Roland’s YouTube contest and talked a bit about the JUNO line’s history. (See previous story.)

One of you by the name of “made” even asked comments addressed “Dear Roland.” I had to admit I was curious about those answers, so Roland responded.

The JUNO-G feature a lot of readers wondered about was the onboard sampling functionality. That feature was beefed up in the OS 2.0. Personally, I’m still looking to keep my samples on the software side, but I can see this having some appeal for live performance. With 2.0, you can sample onboard, which could make the JUNO-G an interesting “live-PA”-style synth, a hardware unit with some sample savvy, and/or a way to supplement your laptop in gigs.

New 2.0 features as described by Roland:

• Sample audio from external sources or import audio phrases from the removable flash memory.
• Samples can be assigned to trigger from the JUNO-G’s function buttons or the JUNO-G’s keyboard.
• Velocity and note number can be assigned individually for each sample.
• Adjust Start, End and Loop points using the JUNO-G’s front panel control knobs.
• Advanced sampling editing such as Truncate, Normalize, Emphases, Sample Chop and Combine are included.
• Samples can automatically match BPM in real-time to changes made to the tempo of your song.

To download JUNO-G Version 2.0 software upgrade, please visit:
http://www.rolandus.com/products/productdetails.aspx?dsection=d_downloads&ObjectId=756

Now, onto the tips, which come from Roland’s Eric Klein.

Maintaining Sustain:

The Juno-G can maintain its sustain when changing patches, as long as Patch Remain is turned on (it’s off by default).
1. Press MENU, select System, and press ENTER.
2. Press F1 (GENERL).
3. Press F1 (Common).
4. Turn Patch Remain on and press F6 (WRITE).

Note that only the raw patch itself will transition smoothly; the effects engine will change to best compliment the new patch, and there will be a short glitch when this happens. The Fantom-G is the only keyboard on the planet with perfectly seamless patch–and–effects changes (and then only in Live mode). If you want perfectly seamless patch changes in the Juno-G, you must turn the effects off.

If the sustain is working backwards; that is, it sustains when not depressed but stops when pressed, this means its polarity is opposite that of the Juno-G. No worries–you can change that:

1. Press MENU, select System, and press ENTER.
2. Press F2 (KBD/CTRL).
3. Press F2 (PEDAL).
4. Turn Hold Pedal Polarity to Reverse and press F6 (WRITE). If the sustain isn’t working *at all*, it’s most likely an incompatible sustain pedal. We use the Roland DP-2, DP-8, and DP-10 here.

Ed.: I have both Roland and Yamaha pedals at home, and tried the Yamaha damper without any incident, just FYI. –PK

JUNO-G as Sampler:

The Juno’s G’s audio tracks have always utilized a powerful RAM-based sampling engine, and clever users noted that any audio file recorded into the keyboard could be manually assigned to a patch or rhythm set’s key(s) from the Pro Edit screen. Basically, it was hidden. With the new Juno-G OS 2.0, the sampling engine is right at your fingertips and any samples can easily be assigned to keys or to the buttons below the Juno-G’s screen. A fully-loaded Juno-G can store and play back up to 51 stereo or 102 mono minutes of samples and audio tracks. Samples can be manipulated with the Juno-G’s myriad synth parameters–filters, effects, envelopes, LFOs… There’s even realtime timestretch, so any sampled loops will automatically follow the song’s tempo, without changing pitch. It’s certainly a proper studio sampler.

"Can you trigger sequenced patterns from one part of a keyboard split while playing synth sounds on another?”

The Juno-G’s rhythm patterns can be triggered from the six buttons below the screen, and they can be either heavily modified or created from scratch via step sequencing. Layered/split performances can be played from the keyboard simultaneously.

If one really wants to trigger sequenced patterns from the keys, an entire song can be resampled as an audio file and be assigned to a key within a rhythm set. That rhythm set can be confined to, say, the bottom octave of the keyboard. The flexibility of the Juno-G is really remarkable.

Thanks for the answers, Eric.

If you think today’s “talk to the manufacturers” is in any way inspired by the fact that I’m busy at the OFFF conference in Portugal, you’re right. But it’s wound up leading to some interesting discussions, so I’m open to doing it again, with any makes or models you wish. (And we’ll be doing some open source/DIY Q&A soon, too, so this isn’t just limited to vendors. These are all tools we rely on, so I know they’re important.)

Roland is holding a YouTube video contest to get people to show off their JUNO keyboard synths. They’re not just talking the currently-available Roland keyboards that wear the JUNO badge, but the classic models going back to 1982.

"How Do You JUNO?" Video Contest [Roland US]

I like to disclose our partnerships upfront, so in the interest of disclosure: Roland US is currently promoting this campaign on CDM – thanks, Roland, for supporting the site. I can also tell you that personally, selfishly, I’d really love to see some great JUNO videos up on that YouTube channel, and that I suspect the take of some of you readers will be different. Also in the interest of really full disclosure – yeah, okay, I’m partial to the vintage JUNO. That’s my own personal bias. But I’m eager to see videos of whatever you’ve got. (Also, the JUNO-G is one of my favorite mainstream keyboards at the moment, for reasons I talk about below – it has the advantages of a workstation, like the ability to load custom waveforms and do onboard audio recording and sequencing, but without some of the bells and whistles a lot of us don’t want.)

Right now, there’s not a whole lot uploaded to the YouTube video. The contest just started, and you have until July 1. But I’d like to see some more from the CDM readers – especially after you successfully conquered Keyboard Magazine’s Depeche Mode identify-the-gear competition last month. Prizes this time include a new, loaded JUNO-Stage to the top three winners, plus two SRX expansion boards of your choice to the top winner. I can kick in a beer if I see you, plus international fame here on CDM if you do something great – and that extends beyond the US borders. (The contest itself is US-only as it’s run by Roland US.)

JUNO History

I think it’s worth reviewing the history of the JUNO line. What it’s meant to be a “JUNO” has changed pretty radically over the years; a JUNO-D and a JUNO-6 might not recognize each other. It reflects some of the changing tastes and technologies in the industry. Sometimes that represents forward progress — hooray, MIDI and patch memory! But sometimes something is lost. The analog original is something special, and even Roland wound up bringing back retro-styled front-panel editing, missing on the JUNO-D, to the JUNO-G and JUNO-STAGE. It’s not about nostalgia: it’s about making something musically productive. In some ways, that’s brought us full circle.

1982: JUNO-6, JUNO-60. The original JUNO was a six-voice polyphonic analog synth. The distinctive, punchy analog sound was so beloved, it even inspired a meticulous emulation on a dedicated Linux machine. It also introduced Roland’s friendly-looking panel layout approach with big, clear labels and a spacious setup – something to which Roland themselves have recently returned. The JUNO-60 added patch memory storage. No MIDI, although there Roland later produced add-on hardware for MIDI control.

1984: JUNO-106. The 106 has a special place in history, not only a favorite of the 80s but ever since – it’s got six analog voices as on the original JUNO, plus one digitally-controlled oscillator per voice, but adds MIDI control. It sounds great and it’s dead-simple to use. It’s also a nice choice if you’re looking to pick up an 80s keyboard as it’s a good value today as it was when released. In a world in which “vintage” often translates to elite and expensive, the JUNO-106 is one of the great populist keyboards of all time. Note that if you are looking to pick up a used 106, our friend James Grahame from Retro Thing notes tells me the voice chips are starting to die. Buyer beware: owning a used synth can be like owning a used car.

The Roland Jupiter, not the JUNO, went down in history as one of the two first synths to connect in public via MIDI – at winter NAMM, January 1983, connected to a Sequential Prophet-600. But the JUNO-106 was still one of the Roland products that helped popularize MIDI.

1986: Alpha JUNO 1. The Alphas are smaller, and eschew physical controls for LED and minimalist button selections – there was something about the mid-1980s that did that to synth design. But you can add on a PG-300 controller for additional controls, the Alphas are MIDI-friendly, and not hard to find these days. They maintained the distinctive JUNO sound and have been a favorite in the techno scene ever since.

Alpha JUNO 2. The Alpha 2 hits a nice sweet spot as a controller: aftertouch, 61-note keyboard. That could make it a decent choice on your keyboard rack even today.

The New JUNO Models

2005: JUNO-D. The JUNO-D is a budget wavetable synth, and as such, really the odd man out here. The connection to the original JUNO is presumably that it’s a friendly synth with some favorite sounds, and it does support a computer editor. There are also front-panel envelope controls. But it’s the more recent JUNO models that have brought back more of the original spirit of the JUNO. The JUNO-D has “JUNO” printed on it, but otherwise, while a solid entry-level keyboard, it lacks a lot of the features that make the other modern JUNO line appealing.

2007: JUNO-G. The JUNO-G is quite a lot more interesting if you’re interested in doing some real programming and live performance. It’s a workstation, though without some of the arranger features that are superfluous to many of us. You get the Fantom-X synth processor, but with easily-accessible front-panel editing controls and a layout inspired by the original JUNO. There are also some nice gigging features, like onboard audio/MIDI recording, 16-part MIDI sequencing, and a slot for flash memory. It’s also got additional controller features, like a D-Beam, plus USB connectivity. I reviewed the JUNO-G in summer 2007 for Keyboard Magazine. I was especially attracted to the ability to use your own waveforms as the basis of sounds, and to the front-panel editing and sequencing/recording features.

Version 2 of the JUNO-G recently added waveform editing.

2008: JUNO-STAGE. I quite liked that the JUNO-G is light, but the JUNO-STAGE gives you a 76-note, semi-weighted keyboard and additional performance controls. It gets rid of some of the sequencing and workstation features of the JUNO-G, but if you want to do all your sequencing on computer, that may not matter. The idea of the STAGE is really focused on live performance controls. Like the JUNO-G, it’s the soul of a Fantom-X in a different package, but that package is more narrowly-focused in a way that can appeal for live playing.

Modern JUNO Portal at Roland

JUNO Users, We’d Love to Hear From You

An informal poll reveals there are some JUNO owners – new and vintage – out there in CDMland. So I’m actually quite interested to hear what these results might be like. I’d love to hear your actual music and learn how you use these in the studio or live.

Hopefully in the future, we can extend this to other popular gear, as well.