Classic Synths: Jupiter-8

Beyond the "How to's" of synthesis, I'm also trying to expand my knowledge of the history of synthesizers. So from time to time, I'm going to focus on a classic synthesizer.

Today is the Roland Jupiter-8.

In the late 70's and early 80's, the Oberheim and Prophet 5 were the main rock synthesizers. When the Jupiter-8 came out in 1981 it suddenly took over as the "must-have" synthesizer. Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Relax" made extensive use of the Jupiter-8



The Roland Jupiter-8 was an 8-voice analog polyphonic synthesizer (hence the "8" in the name) that came out in the Autumn of 1981 and was quickly adopted by many influential bands at the time. Some of its features included the ability to split the keyboard and assign two patches on the top and bottom of the keyboard or layer them on top of each other. It also had an arpeggiator that can be easily recognized on such classic songs as Duran Duran's "Hungry Like The Wolf" and Queen's "Radio Gaga."

According to Wikipedia the Jupiter 8 was used by the following bands, many of which are personal favorites:

• Duran Duran - "Hungry Like the Wolf"
  


• Michael Jackson - Thriller


• Depeche Mode


• Howard Jones - esp. Human's Lib
  


• No Doubt


• William Orbit


• Journey on different albums. It is shown in the "Separate Ways" music video.


• David Bowie


• Underworld


• Moby


• Queen - The Works (1984), A Kind of Magic (1986). Radio Gaga's recognizable bassline was created using the Jupiter-8's arpeggiator, and the solo on I Want to Break Free was performed on Jupiter-8 as well
  


• The Cars - Heartbeat City, Door To Door


• Roger Joseph Manning Jr.


• Devo - Oh, No! It's Devo


• Freur - "Doot Doot"
  


• Go West - "We Close Our Eyes"


• Rush - Signals, Grace Under Pressure Notably, the bass line for "Red Sector A"


• Tears for Fears - "Head over Heels" and "Shout" on Songs from the Big Chair


• Toto - on Toto IV Africa, Rosanna


• Simple Minds - New Gold Dream


• Blancmange


• Scritti Politti


• Prince

On the Jupiter 8 page at synthmuseum.com some other favorite bands are listed that used the Jupiter:

Damon Albarn of Blur, Alphaville, Cocteau Twins, Martin Cooper of OMD, Thomas Dolby, Jan Hammer, Paul Hardcastle, Human League, Brian Kehew and Roger Manning of The Moog Cookbook, Pet Shop Boys, Robert Smith of The Cure, Swing Out Sister, Talk Talk, Tangerine Dream, Ultravox, and Wang Chung.

Vintage synth lists a few others:

A Flock Of Seagulls, Heaven 17, Huey Lewis and the News, Yes, and Stevie Wonder.

There were only about 2000 Jupiter-8s made, so it is very hard to find these days, but Arturia has recreated the classic synth virtually with their Jupiter-8V:

http://www.arturia.com/evolution/en/products/jupiter-8v/intro.html

The reviews are a little mixed on whether it truly recaptures the original sound or not, and supposedly it's a huge power hog for the computer, but it's certainly much cheaper than tracking down an original vintage and still working model.

Book: How To Make A Noise

After getting a good introduction to Subtractive Synthesis with Welsh's Synthesizer Cookbook, I found another book that went in a little deeper into the subject of synthesis called "How To Make A Noise" by Simon Cann: http://noisesculpture.com/htman.html

This book goes in depth into subtractive synthesis as well as into other forms of synthesis such as FM synthesis, Additive synthesis, wave shaping, and more. I'm still working my way through it, but it's been fairly educational so far. One of the reasons I got this particular book was that it was pretty low-priced for all the information it seemed to contain. I got it for about $15 on Amazon. (An earlier, smaller version of the book can be found for free on the Internet.) The low price is actually a little bit misleading, though.

This book looks at programming using examples from six software synthesizers: Cameleon 5000 from Camel Audio, Rhino 2 from BigTick, Surge from Vember Audio, Vanguard from reFX, Wusikstation from Wusik dot com, and Z3TA+ from Cakewalk. This means to be able to fully understand and follow along with everything in the book you need the book, the six software synthesizers, and the specially made patches that go with the synthesizers to illustrate the concepts in the book. The author sells the patches separately for $10. The synthesizers range from $90 to $200 each.

So let's break this down:

Book: $15.00
Patches: $10.00
Cameleon 5000: $125
Rhino: $90
Surge: $150
Vanguard: $100
Wusikstation: $200
Z3TA+: $100

Total price: $790

Now to be fair, most of the synthesizers have demo versions available that can be used rather than having to buy the full product. However, you can see how it can feel a bit misleading to buy a book due to its relative cheapness and discover that to fully experience everything the book discusses, you've got to spend a lot more money.

I recently purchased the patches on-line (I'm not sure why they weren't included as a CD with the book) and have been gathering the synths to soon be able to properly follow along. Hopefully it will be worth the effort.

Classic Synths: Oberheim OB-X & SonicProjects OP-X

In my previous post, I talked about making the opening growl sound from Rush's "Tom Sawyer." In looking up information about how the sound was made, I learned that it specifically came from the Oberheim OB-X synthesizer.

Wikipedia article on the OB-X synthesizer.

Looking a bit more into this synthesizer, I learned that it and other Oberheim synths were used by quite a few classic rock bands, including Rush ("Tom Sawyer"), Queen (Who were vehemently against synthesizers until they started using this from the "Flash Gordon" soundtrack on), Van Halen ("Jump" and the prelude, "1984") and Styx ("Come Sail Away"), among others.

This classic synthesizer has been recreated in software form as the SonicProjects OP-X.

You can go to their site an hear many samples of the software synthesizer including many recreations of famous synth sounds.

Here's a quick Youtube video of someone playing around with the virtual synth:

Creating a Sound: Tom Sawyer

So I've been learning about how to make sounds. I've been listening to songs trying to pick apart the sounds in my mind and trying to figure out how I might recreate them on my synthesizers. I figured I'd start with one of the most famous synth sounds of all time, the opening growl sound at the beginning of Rush's "Tom Sawyer":


I had no idea how to make that noise despite all the different books and tutorials I'd seen so far. So I did some searching and found this page that talks about recreating the sound:
Tom Sawyer Growl Sound

There's quite a long discussion on what was used to make the original sound, and some discussion on how to re-create the sound. From there I made my first attempt to recreate the sound. It really sounded awful compared to the original sound.

TomSawyerTake1.mp3

I think I ended up passing the sound through both a high and low pass filter essentially removing most of the sound and getting nothing but the growling noise. I had to add a second sound to try to add the low E back into the sound.

After studying the write-up on the page again, I went back and started again. The page talked about modulating Oscillator 1 with Oscillator 2. I attempted that by using the R3's Cross Modulation feature.

TomSawyerTake2.mp3

This still ended up more of a hiss than a growl.

So I went back and looked some more. He talked about Rush using the Oberheim OB-X synthesizer. I found that there's a virtual version of the classic synthsizer here:
Sonic Projects OPX

I'll post more about that synth later, but using that plug-in I could see how they programmed that particular patch more carefully and attempt to recreate it on the R3. Here's the Tom Sawyer patch on the virtual Oberheim:

TomSawyerOPX.mp3


So once again I went back to start over. This time I tried to match the settings of the OP-X virtual synth with my R3 editor. The biggest difference this time was this time setting the patch to monophonic with 4 unison voices. The Oberheim has 6 which gives it a slightly more powerful sound, I believe. And then adding a slight LFO while holding out the sound.

TomSawyerTake3.mp3

It's still not completely right, but much closer to the original sound. It's amazing how just tweaking one or two little parameters can have a major effect on the sound which is why it's hard to get it completely accurate.

And just for fun, I tried to recreate it on my Korg DS-10 as well, this time just by ear.

TomSawyerDS.mp3

Yikes.