Roland Jupiter-4
The first Jupiter synth. It was among one of the first poly synthesizers (4 individual voices which could be synced together for one fat monophonic lead), it had a pitch wheel that could be assigned to the VCA, VCF, VCO or all together, there are 8 memory locations and a cool arpeggiator - the arpeggiator can be heard in the Duran Duran classic, "Rio". It also has a very slow LFO for those ever-so-long filter sweeps. Pretty good for 1978!
Not so cool however, are the 10 preset sounds which sound nothing like the piano, brass or strings they claim to be. The placement of all the preset buttons below the keyboard can be inconvenient, especially while playing it. And as with most old analog synths, the Jupiter-4's tuning can go out often. Still it is a nice analog synth for creating weird trippy analog sounds. It's used by Meat Beat Manifesto, Gary Numan, Thomas Dolby, Saint Etienne, the Cars, BT, Simple Minds, Moog Cookbook, Vangelis, The Human League, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Heaven 17, and film-maker Satyajit Ray.
- Demos & Media
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Video 1 - Roland Jupiter-4 Analog Synthesizer pt.1
Video 2 - Roland Jupiter-4 by SundaymanAudio Clip 1 - Some cool sounds & grooves (the drums and effects were added and are not created by the Jupiter).
Audio Clip 2 - A series of sample patches from the Future Music CD, issue 52.
Manual - Roland has made manuals for most of their products available as free PDF downloads.
- Specifications
- Polyphony - 4 voices
- Oscillators - 1 VCO per voice (triangle, square, square with PWM) and a switchable on\off sub osc
- LFO - 1 LFO (sine, square, ramp up and ramp down)
- Filter - HP filter, LP rez filter
- VCA - 2 env (ADSR) one for the filter which you can invert, one for the VCA
- Effects - Ensemble/Chorus
- Arpeg/Seq - Arpeggiator
- Keyboard - 49 keys
- Memory - None
- Control - TRIG IN to control the arpeggiator
- Date Produced - 1978/79
- Websites of Interest
DIY Roland Jupiter-4 CV/Gate Interface
- Resources & Credits
Images from Kevin Lightner's Synthfool and Tone Tweakers.
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it is no workhorse in the studio, as can easily dominate a mix and hence needs to be applied carefully. consider it gold dust, not potatoes.
pandoras box in terms of trippieness - the knobs and sliders cover big ground and seem to reach from "-1000 / +1000" whereas your standard synth covers "-250 / +250".
absolutely adore it. keeper.
it won't do a piano. but it will pull off an evolving, 10-minute lfo/vcf-sweep that might be entirely useless to some musicians, but pure, solid gold to others. wonderful instrument, just wonderful.