My new synthesizer (Roland JD-XI)

[Pakz]

It has been many years that I last bought a synthesizer. I did sometimes look around for something interesting but never really decided to buy anything. This time however I found a small synthesizer with pretty descent specs and not to expensive. I watched hours of video's of various synths and grooveboxes and the Roland seemed the best for me.

The Roland JD-XI is a crossover synthesizer. It is a analog and digital synth in one. Only a 4 track sequencer but it has a sequencer, and my first one. The sounds are pretty good and there are quite a lot of knobs to twist to tweak the sounds. It is only around 60cm's wide so I can have it on the lap.

The music that can be made with it is said to be ranging from the 70's to right around now. I have been learning how to use it this week and have been able to create a whole set of music patterns. There is no song mode so you need to press buttons while recording anything longer than the longest pattern length.

I bought a number of daws and instrument module's for the ipad but never been able to get hooked on it. Somehow I can not seem to find it fun enough. With the JD-XI I find it a lot more fun so far. Twisting knobs to get the right sound and entering notes using a piano style keyboard is a lot easier than pressing a screen.

Here are a number of Medleys I made already. They are game music(remix) inspired.

If this synth gets me back into composing then I might be tempted into buying a more proffesional synth. There is a lot of interesting gear out there.

[Matty]

Love the music...listening to it all now...did you make all that?

[Pakz]

Yeah I entered every note myself. Either with the piano keys or the sequence pads. The instruments are the presets and most of them are tweaked with the various effect knobs. There are a number of tracks that are based on existing songs. The Settlers/Paperboy/Arabian Nights/Ghostbusters(c64) and a song on a alcatraz odessey tune(the planets travel section I think it was)

I have been writing music since I found a music program called NoiseTracker on the Amiga Never got anywhere with writing music though.

[Matty]

I like it very much. 

[Pakz]

Thanks!

The sysnthesyzer has a great build in set of instruments and effects!

[Derron]

> I have been writing music since I found a music program called NoiseTracker on the Amiga Never got anywhere with writing music though.

I am more interested in your own creations rather than rearrangements or "played on my own" existing tracks of other artists. Not to talk about copyright (infringements).


bye
Ron

[Pakz]

@derron

I am not that familiar with infringements and remixing/remaking/influenced by or based somewhat on other works. I do sometimes use parts of old tunes for works like on sites like Amiga Remix. (https://www.amigaremix.com/) I quite like the music there and on their other site for c64 music.

I know there are sites and apps to check melodies and parts of music if it has been used before and is copyrighted(Not sure if game music is here) I do not use these services. But if I make something that needs to be original then I do not try to copy other people's work.

I know that on youtube that the original artists(copyright holder) can add a mode on any youtube video with their work on it so they get the advertisement money. I have a old demo song by elmobo on my youtube channel that I uploaded and this has this mode that gets the view money to him. I was kind of suprised that this happened but he does sell his old music.

I recently read about kraftwerks hit based on music from the c64 game bagitman. And I read that even the c64 composer then based that work on other people's work.

I have never gotten into trouble for re-using a melody(yet )

[Derron]

Jus be aware that you might run into trouble ... emphasize on "might".

In Germany we had a "Kraftwerk" court decision:
http://www.dw.com/en/opinion-two-seconds-of-kraftwerk-beat-and-a-verdict-for-artistic-freedom/a-19295379

It was about a 2 second sample of a Kraftwerk song used in another song.


The more songs get created the lower the chances to find a unique and unused melody - this is the matter of harmony and a limited set of "variations".


bye
Ron

[Pakz]

If I ever start making money with music I wil be a lot more careful and serious with what I make. There are so many people remixing and I never read or see about problems. I think you need a few hundred thousand views in a couple of weeks time before you can actually earn money with youtube and you need to request a contract. Artificial detection wil also get a lot better in the future. I think in the future even musical instruments and home computers wil warn you if you have something created that is protected. And when that happens I think people wil really not want to be very limited in what they can do so laws wil probably change also.(fair use)

I re-created a couple of (midi) amiga songs just in the beginning of the 2000's for vgmusic.com and someone took these songs(and others) and rendered these with different instruments and put these for sale on spotify and itunes etc. I actually bought one of these and discovered these songs on them. I was never contacted and I bet the original copyright holders were not contacted either. I think game music really is not that protected and enforced.

I sometimes wonder that if someone generates trillions of midi files, would he/she then get the copyright for these? Is that some kind of copyright trolling? I know it is easy to program. You just start adding up binary until a certain size.

[Pakz]

I got thinking on the amount of music possible and the limits. I found this page (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/albertos-music-pattern-generator-alberto-dealmar) that mentions that the generator there for music patterns takes 194 trillion universe lifetimes to hear all. A universe lifetime being 13 billion years.

[Derron]

Not all "patterns" will sound harmonic/nice. All these "strange" or "noise" arrangements should be skipped - and the amount of possibiities will be truncated by a big big bit.

This why many songs sound "familar" or "heard it already somewhere somewhen".


Aside of that: you created some cool stuff - especially for me not having tracked/done a single music track.


bye
Ron

[peteswansen]

Great songs- great sounding synth!   I have a Juno-106, Korg Poly-800, Waldorf Blofeld, and recently I have bought the Roland "Boutique" JU-06,JP-8,SH-101 and just recently the TRS-8. The Boutique series are faithful sounding remakes of Roland classic synths-  (Also use Propellerhead Reason for computer based music making.)