Revisiting my Roland Boutique - 9 JP 08 Jupiter Synth tracks in an Ableton Live Jam

Published on Sep 8, 2019 Expanding Sound

"Roland announced their JU 06A this week, and from what I can tell it seems to be a fairly polarizing product, along with the entire Boutique line. A lot of people have strong opinions about the Boutiques. I got my JP-08 a few weeks after it came out, some 3 years ago. I have my gripes with the product but I've also had some fun with it. After reading some peoples reactions to the JU 06A I decided to revisit my JP 08 and give myself a fun little project with it. I wanted to make a jam using only the sounds from the JP 08. The drums are from a simple custom drum rack in Ableton, but all melodic instruments were performed using the JP 08s interface into my computer. There are 9 instances in total of the JP 08 on this track. I spent about 2 hours working on the melody, recording and giving it a quick mix. There are no individual instances of EQ on this track. The only effects I used were a little delay, reverb, and a filter on the end of the track, with a quick mastering preset from my Waves Abbey Road Mastering Plug in.

Pulling the JP 08 back out after being on the shelf for a while brings back my original sentiment. Its fun, a great idea, and captures the essence of the Jupiter. But the faders and pots are excruciatingly small. You have to be so fine with your movements otherwise you modulate way more than you intend to. The portability is nice but the keys are really useless if you want to do anything more than just fiddle around. I don't think the Boutiques are a complete swing and a miss, but rather a cool idea with some unfortunate flaws.

At the end of the day, it really just comes down to sound with any instrument. Nevermind the melodic structure of my little track if it's not your cup of tea. You tell me, how does the Roland JP 08 sound completely on its own?"