Roland JP-8000 - trancy signature sound of the 90ies

video upload by synthlegends

"The Roland JP-8000 came out 1997 as the first VA-Synth of Roland. It had the very famous super saw waveform on board, a saw consisting of 8 saw waves slightly detuned, which is adjustable with a fader in live performance. It also had a very distinctive digital delay and chorus plus equalizer, which gave the synth its typical signature sound. The JP-8000 was the style maker für trance music. Still today it is very sought after and Behringer just made a small clone named JT-4000 for only EUR 49,--.

The JP-8000 doesn't sound like an analog synth at all. The resonance of the filter sounds very cold, there is a lot of aliasing, the tone can sound quite harsh and industrial, nevertheless with the super saw and a lot of internal delay you get very powerful pads and dreamy textures out of it. This synth is difficult to compare with others. Maybe a bit with the VA engine of the V-Synth, although I find the V-Synth in this respect inferiour.

In this video I start with some own created split sounds I used in my last band, it is followed by some solo sounds and arpeggiated lines. It ends with some trancy pad sounds.

The effects are great on the JP-8000, nevertheless I used only very little of reverb of the GFI Sepcualar reverb. Beside this, there is no additional processing.

Enjoy the video and have fun!"