Roland Jupiter-8 real time sound design | How to make great pads

video upload by Espen Kraft

"Programming synths has been my life for over 35 years. I'm good at it and I always enjoy it.

Most of my sounds and patches are made so they will fit in nicely with other sounds in an arrangement. Not too thin or to thick in the frequency spectrum. Sounds must blend well with each other.

I have a set of chord structures and intervals I often play through to find the sweet spot of any sound I'm working on. This video shows how I work in the final stages of a patch. The release time of the envelopes, the filter, filter envelope and oscillator detuning. It all comes into play (literally) when finding that sweet spot and small adjustments can change a lot.

The ability to detune Osc 1 from Osc 2 (on synths that have two or more oscillators) is always tempting as the sound will fatten up, but it can easily turn a usable sound to unusable as it takes up too much space and with Roland synths and a saw waveform, it will turn the sound into a "supersaw" which in turn will make everything sound like "Trance", which is not good if you're doing 80s pop. Be very careful about detuning oscillators like that.

When I'm creating a sound or patch I have one rule I live by; Could I use this sound in my OWN music? If the answer is yes, then the sound is ready.

Find my music here:
Bandcamp: https://espenkraft.bandcamp.com/"