Yellow Orange (Synth Jam) Roland XP80 with RPS

Published on Aug 25, 2019 bitleyTM

"I finally learned how to use the Roland XP80's built in RPS (Realtime Pattern Sequencer) functionality so here I am triggering four sequences on the fly; two drum patterns, two simple background synths, a baseline. Jamming on top of this with two pad sounds. RPS is actually a cool function which kind of brought an Ableton vibe to this "JV-1080 with keyboard" about four years before Live was released. Roland is a company making synthesizers — often adding an extra edge over the competition. (XP30, 50, 60, 80 and JV-1010, 1080, 2080 are similar & fully compatible instruments from about 1994-1998, later replaced by the Fantom series). The movie was edited with MovieMator Pro. Quite cool — but the rendering / processing took almost 20 hours so it was the slowest Mac application I ever tried."

JDXA Noodling Followup. Kawaily. Kayfourly. Digitally yours.

Published on Jun 28, 2019 bitleyTM

"Going back in time to the 1889 acoustic piano... here's forward a 100 years to the 1989... secret box of synthesis powers you never knew!"

SY77 & ATARI / landloord's kitchen door - desperate monoculture

Published on Jun 3, 2019 bitleyTM

"Lovely old gear almost gets more lovely when geared up with lovely old gear. So we connected the 1990 SY77 with the 1987 Atari 1040 ST and this is what becomes the first track of Landloord's Kitchen Door Aka Konrad & Helvetika reprazentin' Mölnbo Of Sweden."

Prophet 5 Ambience

Published on May 6, 2019 bitleyTM

Ensoniq EPS Tutorial & Inspiration

Published on Apr 11, 2019 bitleyTM

"Having fun with the mighty old EPS & the floppies from the past, telling the history about one of the groundbreakin' pricebreakin' samplers. Sequencer 'tutorial while having fun' kind of thing."

Akai S1000KB inspiration

Published on Apr 6, 2019 bitleyTM

"While the rack format was extremely popular for samplers back in the day, it must be said that having the keyboard version of the S-1000 instantly made it feel like a completely different instrument, hands on, easy to use and very fun to play. This particular S-1000 KB has been owned by the euro pop legend E-type and the diskdrive does currently not work. Therefore, I programmed three patches (that I can't save) which uses the four internal waveforms of the machine. Adding these was a brilliant move by Akai and I am sending my thanks for this. The patches were programmed as three programs with two samples per key group, thus making the programs 8 note polyphonic. The synthesizer engine may be limited (the filter is non resonant for instance) but it is none the less highly musical and exciting to befriend. I'm calling this improvised musical passage 'Akaiada'."

Roland JD-XA inspiration II

Published on Mar 25, 2019 bitleyTM

Note the video does not match the audio. Per below it was re-used from another. What you are hearing though is the JD-XA.

"The JD-XA is a wonderful synthesizer. I was allowed to borrow it from Roland in Sweden for a while but I truly want one.

Musical passage improvised around Stanley Myers' Cavatina, a piece of music I grew up with as my father often played it on classical guitar. My dad studied guitar for the late John W. Duarte in London.

Apologizes for the video material: the camera shoot from this recording hasn't been recovered so for now video material from the first https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3vgu... video has been recycled.

Hopefully though you were already closing your eyes, or did you keep them wide shut? ;)"

Oberheim Matrix 6 Multitrack

Published on Mar 25, 2019 bitleyTM

"The wonderful sounds of the Oberheim Matrix 6 synthesizer, here in one of my compositions from 2015"

Midi interface morning training

Published on May 19, 2016 bitleyTM

"It was time fetching up the larger rack from the basement once again. Of course a good opportunity to shoot a training video for y'all, enjoy."

A little synth humor to start the day. The weekend is almost here!

1985 - CZ-101 - bitleyTM's first synth

Published on May 11, 2016 bitleyTM

"This one was my first synth. Lots of love for it still to this day, MUST spend more time using it, completely stupid to leave it DUSTING! Here's a 1980's kid presenting... the Casio CZ-101!"

JV-1080 Noodling - "Don Solaris"

Published on May 10, 2016 bitleyTM

"Playing with an EPS 16+ sequencer pattern controlling 8 midi tracks in a JV-1080 using the new and pretty nifty Don Solaris soundset - link below - as well as a simple drumkit from the Roland Dance expansion JV card simply changing 'patterns' by transposing the part (regular part, not a drum part but there are kits also among the instrument patches on that card). Patches tried out here are for instance SH101 Lead, JV80 D.Bass, 24 db Bass, TransistBass, AcidLine, Prophet VS, ESQ1 sweeps, etc. The EPS / ASR sequencer is very easy to use and kind of cool. 'Create instrument' on the EPS and set midi channel, repeat until all 8 slots are loaded. Can also play sampler presets together with midi if you create layers, for instance.

Don Solaris 1080 soundset (also 2080, XP30/50/60 etc)
http://www.donsolaris.com/?page_id=865

For those of you new into this the 1080 and the EPS 16+ were two of the most popular synth instruments in the mid 90's... that's how old they are; they cost peanuts today but still deliver! Great bargains!"

Sounds of the Korg Lambda

Published on May 4, 2016 bitleyTM

"Our multi-sampled version of the Lambda is called Poly X3M, and we even upgraded this to 'Platinum' status by including some of the sounds from our other libraries to really make it FAT and inspiring. This is a Reason refill for Reason 7 and 8. More info: http://bitley.laconicsounds.net - thank you for watching!"

Roland JX10 Reason ReFill

Published on Apr 25, 2016 bitleyTM

"This is a demo track for the Orlando JX10 refill, featuring tape-treated samples from our own Roland JX10 patches. The refill is compatible with all Reason versions from 4 and up.

For more info please visit http://bitley.laconicsounds.net"

'The Prophet' for Reason

Published on Apr 25, 2016 bitleyTM

"Multi-sampled Prophet 5 soundbank for Propellerhead Reason 4 and up. Drums in the demo from our DaBeat refill. Both reintroduced now!

More info: http://bitley.laconicsounds.net"

Roland JP08: Modulated

Published on Jan 2, 2016 bitleyTM

"Live tweaks on the Roland JP-08 front panel: It's actually lovely to tweak after getting used to the pretty small footprint. Here, we modulated the JP-08 realtime by passing its signal through the Alpha Juno clone Rack Extension (Reason) "ReDominator". After that, we also modulated the ReDominator's Chorus rate and envelope settings with a Matrix Pattern Sequencer. So in all, it's like a giant polyphonic modular system running, using just three 'modules'. The JP-08 is a wonderful box!"

Multitracked Oberheim Matrix 6R

Published on Sep 8, 2015 bitleyTM

"I've just kept finding more and more interesting synthesizers, and here's my first Oberheim in over 20 years (I used to have the Matrix 1000) - enter the Matrix 6R. I always kind of missed the Oberheim sound and as you hopefully will agree, it sounds wonderful."

JDXA Yaz Noodling

Published on Sep 1, 2015 bitleyTM

"A little more JD-XA 'noodling' from me; this time I'd like to show you just 10 minutes worth of patch tweaking inspired by Yazoo's classic Walk Away From Love."

Roland JD-XAs on eBay

Was it a ghost passing?

Published on Aug 20, 2015 bitleyTM

"As I was jamming loosely around Stanley Myers' Cavatina (from The Deer Hunter), a mysterious shadow suddenly passed the camera lens. You can see it at about 2.44. I was all alone in my home, which is a rebuilt community center for elderly. But that's good, now the ghosts too know about Roland's new synthesizer, the JD-XA."

JD-XA Noodling 2

Published on Aug 20, 2015 bitleyTM

"We're entering the world of 'polysynthin' and I'm tweaking around a bit. As you can see it's very easy to mistakenly edit the wrong part, I guess it's a matter of getting used to it. I've not found the ultimate polysynth settings yet but I'm getting there... :)"

Part 1 here.

JD-XA Noodling 1

Published on Aug 13, 2015 bitleyTM

"Playing (with) a new patch I've completed for the new JD-XA, called 'MagicalSplit'. The patch contains three sequenced tracks; all made with the analog part; bass, 'click' and 'sub melody'. The lead synth is analog too. Truly amazing synthesizer."

JD-XA Noodling 2

Published on Aug 20, 2015 bitleyTM

"We're entering the world of 'polysynthin' and I'm tweaking around a bit. As you can see it's very easy to mistakenly edit the wrong part, I guess it's a matter of getting used to it. I've not found the ultimate polysynth settings yet but I'm getting there... :)"