Ah yes the Roland Jupiter-6. It looks like techno. It sounds like techno. It’s also pretty good at other stuff too, like strings. That’s what this Decent Sampler instrument and sample library is leaning into.

Specifically, the Jupiter-6 can make some gorgeous synth string sounds when you engage unison mode. Up to 12 VCOs all beating against each other adds a nice bit of chaos that imparts a certain realism you don’t get when unison is off.

The problem with unison mode on the JP-6 (and others), is that unison mode kind of sucks for playing polyphonically. It works, and the JP-6 does its best, but falls short when it comes to triggering notes without killing the natural release. It’s just the nature of how unison mode works with the limited resources of an analog synthesizer from 1983.

A sampler does a nice job of getting around these limitations. I’ve been meaning to learn how to make patches for Decent Sampler, so here we are with a sample based instrument of fully articulated Jupiter-6 Unison Mode strings! Each note has 4 round-robin layers to keep things sounding lively, and each of those has a long, imperceptible loop. Hold those chords and see for yourself – notes swirl around each other in a lively way that isn’t what one would usually associate with a sample based instrument.

This is in no way meant to be an emulation of a Jupiter-6…it’s more “what if Roland took one last crack at the string machine market, using the technology from the Jupiter-6?”. So with that in mind, there are some basic synthesis options and a variety of sounds to be made, but if you’re coming here looking for basses and weirdo JP-6 fx, you won’t find any here this time. This is mostly a string/pad machine.

Enjoy! There’s more to come…

Contributors

unicity

Sampling, UI design, programming, obsessing