Roland Jupiter-6 "We Design The Future" brochure, April 1983

Roland Jupiter-6 "We Design The Future" four page colour brochure from April, 1983.

Yeaaah... I got a bit of a buzz going for Roland at the moment. As much as I'm a diehard analog gearhead, I really am digging their new AIRA products. Normally I would knee-jerk to anything new that is supposed to resemble the old, but after my knee-jerk to the Korg MS-20mini, I decided to take a wait-and-see approach. And I'm glad I did.

I've even proclaimed on Twitter that I'm going to retire my TB-303 and TR-808. Not sell... just retire. I'll still pull them out every now and then to play with, but for recording and live shows I'm going to be using the TB-3 and TR-8 from now on. I've done a few simple YouTube tests (more on that a bit later in the blog post) and I figure if they can get the TR and TB done correctly, why stop there. I'd love to retire my lovely Jupiter-6 too  :)

And thus the reason for posting this Jupiter-6 brochure. I love that thing.

I've blogged about a number of Roland's other "We Design The Future" series of brochures including:

• the SH-101 brochure
• the MSQ 700 brochure
• the MSQ-100 brochure
• the TR-909 brochure
• and, of course, the classic "Rhythm Machines" TR-808/TR-606/TB-303/CR-8000/CR-5000

None of those brochures disappoint, and neither does this Jupiter-6 brochure. Except for the hole punches, but that's not Roland's (or my own!) fault. People have to stop hole punching these things.

Those inside pages are especially nice - a great big photo of the Jupiter 6 and a nice diagram of the back panel too. But really intrigues me is that purplish call out box on the left side that has the rectangles and cones sitting on something that resembles the slat wall that holds up all my keyboards in my studio. Why isn't THAT the image on the front cover? That would be more aligned with the other more creative front covers of the other brochures.

That back page is also great. The specs are always nice to see clearly laid out, but its the images of the other synths currently available from Roland that I find useful as a way of knowing exactly what gear Roland was still officially selling as of April 1983 when the brochure was printed. Helps with those reference timelines.

Anyways, enough about the brochure. It's awesome. We all know it.

And as you might have guessed, I find Roland's new AIRA gear just as awesome. I mentioned near the beginning of this blog post that the first thing I did when I got my Roland AIRA TB-3 and TR-8 was turn them on and set them up side-by-side with the originals for a little simple testing. Nothing as detailed as you'll find elsewhere online. Just something to give me an idea.

Now, if you recall from my last blog post on the Big Briar Touch Ribbon Controller, I had been side-tracked from creating my first Retro Synth Ads video. But I'd done all the leg work to figure out how exactly I was going to set up the camera, get audio from the mixer into the mic jack of the camera, etc... . So, I decided to finally get my first video up and running last Thursday evening with that test.

For my first YouTube video, I think it turned out okay!

Next up was a little test of the TB-303 against a few of the different clones I have - the XOXBOX, the TB-3 and the TT-303. I programmed the same pattern into all of them and turned on the video camera.

In my opinion, all of them do an okay impression. The TB-3 is a little more bassy, and the TT-303 tends to loose the growl during long slides. But both of those may be user-error. Remember, there were just simple tests after very little time with the machines. Overall, with effects added in, very few people would know the difference.

The thing I love about the TB-3 is that it goes above and beyond the classic "303" sound. So, I took out both of them (yes, I bought two - don't judge me) and decided to try and push them outside there normal 303 comfort zone.  I uploaded that final video on Friday night.

Accompanied by the TR-8 as well as my MC-202 for a bit of vintage flavour, I just created a few small riffs and started the recorder. Not too shabby for 10 minutes of work.

All in all - I'm digging the AIRA line and the technology behind them. And for the record, Roland isn't paying me to say that.

Roland "Enter the world of MIDI" three-page fold-out, Keyboard 1984

                                         

Roland "Enter the world of MIDI" three-page fold-out featuring the TR909 drum machine, Jupiter-6, Juno-106, and JX-3P synthesizers, MSQ-700 sequencer, MD-8 MIDI/DCB interface, MPU-101 computer interface, MM-4 MIDI through box, and GR-700 guitar synthesizer, attached between pages 18 and 19 in the July 1984 issue of Keyboard Magazine.

1984 was a good year. Two words - Sixteen Candles.

Another reason is that Roland officially announced it *hearts* MIDI with this promotion fold-out piece.

Really what else is there to say?

Okay - a lot actually.  :)

What a nice surprise to open up the July 1984 issue of Keyboard and find this tucked nicely between pages 18 and 19. Its a pull-out, but stuck so tightly in there that its more of a fold-out. So that's what I called it. Sure, Roland had a few ads before this featuring MIDI gear, but I think this really was Roland's defining moment - proprietary DCB is out and the MIDI standard is definitely in. So long, suckas!

I hope the scan makes sense. Basically, when you flipped to page 18, rather than viewing page 19 on the  opposite page, you would be presented with that first lovely front page with the inviting welcome message "Enter the World of MIDI". Flip the page and you really do enter that strange new world, greeted with  two and a half pages of inner-promo-goodness. Then, if you flipped that over, you could view the back-side page and a half fold-out.

This is Roland announcing to the world that it has embraced MIDI. And indeed it has. Just look at that list of gear Roland has pumped out since MIDI was introduced to the word - TR-909, Juno-106, Jupiter-6, JX-3P, MSQ-700, MD-8, GR-700, MM-4 and MPU-101. And, lets not forget a few walk-on appearances by none other than the grand-daddy of 'em all - the Jupiter-8, but also a Juno-60 and even an Apple II computer (and PC - both using special Roland software).

And if putting all that gear together in one place isn't enough, Roland tied it all together with a gorgeous bow by including an infographic - before the word "infographic" even existed.

Just look at the design. Gorgeous black background with a pre-Photoshop neon glow. It's so soothing. I want to just bathe in the glowing light.

And best of all - Roland includes not one, but two diagrams. I loooooove diagrams. The first includes imagery of each group of instruments, and the second is more of a classic diagram illustrating Roland gear used in a basic set-up, multi-keyboard set-up, guitar set-up and home computer set-up.

To make it easy on us readers, Roland colour-coded everything and included a legend on page three under the heading "Choose your weapon!".

• MIDI keyboard - blue
• MIDI guitars - purple
• MIDI drums - green
• MIDI computers - orange
• MIDI keyboard interfaces - red

 Another nice touch.

 Roland - it doesn't get much better than this.

Roland family of products, Keyboard 1983

Roland family of products advertisement including SH-101, JX-3P/PG-200, System-100M, MC-4/MTR-100, Jupiter-8, Juno-6/60, Jupiter-6 and MC-202 from page 14 and 15 of Keyboard Magazine July 1983.

Finally!

The Roland 'We Design The Future' tag-line had been showing up in Roland's brochures for months now, but up to this point, their advertisements were still mostly designed around it's 'Understanding Technology Series' ads like those created for the TB-303/TR-606 or Jupiter-8. Black backgrounds, strong colours, and lots of text. Their recent Juno-6 and Juno-60 ads started to mutate away from that design, but I'd still be inclined to classify them as such.

"What?" you say? Where is the tag-line? You can see it at the bottom of the ad in the purple-coloured bar. Yes, it's small. Really small. Almost an afterthought. And unfortunately, I think this is the last advertisement to use the tag-line.

Roland decided to pull in a few other common design elements found in those brochures by using a textured background and an accent piece (in this case a tile pattern background and spheres), but I have to say I miss the brochure's slick photo with mood-lighting. A really nice family photo done in that style would have looked sweeeeeet! Instead, it looks like Roland decided to comp together an image using a few effects that I would guess got onto the wish-list for Photoshop 1.0.

This advertisement was a first for Roland in one other important way too. They mention MIDI!

And so we get to the whole point of this ad. As mentioned in a recent brochure blog post for the TB-303, TR-808, TR-606 and CR-8000/5000, Roland had been pumping out A LOT of DIN-sync technology for a while now. They had a lot invested in it. And then along comes MIDI, and Roland has to convince current owners of Roland gear that the gear they just bought is not going to be obsolete in a year. And more importantly, they have to convince future owners that they are looking out for their future as well.

The ad title text handles this perfectly.

"Roland presents its product line for 1987. The nice thing is, it's available today!"

Interestingly, they make no mention of MIDI in that title or in the opening paragraph. Its not until the reader gets to the JX-3P text that MIDI is mentioned - and a definition is included next to it - "a new system of interface developed for computer-controlled instruments".

A year from now, and ALL synthesizer ads will feature the word MIDI heavily in either the title or ad-copy. I pulled out the July 1984 issue of Keyboard just in case someone called me out on that statement, and sure enough, MIDI has pretty much taken over. Heck, Roland's own ad title in the July 1984 issue was "Enter the world of MIDI".

But jump back to July 1983, when MIDI is just getting it's feet wet, and Roland is smart to stay firmly on the fence for now. By promoting both their own protocols as well as MIDI, they let readers know that no matter when they buy from Roland, the gear will be compatible one way or another.

And it wasn't just Roland that was playing the waiting game. Many companies either hadn't included MIDI in their gear yet, or if they had, they didn't say too much about it in their ads. The July 1983 ad for Garfield Electronic's Doctor Click (the godfather of sync) didn't include MIDI yet. Neither did Octave-plateau Electronic Inc.'s Voyetra-8 ad.

There was one exception... :o)

The ad for Sequential Circuit Inc.'s Prophet-600, the first commercially available MIDI synthesizer. Their ad has a large call-out box extolling the virtues of MIDI. And no wonder - SCI was heavily involved in MIDI's development. Nice!

I'll post that ad in the near future.

End note: This has always bugged me. Why did Roland pick 1987 as the 'future'? There is a design rule-of-thumb that says never to use even numbers. So maybe the thinking was that '84, '86, '88 would be out of the question. '85 is probably too close. And '89 is too close to '90.

Hmmmm... still bugging me.