When I first decided to start introducing more hardware to my setup, one of the main problems I encountered was the lack of resources online that really showed you how each synth worked, what the interface was like and what it sounded like. There are lots of places that list specs and give subjective reviews, a few places that will cycle through some presets and call it a demo, but nobody was really demonstrating what it was like to really work with a specific synth. So here's my attempt at demonstrating what it's like to program patches on the Roland JX-3P.
I think this is a great polysynth for getting simple, raw sounds with lots of subtlety and character. It's not the most feature-laden poly out there...in comparison to some it's downright remedial in that respect, but within its limitations there are a lot of possibilities and to be honest, it's pretty hard to make a bad sound with this baby. The filter on this thing is really nice - just moving it a fraction begins to change the sound in very interesting ways. While the resonance isn't as pronounced as some might like, you can pretty easily open the machine up and retune the filter to pump a bit more juice out of it, which I may end up doing some day to push it into self-oscillation territory, but for now I'm happy with its output.
If you're interested in hearing a little more of the 3p's sound, I ran this simple sequence through a bit of delay and very subtly nudged the filter cutoff up every few bars. You can really get a feel for how much the sound is changed by these minor tweaks, especially if you listen on headphones.
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