Here’s nearly four minutes of knob turning while playing an arpeggio on the MKS-80.
Unprocessed Evolving Arpeggio
Unprocessed Evolving Arpeggio
Reply
Tag Archives: Roland MKS-80
Unison 2 Mode
The Roland MKS-80 has several modes for dividing up it’s staggering 16 voltage controlled oscillators. One of the modes is called Unison 2. In this mode playing one note uses all 8 voices (2 oscillators per voice) for a loud punchy, and usually phased sound. Playing two notes together uses four voices per note. Playing three or four uses two voices, and five or more uses one. To illustrate this I played eight notes together, starting with just one note then adding higher notes at each quarter note. As the chord builds you can hear each note getting thinner as voices are being robbed from the first note played.
Unison 2 Mode
New Bass Patch
Today I have been programming and testing some new bass patches on the MKS-80. I’m not quite there yet, but here’s one that’s pretty close to what I’m after.
New Bass Patch
Computer Freak Out and Crash
Remember the old cliché in movies, tv shows, and skits where someone asks a robot some irrational or illogical question and the robot starts to freak out exclaiming, “does not compute! does not compute!”? Here’s the sound I imagine that makes programmed on the Roland MKS-80.
Computer Freak Out and Crash
Dreamy New Age Synth Harp
Having finally started using the Roland Super Jupiter MKS-80 for the last two Ostracon performances my next goal is to utilize hardware synths for the majority, if not for all, of the instrument sounds during these shows. I have another repair necessary on the MKS-80 to make it performance ready, but other than that I should be in business soon. In preparation I have started weeding out some of the sounds in the MKS-80 internal memory, replacing them with my own programmed patches. Here’s an example of a nice harp-like patch I came up with during my last session. I created the passage by routing MIDI to the MKS-80 from Ableton‘s arpeggiator.
Dreamy New Age Synth Harp