Roland JV1080

The dancecrave studio - instruments used for music production

the studio -> roland jv1080

Provides bread and butter sounds for most of my tracks. Expanded with 3 expansions cards, there are plenty of sounds to choose from.

The appearance of the Super JV mainly interested me because of it's massive 64 note polyphony. The typical at that time was 16 to 32 - a limiting figure for many. I had decided that whatever I bought next it was to have good filters, resonant and fully programmable etc. I also really wanted a Roland because they are really, well cool. JX, Juno Alpha Juno, JD, TR, you name it , Roland kit is cool. It took about 10 seconds to decide on the JV and then another 6 weeks finding one!

Roland JV-1080

The JV1080 has to be one of the classic modern bits of dance kit these days (and well used too), offering access to a huge selection of sounds / patches thanks the expansion slots (the 1080 has 4) containing 8 Meg of sample ROM. The modules are available in different flavours for many different styles of music such as D+B, Techno, orchestra and so on. The best part about the module is you get a lovely gold sticker with each one which says " E X P A N D E D"!!

Roland have introduced the JV 2080 which can hold 8 expansion modules, has better FX and a larger display - a great improvement, as I have almost run out of space in my JV! They also have slots for the new SRX series cards which have 4 times as much memory and generally seem to have very realistic multisamples in them.

You can now pick up a 1080 and maybe a 2080 fairly cheap second hand and there are some good shop deals around as more modern machines come out all the time.

The SR-JV expansion cards have come down in price a lot now and I have seen them around for £169 each making them even more desirable. I now use the Techno, Hip-Hop and House cards which seem to complement each other very well.

	Picture of an expansion card about to be added.
	Installing the card...
	Cards Installed.


Roland JV-1080		Roland JV-2080

Sounds of note

There are so many sounds / patches I still adore on the JV this is going to be hard, but I'm going to be ruthless - only the most favorite of my favourites and an equal number from the internal presets and Techno expansion card.

JV Sounds of Special Note
Preset	Sound Name	Comments
A:061	Church Pipes	A good church organ. Layered with the 01 sounds great!
B:057	Velo Techno	Lovely, dynamic pulsing sound to add movement to a song
B:68	X-Mod Man	Weird. But still good, clean family fun.
C:053	E-Motion pad	Sexy moving pad and nicely controllable.
C:099	Flying Waltz	I heard this sound and it helped inspire a whole tune.
C:121	Ocean floor	Saves getting some expensive AKG mics wet I suppose
GM:098	Soundtrack	I guess I have to include one GM sound!!
XPA:033	Brain Waves	Wow. Totally spaced patch. Hold a chord and change the controllers slowly - an almost randomly changing sound.
XPA:129	Euforia	Familiar sampled string pad sound but usable.
XPA:133	Mystic Pad	A lovely variation on the tinkly pad theme.
XPA:149	Liquid Sky	This sound is BIG. It builds up and blows your mixer inputs. Wonderful.
XPA:196	Arpege me	Do as it says. Very usable, alter mod, breath and aftertouch in real time.
XPA:210	FazzyCow 808	Great lead sound based on the 808 cow bell. I am sure it has a use.

Please note the XPA patches above all address the Techno collection expansion card so you obviously need one installed to hear the sound.

Experiences

There is no doubt that the JV is my most used bit of kit and the sounds on it help greatly with inspiration at the moment. The unit has 3 sets of stereo outputs so use of outboard effects is easy and it is possible to set up special outputs for, say drums and bass to bring out onto the desk. The configuration I mostly use, out of interest is the first pair (L,R) to dry mix and second pair (3,4) to wet mix via the Alesis MVerb 4 .

I do find the JV a little difficult to program, maybe because of the small screen (though Roland did get the best out of it) or maybe because it's got many parameters. Although there are well thought out short cuts for frequent operations I never end up using them and I always seem to have to press the 'parameter' button once more!

There is at least one editor for the JV which promises to make editing much easier; SuperJV but I have never really got round to try that as yet...

System Exclusive problems

One problem I experienced in early days was when dealing with system exclusive dumps that at times the whole unit would freeze when sending program data, thus requiring a restart. It worked second time. I never really got the the bottom of this problem. Has anybody else experienced this?

Another irritation with system exclusive was that the Atari could never take a system dump without freezing, and the Midi Translator PC had similar problems if compatibility was set on! I get the feeling the JV is particularly heavy with MIDI when sending this type of data.

In all

I don't think I will change to a JV2080 but am getting a serious craving for a 5080 now, not least because I am about to fill all the EXP slots in my 1080 :)

If you are on a budget, it is probably better to get a 2080 or a 3080 if possible. As far as Roland kit goes I want a Jupiter 8 with MIDI, I was lucky enough to spend a little time with one and fell in love! Maybe it's just vintage gear in general though...