Roland Juno-DS - nice to see it get promoted!

Introduction

It's the turn of the Roland Juno DS today, a keyboard that started out in the lower leagues of the Stick Up Boys Toys, but has recently had a good run and is now taking centre stage on our, well, stage.

https://www.roland.com/global/products/juno-ds/

Originally, this keyboard was relegated to basic MIDI keyboard responsibilities, triggering other more fancy sounds from our DAW or other sound making boxes. It was also their for it's instant sounds for when one of the Mini SUBs came into the studio as it is not as complicated as some of our other synths. However, it slowly started showing us it's personality, and is now a star performer in our live set-up, as you can see in our Hive Open Mic videos (@hiveopenmic). It's a classic Stick Up Boys rags-to-riches tale!

The layout of the keyboard is great - everything is right to hand, and going from an organ sound to a synth sound is just one button push away. The sounds themselves are solid and run the full gamut of pianos, organs, synths, orchestras, drums, voices, pads, and anything else you could want (accordion anyone?). You can layer two sounds onto of one another, or have a keyboard split for some bass/lead jazziness. The four knobs on the top left have three functions each, selectable by a button nearby, and they default to useful functions such as filter cut-off and resonance, reverb and delay level, and user-selectable functions.

It also has the option of playing back samples from a USB stick which I have briefly explored; just plug in your USB stick, select a sample, and load it into an empty slot. The sample editing options are limited however, and there is no waveform display, so it is only really useful for one-shots. Although we did play around with it for the CTT jingles we did recently on Hive.

There are a multitude of drum patterns in all the usual Roland styles, and these can be triggered from the big number buttons on the top right. Unfortunately, the keyboard doesn't respond to MIDI start/stop messages, although it does sync to MIDI clock, so you can't use these as part of a bigger live set-up.

All-in-all, this keyboard has been a real slow-burner. I am a big fan of equipment that grows and develops with the user, and the Roland Juno-DS has done just that.

If you have a great piece of music equipment you think we should have a look at then leave a link in the comments!

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