SHOWCASE: Roland JV880 Synthesizer Module

I have always had a keen interest in making music, I started when I was about 12 on a neat little freeware program called LMMS (I will be doing a tutorial on how to use that very very soon!) which is a software music sequencer. I was bought my first keyboard at the age of 8, a casio, and played it almost every single day. I progressed on to buying a CME UF50 MIDI controller keyboard to play directly into LMMS before purchasing FL Studio and using that to make some slightly better sounding beats. A few more years down the line I bought a Roland Juno Di synthesizer, but sold it after a year as it wasn't really my cup of tea. After taking a year or so out of music, walking home from school passing Cash Generator I saw out of the corner of my eye a synthesizer sat on display and I purchased it in a heartbeat. I give to you ladies and gentlemen, the Roland JV880 Multi Timbral Synthesizer Module!

The machine is 22 years of age and in remarkable condition! It's in a 19 inch 1U form factor, so it's a rather compact machine. The device has no build in means of playing it, this is done by hooking it up to an outboard MIDI keyboard via the MIDI input on the rear of the device. 

Lets take a look at what the front of the device has to offer:

At the very top we see the machines name obviously. Below that is the headphone output so you can play in complete silence and a multifunction volume control. Obviously rotating this alters the volume but pushing the knob allows you to quickly preview the selected sound. On the very right we see an LCD display which is a 2 line 23 character LCD display. 

After the display is where the buttons are at. Top right and working across we have: Data rotary encoder which allows you to alter the parameters of any options displayed on the screen, this is mainly used for selecting which sound you are using, it also doubles up as a button. The patch/perform button, this sets the device up for 8 part midi playback through a midi in allowing you to select up to 8 sounds across the 8 midi channels, patch mode allows you to play single sounds. Edit button allows you to change many parameters of the sound you are playing including envelopes and LFO settings. System button enters into the system set up menu to change keyboard tuning etc. Rhythm allows you to set up the drum kit, which sound is triggered on which key. Utility houses functions like loading from SR-JV80 cards and PCM/Data cards. Below we have the cursor buttons which changes the option on screen, there may be several alterable parameters on the screen which you scroll through using the cursor buttons. Tone select, I still have not worked out the usefulness of this button, the manual is huge! The tone switches also double up when in the perform mode to mute, monitor and info, but when in patch mode they allow you to turn off the different timbres of the sound, up to 4 oscillators per sound. 

At the very far right of the machine there are 2 card slots, one for PCM cards and one for data cards. PCM cards hold sounds or 'samples' that can be played back, the corresponding data slot tells the synthesizer how these sounds are to be set up for playback, therefor you must have both the PCM and Data card in the machine to make use of this function. There is a nice chunky power switch and a small light that tells you when there is MIDI activity being sent to and from the machine. 

Around the rear of the machine we have the power cord, which unfortunately is not a kettle lead and is fixed.

The unit is 240 volt AC at 20W, and is produced in Japan!

There are 3 MIDI ports on this device, an input for sending data to the machine, an output for machine to send data from the machine and a thru to allow daisy chaining of devices. 

There are 4 outputs on the device for audio, both boiling down to 2 balanced outputs (main and sub). Each output can however be used as a mono output. 

The sound quality of the device is amazing although the built in patches are in some places a bit miserable there are many classic sounding rich sounds. This device came with a pre-installed SR-JV80-04 card, which is to my liking as it is a classic synth expansion board which has many sounds from older synths on it, really making this a wonderful vintage-ish digital synthesizer. Editing patches on the machine is a bit of a pain due to the small display but with practice can be done fairly quickly.

Thanks for reading

Joseph Wright -SCOTECH