Summary

In this article Julian considers the value of quality over quantity, all triggered by his response to some gear which, on paper, outperformed his alternative choice.

Going Deeper

I recently borrowed a keyboard from a friend. The result of a conversation about the shortcomings that I have increasingly found to be frustrating about my Nord Electro. I've written quite a lot about this instrument as I do think it's rather special. However, although at the time I understood its limitations, those limitations have become more restrictive than I anticipated when I chose it. I wrote about this in my recent article My Fantasy Audio Christmas Present - Nord Stage 4.

The lack of proper synthesiser facilities have left me with something of a gap in what I'd like to do with this instrument, and in my Fantasy Audio Christmas Present article I also mentioned how comparatively unusual an arpeggiator with tap tempo is. During this conversation with my friend, it emerged that he had a Roland Jupiter, 50 which features plenty of synthesis features and a tap tempo arpeggiator. I was curious, so I arranged to borrow it for a few days.

On paper, it looked as if this instrument could potentially replace my Nord. It features the pianos, electric pianos and organs which are the stock in trade of the Nord Electro. However, it is principally a stage synthesiser with the features my Nord misses out: A readily accessible filter, three-way keyboard splits and more voices and multitimbrality. Six simultaneous tones as opposed to the Nord’s three. The ability to stack sounds for bigger, more impressive patches is a key selling point of this keyboard.

I should offer some context here. The Jupiter 50 is the cut down version of the Jupiter 80 and both are legacy products released over 10 years ago and superseded by the Jupiter X model. At the time these models were judged by many relative to their similarity to the iconic Jupiter 8 (they aren’t very similar) and this distracted from the merits of these instruments at the time. A decade is a long time in music production and while this article is going to be critical of this product, that criticism shouldn’t be extended to Roland's current products, in fact during a recent conversation with a friend who is the keyboard player for an extremely famous band, he was full of praise for the current Roland Fantom 8, a keyboard I’m keen to investigate further as it seems a very viable alternative to the Nord Stage, clearly exceeding it in key areas.

So having collected the Jupiter 50 I set it up next to my Nord Electro. My main concern was whether I would find the ‘semi-weighted’ keybed tolerable. To my surprise I actually find it very playable. But something wasn’t right. There were a huge number of patches, the layout was intuitive enough for me to get around without having to look anything up but whether playing imitiative or synthetic patches I found I was left cold by the sounds. There were some specific criticisms - the dynamic response of some string and electric piano patches struck me as odd, but there was more to it. Then I tried the tone wheel organs…

Great Sounds, Not More Sounds

I first became interested in Nord keyboards when I heard the tonewheel organ on Luke’s Nord Electro. The sound had ‘it’. That churning grind which just sounds fabulous. I listen to Luke about organs as he’s owned a couple of real Hammonds with Leslies and knows his (green) onions. The organ and the rotary effect on the Jupiter 50 just didn’t have ‘it’. Actually none of the sounds were especially involving. They were fine but they didn’t jump out of the speakers, they lacked life. I quickly decided I was better off with fewer, great sounds than loads of acceptable sounds. However to a different user the distinctly limited synth section of the Electro might be a total deal breaker…

This got me thinking about the abundance we all have in our studios and how easy it is to assume that more means better. However if we think about the things which move us, quantity is rarely top of the list.

One Good Option

Considering guitar tones for a minute, I prefer Blue Cat Audio’s Free Amp plugin with its three models over alternatives I’ve tried with ten times as many amps because they have ‘it’. Actually I only really use the Classic Clean model as I just think it’s so good. One good sound over hundreds of OK sounds every time! Sometimes numbers matter. If you need 10 mic stands then three really good quality ones isn’t going to cut it. But as long as you have enough to do the job then quality still beats quantity every time.

Once you can count something, attach a number to it, it becomes tempting to ascribe value to the number regardless of content. I’d rather record at 44.1KHz through my BAE 1073 than at 96KHz through my interface preamps. I regularly scratch my head at comments I see online where people present the number of tracks they have in their projects as some kind of badge of quality and/or professionalism. Usually I just wonder how someone is getting into triple figures in a stereo project so regularly, but taking stacking multiple tracks as an example, there is a point of diminishing returns. More doesn’t necessarily equal better. Double-tracking sounds cool. Triple-tracking can sound cooler still but four or five passes doesn’t achieve more. A bigger number doesn’t mean better and its not how many tracks you have in a session. It’s what’s on them that makes the difference!

Valuing Gear For What It Does Well

I’m still glad I’ve borrowed the keyboard. In these days of online dealers it’s useful to check out gear first hand when you can. It’s made me appreciate what I like about the gear that I have rather than focusing on what it doesn’t do. With that I’m going to go and play some simple chords on my favourite hammond patch and get more emotional engagement than I would from any megasupersawstack patch. Lesson learned.