I had a hard time choosing a Japan track this month. There are plenty of gorgeous classic analog tones on their seminal 1980 release, Gentlemen Take Polaroids (made even more quaint by today’s obsolescence of Polaroid cameras!). Since “playable” arpeggio parts are always fun and musically useful, this month we’ll break down the arpeggio figure that introduces and plays throughout Japan’s “Methods of Dance.” When I say “playable,” I’m referring to an arpeggio figure that starts and stops as well as transposes when playing the keyboard, as opposed to an arpeggio that latches “on” and plays in the same key regardless of notes played on the keyboard . . . boring!
On the original recording, Richard made use of a vintage Roland System 700 modular synth “played” by an Oberheim analog sequencer, but we’ll make our lives easier by using modern plug-in synths. I used Arturia’s Jupiter-8V virtual synth. I mainly chose it to utilize its vintage-style pattern sequencer, but there are numerous other plug-ins containing built in sequencers, such as Native Instruments Massive, Arturia’s 2600V and Moog Modular V, and Way Out Ware’s KikAxxe.
First let’s set up the basic patch; this is pretty straightforward. Select sawtooth waveforms on both oscillators, and set them to the same octave. I used the 16’ setting. You’ll want to detune the oscillators against each other a bit for a nice chorusing effect. Set the oscillator volumes to the same level in the mixer section. Filter cutoff should be right near the middle of its range; we don’t want to hear a lot of the saw waves’ “teeth.” Crank the resonance up to about 75%. Since this sound is very analog, effected, and murky, we’re shooting for very mid-rangey timbre. I also used the Jupiter-8V’s highpass filter to take a lot of lows out. If you don’t have a highpass filter, you can always use your DAW’s EQ to knock the low end off. This patch doesn’t use the filter envelope, so set it to zero. Moving on to the amplitude envelope, set attack to zero, decay for a quick percussive envelope, say 300ms, and sustain and release to zero.
Now for the fun part. First, set the sequence length to eight steps (use the sliding bar at the top of the grid on the Jupiter-8V). Now route the step sequencer to control the pitch of the oscillators. There are pop-up destination menus in the sequencer section where I selected VCO1 and VCO2 on the Jupiter-8V; this allows the sequencer to control pitch. In order for the pitch to track right, you’ll need to turn the VCO output amount knobs up to .0484. I routed the third sequencer out to VCA and turned on the “retrigger” button. This allows the sequencer to trigger the amplitude envelope at every sequence step, so it automatically plays perfect sixteenth-notes. E-zee. Here’s the eight-note sequence pattern, expressed in half-step intervals:
0 +5 +7 0 0 +5 0 +5
One quirk of the Jupiter-8V is that the steps set to zero all need to be set to 0.010, or else the rest of the notes will be a little off key; bug alert!
Now all you need to do is hold down Ab, E, and Db and you’re there.
The finishing touches on this patch relate to adding aforementioned analog “murk”. I inserted a distortion effect after the VCO on the Jupiter-8V, a slow chorus/flanger, and a subtle sixteenth-note delay, locked to tempo (by the way, “Methods Of Dance” is around 124 bpm). Though I used the Jupiter-8V’s onboard effects, there’s no reason you couldn’t make use of your DAW’s effects. This sound really invites a lot of experimentation; I found some neat effects by playing with the VCO pitch amount settings in the sequencers for odd harmonies as well as holding down different combinations of keys. I bet Richard didn’t have this option back in 1980!
You can download the Jupiter-8V patch as well as some audio sounds samples at www.celebutantemusic/keybmag. Until next month, rock that new romantic eyeliner with style, baby!