It may not have escaped your notice that Howard Jones likes playing synthesizers, and we’re starting to get the impression that he rather likes talking about them, too.
After last year’s rather surprising revelation that he’d never previously owned a Prophet-5 - relax, he’s got one now - his latest video has him revisiting an instrument that he’s definitely familiar with: a Roland Jupiter-8 that he’s owned since 1983.
HoJo refers to this as the “king of synths,” adding that it “always will be my favourite.” He says that he paid around £8,000 for his Jupiter-8 (“I didn’t have that kind of money, but I had to have one of these”) though the original retail price in 1981 was actually closer to £4,000. That’s almost £20,000 in today’s money, though, so we take the point that it was expensive.
Describing the Jupiter-8 as a “proper analogue synth,” Jones says that it has 18 miles of cabling inside it (we can’t be sure if this is true) and praises its biting sound. “The way it spits out those notes is incredible,” he says. “The attack… I just miss that on modern keyboards.”
Later on, Jones describes what he believes is another unique aspect of this classic Roland synth: “The Jupiter-8’s got a sound like no other - it’s sort of incredibly ‘stereo’. I don’t even know how they do it but software can’t get there quite yet.”
Despite having lengthy experience with the Jupiter-8 (and synths in general), it seems that Jones still doesn’t consider himself to be a sound design expert. Near the beginning of the video, we cut to archive footage of him being interviewed by Dick Clark on American Bandstand and hear him say that “I've always sort of thought of myself as a player really. I don't know what half those knobs do up there, but you know, I just fiddle with them until they make the right sounds.”
We’re with you there, Howard.
