Roland J-6 minisynth: a serious musical instrument or an expensive toy?

Towards the end of September, I received (yet another) SMS from one of the musical instrument shops in Israel where I have purchased items. I had a look at their site and resisted the temptation to buy yet another guitar that would probably hang on the wall, gather dust and never get played. On the other hand, I saw that there was a synthesizer on sale for about 850 NIS, about $240. As the shop was prepared to spread the payments over two years, the cost each month would be 35 NIS, which the same cost as a few bars of chocolate. I decided that it was time to spoil myself and that I could afford the cost.

The manufacturer's website describes the device thus: The J-6 Chord Synthesizer is an endless well of musical inspiration, pairing a powerful chord sequencer with the lavish tones of the renowned JUNO-60 synth. Generate soul-stirring song ideas in seconds, and experiment with styles and variations to coax dancing lines and rhythmic patterns from your chords. Add lush effects to frost your sound, and expand your possibilities by interfacing with other AIRA Compacts, MIDI hardware, and music production software.

Only after ordering was I smart enough to go looking for videos about this device on the Internet.  Here are a few videos: one, two, three and four (there are more). The fourth video asks the very important question: is this a serious musical instrument or an expensive toy? In the time before the synth was delivered, I found the user manual on the internet and tried to figure out how I might be able to use it in order to turn it into a serious musical instrument. There is a sequencer contained within the synth but this has only 64 steps; I spent some mental time figuring out how I could use this within my recordings. The first conclusion was obviously that an entire song could not be sequenced within the synth, but it should be possible to record sections and paste them in to the multi-track recorder in the same way that I include my vocal parts. There were listed a huge variety of chords available, but these seemed not to be labelled so I would have to figure out by myself what each chord is.

The synth arrived yesterday and with no ado I began charging it, before playing with it slightly. The first thing that strikes one is its size: it's tiny, about the size of a trade paperback, 188 (W) x 106 (D) x 36.2 (H) mm! Obviously this isn't meant to be an instrument that one plays live!  I played around with it for a while and couldn't get much out of it (RTFM). The synth comes with a card embossed with a QC code holding a web address which when followed causes allows the owner (me) to register his purchase. The web site also contained an updated manual so I downloaded this and glanced through it. 

My first observation about the manual was that the chords have now been named; my second was that each chord family contains one chord per each chromatic note (i.e. for family #1, the chords are Cadd 9, C#M9/C, Dm7, D#M7, Cadd9/E, FM9, Dadd9/F#, Em7/G, F/A, Gm/Bb, G/b) where there is no direct correspondence between the 'note' being pressed and the chord played. In other words, pressing the A key will produce an F/A chord.  What if I want to play Am7 followed by BbMaj7? Do I have to play (and sequence) an Am7 chord from family #18 (that seems to contain the 12 minor chords), followed by a BbMaj7 chord from family #19 (all major seventh chords)? A better solution would be to transpose the keyboard by five semitones then play Em7 and FM7 from family #2. OK: how does one transpose the keyboard?

The manual explains the basics of working with the synth; for transposition, the manual says

1. Hold down the [SHIFT] button and press the [A (KEY)] keyboard button.
This returns you to the transpose setting screen.
2. Turn the [TEMPO/VALUE] knob to edit the value.
3. When you are finished, press the [C (EXIT)] keyboard button on the left side.

I suppose that's reasonably clear although a bit confusing. Most of the other instructions are similar.

After fiddling around a bit and discovering odd snippets, I realised that I would have to learn to operate the synth in the same manner as I learnt how to write reports in Priority: read the manual/SDK, try out small things, then build on this knowledge in order to build larger things, and so on. I was somewhat confused at first as all the youtube videos had arpeggios running: I discovered that in order to do this, one has to press the 'chord' button then hold the desired key (e.g. A) for a few seconds: this will cause the synth to play the chord defined by the chord family according to the pattern defined with the defined sound. The arpeggio will play as long as the note key is pressed. But notice: one has to define a sound (there are 64 predefined sounds) that can be altered by changing its envelope and by adding delay and reverb; one has to choose the arpeggio pattern and one has to choose the chord family (and that's before the sequencer enters the picture). 

In other words, it's going to take some time before I can use this device in an intelligent manner. But at least, I now have a mental path as how to progress. 

It seems that in order to create a sound file on a computer, I have to connect the sound out socket (where headphones are connected at the moment) to the input on the computer's sound card. Supposedly MIDI data can also be recorded but how to do that is even less clear than how to choose the arpeggio pattern. This can wait for later.

I am going to try very hard in order to turn this tiny device into a serious musical instrument.