Roland Juno-106

And I played the violin, and even though I didn't make a career out of that, because I was interested in music, they were always very supportive.

They helped me get my first synthesizer, the Juno 106, which I treasure forever.

That was a big, big, big deal.

And I made a lot of my early tracks, I used that, of course.

And I always advise everybody like going into it talk about, you know, make a structure, make a plan first, even if it's just a conversation, just be like, i'm gonna play keys you're gonna program beats you know etc right just like decide what your roles are it can change but like then everybody knows what they're in for from the beginning yep i think that helps establish things in a way where you're more likely to to be successful yeah

so how how did you and um well when and how did you and christian meet

was in the 90s it was in dc he was down there he was still in college he was going to american university i think and i was living down there well i was home actually home from school like i was going up to new york for purchase college and then back in the summers um i don't recall who introduced us or made the connection first and in fact he might have just made it made he just might have you know been proactive to like find me because like i was he was starting his dj career he used to be called dj neuromancer he was playing like ravey kind of hard trance techno you know in the early to mid 90s um and i was still you know i was making techno either like very hard techno like some of my early stuff on industrial strength and at the same time i was making like really deep early kind of minimal stuff and and deep house even and this is another thing we can talk about is like all the different genres I've been into but like I played a live performance at a rave in the DC area and it was crazy man I brought like I had a Mac SE you know that the old Macintosh computers I brought that to the rave and my Juno 106 and a 909 and a 303 and a Boss 8 channel mixer And I played live hard techno at this rave.

And I think maybe it was that he was also booked at this party.

Can I just ask you, Pete, just for anybody that's listening and myself, what the difference is between a synth and a soft synth?

A synth is a physical instrument, like a Juno 106, which I've had and they've had for years.

A soft synth is something that is generated in the computer.

So you bring up a synthesizer.

Mm

... we, we were into, and like, you know, whether it's like a Juno-106 or, or-

Yeah.

But you're sort of hearing those sounds coming back around now, aren't you? But you've obviously-

And so it was like, well, I play guitar.

I said, well, why don't you play synth? so I mean I played a little bit of keys but I'm a bit I love the nerdy stuff so the first gig we ever did I just had a Juno 106 and was making weird squelchy sounds

it was love it

it was sort of the era of acid jazz and that kind of early to mid 90s thing um so that that was our first thing and then it was actually a you know serious life-changing moment that dan said to me after that gig i think you're a bass player i think you know that really because we we'd always jam on different instruments you know i love jamming on the drums but i'm not a drummer you know yeah yeah there's there's a thing but Um, and we've been swapping around and jamming on stuff and he was like, I think you should play bass.

Yeah, yeah.

And did you use the 303 or the 909? I used the 909, Juno 106, those are my kind of my go-to, SP-1200, Sampler, those are my tools back in the

day.

Great, great stuff.

Right.

It was, we didn't have synthesizers, maybe one or two, like an SH-101, a Juno 106, but, We were kind of doing it on a shoestring, really.

So when the sampler came along, it meant you could open up everything.

But it also depended on how many records you had.