Roland JUNO-Gi Instruction manual

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®ÂØÒňήWorkshop
Meet the JUNO-Gi
© 2010 Roland Corporation U.S.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the
written permission of Roland Corporation U.S.
JUNOGiWS01
JUNO-Gi Mobile Synthesizer
and Digital Recorder

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About the JUNO-Gi Workshop Booklets
The Roland JUNO-Gi Mobile Synthesizer with Digital Recorder is an
affordable, portable, perfect instrument for performers and songwriters.
It’s got a top-of-the-line sound engine and over 1300 exciting new sounds.
The onboard digital recorder allows you to record and develop your songs,
with dedicated faders and acclaimed BOSS GT-class effects. With USB MIDI
capabilities and its instant MIDI Controller mode, the JUNO-Gi also fits nicely
into any computer-based recording system. Finally, the JUNO-Gi sports a
versatile USB song player for playing backing tracks onstage.
Each JUNO-Gi Workshop Series booklet focuses on one JUNO-Gi topic, and is
intended as a companion to the JUNO-Gi Owner’s Manual.
This booklet requires JUNO-Gi Operating System v1.01 or higher. You can
download the latest JUNO-Gi O.S. for free from www.RolandUS.com.
About This Booklet
This introductory tour of the JUNO-Gi’s major features will give you an idea
of what the JUNO-Gi sounds like, and what it can do.
Understanding the Symbols in This Booklet
Throughout this booklet, you’ll come across information that deserves
special attention—that’s the reason it’s labeled with one of the following
symbols.
A note is something that adds information about the topic at hand.
A tip offers suggestions for using the feature being discussed.
Warnings contain important information that can help you avoid
possible damage to your equipment, your data, or yourself.
Hot Links
Each Workshop booklet is meant to be read in order from beginning
to end. However, if we mention an upcoming section—and you see
this arrow—you can click the arrow to jump there immediately.
The Four Sides of the JUNO-Gi
No, we’re not talking about its top, sides, and bottom. The JUNO-Gi is really
four major musical tools packed into a single lightweight—less than 13
pounds—portable instrument. It’s a
• JUNO-family synthesizer—optimized for performance, with the Roland’s
latest cutting-edge sound engine and synth effects and all the realtime
controls a performer needs.
• powerful 8-track digital recorder—you can use for creating songs with
JUNO-Gi sounds and/or live audio from its mic, guitar, and line inputs.
The digital recorder has its own effect processor that produces GT
effects like those found in the BOSS GT-10.
• master controller and audio interface for a computer-based music rig—
with its instant-on MIDI Controller mode and guitar, mic, and line inputs.
• handy USB song player—that allows you to use backing tracks or other
pre-recorded materials onstage, in a range of common audio formats.
Master controller and
audio interface
USB
Song Player
Digital
recorder
Synthesizer
All of these elements work together in making the JUNO-Gi a potent
performance synth and instrument for the modern songwriter or producer.

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Connecting the JUNO-Gi for Using AC Power
The JUNO-Gi comes with a two-piece AC power adapter
you’ll need to put together for use.
1 Assemble the JUNO-Gi’s two-piece power adapter.
Of course, the AC cable’s longer than we’re
showing in this illustration.
2 Plug the AC end into a grounded power outlet—the adapter’s
indicator lights green as shown above.
3 Plug the other end into the JUNO-Gi’s rear-
panel DC IN jack.
You can wrap the cable at the DC end of the
power adapter around the cord hook to the left
of the DC IN jack to help avoid unintentionally
yanking out the plug or damaging the adapter.
4 Jump ahead to “Turning on the JUNO-Gi” on
Page 4.
Installing Batteries in the JUNO-Gi
The JUNO-Gi can operate on eight Ni-MH batteries. Though
battery life depends on the quality of the batteries themselves,
the JUNO-Gi will typically run continuously for about three
hours on batteries if you’re not using the USB Song Player, or
about two hours if you are.
1 Turn off the JUNO-Gi.
2 On a soft, static-free surface, turn the JUNO-Gi onto its face so its rear
edge is facing you and its battery compartment door is visible, as
shown on the next page.
Getting Ready
Before we proceed, you’ll need to power-up your JUNO-Gi and work out a
way to listen to it.
We’re going to presume you’re dealing with a factory-fresh JUNO-Gi,
and that you still have its factory SD card installed. If this isn’t the
case, the screenshots we show in this booklet may not exactly match
what you see. The factory card is also required for the “The JUNO-Gi
Digital Recorder” section on Page 12.
Listening to the JUNO-Gi
We strongly recommend setting up your JUNO-Gi listening system
before connecting and turning on the JUNO-Gi’s to avoid damage to
your speakers, headphones, or ears.
You can listen to the JUNO-Gi in a variety of ways. Here are the most
common:
• You can connect stereo headphones—to its rear-panel PHONES jack. This
is the fastest way to get going, and a great way to listen to the JUNO-Gi.
• You can connect the JUNO-Gi to a stereo amp—with the JUNO-Gi’s
OUTPUT L/MONO and R jacks connected to the amp’s left and right
input channels.
You can also use a mono amp—and the JUNO-Gi’s L/MONO output only—
though listening in stereo’s the best way to fully appreciate its sound.
• You can connect the JUNO-Gi to a mixer—with the JUNO-Gi’s OUTPUT
L/MONO and R jacks connected to two mixer channels panned left and
right.
Powering the JUNO-Gi
As a truly mobile instrument, the JUNO-Gi can run on AC power using the
included AC adapter, or on battery power.

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Turning on the JUNO-Gi
1 With the JUNO-Gi still turned off, turn on any listening equipment to
which it’s connected, and set the equipment normally.
2 Turn the JUNO-Gi’s main VOLUME knob all the way down.
3 Press in its rear-panel POWER button to turn on the JUNO-Gi.
If you’re in playing position and feeling around for the POWER button
on the back of the JUNO-Gi, it’s just to the left of the DC IN jack.
After power-up, you’ll see the JUNO-Gi’s Live Set Play screen.
The Live Set Play screen is an important one—it’s essentially the
JUNO-Gi’s synthesizer Home screen. You can always get back to it by
repeatedly pressing the EXIT button to the right of the JUNO-Gi display.
If this doesn’t get you all the way back, press the RECORDER VIEW
button in the DIGITAL RECORDER area once or twice.
4 Play the JUNO-Gi’s keyboard as you turn up its VOLUME knob to a
comfortable listening level.
3 Gently press the door’s tabs inward, and then lift out the door.
4 Insert eight fresh batteries according to the polarity symbols shown
in the battery compartment. The JUNO-Gi will successfully power up
only when you’ve got the batteries the correct way.
For optimal results, avoid mixing new and old batteries. Fresh
batteries are always best, of course.
5 Re-attach the compartment door by inserting its far edge, and then
gently pressing down the door so its tabs lock in place.
If you reconnect the adapter while operating on batteries, the JUNO-Gi
momentarily shuts down to switch power sources.
6 See “Turning on the JUNO-Gi” below.

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Live Set Categories
Live sets are organized in musical categories—this is the key to finding the
ones you want quickly. Each category has its own button, which you’ll find
beneath the JUNO-Gi display.
Category button-labels
When you press a category button, the first live set in the category is
displayed. For all of the buttons except SPECIAL, a second press takes you to
a subgroup within that category. The first time you press
• RHYTHM—you select the rhythm category that contains the JUNO-Gi’s
drum kits. A second press selects its percussion kit subgroup.
• PIANO—you select the Piano category. When you press it a second time,
you select the Electric Piano subgroup.
• KEYBOARD/ORGAN—you select the Organ category. With a second
press, a subgroup of other keyboard sounds is selected.
• BASS—you select the Bass category that contains electric and acoustic
basses. A second press gets you the synth-bass subgroup.
• GUITAR/PLUCKED—you choose the Guitar category. Press the button
again to select a general plucked-string subgroup of live sets.
• STRINGS/ORCHESTRA—you select the Strings category. When you press
it a second time, you select a subgroup of other Orchestral instruments.
• BRASS/WIND—the Brass category is selected. Press twice for Woodwinds.
• VOCAL/CHOIR—you select a category that contains jazz-scat live sets.
For choral live sets, press the button again.
• SYNTH/PAD—you select a collection of general synthesizer sounds. A
second press gets you synth pads.
• FX/OTHERS—you choose the musical-effect live sets. With a second
press, a subgroup of standard sound effects are selected.
The JUNO-Gi Synthesizer
The first thing to explore on any JUNO is, of course, its sounds. The
JUNO-Gi’s streamlined synth engine makes it easy for you to find the sound
you’re looking for. Unlike many other synths with multiple sound modes, the
JUNO-Gi keeps things simple: There’s only one mode, where you select “live
sets.” There are 1,379 permanent—or “Preset”—live sets. You can also store
up to 256 of your own.
1379 Preset live sets 256 User live sets
On the Live Set Play screen—and some others—“Preset” is shown as
“PRST.”
A live set is similar to what other synths call a “performance” or “combination.”
It’s a collection of up to four sounds called “tones.”
Each tone is one- or two-layer sound expertly pre-programmed at the
Roland factory. There are 788 of these permanently onboard.
788 Tones
The beauty of the live set is that it allows you to use one, two, three, or four
of these tones together. Listening to some live sets will give you an idea of
the possibilities.
Live Set Selection
Live Set Groups
Live sets are stored in the JUNO-Gi’s memory in three groups:
• Preset—These are permanent factory-programmed live sets.
• User—These are your live sets.
• Special—These are a select collection of factory live sets.

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The Live Set List for this category is displayed.
To select a live set from this list, turn the Value dial or use the DEC and/or INC
buttons to highlight it. (We’ve selected PRST:004 88KeyGrand 4 here.)
You can jump from category to category—including their subgroups—
from any category’s Live Set List screen using the category buttons.
Numeric Selection of Live Sets
There’s a third, speedy way to select a live set if you know its number. Here’s
how it works:
1 On the Live Set Play screen, press the 5 cursor button to highlight
the live set group parameter, as shown in the screenshot below.
2 Set the parameter to the desired group from which you want to pick
your live set: User, Preset, or Special.
Rhythm and Special Live Sets
• Rhythm live sets—play special rhythm-set tones in which each key can
play a different drum or percussion sound. On Page 9, we’ll show you
what we mean.
• Special live sets—are multi-tone live sets that combine tones and take
advantage of other JUNO-Gi features such as the built-in arpeggiator.
We’ll show you what we mean on Page 10.
Selecting a Live Set
You can select a live set from the Live Set Play screen by turning the VALUE
dial or using the DEC and/or INC buttons to select one from a list of sounds
in a category you’ve chosen, or select one by entering its number.
Value dial
You also use the Value
dial and the DEC (for
“Decrease”) and INC (for
“Increase”) buttons to
change settings on the
JUNO-Gi.
Using a Live-Set List
After pressing a category button, you can see all of its live sets in a list by
pressing the ENTER button.

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The JUNO-Gi’s Preview Feature
The JUNO-Gi’s Preview feature makes it especially easy to check out its
live sets. For each live set, there’s a short musical phrase that shows off its
possibilities. To use Preview, you can
• hold down the PREVIEW button—and the Preview phrase plays through
as you hold down the button.
• hold down SHIFT and press PREVIEW—and the Preview phrase plays
through to its end, or until you press PREVIEW again.
The Preview feature is very configurable if you’d rather try out live
sets using a series of individual notes or a chord of your choosing
instead of the Preview phrase. See Page 80 in the JUNO-Gi Owner’s
Manual for details.
Favorites
Once you’ve spotted some live sets you like and want to be able to select
even more quickly, you can register them as Favorites. When a live set’s a
Favorite, you can grab it with just a few fast button-presses. To learn about
Favorites, see Page 24 of the JUNO-Gi Owner’s Manual.
3 Press the 6 button to highlight the live-set number parameter.
4 Press the NUMERIC button to the left of the display so the category
buttons and the NUMERIC button light.
5 Type in the desired live set’s number using the category buttons
beneath the display. The number for each button appears beneath it.
Numeric-entry button-labels
6 Press the ENTER button to confirm your selection.
Listening to Live Sets
To try out a live set, play the
keyboard or hold down the
PREVIEW button to the left of
the JUNO-Gi display.

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This screen is where you build a live set’s foundation by turning on
and selecting the tones you want to use. When a tone is active, its
checkbox is checked. You can also set each tone’s volume here.
The four tones in a live set are named:
• Lower 1 • Upper 1
• Lower 2 • Upper 2
As you can see, this live set uses just a single tone: 88KeyGrand 1.
Many of the JUNO-Gi’s Preset live sets use a single tone. This one is, in
fact, named after the tone it uses.
4 Press the EXIT button to leave the LAYER/SPLIT screen and return to
the Live Set Play screen.
The JUNO-Gi provides plenty of parameters for customizing the sound
and behavior of each live set. To learn about editing live sets—and
creating your own—see Page 34 of the JUNO-Gi Owner’s Manual.
5 Before we leave the Piano category, press the ENTER button to
display a list of piano-based live sets in this category.
6 Turn the Value dial or use the DEC and INC buttons to select some live
sets from this list and give each one a listen.
7 While you’re still on the piano Live Set List screen, press the PIANO
category button again to jump to the Electric Piano subgroup.
Exploring the JUNO-Gi Live Sets
Pianos and Electric Pianos
Let’s start out with the JUNO-Gi’s first piano live set.
1 Press the PIANO category button once—there you have it:
2 Play the JUNO-Gi keyboard or hold down the PREVIEW button to hear
what 88KeyGrand 1 sounds like.
Now let’s have a look and see what gives this live set its sound.
3 Hold down the SHIFT button, and then press SPLIT to display 88Key
Grand 1’s LAYER/SPLIT screen.
You’ll notice some new things appear on the display as you press
SHIFT—don’t worry about them for now. We’ll discuss them later.
Pressing SPLIT without holding down SHIFT turns the JUNO-Gi’s
keyboard Split feature on and off—we don’t want to do that now.

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Start by pressing: To select:
ORGAN once PRST:124 Rock Organ 1
ORGAN twice PRST:183 Phase Clav 1
GTR/PLUCKED once PRST:287 Nylon Gtr 2
GTR/PLUCKED once PRST:303 Clean Gtr 1
GTR/PLUCKED once PRST:325 Searing COSM
BASS once PRST:368 Fingered Bs1
BASS twice PRST:384 MG Bass
STRINGS once PRST:491 Slow Strings 1
SYNTH once PRST:777 Dirty Fifth
SYNTH twice PRST:804 SynBrass sfz
Listening to Rhythm Live Sets
The JUNO-Gi contains 14 rhythm live sets, plus an
additional nine General MIDI 2, or “GM2,” live sets. (We’ll
explain GM2 on Page 24.) Rhythm live sets lay individual
drum and percussion sounds across the keyboard. Let’s
try some out.
1 Press the RHYTHM category button.
The first kit you see is PRESET 1256 Standard Kit
1. This is a kit built of general-use, every-day drum sounds.
2 Play some keys to hear the sounds in this kit. You’ll find:
• a kick drum—on the lowest key of the JUNO-Gi keyboard.
• snare drums—on the D and E right above the kick.
• hihats—on the F#, G#, and A# just above the snares.
3 Be sure to go up and down the keyboard to hear what you’ve got.
4 Some other kits you’ll want to check out are:
• PRESET 1278 Analog Kit—for sounds from classic Roland TR-808
and TR-909 beatboxes.
• PRESET 1262 Power Kit—for a heavier rock kit.
5 Press RHYTHM again to get to some percussion kits, and use the
Value dial or DEC and INC buttons to browse through some live sets.
In the upper-left corner of the screen, you can see the name of the
collection of live sets you’re currently viewing, as circled above.
8 Try out some of the Electric Piano live sets, making sure to give
PRST: 052 Vintage EP a try—it’s a nice one you don’t want to miss.
Shaping Sounds in Realtime
The JUNO-Gi has a rich assortment of tools for manipulating your sounds
as you play. These realtime controllers let you play live sets even more
expressively, and also play them in a way that’s uniquely your own.
Pitch Bend/Modulation level ASSIGNABLE switches
SOUND MODIFY knobsD Beam
As you go through the next live sets, try
• the Pitch Bend/Modulation lever—by pushing it forward to add vibrato,
or side-to-side to bend pitches up and down.
• the SOUND MODIFY knobs—to change the character of your notes.
• waving your hand over the D Beam—after pressing any of the D Beam
buttons to light it and thus assign the D Beam to that task.
• the ASSIGNABLE switches—to hear what they do in any given live set.
Other Categories’ Live Sets
Avoiding the RHYTHM and SPECIAL category buttons for now—we’ll get to
them next—take some time to check out other categories’ live sets. Here are
some live sets you should be sure not to miss. In the following chart, we’ll
get you close to each one, and then leave it up to you to turn the Value dial
or use DEC and INC to select the specific live set we’ve listed.

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These are the same labels we saw when we held down SHIFT back on
Page 8.
Each of these labels corresponds to the button roughly beneath it.
Whenever the soft buttons are active on the JUNO-Gi, you’ll see their
labels onscreen. In this booklet, when we want you to press a soft
button, we’ll identify it by its number and show its current onscreen
label in parentheses. For example, when we want you to press the
on/off switch for the Upper 1 tone, we’ll say “Press 1 (U1).”
...Back to QuickBells
4 While holding down SHIFT, press 1 (U1) to turn off the Upper 1 tone.
5 Play a key on the keyboard. What you hear now is just the two Lower
tones playing Soft Pad 2.
Though Lower 1 and 2 are playing the same tone, they’re tuned very
differently to create a more interesting sound together.
6 Press 4 (L2) to turn off Lower Tone 2, and then play the keyboard.
You now hear Lower 1 all by itself—it’s pretty low in pitch. In fact, Soft
Pad 2 is tuned down by an octave for this live set.
7 Press 3 (L1) to turn off Lower 1, and then press 4 (L2) to turn Lower 2
back on so we can hear its tuning: It’s much higher. In fact, it’s tuned
7 semitone steps up.
8 Press 3 (L1) to turn Lower 1 back on and listen to the two tones
together.
Special Live Sets
A press of the SPECIAL LIVE SET button reveals more complex live sets. We’ll
point out a few to give you an idea of the possibilities. Let’s start at the
top—the live set you get when your press the SPECIAL button: SPECIAL:001
QuickBells. It’s a good example of a few things you can do in a live set.
1 Take a few moments to play some notes and chords up and down the
keyboard—QuickBells is a rich, complex sound with a tinkling series
of notes within it.
2 Let’s see what it is we’re hearing. Hold down SHIFT and press SPLIT to
go to the LAYER/SPLIT screen for this live set.
We can see that QuickBells uses three tones. The
• Lower 1 tone—uses Soft Pad 2.
• Lower 2 tone—also uses Soft Pad 2.
• Upper 1 tone—uses Toy Box.
QuickBells is a layered sound that uses these three tones together.
You can easily turn tones on and off, and doing so will help us isolate
what each tone contributes to QuickBells’ sound.
A Short Detour to Talk About the JUNO-Gi Soft Buttons...
The buttons beneath the display numbered from 1 to 6 are “soft
buttons,” which means their behavior changes depending on what
you’re doing and what’s on the display. Here’s what we mean.
3 Hold down the SHIFT button—along the lower edge of the screen,
you can now see labels of the live set’s tone switches, a LIVE SET
button, and an EFFECT button. If you let go of SHIFT, the labels
disappear, so keep holding it down for now.