Hi, here’s a new Jaguar Knight jam called “Jaguar Future Party.”
And here are the machines I used to make the track.
YAMAHA RY-20 DRUM MACHINE
The beats came off this Yamaha RY-20 drum machine. I did almost nothing to them. A little bit of compression and reverb, and I think some filtering at one point. But otherwise it’s all straight out of this badass beatbox.
X0XB0X (ROLAND TB-303 CLONE)
Some crazy dudes went and reverse-engineered a Roland TB-303. They found all the same transistors and resistors and whatnot and it just sounds awesome. I used it for the acid line in this track. Those pieces of tape really are holding my x0xb0x together. I took it with me to Malaysia and all the screws fell out.
I would take my x0xbox with me to a desert island. Even if there were no electricity. I would just lie on the sand and stare at it. ?
LITTLE BEAR
Look at this cute l’il guy. It’s the Little Bear, a sweet tube overdrive pedal that I got brand-new off eBay for like $15. I run the x0xb0x through it. It gives a nice creamy distortion on the ‘b0x I find.
KORG KAOSS PAD 2
I use the KP2 for all my vocoder effects. It’s a little rough and ragged sounding compared to a lot of vocoders and yet the words do come out quite clear and audible. This unit is pretty common but not many people use the vocoder on it because it’s such a huge pain in the ass. You can’t just plug in a MIDI keyboard and play your vocal line, oh no. You have to send MIDI controller change messages to change the pitch. That’s crazy! So if I want to sing a robot B flat, I have to program my sequencer like “Control Change, Channel 11, Controller 12, Value 67” or whatever.
That’s why most Jaguar Knight songs have a one or two note vocoder line. Because who has time for a bunch of MIDI CC nonsense? What is this, the 1950s?
YAMAHA FB-01
Now this piece of junk. “Ready!!!” Yeah, we know you’re ready… shut up, nobody likes you. This is a Yamaha FB-01 FM sound module. Technically I suppose you could consider it a “synthesizer.” Although the ’80s synth market has gone through the roof lately, these are so unpopular that you can still get one for like $30-50. That’s about what I paid for this noisy hard-to-program FM box. Go ahead, buy one. You’ll never use it. No one uses these. Except me. Why! It has 4 FM operators and I only got it to replace my Yamaha DX-100 because it’s smaller, but it’s way less fun. Anyway nearly all the sounds on “Jaguar Future Party” came out of this box… the chord stabs and that excuse for a bassline and all that stuff. That was all this thing.
The FuccBoi-01 has a really dumb interface where you can create “users” for some reason and if you brush the front panel during a show, you can easily switch “users” and suddenly all your basslines are being played on a distorted glockenspiel. Good times! I can’t seem to get rid of this unit. I use it in a million songs. It’s like having a horrible growth on your body. I hate it, but it’s part of me now.
BOSS HYPER METAL
A Hyper Metal pedal. Yes, I’m afraid so. I would never put one of these anywhere near a guitar. But on a synthesizer it somehow takes on a weird magical new life.
Anyway that’s the secret of the Jaguar Knight sound. The world’s worst synth, played through a running joke of a distortion pedal.
That’s it. That’s how I make my songs.
