The Roland SH-01a

I have to admit, the orignal SH-101 has always been a vintage classic synth that I enjoyed. In the mid 90’s a musician friend of mine had an SH-101 and it always sounded cool. I didn’t knew why but it felt like it was almost impossible to make a dull sound with it. Today after playing with the SH-01a I totally understand why. The synthesis structure of the SH-101 or SH-01a is rather simple yet it has the complexity that a timbre needs to give life and create interesting sounds. It packs only one oscillator, 1 lowpass filter, 1 ADSR enveloppe and 1 LFO. Yes it is simple, but the single oscillator offers 3 outputs that can be mixed (Saw, Pulse, Sub (Pulse or Square) ) and a noise. This design gives the sound possibilities of a multi-oscillators with a single one. Ok it does not permit Sync or FM or Cross-modulation because you would need at least two distinct oscillators for these combination.  But it’s still quite efficient yet very simple.

I can see this as a great first synth or just a “go to” synth for fast efficient sounds that do not need to much modulation.

So I made 3 videos. Enjoy!

The Roland SH-01a : synthesis and hidden features.

The Roland SH-01a sounds

The Roland SH-01a sequencer