The Roland SH-1000, introduced in 1973, was the first compact synthesizer produced in Japan, and the first synthesizer produced by Roland. It resembles a home organ more than a commercial synth, with coloured tabs labelled with descriptions of its presets and of the "footage" of the divide-down oscillator system used in its manually editable synthesizer section. It produced electronic sounds that many professional musicians sought after whilst being easier to obtain and transport than its Western equivalents. The synthesizer has 10 simple preset voices combined with a manually editable section which can be manually tweaked around to create new interesting sounds. No user program memory is available. Its effects include

white noise In signal processing, white noise is a random signal having equal intensity at different frequencies, giving it a constant power spectral density. The term is used, with this or similar meanings, in many scientific and technical disciplines ...

generator,

portamento In music, portamento (plural: ''portamenti'', from old it, portamento, meaning "carriage" or "carrying") is a pitch sliding from one note to another. The term originated from the Italian expression "''portamento della voce''" ("carriage of the ...

, octave transposition, two

low frequency oscillator Low-frequency oscillation (LFO) is an electronic frequency that is usually below 20 Hz and creates a rhythmic pulse or sweep. This is used to modulate musical equipment such as synthesizers to create audio effects such as vibrato, tremo ...

s and a random note generator. Even with a single oscillator, it sounds like there are several thanks to the 8 sub-osc keys. The ninth is the (white or pink) noise.

Notable SH-1000 users

Jarvis Cocker Jarvis Branson Cocker (born 19 September 1963) is an English musician and radio presenter. As the founder, frontman, lyricist and only consistent member of the band Pulp, he became a figurehead of the Britpop genre of the mid-1990s. Following P ...

(

Pulp Pulp may refer to: * Pulp (fruit), the inner flesh of fruit Engineering * Dissolving pulp, highly purified cellulose used in fibre and film manufacture * Pulp (paper), the fibrous material used to make paper * Molded pulp, a packaging material ...

) * BlondieThe 30 Top Instruments and Innovations of Roland’s Ikutaro Kakehashi (1930-2017)
''

Electronic Musician ''Electronic Musician'' is a monthly magazine published by Future US featuring articles on synthesizers, music production and electronic musicians. History and profile ''Electronic Musician'' began as ''Polyphony'' magazine in 1975, published ...

'' *

The Human League The Human League are an English synth-pop band formed in Sheffield in 1977. Initially an experimental electronic outfit, the group signed to Virgin Records in 1979 and later attained widespread commercial success with their third album ''Dare' ...

* The Band *

Fad Gadget Francis John Tovey (8 September 1956 – 3 April 2002), known also by his stage name Fad Gadget, was a British avant-garde electronic musician and vocalist. He was a proponent of both new wave and early industrial music, fusing pop-structured ...

* Giorgio Moroder * Imagination: "

Music and Lights "Music and Lights" is a single by British trio Imagination, released in 1982 by R&B Records. It was composed by the band's members in a collaboration with Jolley & Swain. The song has appeared on their second album titled '' In the Heat of the ...

" (1982), bass instrument * Jethro Tull *

Eddie Jobson Edwin "Eddie" Jobson (born 28 April 1955) is an English musician noted for his use of synthesizers. He has been a member of several progressive rock bands, including Curved Air, Roxy Music, U.K. and Jethro Tull. He was also part of Frank Zap ...

(with

Roxy Music Roxy Music are an English rock band formed in 1970 by Bryan Ferry—who became the band's lead vocalist and principal songwriter—and bassist Graham Simpson. The other longtime members are Phil Manzanera (guitar), Andy Mackay (saxophone ...

) *

Jolley & Swain Steven Nicholas Jolley (born April 1950) and Tony Swain (born 20 January 1952, London, England) were a successful songwriting and record production duo in the United Kingdom in the early to mid-1980s, producing some of the top artists and song ...

: ''Backtrackin (1985), bass instrument *

Tetsuya Komuro is a Japanese musician, songwriter and record producer. He is recognized as the most successful producer in Japanese music history and introduced contemporary electronic dance music to the Japanese mainstream. He was also a former owner of the ...

* Omar Rodriguez Lopez *

Radio Massacre International Radio Massacre International is a trio of British musicians, Steve Dinsdale (Keyboards and Drums), Duncan Goddard (Keyboards and Bass), and Gary Houghton (Guitar, Synth). They specialize in improvisational experimental electronic music, utilisin ...

* Steve Roach *

Barry White Barry Eugene Carter (September 12, 1944 – July 4, 2003), better known by his stage name Barry White, was an American singer and songwriter. A two-time Grammy Award winner known for his bass voice and romantic image, his greatest success came ...

: ''Change'' (1982), bass instrument *

Vangelis Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou ( el, Ευάγγελος Οδυσσέας Παπαθανασίου ; 29 March 1943 – 17 May 2022), known professionally as Vangelis ( ; el, Βαγγέλης, links=no ), was a Greek composer and arranger of ...

Maksim Dunayevsky Maksim Isaakovich Dunayevsky (russian: Макси́м Исаа́кович Дунае́вский, born 15 January 1945 in Moscow) is a Soviet and Russian composer. People's Artist of Russia (2006). He is the artistic director and chairman of th ...

* Cardiacs

References

External links

Vintage Synth Explorer's page on the SH-1000

Music with SH-1000
SH-1000 Monophonic synthesizers Analog synthesizers Musical instruments invented in the 1970s {{Electronic-musical-instrument-stub