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John Bowen Solaris – a life's work
Solaris review. A life's work: Three views on the John Bowen Solaris ...
First: "The Solaris is a fusion of the most important synthesizer
designs of the past 40 years"
It may sound presumptuous: the John Bowen Solaris is in some ways the epitome of synthesizer design since the 70s.
Let's see ... there are various oscillators to choose from: Minimoog, CEM, Microwave, Prophet-VS, Wav (samples). Or
consider the filters: Moog, Oberheim, SSM, multimode filter, comb filter, vocal filter ... The modules are a journey
through synthesizer history. Sure, it's all purely digital, but the sound quality is excellent. Impressive.
Second: "The Solaris is the life work of a synthesizer enthusiast and
musician"
The Solaris' enormous musical potential is no accident. As the first 'official' demonstrator for Moog, as co-founder of
the Prophet-5, as part of the team that developed vector synthesis (the actual concept for VS came from Chris
Meyer) and due to his decades of experience in playing instruments and programming factory sounds – Bowen has
been able to contribute his vast knowledge to the development of the Solaris. Above all, Bowen is a real musician. All
this is reflected in many details and in the user-friendly Solaris concept.
Third: "The king is dead, long live the king!"
Many years ago I realized that the polyphonic analog synthesizers of the late 70s and early 80s had ushered in their
own demise. Polymoog, OB-X, ARP Quadra, Prophet-5, Rhodes Chroma, Memorymoog, Yamaha CS-80 and PPG Wave
2.2 ... many of those instruments never left the prototype status, strictly speaking (you'll pardon my slight
exaggeration). Only a few instruments were actually "very" reliable, such as the Roland Jupiter-8 or Oberheim OB-8.
Well-to-do musicians often had several units of the same instrument with them on tour, a prophylactic measure
against the all-too-common technical failures. Vintage polyphonic synthesizers were (and are!) simply unreliable ...
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Summary of Contents for John Bowen Solaris Limited Edition
- Page 1 40 years” It may sound presumptuous: the John Bowen Solaris is in some ways the epitome of synthesizer design since the 70s. Let’s see … there are various oscillators to choose from: Minimoog, CEM, Microwave, Prophet-VS, Wav (samples). Or consider the filters: Moog, Oberheim, SSM, multimode filter, comb filter, vocal filter …...
- Page 2 John Bowen’s Solaris closes this gap. Although purely digital, it’s a programmers’ instrument, a music synthesizer for musicians. Solaris offers direct access to the entire sound structure, it invites you to create your own sounds “starting from scratch”, that is, with the oscillators ….
- Page 3 In this case, it was a long wait: From the first announcement to the final model, it has now been several years. John Bowen had some bitter setbacks to deal with, followed by forced breaks when he had to refinance the instrument.
- Page 4 Second, Solaris production (currently in Germany) has not yet banned minor weaknesses. Pitch wheels without properly closing zero points and other such irritations are an indication that the production still has potential for improvement. As John Bowen and his team are on their toes, such shortcomings should be remedied soon.
- Page 5 As a rule of thumb and in my opinion, the Solaris will place 10 to 20 voices at your disposal. When I asked him, John was more cautious: “… for now it is fixed at 10 voice polyphony.” (John Bowen)
- Page 6 “Sorry, the Solaris is all digital. Originally I had the word amp instead of VCA, which I guess we should have left there, but I kept calling them VCAs, so we changed it. Think “Virtually Controlled Amplifier” ;-) (John Bowen)
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Page 7: Octave Up/Down
John Bowen Solaris – a life’s work John Bowen Solaris Synthesizer In the Solaris, extensive sound material meets high sound potential, and the two encounter remarkable performance potential: A weighted (grippy) keyboard, assignable wheels, a joystick, a multiple zone ribbon controller, etc … These are the decisive ingredients for good sound performance. - Page 8 John Bowen Solaris – a life’s work John Bowen Solaris Synthesizer Interestingly enough, the great John Bowen himself doesn’t seem to be fully aware of the usefulness of the octave buttons. “These buttons should be self explanatory. They change the range of the keyboard, but must be pressed before you play to get the transposed values.
- Page 9 John Bowen Solaris – a life’s work John Bowen Solaris Synthesizer All the “usual” parameters such as tuning, fine tuning, sync, shape (determining the shape of the waveform across its continuum), phase, glide and linear FM are available. In addition, you have LOW (frequency) mode, which turns oscillators into LFOs.
- Page 10 – and setting the Rotor to a very slow rate, you can have subtle variations of modulation going on, but that would still be cyclical over the long run.” (John Bowen) Back to the rotor being used for audio purposes. When the rotor is in the NO TRACK mode, it behaves like a slow- playing wave sequence.
- Page 11 John Bowen Solaris – a life’s work John Bowen Solaris Synthesizer The entire sound material — oscillators, rotors and much more — is now fed into the … 4 Mixers Each mixer has four inputs. The oscillators, the two rotors, the four insert effects, even the mixers themselves, the VCAs, the filters –...
- Page 12 John Bowen Solaris – a life’s work combination with the joystick. The five vowels can be morphed (moved (o;) in realtime … John Bowen Solaris Synthesizer 4 “VCAs” (in reality: 5 stereo amplifiers) As explained above, “VCA” is not correct, but we’ll stick to the label as Bowen did. We know they are in fact digital amplifiers.
- Page 13 6 Envelopes (in reality: 7 envelopes) Let’s not be petty: Envelopes you need. It’s nice that John Bowen chose “classic” ADSR envelopes. A clearly structured ADSR is, in my opionion, the most practical tool for your musical requirements (easily topping 8-stage envelopes, in that respect).
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Page 14: Further Features
John Bowen Solaris – a life’s work John Bowen Solaris Synthesizer Further features And now a simple list of additional Solaris features, since their detailled description is clearly beyond the scope of the report: Arpeggiator 4-Track Step-Sequencer 4 Effect Channels... - Page 15 John Bowen Solaris – a life’s work John Bowen Solaris Synthesizer A little more performance … By the way, the bottom five knobs below the graphic display can be completely freely assigned. Concerning the Assignable Performance Knobs, the essential point is that the user doesn’t have to leave preset mode to make adjustments.
- Page 16 John Bowen Solaris – a life’s work John Bowen Solaris Synthesizer The four ENABLE PART buttons are also worth mentioning. Since the Solaris is permanently in Multi-Mode (meaning up to four sounds make one “sound”), you can disable or mute each individual sound component “on the run”, while you’re actually playing.
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Page 17: Modulation Sources
John Bowen Solaris – a life’s work John Bowen Solaris Synthesizer Modulation Sources Since the oscillators, mixers, insert effects, filters, LFOs and VCAs may be modulated in many parameters, the list of the modulation sources is of great importance. LFO 1-4... - Page 18 John Bowen Solaris – a life’s work MaxValue OSC 1-4 Rotor 1/2 AM 1/2 Vector 1/2 Mixer 1-4 Filters 1-4 InsFX 1-4 VCA 1-4 White Noise Pink Noise Ext 1-4 SPdifL / SPdifR (S/PDIF) The envelope parameters can only be modulated by velocity, key tracking, the individually assignable modulation wheel and the controllers CC1 to CC4.
- Page 19 Solaris (studio, friend’s house) – insert your CF card, and voila! You have it just as if you had packed and brought your own Solaris keyboard with you!” (John Bowen) Solaris and the local heavy weight JD-800 20 sounds! On the first night with my Solaris I created 20 sounds of my own.
- Page 20 John Bowen Solaris – a life’s work John Bowen Solaris Synthesizer Working with wavetables is a real delight, something I would hardly have imagined up till now. The combination of traditional (sawtooth) string sounds with a touch of wavetable is particularly appealing. Above all, I would like to emphasize the numerous performance-oriented controls.
- Page 21 John Bowen Solaris – a life’s work John Bowen Solaris Synthesizer The user knows exactly where he is, what he has done, what he is in the process of doing, and what his next steps must be in order to achieve the sound he is going for. These are things I have never managed to this point of perfection with the Andromeda.
- Page 22 John Bowen Solaris – a life’s work With Solaris, his life’s work, John Bowen has created an in-depth musical instrument. In connection with the audio files, please note: These contain 50 (!) minutes of music. Everything is Solaris “pure” —...
- Page 23 John Bowen Solaris – a life’s work Elkas masterkeyboard MK88 was used in two soundfiles (“polyphonic aftertouch”) for variation of Solaris filter frequencies and LFO speeds, based on independent key pressures. (No knobs were tweaked, it’s all “finger control”). Enjoy …!
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