Geared Up: ORCumentary Mastermind Orc Adams on His Roland Juno GI Synthesizer

Fantasy themed solo project ORCumentary has been slowly but surely growing his following over the past few years. The band, which is a solo project of Orc Adams, recently released the album Destroy the Dwarves via Orc Rock Records. The recording is an awesome mix of fantasy-themed death/industrial/heavy metal that fans of Tolkien will love!

What one piece of gear do you use to obtain your signature sound?
Adams: My Roland Juno GI. It’s a 66-key synth with over 1300 sounds built in.

What about it makes it so important to you?
Adams: It’s not just a great machine for live performance, it’s a songwriting machine (more on that later). It’s portable too, which I couldn’t say about its large and unwieldy predecessor. It’s easy to record demos on and there’s a plethora of sounds to choose from. Why Roland discontinued such a wonderful machine is beyond me.

How was this gear used during the recording of your latest album?
Adams: I did all of the recording and mixing directly on the Roland (including vocals; you can hook up a microphone to it too. I use a Shure SM7B). The only work that needed to be done on the tracks that isn’t done on the synth itself are the finishing touches like track trimming (which I do on Audacity) and mastering (which a friend of mine does for me).

What are the major pros and cons?
Adams: Pros: I’ve already said most of them, but in addition to all the praise I’ve given it thus far, it’s cost-effective. The synth cost $1,000 and I’ve used it to record two albums and an EP.

Cons: Doing final album recordings are extremely tedious, especially when there’s a deadline. The production quality is not on par with that of major studio releases. As much as I’d like that quality, I don’t have that kind of expendable income to dump into this. I think the audio quality is definitely good, though. If anything, it adds to what ORCumentary is, because the music itself is pretty raw and unpolished.

How long have you had it and would you ever change it?
Adams:I’ve been using the GI for 4 years and the Shure SM7B for about 1 year I’m very happy with both pieces of equipment, but I am considering investing in actual software to make album recordings easier. We’ll see what happens when it’s time to record the next release.

Give us your best “gear goes wrong” story.
Adams: This was with my old keyboard, but I had a show roughly an hour from where I live and I forgot the USB stick that contained all my backing track data. It was also in a more rural area, so it took me forever to find a place that actually sold USB sticks. Luckily, I had saved some of my backing tracks to my email account. Once I got another USB stick, it was just a matter of finding someone at the venue who had a laptop that I could use for a few minutes. I lucked out in that respect too. Moral of the story: always have a backup plan.

Check out the song “Into Their Cavernous Hole We Plunge” here.