help and advice on a true analog synth

[Hades]

i would say the patch memory on the juno 60/106 will make things harder to understand than an sh101 without patch memory. when you change patch with the juno the sound changes but the sliders stay in the same position. this means you can't see the settings of your saved sounds. with the 101 what you see is what you hear.

agreed

the sh101 is easy to understand, theres little point in having a patch memory with it, i can get a sound back to roughly what it was in seconds.

i had a Juno 106 and 2 x SH101s, i sold the 106 and kept the 101s,

better sounding synth.

I can't compare since I never owned an SH101.

but I disagree with the statement of tone-def.
you have this problem with every old analog synth (or even with quite a few newer ones) if they don't have rotary knobs.
you simply don't see the settings of your sound unless there are endless rotary knobs or a screen to help you out, and with a lot of screens, the value of the parameter will only show up untill you move a knob or slider, and by then you're already changing the value.
I still consider the moving a slider/turning a knob untill the value gets picked up less frustrating than having lost a sound you just fell in love with.
With a Juno you could simply try to constantly keep in your mind :
"ok, old gear, so sliders or knobs don't move to new settings when I take another sound. pay attention"
or still just start from scratch with an initial sound when you want to and still have the advantage of having a patch memory.
With an SH101, you just start from the last sound you made and you don't have patch memory.

sure enough an SH101 is fairly easy.
nowadays, with something like an SH101 I'd know exactly how I could recreate it,
so I wouldn't get frustrated.
but I think we forget sometimes how it was when we first started out with sound synthesis.
It's one thing to read up on all the info and 'understand' what an LFO is, or what an envelope does,
but it's a whole different thing to come to a level where you listen to any kind of sound and always start thinking in theoretic terms on how you could recreate or program that sound if you had a synth in front of you.

anyway, I'm tired, and I get the feeling I can't put into words exactly what I mean.
plus it's a bit of a pointless discussion since this boils down to personal preference anyway.

[tone-def]

i can see where your coming from.
patch memory has it's plus sides but i don't think you can learn anything from the patch storage on a juno. it just doesn't give you any visual data of how the patch was made.

[Hades]

i can see where your coming from.
patch memory has it's plus sides but i don't think you can learn anything from the patch storage on a juno. it just doesn't give you any visual data of how the patch was made.

"patch memory has it's plus sides"
??
you make it sound as if patch memory is generally a bad thing and to avoided wherever possible.

patch memory basically has only advantages.
the only downside I see in patch memory is people getting lazy and not starting from scratch enough.
But if you use your "initial patch" enough, then what's the problem with patch memory ?
it's not the patch memory that is stopping you from getting visual data, it's sliders or knobs that don't move to a new position when you switch to another sound. or no rotary knobs.

anyways, you get my point/humble opinion I guess

[Phurniture]

The Juno-106 is a good first analog synth (it was mine). In terms of learning how to program sounds from scratch I would just push all the sliders up, then pull them all down and start from there. I've seem plenty of Juno-106s around in good condition for a decent price (around $500 or less). Not the best synth ever, but some pretty damn good sounds - you get decent bass and pads (as it's polyphonic), along with MIDI and patch storage.