Synthesizing Nightmares

In 1983, a young college student plundered his student loan money to buy an analog synthesizer. That young man was me, of course, and the synthesizer was the amazing  Sequencial Circuits Pro One. Sadly, it's long gone from my studio. But one creation I squeezed from it left a lasting impression on a generation of innocent youth.

Back the day my dad was in advertising and promotion and one of his firm's clients was Children's Television Workshop, of Sesame Street and Muppets fame. Papa threw me a bone, hired me to create a three second sound track for the CTW video sign-on above. I was paid $50.

Every sound came from the Sequential Circuits Pro One, recorded on a TASCAM 144 4-track cassette recorder, the original Portastudio. The synth had a 16-step programmable sequencer, which I employed at hyper speed for the cascading effect. I layered more sounds on top of that and ran it through an analog delay pedal. Bingo.

I scarcely gave it a thought for years, but recently, when searched YouTube for it on a lark, I found that many people had posted the sign-on, and it was getting views. I did some quick math and found our ancient video logo had received, easily, over half a million hits.

That was delightful to discover, but it was the comments that were really surprising. I was astounded to learn that a  more than a few children had been traumatized by the spot. They found my soundtrack and the visuals truly frightening. Just read this sampling of YouTube comments:

"This version of the CTW logo should've been one of the scariest logos in television history."— danucciguzman

"yay i'm not the only one who was freaked out by this!!!"— girlintheflesh78

"omg! i thought i was the only one who this scared, lol."— bluebeary07

"That always scared the hell out of me when I was little."— chrisz71

"Oh...My...Gosh... Scared me SO bad when I was little. I hid under my covers when it would come on!! :O"— LuckyPup551

It scared me too. I wouldn't watch my sesame street tape because of it"— Colleen Perisutti

But there were also these:

"Pretty sweet soundtrack."— OmniInc

"i love this it was my childhood i will never forget it"— daminmancejin

Casio CZ-3000 Synthesizer

Casio's synthesizers began as novelty items, like the VL-Tone, so I get the sense that the company did not plan a trajectory toward professional musicians. But the CZ-101 was a huge hit, even with it's tiny keys. It sounded good, it was cheap so musicians ate it up. Casio fed the market with more professional models.

The CZ-3000 was one of those, a CZ-101 on steroids. It used the same "phase distortion" digital synthesis as the 101. It had 2 oscilators per voice (16 voices) and an 8 stage envelope, for goodness sake. I got the 3000 for its 16 voice polyphony 61 full sized keys.

The Casio was OK. I was able to use it as a master midi controller to sequence with. It had some nice pads, and good industrial and sound-effect-like tones. But it lacked in a few areas.

It had no velocity sensitivity.

Strike one.

Second of all, even though it had a ton of parameter buttons on the front, it was still not easy (for me) to program.

I started on the Sequential Circuits Pro One, and all its knobs. You could see every parameter and its value right in front of you. Some people can conceptualize a sound in their head, understand how to create it with a particular synthesizer's architecture and then plug away at those little up and down buttons. Maybe I'm just stupid that way. I prefer a more tactile and visual way of creating patches. But maybe I'm not so stupid, because knobs are back, big-time.

Strike two — the crappy programming scheme.

The 3000 was also heavy and chunky. Along with the Casio, my studio now had a PC computer with midi, a midi patchbay, a drum machine, a couple of Yamaha FBO1s, guitars, a mixer, mics, effects, headphone and speaker cables etc. I had myself a spaghetti of power, midi and audio cables that had to be constantly managed and maintained.

By now it was 1988 and I was living with my fiancée in an apartment in a Brooklyn. Studio space and time was tight and my muse didn't like spending all night hunting for buzzes. My urge to simplify drew me in the direction of a master keyboard (with velocity) to control everything and some sound modules placed neatly in a rack.

One day I found a Roland MKB300 midi controller on sale at Sam Ash. It was plugged into a grand piano sample in the store and when I touched those keys, I felt like I was playing a piano again.

Strike three.

I turned toward my controller/rackmounted gear vision, sold off the Casio and took the Roland home.

Sequential Circuits Pro-One

The Prophet-5 was IT in 1977, but at $5K, who could afford one? Suddenly Sequential put out its baby brother, the Pro-One. For $425 you got not a Prophet 5, but at least the "voice of the prophet." Positively religious!

And look at all those knobs! This was synth 101. Here I could map out my synthesizer voices clearly, every parameter right in front of me. It had a couple of oscillators so you could tune them to an interval and get a "chord" out of it. This was the real deal. No presets? No voice memory? Who knew that was a problem back then!

This synth could make a mechanical clang, a bouncy bass, a string sound, a tornado, a wasps nest wind, an organ sound, whatever, and had many options for routing modulation. Play a clean tone then turn up the mod wheel and the sound would fly out warped, twisted and spinning. A pair of 20 step sequencers I made good use of: one for verse, one for chorus. You could sync the clock to a tape click and after a few bounces on the old 4-track, things really started to cook. And let's not forget the arppegiator!

O.k., you can tell I still love this. I still want this one. So why did I get rid of it? Well, I needed the money for something else. And that was polyphony. This synth didn't have it and mulyi tracking layers and layers on a 4-track got tedious. I sold my Pro-One for pretty much what I paid for it. Someone got a great synth, and got a myself a Korg Poly Six.