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

Alesis NanoPiano

Alesis makes a lot of small, inexpensive music gear with a lot packed inside. Buy something Alesis and you'll get what you expected, once home you will likely find a whole bunch more functionality, sounds or something under the hood.

That it's almost a shame, as lots of potential customers may have passed this up, not realizing how much it could do.

Yes, it was "nano," that is, small. But the sounds were huge sounding, high quality (16 bit 48k) and it had 64 full notes of polyphony all packed into its tiny 1/3 rack space.

The name is also not right. Yes, there were amazing acoustic and electric pianos in there, all you'd need, but also bass, organs, mallet percussion, synths, sound effects and all manner of splits and layers.

They kept it simple and hands on, two knobs got you to all 256 sounds manually, and I never got so far as to try and use program change messages to switch between them remotely do any editing as you could with an external editor, apparently.

I, like most, I suspect, who got this, did so for the cheap and available sounds, the immediate gratification of the front panel. It was fun, but if you like to tweak, forget it.

It was not multi-timbral either, one patch at a time, kids. That was the ultimate downside for me, and I moved on looking for a rack unit that had performance set ups I could program per composition in my sequencer. A pallet of sound I could use AT THE SAME TIME.

I guess I just wanted more. I had plenty though, I just wasn't appreciating it. I've seen these on ebay for like nothing, and I've just set up an alert to tell me when one comes up.

I want my NanoPiano back.

Yamaha TG-33, Vector Madness

Yamaha TG-33 (I've owned two over the years)

The TG-33 is a descendant of Yamaha's very successful FM synthesizers of the 1980s, notably the DX7, cross-bred with sample playback technology. Each patch was made up of four sounds, some FM, some sample based — with the added magic of "vector control." The joystick on the left was used to mix these sounds over time, or within the patch. Much like Korg's popular Wavestation synth, the sound of a patch could flow from one distinct timbre to another. That movement could be saved within the patch or controlled in real time. Very cool.

It was pretty cheap, but the polyphony was less than they claimed, because each patch could use up to 4 voices of that polyphonym. It was easy to use up all your polyphony in just a few patches. But the voices where allocated dynamically. You could set up 16 midi channels, each with a different sound, and have them all available in a performance for sequencing or live performance, without needing to switch patches.

Despite the fact that the sample resolution was on the low side, quality-wise, 12 bit, I think, in the mix the sounds were pretty convincing. Alone, though, the patches could sound a bit thin.

This machine was best for creating sweeping atmospheres, a combination of the vector movement and the ample sound choices, but the thing had drums and bass guitars and everything you'd need to sequence songs.

Which is just what I used this for back in the days before computers made any sounds themselves. My Mac IIci ran Cubase, sequencing midi that this thing played back. The whole thing worked pretty well, it was easy to use, and pretty fun at that.

A bit of a relic now, but the vector joystick seems to have been an prescient ancestor to today's many midi controllers that musicians an DJs seem to love for mangling audio on the fly.
You can hear the factory demo here:

Korg Micro X

"As an absolute minimum we would suggest 32 MG and a processor running at 120 MHz. There is no maximum system requirement, but an Apple G3/300 MHz with 64 MB or more would be very cool." -FROM THE BOX OF CUBASE VST, MY FIRST COMPUTER RECORDING/VIRTUAL INSTRUMENT SOFTWARE PROGRAM.

Boy do times change. My current mac blows those specs away, but software has gotten more demanding too. My 1.4 ghZ G4 notebook starts to hicup in Live or Protools with a just a couple of virtual instruments running — sometimes with just one demanding vst. Let's face it, not everyone can afford to get the latest computer every year.

Frustrated by crashes I went out looking for an external voice module to trigger via midi out of my sequencer. My adventure with the JV101 proved less than ideal. I wanted something editable and with more contemporary sounds.

I never even heard of the Korg Micro X when a salesman pointed it out to me. It's keyboard is so short you can barely play it on it's own, but with a controller keyboard (I already had one) and almost any computer (even my lame G4) the sounds, editing and system integration of this machine really shine.

Get this: The supplied editor opens just like a virtual synth inside of your recording software, so you can work seamlessly inside your sequencer, just like with virtual synths, only here the processing chores are all off-board, on the Micro X's back. Free of the CPU load of the virtual synths, my lame mac is running like a champ.

Add to that: Lots of great sounds, ample polyphony, editable, multiple arpeggiators, realtime control knobs and even built in templates for using its knobs as midi controllers for Live and other software, the little thing is a rocket in the pocket with a sequencer, and lot's of fun to play on it's own with it's cool patches and synced arpeggios.

And it comes with an orange case. Well worth the $500.

Roland JV-1010

The JV-1010 is like Las Vegas. Lots of sparkle and polish, affordable to get there, but my short vacation with this unit is ending. (I got this 1999 half-rack at a used music store for $175 a few months ago [2008]).

And it really isn't a synthesizer, in the traditional sense, despite what it says on the panel. Yes, you can get into the JV-1010 and start raw with the waveforms and create new sounds by modifying what happens to them, "like" a real synthesizer. But editing the sounds on this is limited for me by the fact that there is no reasonably priced Mac editor software for it these days. Not surprising, because this is so old it has a serial computer connection on the back!

It's basically a "ROMpler." It plays back bits of samples of natural instruments or actual synthesizers from ROM to mimic natural instruments, synths, sound effects etc. And it does it really well for $175 (what I paid in 2008). By God there are over 1000 patches in this, probably every sound you've ever heard on a record or in performance! Drums, pianos, organs, clavs, guitars or all kinds, and plenty of synthesizer sounds. The specs are truly awesome.

That's pretty much how my ebay auction reads. Sure, it's great for producing recordings. You have all the sounds right in here. But I'm in this for the fun, and I want to do something, not just play back canned sounds. And yes, composing and arranging is doing something, but somehow the overstuffed library of sounds in the JV-1010 makes it just too easy to randomly pick and choose and get a comfortable sounding track going. Like Las Vegas glitter, it's hard for the individual personality to shine through the prepackaged glitz.

I feel like I have a brick of gold on the table, but I needed groceries. See, the folks down at the Shoprite won't accept it at the register. It's just not the currency I need right now. I'm in the market for a tweakable, knob-ladden synth or sampler serving immediate sound mangling satisfaction.

The Astounding Yamaha FBO1

Lame little DX module, say you?
When this arrived in 1986 or so, with it's unbelievable EIGHT note polyphony with up to 8 discrete midi channels, all for about $400 bucks, it really was revolutionary. I got mine when it dropped to $299.
Let's remember the little FBO1 as the module that broke that $500 price barrier, bringing multitimbral midi, internal memory, ability to patch edit on a computer and the sound (almost) of the DX7 (only 4 operators for the FB01) to the common man.We're used to our multitimbral workstations and computer instruments, but back in the 80s you needed real cash to get a multichannel midi setup happening. Two of these could be linked for a full 16 note polyphony as well.

It's limitations were also it's strengths. For example the polyphony was not allocated dynamically among the voices. You needed to assign 1 voice to you bass patch, 4 to your string pad, 2 to a percussion thingy, and the last to something else. Accidentally lay a fifth note on the pad? You'll not steal from the churning bass riff. Lack of flex brought control.

At least that's how I thought about it. Anyway, who ever heard of dynamic voice allocation back then? That was Star Wars stuff.

Soon I got two of these and used them on a primitive sequencing setup: A Voyetra sequencer on a DOS PC XT without even a hard drive. The dual floppy discs really were floppy those days. A few other modules for drums, some effects. And I had something going there.

And two of these screwed into a rack nice and neat.

Here's a nice link.

Roland XP50 Workstation

Every keyboard has it's moment as the "flagship" of the product line. There was a version of the XP-50 with more keys, the XP-80, but essentially this represented the state of the art in Roland "romplers" (ROM sample playback synths) in 1995.

MAYBE I'M CHEAP because I rarely buy gear when it's brand new. But something else was coming out so the XP-50 was on sale for about $500 by 1998 or 1999 or so. My midi studio was getting out of hand, with lots of modules and drum machines, a big mixer and tons of cables. I was spending half my time getting all the bank change and program change messages right in my computer sequencer, and laboring over saving all the various drum patterns and program setups or my modules. Trading all that for this "workstation" seemed like a great way to consolidate, and I knew it sounded really nice, having spent many a lunch break in Sam Ash.

The store's advertising claimed that an expansion card was included, but after I'd plunked down my credit card and the expansion card wasn't appearing on the counter, I complained. Loudly. The salesman was on his first day and couldn't find a record of the special deal anywhere. I was insistent, because I knew I was right, and didn't want to get ripped off. Finally, he looked both ways and threw the card in the bag saying, "O.K. just take it, go!"

MY MISSION was being served: to move away from a spaghetti of cables and the complexity of being nursemaid to a dozen tiny LCD screens in the direction of writing good songs and capturing great performances.

I was simplifying, getting back the music.

OR SO I THOUGHT. While the XP-50 had a great soundset, a nice feel and all that expandability, it was not exactly simple to use well. It required lots of button pushing to program new sounds and get around the sequencer and to program patches on-board.

Also, the 64 voice polyphony was very easily eaten up by a few tracks, because a lot of sounds used up to 4 voices. Play your biggest chord and do the math. Pretty pointless to have a 16 track sequencer with so few voices.

CONCLUSION: I loved this keyboard anyway because of the variety of patches. I wish I'd never sold it a few years later in favor of the VST synths my computer was too sluggish to take full advantage of inside Cubase VST. In addition, I wish I'd not gotten rid of some of the other modules because they could have provided some expanded polyphony.

I think the sounds are still good today. Mangle them with your recording software. In 2008 I'd tell folks on somewhat of a budget (read: can't buy a $4000 tricked out mac with a quad processor) to record straight audio on a more basic machine and not worry about the ever increasing horsepower you need to run more than a couple of virtual instruments. Instead, buy one of these or it's rack-mount siblings (jv1080 jv1010 or later models) used and you'll have thousands of sounds ready to go.

OH YEA, When I got home from the store with my XP-50, I looked it up and actually the price with the included card was from another store, and a hundred bucks more.

Roland Drumatix TR-606

A crystal ball would have been nice back in the mid 1980s. That's when I hocked my TR-606. This analog drum machine sells for $500 today. I should have just put it in the closet for a while. Who knew?

Most people using these today are too young to remember the time when sample playback drum machines became available. Suddenly the 606 sounded totally cheesy. Even embarrassing. However, listening to my old recordings that include it, I do appreciate the thwacky, solid punch of the analog bass and snare. The hats rock too.

But alas, I've got all the sounds on my mac now, and you can get software versions of this that do more than the original.

Yes, this was the cool at the time, and it's cool again, but honestly, I don't miss it.

I do love telling people that I sold mine for $75!

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.

Yamaha CX5M Music Computer

In 1986 I must have been one of 25 people in the U.S.A. who had this thing, because nobody I've ever spoken to has ever heard of it. It was an MSX system computer, a 1980s Microsoft based computer platform developed in and popular in Japan with the idea of standardizing hardware manufacture. But it was a total flop in the U.S.A. The CX5m came out way before the MAC or PC had great options for sequencing and MIDI composition. The main competition was the ATARI.

And this computer had a built in multi-timbral FM synthesizer. That sounded good to me. It was only 8 voices, and they were not dynamically allocated. The composition software did the job with actual musical notation entered on a staff, which was pretty cool, if you knew how to read and write music (those 5 years of classical piano and theory classes finally were paying off). Other software, on plug in ROM cartridges, included a 4 track real time midi sequencer, which came out later, (but didn't work with the internal sounds!) a voicing program and a librarian. Other stuff too like art software and word processors and such.

It was interesting to have exact control of your music using standard notation as input for the sequencer. The results tended to be a little rigid, unless you went nuts inserting dynamic markings, tempo shifts, time signature changes and individual 64th note rest measures etc., to make it sound more organic. Not easy. I began to appreciate what a conductor did and the flexibility of organic musical human creatures.

The real-time 4 track midi sequencer was an improvement in terms of getting the feel of a human being into your tracks. But like I mentioned, it didn't work with the internal sounds! I actually sent this back to the factory for a MIDI upgrade, which gave it a midi out so that I could use it with other gear. It was buggy though, tending to add a small delay between patterns.

The sounds themselves were of the clean 4-0perator FM synthesis variety, like the DX-100, or the FB-01 and other Yamaha DX synths below the level of the flagship DX-7.

When it came down to it, the CX5M was an FM-Edsel. Yes it had the clear as bell dx piano signature sounds and pretty twacky metalic bass slaps. And it was very crisp sounding. After layering synths on a cassette four-track sequencing straight out of the box sounded amazingly clean, if somewhat sterile.

Soon I got a PC XT and Voyetra sequencing software, which was much more powerful. The Yamaha computer ended up in my niece and 2 nephews' basement after a few years, and I think it's still there. All three went off to Ivy League schools, two of them to study math and computers. I'd like to think their career choices were inspired by working with that CX5M.

Nah.

Korg Poly Six

When that big goon approached me on the subway platform I got a bit nervous. And then he started asking me about what was in my instrument case. I was carrying my prized synthesizer, the Korg Poly Six.

I had a theater gig at La Mama Etc. for the 1984 production of The Memory Theater of Giulio Camillo by the Creation Theater Company. Vito Ricci composed the music, and I played some synthesizer parts in the show. I was on my way home after words when the guy approached me, so it was near midnight.

While it made me a little nervous that the goon started questioning me, I really wasn't too worried. He couldn't exactly run away with the Korg, being that it weighed about 60lbs! But I couldn't run away from him either, so I found myself in a bit of a standoff. After a little back and forth, I discovered he wasn't looking to rip me off, but rather wanted to recruit me into his ministry which needed a keyboardist for its live service.

I told him I was "exploring Taoism." I think that he thought that it may have meant that I was gay, and he scooted away.

O.k., I just looked it up, the Poly-Six is 11.2kg which comes to like 25lbs. It seemed much heavier at the time. Maybe that's because my memories of it are so solidly positive. It had a good build — metal, with wood side panels. This synth was old school.

The Poly-Six was the first really affordable polyphonic synth, coming in at under $1000 back in 1980-81. But it didn't have MIDI, which was brand new. The price dropped to about $500 or $600 when the next model came out, the Korg Poly 61, which did have MIDI. What the Poly 61 did not have, however, was knobs. That was about the point in history when knobs went away in favor of the tiny liquid crystal display, as in the ubiquitous Yamaha DX7, and everything after it, for quite some time.

The Poly Six sounded great to me. It had a more simple voice architecture than the Pro-One I'd had before, but it was POLYPHONIC. You could also stack all six voices into a hugely thick monophonic voice. It had a chorus on it and memory, so yes, finally I could save my patches. You could invert the envelopes with the twist of a knob.

Très cool.

I recorded a bunch of tunes with this, but traded it in at Rogue Music in Manhattan. I still remember how happy to take it off my hands they were, so I knew I wasn't getting top dollar on it. But it was too heavy to take home. As time passed and I listened to my recordings of it, I realized how much I missed the analog sound of the thing. Everything went cold and digital after that. FM synthesis is o.k., but it was a lot harder to make your own voices. But I craved MIDI, and was looking toward computers and the future.

I sold the Poly-Six and got myself the Yamaha CX5m Music computer, which promised to combine computer sequencer based composition with an on-board FM synthesizer complete with computer voicing software and a librarian. Read all about it.