Actually that got me thinking…
We always treat the MiniMoog as the default Monosynth. . . .
and this is a worth pursuit which has made us the simple stay at home types we our so proud wee have become.
But a recent discussion whilst examining the number of rooks and crows that can dance of head of the zynthian pin brought up the subject of connecting early polysynths as was done in 1983…
So what is the default polysynth to present to the world?, which implementation is it?
Can you support your strongly held views with powerpoint, blurry youtube videos and excellent zynth samples ???
Points will be awarded for opinionated bombast and unsupported opinion and punishing sessions on the zynth club will be the social retraining for those that insist on talking about the subject with any degree of understanding especially if they mention CPU, Polyphony, Temperatures or latency…
I like Helm and use the DX7 but I’m not sure I know what it’s trying to be…
What are the best?
And which engines would you choose to do the above two…? PD answers get extra marks.
I am watching this subject with great interest. Doing control panel knockoffs of classic synths with close-enough under the hood seems pretty doable here.
It’s such a debate that benefits us as a community.
I will, of course, insist on a full CS80 implementation with rather too many ribbon controllers but that could be just me…
Hi! Not really sure about what we are elaborating here…
Are we talking about which memorable polyphonic synthesiser of the past to emulate and implement, as a Raspbian-specific plugin for Zynthian, presenting it as the default starting point of each new synth chain?
It’s the result of a certain amount of red wined fueled analysis and nostalgia that was indulged in after some excellent food at the fireside of a certain developer of this parish…
But yes, it’s interesting to see what people consider the polysynth to consist of. …
So far everything we have seen has been microprocessor allocated voices, would you include this rather peculiar beast which is almost more organ than polysynth is some peoples eyes…?
currently going for £69,382.99GBP which is either an example of how far the pound has decayed or indicates a certain degree of over choked nostalgia…
It is rather amusing when I remember Shaun Ashcroft replacing a blown output op-amp on just such a beast, caused by the slightly confused and nervous owner plugging his amplifier output which happened to be on 1/4" jacks into the output of said synth…
Not every Sheffield synth band knew what they were doing back in 1980 but I hope he hung on to it…
Apologies if if this seem a little esoteric but It’s interesting to see how far the polysynth tag can actually stretch and I confess to a certain nostalgia for filling in my observer book of synthesizer back in the Studio Union Refectory wondering what was going to emerge from every interestingly shaped flight case that made it to the interesting bit of the stage…
I doubt that any of these sound as good as my Casio Christmas Synth that played “Living la Vida Loca” as a built in demo tune, and to prove it, I challenge you all to upload your keyboards demo songs.
As far as my subjective synthesiser mythology goes, this behemoth of an electronic instrument from 1985 would be my personal Holy Grail. Never had the privilege of touching it, nor seen it in presence. Once knew a guy who repentedly admitted having sold it for peanuts in the early 90s, just in order to finance the purchase of some nondescript rompler-ish workstation. I have watched/listened to quite a few demos of this baby, and even so - with all the audio codec distortion going on - it sounded as majestic, lush and authoritative as it might have sounded at the time of release. As many other digitally controlled analogue masterpieces of the same era, it screams for being swathed in crystalline waves of top-notch fx outboard (Lexicon or Eventide are de-rigueur), so as to express all of its marvellous sonic potential.
The sound of Money for Nothing that showcased these devices was as contemporary act of creation as we might have seen in a while…
It’s interesting to compare and contrast the attempted sounds of the different architectures, but FM was a massively interesting approach and certainly could certainly disturb the voice allocation devices . . .
What a monumental symphony of an FM machine. You’re right in highlighting how similar in design concept and overall architecture the two (roughly contemporary) beasts were. In both cases, the coupling of two sub-synthesisers with half of the voice count, a luxury cabinet and plenty of futuristic push controls on a wide front panel. And what a match between the two! On one side the pinnacle of subtractive synthesis under IC control, with unprecedented complexity of modulation for a non-modular instrument, on the other side a colossal 32 voices foray in digital non-linear waveform distortion. Both are, especially if acquired in well serviced shape, completely unattainable today to normal human beings as they were back in the day.
Well if mini-moog gets the mono title (despite the far richer 2600), then the meter is pop stage presence. Defacto you could argue the Hammond B3 really did and still does take much electronic real estate… nothing sold more than the DX-7, but it was effectively presets only in use, so don’t we have to give it to…
the prophet?
They were such charming things in the days before acoustic extinction. The single primogenitor of the synth genre, whose influence rings modern to this day, to my ear, is the Stratocaster of James Hendrix. These days everybody wants a guitar pedal for their synth LOL.
The single primogenitor of the synth genre, whose influence rings modern to this day, to my ear, is the Stratocaster of James Hendrix. These days everybody wants a guitar pedal for their synth LOL.