How One Instrument Defined A Generation
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- Опубликовано: 21 окт 2024
- How the 80s became a genre.
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Every time period has its own musical sound, but few are quite as recognizable as the 1980s. It was a time defined by bright visions of the future, visions brought to life by the budding new technology of digital synthesis, and there's no better case study there than the Yamaha DX7. It was the first truly affordable synth, and it quickly took over the musical world, led by its signature preset, E PIANO 1. But what made E PIANO 1 such a perfect fit for the world of the 1980s, and how did it become the most recognizable tone in popular music?
The paper is "What Makes It Sound ’80s?: The Yamaha DX7 Electric Piano Sound" by Dr. Megan Lavengood: online.ucpress...
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My immediate 80's sound was bass-boosted echoing drums a la Phil Collins.
The infamous gated reverb
And the gated reverb, don't forget the gated reverb
mine was the oberheim ob-xa
As much reverb on drums as in the 80s is definitely something you don't really hear anymore these days.
Mine was a slash like guitar tone
The Rhodes sounds like "ooh", the DX-7 is more like "oww".
FAX
The thodes sounds like UWU and the DX7 sounds like OWO
A sound analysis, actually. If you analyse a human producing those sounds, you'll find that the "ooh" has more consistent harmonic overtones while the "oww" has more gaps because it's a diphthong (ie. one vowel sound bleeding into another). Kind regards, someone studying to be a linguist :)
@@rasmusn.e.m1064 Wow, fascinating, thank you for sharing!
The DX7 EPiano1 isn't modelled after your typical Fender Rhodes, it is modelled specifically after a well-known Rhodes piano modification from that era called the Dyno-My-Piano: ruclips.net/video/HSEd1I9JqxA/видео.html
"There's one variable we haven't considered yet: humans."
Draws an elephant.
(yes yes I know I just couldn't resist)
It's in the room...
Elephants are people too.
My first thought was the gated reverb snare! But alright, this is a close second
4:39 haha I like how "imprecise" means drawing with your right hand
“Retro futurism” wow, you just described exactly what I love about old sci-fi and whatnot
Retro sci fi is my undying passion! The way the people used to see the future was brilliant. Well, until Cyberpunk was created and it became more brilliant but way too dark.
80s music in a nutshell: one person who can sing, one person who can play guitar, a Yamaha DX7, and a LinnDrum.
Don'f forget the 808!
(Guitar optional)
@@michaelwaynemartin3291 (if guitar, then boss ce2 mandatory )
Lets not forget the Prophet 5, the Simmons, the Oberheim OB-Xa, OB-8 and the DMX. Junos and Jupiters.
@@DHTSciFiArtist The DX7 was the most popular, hence the joke :P
Prophet 5 is my favorite 80s synth.
The tactile feel of the keyboard synth is a drawback to the type of feedback a player receives but it is not unique and offers its own advantages. It shares the problem with the pipe and tonewheel organs, whose keys and controls are also only sending "data".
The DX family actually were extremely sensitive to player input because of the multiplicative nature of FM synthesis (compared to subtractive and additive synthesis). A very slight change in velocity (how hard the key is pressed) can change the sound on a DX7 dramatically.
Great comment. Anyone who’s ever played a DX7 can tell you the keybed actually feels pretty incredible to play, especially compared to its competitors in the synthesizer market.
@@sentient8653 While it's been ages since I've used a real DX7 and I'm sure the keybed is good to play, I was referring to the way FM synthesis actually works and the fact that you can route velocity to any of the operators (what Yamaha called each oscillator), allowing very interesting control over things you wouldn't be able to control physically. An example would be having the velocity modulate the amplitude of the modulating operator instead of the final carrier operator. In the physical world, that's like changing the hardness of the felt on the hammers by how hard you hit the key on a Fender Rhodes.
@@Jophenese Yes, FM synths feel so expressive to me, the way eps breakdown at high velocity is beautiful..
Question: Do software synths (Dexed, Arturia DX7 etc) that try to replicate them capture the feedback?
@@tonylancer7367 Yes. It's the nature of Frequency Modulation synthesis. The particulars of what happens when the math is pushed to extremes can vary but it's still just math. That's why FM synths didn't catch on until computers; you can do FM in the analog world but it was hard because analog oscillators tend to drift.
My great grandma is disappointed that this video isn’t about the accordion.
it's me. i'm your great grandma
Peyton T. Starkweather
What’s your age
@@want-diversecontent3887 700, but let's say 20
When I tried to imagine the music of the 80s I just immediately rickrolled myself
The DX7 story that I always loved (I hope it's true) was that Yamaha fully expected users to overwrite the factory presets and only realised very few players did when they got some back to the factory for repairs. I had a long held hatred for the the DX's and FM synthesis as a whole, but I've since realised FM can do a lot in the right hands - Eno for example. I Still hate that epiano preset though
And this is why I bought a Yamaha TX-802 a couple of years ago. 2 DX7s in a rack mount enclosure. Instant 80s
Someone's probably already said this, but the DX7 used FM synthesis, which stands for frequency modulation. This takes one waveform, or operator and modulates the frequency by another frequency or waveform. This is a lot different than the subtractive synthesis that was used for most analog synths, such as the jupiter8, which just passed a waveform through various filters. FM synthesis is a lot harder to predict, control and understand than subtractive synthesis, which is why the DX7 was notorious for how hard it was to program.
Right. Other digital synths that weren't trying to copy the DX7 used digital waveforms as a starting point, but used more traditional modulation, filters, and envelopes to shape and modify the sound. Like the Korg DW-8000 and DW-6000, for example. And then there were the early sampling keyboards trying emulate the Fairlight CMI, allowing you to sample a sound, and then apply filters to the sample. The different forms of synthesis are quite interesting in their own right.
The Sega Genesis's soundchip also used it, which is why soundtracks for its games could vary wildly in quality. I don't fuck with FM synthesis.
Andrew Huang has a great explainer video about fm synthesis m.ruclips.net/video/vvBl3YUBUyY/видео.html
I'm calling it - this sort of analysis of sound design is going to be increasingly significant in musicology. I've been less in academia in recent years and more in performance, and I've spent more time figuring out what synth was used on which recording and how to recreate it live than I have spend time actually playing. Guitar players will wax at length about their exact setup....but keyboard players tend to be much more tight lipped about it.
Additionally, coming from a symphonic band/marching band background, the more I learn about synthesis and sound design the more I see parallels to band - how overtones effect orchestration, and why tuning idiosyncrasies create the perception of "warmth."
In the study of orchestration throughout the centuries, there were certain types of instrumental pairings and doublings that were agreed to be more pleasing than others. It wasn't until the development of electronic sound spectroscopy that they realized those traditionally-taught instrumental pairings were the ones that avoided clashing overtones and best approximated a flat frequency response. It's a good example of modern technology verifying, but also recontextualizing traditional teaching.
Super interesting stuff! That disconnect between physicality and a fully electronic instrument is something I've been trying to get across about electronic drums "vs" acoustic drums a lot recently. There's a distinction between how we feel when we create a sound physically and how we feel when one is "generated" when we interact with an electronic instrument that doesn't get dicussed or recgonised nearly enough and it goes a long way to explaining why some people can't gel well with certain electronic instruments. Great video, as always.
Your comment made me realise I don’t really feel that disconnect AT ALL with regards to keyboards (even though I play some, for me they’re just different instruments with different sounds) but it is definitely there for me with drums and percussion sometimes. Often there is the feeling of “this is a great song, sad it doesn’t have real drums on it”.
"Notoriously difficult"
Draws Battletoads.
I felt that connection.
My 6 year old self was not ready for how unfairly difficult that game was back in the NES days.
"We built this city on the DX7."
That shotgun snare sample, if intentional, is my favorite easter egg ever
It seems like 80s pop is perhaps the most controversial genre of music, to the point where if you type "Why is 80s music..." into Google, the first two suggestions are "so good" and "so bad." I'm guessing that brightness has a lot to do with it - some people love brightness, others can't stand it. It's the same reason why many people hate accordions, bagpipes, and fiddles, and why so many others love them (and why so many cultures use them in their traditional music).
80s synth-pop started in the UK, and the synths themselves are mostly Japanese. Traditional British/Scottish/Irish music is very bright, as are traditional Japanese instruments. It wouldn't be surprising if this preference for brightness carried over into synth-pop. Perhaps this explains my love of both 80s new wave and Irish folk.
For me the most 80s sound is the synths' sawtooth preset. I find it THE 80s sound
Warm can also be described as mellow; soft. A bright sound can be considered more glassy, jingling, or metallic. The DX7 preset gave me that glassy type vibe, while Rhodes sounds fuller, and strangely enough, slightly modulated.
Glassy metallic sounds is what FM synthesis does best, so you're right on point.
I took a college course taught by Dr. Deutsch in 1968. I was learning to become an audio technician, so it was a lot of fun.
THANK YOU for including HERB, I got to study with Herb in college, dude is amazing. So was Bob Moog who he introduced me to. History Section here is Legend just have to give props for it.
Yes - I took his course at Hofstra in about 1968. I was the radio geek ;-)
Ace Lightning that’s the new kitchen sync era isn’t it? Complete with one off Moogs for Concerts... I was there for his retirement/semi retirement
"imagine an 80s sound" *drum machine pattern from "Don't You Want Me" starts*
Watching 12tone videos after learning about standing waves in physics really is an awakening
12tone One thing I noticed about the Rhodes spectrograph is that the "inharmonic" peaks are just higher odd harmonics (specifically 13 through 17) divided by two, which matches the very small peaks around 1.5, 2.5 and so forth as well as what may or may not be another very soft partial an octave below the fundamental-akin to the "hum" note in bell tuning-and ultimately results in a richly harmonic sound while *technically* not representing the harmonic series 1:1. You actually see this a lot in reed and tine-based timbres, although I'm not an acoustician or other physicist so I couldn't tell you why.
Interesting. FM synthesis as a matter of necessity generates undertones for its fundamental frequency.
The DX7 is a behemoth. I feel blessed to play with a keyboardist who has one.
I'm gonna get a yamaha dx27 from a friend of my grandpa's soon. My first physical synth
Back in the 80s I used to make fun of our keyboard player (nicely), who had a DX7, for only using presets and not making his own patches. I had toyed with some analog subtractive synths so I thought what's the big deal making your own patches? Then I got a Yamaha TX81Z rack that was FM based, and realized quickly that FM synthesis programming was whole 'nother ball game and never went beyond the presets.
I wonder if tweaking the design to use allow use of phase modulation rather than frequency modulation might have made things simpler to work with? With both FM and PM synthesis, when using two operators whose frequencies are multiples of a common base, the output will contain only multiples of that base, but when using three cascaded operators, FM synthesis tends to produce "weird and wacky" frequencies.
any of you that have a daw that want to try this out, use the dexed vst. it is an emulation of the dx7 and it sounds just like it.
To my ears is not the same, but close enough.
I was hoping somebody would bring that up. I created the original sound engine for dexed :)
The dx7 epiano sound starts its life as a square wave. Thats the bright over tones you hear.
When I was in high school, they had DX7s in a couple of the practice rooms, so my fellow music nerd friends and I would try to out-cheese each other making up ridiculous 80s-style ballads. Suffice it to say that we were not counted among the cooler kids. (Our teachers thought we were funny, though. 🤷🏽♂️)
Edit: This was not actually during the 1980s.
Can we dig a little more into timbre adjectives? I’m having trouble processing warm and bright as opposites, and my first thought was to describe the “warm” tone as “round” and the “bright” tone as “sharp” or “jagged,” as if the one felt closer to a pure sine wave and the other felt more sawtoothy. What other perceptual spectra do musicians and/or music theorists use to describe timbre, and how did warm-to-bright become the standard?
I have difficulty with them, too. I’ve kinda started feeling warm sounds as like a nice hug, while bright sounds are jarring like getting a flashlight to the face would be
I honestly pretty much make the same distiction. I have and electronic piano, the default preset is quite warm and sounds good with headphones but muddy with the built-in speakers, forcing me to use a brighter preset, especially for faster pieces, for extra clarity.
Round and sharp make sense. I would instantly understand what you meant. I use warm and cool as well as warm and bright.
thanks homestuck synthesizer
I Kinda See What You Mean With "Round Vs Jagged", The "Bright" One Kinda Felt Like A Spike To Me, While The Other One Seemed More Like An Ordinary Sound.
Only at about 1:12, but already props for the Zubat and Bill Cipher drawings. 11/10
My 80s sound also came from the DX7: that synth bass. You know the one
I loved the little aside about the snare drum, because it basically explains why toms (and roto-toms) have their place in a drumkit.
also the paraphrase of Julius Ceasar. (hence the use of the star)
One of the hallmarks of FM synthesis is the ease with which you can introduce 'inharmonic' content to a patch... it's much easier to make a (relatively) realistic sounding chime or bell on an FM synth than on a standard subtractive instrument because of this. I wouldn't be surprised if the author of the EPIANO1 sound thought he was improving on the Rhodes by eliminating those pesky inharmonic overtones.
when i think of the music of the 80s, I do still think of the synth, but what I end up hearing way more is everything, especially vocals, absolutely drenched in heavy reverb. it's like all the artists discovered the magic of reverb and cranked it on everything they could
The first commercially-available "modern" synthesizer controlled with a piano keyboard was not the Moog, it was the Hammond Novachord introduced in 1939.
Fully-polyphonic across all 72 keys as well! Although I've never seen a price for any of them at the time (and they're not the kinds of things to pop up on eBay) I imagine they would have been unaffordable for practically everyone except professional music studios and universities.
While not AS ubiquitous as some other sounds, there's a VERY distinctly '80s bass guitar sound that jumps out to my memory. Perhaps I listen to Rush's post-Moving Pictures material more than some do but it's VERY prominent on Power Windows and especially Hold Your Fire, and I also hear it in the main title theme of Super Smash Bros 3DS/Wii U. It sounds very high-pitched for bass but it's more a timbre than a pitch? I'm sure someone out there knows more distinctly what that is but I know Geddy Lee used Rickenbacker basses a fair bit at that time so that may be related.
There were many factors that made the DX7 such a popular synthesizer. Yes, $2000 in 1983 was a great price for a synth compared to other makes and models. But FM was revolutionary. Back then, people were MUSICIANS (most are just "producers" making beetz today) and were mainly using synths to emulate traditional instruments (there were exceptions exploring synths' full capabilities) and FM synthesis offered much more complex timbres than the subtractive analog synths before and could more accurately reproduce traditional sounds. Plus having an LCD screen telling you the name of the sound instead of just having to memorize a bank number and preset number for your programmed sound "patches". But FM synthesis is much more complicated than analog subtraction, so players relied on the well-programmed factory presets of e pianos, bass guitar, organ, cello, harp, tubular bell- that's why you hear those same sounds on hundreds of recordings (check out the DX100 video I guested on 8 Bit Keys to hear some of these famous sounds). And lastly, the DX7 had velocity and after touch sensitivity on the keyboard which meant you could play more expressively (harder you play, the louder the sound or could even be programmed to affect the timbre) while most synths (including Roland's $5000 flagship synth: Jupiter 8) had no touch sensitivity on their keyboards.
As soon as I heard the comparison between the Rhodes and the DX7... I "heard" the theme to Doogie Howser, which definitely sounds like the 80's!
I'm not into music theory and am not a musician, but I enjoy music and I enjoy your videos and this is one of my very favorites. This was the kind of stuff I come to the channel for, a bit of history, a bit of nuance, a bit of theory, a bit of science, a bit of tech.
When you said 1986 specifically, the only thing in my head was master of puppets.
1986: The Year Of Thraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaash!
Hmmm...I think Darkness imprisoning you...
Until you heard 12tone play a Yamaha DX7 sample…
The velocity sensitivity of the DX7 was an amazing feature. I can imagine how excited musicians must have been when the piano was invented.
As an audiophile, "Bright" vs "Warm" was a popular debate at the time (60's through the 90's) because it had to do with the physical WAY the sound was produced: Transistors versus Tubes. "Warm" was shorthand for being made with an (analog) tube, where "Bright" was a sort of slanderous way to imply the sound came from a digital source (transistors.) Anything that wasn't a vinyl was "too bright" and if headphones/speakers/amps had some kind of fancy tech involved, they're always said to be "a bit too bright." You STILL see it today, all the time. DACs make music too "bright." Class D amps are too "bright." Planar-Magnetic and electret speakers are too "bright". There is DEFINITELY a difference between the sounds from the two keyboards. One sounds dull and more muted/subdued, the other sound has a twangy ping. One is smooth, the other is sharper, piercing. But why you saw "Warm" vs "Bright" ALMOST CERTAINLY had to do with dog-whistling about how one was analog (generated from a hammer-strike) and one was digital (reproducing a calibrated tone wave) and nothing to do with the ACTUAL qualities of sound.
The DX7 changes timbre depending upon how hard you hit the keys. The sound is generated as you play it. This is in contrast to the sample based technology that came after it. I thought that the DX7 sounded better than the Rhodes in your example. Also, bear in mind that people sampled the DX7 sound and played that through their sample-based keyboards. That won’t give you the same feeling as actually playing the DX7. Synthesis has a lot of untapped potential, because people don’t take the time to create their own patches.
Thanks for the video as always. While this is a really interesting breakdown of how two instruments differ mechanically, it doesn't tell me anything special about how one went on to "define a generation" beyond "lots of people used it." Perhaps a different title is in order?
With several plug ins that ape the DX7 (I use dexed) I think it's safe to say that the DX7 is still hitting our ears from time to time. These plug ins are very popular.
Also, should you want a more tactile experience, these days all you need is a controller keyboard with a weighted bed. Though you'll pay extra for it.
As a metal head, I kinda hated synths in the 80s. Even as I loved a lot of the music made with them. But as I write this my currently most used instrument is a Korg Kross. Apparently tastes change.
Nice video, though I feel like you could've gone a bit more into how the DX7 was basically the first affordable synthesizer to use FM synthesis which was what let it get that greater range of sounds compared to other types of synths at the time. Then again, I wouldn't blame you if you couldn't find a way to fit an explanation of FM synthesis into this without straying too far from the topic.
3:29, the original DX7 from 1983 only has 32 internal memory slots for sounds and another 32 accessible via optional memory cartridge. I think the revised DX7II doubled both internal and cartidge memory a couple years later as well as adding a few more features and fixed some of the MIDI issues.
FM synthesis can be really cool, but it's hard to understand. You pretty much find happy accidents. It does sound cold tho so running it through some analog circuitry like an envelope generator and a filter can marry the best of both worlds.
I love your content. I only understand a fraction of it but it's been very soothing while mourning. Thank you!
Been playing Rhodes 50 yrs- never got the DX7 when it came out- everybody else did -wish this video was out 40 yrs ago , it would have saved me a lot of time trying to explain my decision.
As a non musician I would say the first note sounds more like a xylophone and the second sounds like a plucked string.
When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, we had a lot of musical instruments in the house; keyboards, woodwinds, brass and guitars. One keyboard we had was a 50s portable Wurlitzer electric piano. The hammers struck tuned steel tines that were amplified by the built-in amplifier and speakers. Definitely not the same as my Grandmother's upright grand...but still a "piano sound", but a bit harpsichordish.
I bought a Yamaha Psr-520 keyboard in the mid-90s, it has that E-Piano sound. Still have it.
I’m reminded of my reaction to Polyphonic’s video on the DX7: surprise that it considered to define the sound of the 80s. But then I remember that my conception of “80s music” is biased towards the early 80s, to the UK, and towards synth pop rather than 80s pop and rock in general. I’m thinking early Eurrythmics, Depeche Mode, New Order, Yazoo, Art of Noise and Pet Shop Boys, rather than Phil Collins or Whitney Houston. For those electronic artists, who were looking for new sounds, the defining instruments were mostly analogue synths, with digital tech mostly focused on sampling (Linn Drum, the Fairlight ORCH5, lots of weird industrial samples) rather than emulating traditional instruments via FM. The distinction might be that the DX7 was the dominant synth for acts that were mostly not electronic, but wanted a passable e piano, organ or string pad to add digital shine to their production.
Yes, but he DID specify the the later part of the 80's. Remember it was released in 1983, and for the money, at the time, it was Polyphonic, programmable (OK had lots of presets!) was built like a tank, AND was relatively inexpensive. Most of the earlier analogue synths at that time were lacking at least two of those attributes. And they went out of tune. No wonder it was soon on every record.
The DX7 did define a lot of 80s synthpop too, but not with the e piano preset. Many bands programmed their own, but the bass presets were incredibly big too, especially in the EBM genre.
I am only here because of your puzzle on Cracking the Cryptic... GREAT SETTING MAN!!! Loved it.
A fascinating early synthesizer is the Novachord, a fully-polyphonic synthesizer that was manufactured by Hammond in the WWII era. For reference, the Minimoog manufactured 30 years later was capable of producing only one independent voice, so you could never sound more than one key at a time, whereas every one of the 72 keys of the Novachord could sound simultaneously. It was used in the Brother Bones version of Sweet Georgia Brown we all recognize as the Harlem Globetrotters theme song.
How about ep1 is the dx7 preset that sounds good all the way up and down the keyboard and works well for fast two handed playing. No matter what you're playing it will sound clear and defined with ep1. On the other hand brass and choir patches sound different in different octaves. What was a man or a trombone is now a child or bugle. String suffer from the same issue (but we excuse it). What strings don't do write is play fast. The dx7 guitar patches had a weird touch to them that just felt "wrong" when under the fingers of a keyboardist.
While this approach doesn't completely zoom in on ep1, it does remove enough of other patches that ep1's prominence doesn't seem as much like an anomaly.
Great video as always, but I also feel like the perceived warmth is not only a frequency issue. In addition, we perceive tones as "warmer", when they sound more "organic", or alive. So there is one very important factor that makes up the more organic sound of a real Rhodes that you did not mention: imperfection. The imperfect tuning of the single notes on a Rhodes, that slightly varies from note to note (obviously leading to shifted overtones) and their interaction, create a lot of the richness that comes from striking a chord on those beauties. If you add in the distortion you get from running them through analog amps, like the built-in one of the suitcase (giving you even more overtones) and take into consideration the way the tubes will vibrate and resonate differently with each strike, depending on the velocities of the notes played (so the actual physical interaction between wood and metal, that is not limited to 127 velocity-steps), it is easily understandable why such an electro-mechanical instrument is very hard to emulate. But the early digital synths have their very own esthetic, and we love them for it.
I didnt even know my dad has this exact instrument in the attic its such a cool piece of music history and i didnt know that it was worth that much apparently
Indeed. I have spent that much on guitars... Thank you for pointing out the gaps in my budget.
“I’d be willing to bet a lot of people watching this video have spent at least that much on guitars”. I feel so called out by this. I was also a teen in the ‘80’s and wanted a synth so I guess I will always be poor.
Just that 1 test note of the DX7 made me wanna throw back a nonexistent mullet and complain of our actor-President: Ronald Reagan.
It's the 80s! Do a ton of coke and vote for ronald reagan!
Smeetheens
coke: yes!
Mullets: yes (of course)!
Reagan: hell no!
DX7: meh... (Living on a diet of Reign in Blood and Master of Puppets that sound was the sound of bland conformity to my angsty teen years; now many years later sounds like an old friend who I never fully appreciated:)
Don't forget to complain about the PMRC!
@@jeff7775 Oh it's a Mystery Science Theater 3000 reference
Hyperboloid OfOneSheet oh nice one! Haven’t thought about them and Tipper Gore in ages. Can just feel the impassioned adolescent anti-censorship energies building...😤
I recently stumbled upon a live performance of Elton John in which he played bennie and the jets in the central park and the around 3-minute long solo got me quite hooked.
Also, it's worth pointing out that when you say *THE* Fender Rhodes, it is of note (pun!) that you could play the same pitch on a Mk I, II, IV or V, or one of the different Suitcase models, and they will all sound somewhat different.
As a drummer i was thinking about those super fat / low tuned snares snares with white noise and a lot of reverb to make them longer that you could hear on basically every pop-song of that decade xD
Whenever someone explains timbre they should also be required by law to provide the caveat for bells and gongs, that way the explanation can take an extra half hour and we can all walk away more confused than we started.
12tone enters into the rabbit hole of synth addiction... there's no way out!
FM synths are fantastically deep when you start editing timbres... Always saddens me that the most popular FM synth was almost entirely used as a preset machine
Yes, it feels to me that the concept of oscillators modulating oscillators is a good representation of physical processes and that's why so many instruments can be well emulated by FM synths. Of course to replicate instrument sounds would require a lot of fine tuning but in the same sense additive modulation requires infinite partials, sampling requires infinitesimal sampling rate and so on.
8:23 is that drawing.... Entrapta??
I JUST saw that. Nice.
... just yesterday I finished an FM synth project, which is the same tech as the DX7
I'd describe the DX-7 as sounding sharper and more clear than the Rhodes
It's easier to look back at recent history and make fine distinctions, but at the time, as a music fan and amateur musician, it was much harder to realize what was happening. I knew that digital synths were increasingly popular in the 80s, but it seemed more like a natural progression in pop music from guitars and earlier keyboards like pianos, organs, and electric pianos to analog synths to digital synths. Synthesizers, analog or otherwise, gave musicians a wider palette of sounds to use in their music, and digital synths simply made that palette easier to use and more consistent than the variability of the analog synths.
And, of course, the FM synthesis that the DX7 used was more difficult to program. My first digital synth was the Korg DW-6000, which used digital waveforms as the starting point of the sound, but used the more traditional modulation and envelopes of analog synthesis to modify the waveforms. Well, mostly. The DW-6000 had a 6-point envelope, instead of the traditional 4-point Attack, Decay, Sustain, and Release envelope.
“...E Piano 1 is everywhere.” Draws a Zubat. Oof. Those memories of Rock Tunnel.
In the late 80s I was at a composers’ seminar at uni, and one person showed us their piano concerto where the pianist also changed over to a DX7, and I remember thinking then “That's not going to age well”.
That’s a really good explanation of the difference between tinny and woody.
Are we just gonna gloss over that immaculately drawn Zubat at 0:44?!??
also love how they drew it on "is everywhere"
The video imagery influenced me. I instantly heard the MTV theme.
Also, for folks wanting to know what a Moog sounds like, search YT for "Buckaroo Banzai end credits".
"In the real world, bright things tend to be warm and vice versa" - Winters in Wisconsin beg to differ
The E Piano 1 preset of the DX-7 sounds like The Rhodes but with OTT on it :P
I knew a lot of the theory in this video from singing lessons (and the fonology unit in Grammar 1)! I feel accomplished
That’s one 12tone video where I was able to understand what was said! Great job explaining sound theory. But I think warm is more about overtones drifting than just being inharmonic. The FM synthesis of the DX7 is able to produce inharmonic overtones, but with a fixed ratio to the fundamental. There’s no drifting, everything is « perfect ». That is why digital synths of the 80s sound so ... digital. Today, digital instruments are reintroducing drift and randomness which brings back roundness to synth music, along with non linear distortion. But that’s another story.
2:52 I didn't come here to get attacked like this
Eh, glass houses and whatnot
One of my friends is a concert flautist. She was over and I showed her my guitar collection...2 $2000 Kiesels, and couple of $2000 Gibsons I picked up. She then showed me her new $14000 flute. I felt much better after that.
5:52 OMG i love Trunk Tuskyear
Gated reverb snare also.
One note out of that DX7 and all I hear is "Saving All My Love For You." Grrr....
sometimes synthesizers are good because you can make sounds that never existed for example if you sync up certain oscillators you can get the sound from the song lets go by the cars or an imitation of the giggle stick witch was a yellow plastic tube with a slide reed whistle that made an electronic like sound
You're drawings are getting better
thanks dear
This is a great explanation.
It’s probably farther than you would have wanted to go in your video but I think it’s worth pointing out that the DX7’s way of implementing what they called “operators” (which behaved like sinewave oscillators) in software and virtually connecting their signal outputs to their frequency-control inputs made it possible to generate timbres far more sophisticated than what a Minimoog or Jupiter-8 could do. In the ‘80s, this whole new universe of timbres caught the ear hard; by that time, subtractive synthesis like that implemented in those older synthesizers was starting to become a little played out.
I actually owned the related Yamaha DX-100 as a kid (same synth, but with far fewer presets and a smaller actual range. It was my first "piano", and it was good enough for a 4 year old just learning how to play. Eventually, the F above middle C gave out, and trying to play music without the fourth degree of the single easiest key to use on a piano is hard. Then the E gave out, and I gave up. I'm not going to try to make music without the tone a major third above middle C. I mean, you can, but I wasn't going to.
By that point, though, I'd gotten a Clavinova CVP-70 off of a lawyer getting a divorce. It needs new speakers and a new floppy drive, but it otherwise still works.
The dx7 has 4 octaves of overtones. That’s why the synth sound designer in me just thinks it needs to have the top end rolled off a bit by a low pass filter and it would be much closer to the Rhodes.
Yes, the addition of a filter might have helped the DX series no end.
omg. "notoriously difficult" doodle is a battletoad!
I was hoping there’d be at least one person in the comments saying that DX7 VST plug-ins just aren’t the same as a real DX7. I was not disappointed. Are we at the point where we’re fretting about plugins of old plugins yet?
They also have a slightly different envelope. The Rhodes sounds like it has a little bit of a slower initial decay. There's also the effect where the pitch is slightly high at the attack, then settles down to the steady-state value (related to inharmonicity), which the DX7 *kind of* does, I think, but not accurately.
Interesting. I would have guessed the slap bass or that flute patch that was everywhere.
The inharmonic overtones are produced by the metallic bar itself when it rings out. There are only two things that produce only harmonic overtones : strings and pipes
2:43 "Oh yeah!"
7:50: THIS IS SO COOL🤯