$300 in 1998. Still have mine too. Also Juno 60 about 3 months earlier for $200.Still have it too. Those were days for buying analog synths for damn near nothing. We shall likely never see them again. I never had any idea at the time that they would worth what they are today.
@@PatrickRosenbalm I think I’ll have to block this video, it’s too depressing. I sold a Jp-8, a Moog rogue, and an sh101 for less than a sh101 these days!!
Interesting perspective. I noted that you said how many people were after "realistic sounds" and also functionality. What's appealing about analogue synths is that they don't sound realistic at all, they sound like something altogether more interesting and malleable. Their relative simplicity and hands-on interfaces are also an asset rather than a drawback. But if that's not your goal, then I can totally understand why a Juno and a 909 would be painfully limited vs a workstation or something more modern. Thanks for the viewpoint Woody, very interesting.
Although there were people that loved analogue synths in the late 80s, the market showed that the majority of buyers were more interested in the "realistic" and new digital synth world. I think the biggest contribution of the Nord Lead was giving people back what they'd lost. It ushered in a new generations appreciation for subtractive synthesis, and a wave of virtual analogs that started displacing the romplers with few realtime controls.
But Woody is absolutely spot on with his analysis. By the way already starting with the Preset monos and the first Polys in the 70s, it was obvious Synthesizer keyboards were thought to emulate natural sounds. Hence Presets like Piano or Violin on these. Also the Prophet 5 sold as well not because of a synthbrass patch but a brass. Look at the sound charts that Moog or ARP added to their Minis or Odysseys, or those in the keyboards magazine of the time. I mean there were editions about how to emulate the realistic sounding blip for a trumpet. Only later we've realized these sounds actually never WERE realistic but they became iconic for what they were:synthesizer sounds. Which proably was why on portable keyboards of the 80s, you had preset called "synth 1" or "pop synth". And then go further and think of what the job of a keyboarder in a cover bands (which most bands were and probably stil are) is: The guy who didn't learn a guitar (maybe that's why you see it differently... ) who didn't know how to wear leather jackets and pose with an axe on stage. He had to play all that stuff guitar, bass and drums couldn't do. Piano, Organ, Strings, Brass, Clavi, E-Piano. Trumpet, Trombone, Flute, maybe a Sax or later choir. He may have written the arrangement and checked for the stage sound, but he wasn't the guy girls looked after. He was some weirdo, probably understanding these strange computers. So if he'd come up with a super creative distorted solo sound with his MS-20, he wasn't even supposed to do that - not from the audience, not from his band mates. All that stuff the techno heads are lusting after: you couldn't really play them in a band. To be honest - for most parts you still can't. The list of what you can play in band kontext has expanded nowadays. By Synth Brass, Synth Pads, Bells, Samples. If the Singer is not singing and the Guitarist isn't soloing. Main things you'll need for gigs: Pianos, Organs, Epianos, Clavinet, Strings and these synth sounds. On Fly, without interfering the sound too much. Hence the Nord Stage, the Kronos and the Montage and the Fantoms are still so successful, they give any keyboarder enough or more than he'll actually ever gonna need. You may add a Nord Lead or some other Synth to look cool and have your 2 solos. No reason really to come up with a Modular or a Prophet. And the Pros? They're gonna use Mainstage anyways.
Another aspect Woody covered but maybe it's not even clear enough: The Analog subtractive world was coming at its end because it has been really figured out, exploited and there was nothing new to come. The DX, the Wave, the Samplers, the D-50 and even the M1 actually came with non-realistic sounds, soundscapes that were totally new!. Fantasia, Soundtrack and Digital Native Dance were never supposed to imitate something existing. Neither were a bunch of quite famous DX-7-Sounds. They were new and couldn't ever had been done before. Analog synths weren't capable of these anymore. I mean it's quite hard to remember the times where it actually was rewarding for record companies to always come up with songs with new sounds and styles, but that was the case at least until the early 90s. Then music world split up into Techno/House, Crunch/Alternativ/Heavy/Nupunk etc., Hip Hop, and that horrible Eurodance crap/Boybands stuff. In each section (maybe except Hiphop), it was about repeating the styles and sounds. Since the 2000s nothing matters anymore musically, top 40 radio is using the same and same sound just with autotune for the lead vocal. So yes now you can still use the 106 or some plugs. It won't matter anyways.
@@torbenanschau6641 Yep, when subtractive synthesizers first came about the intention was to synthesize acoustic instruments, but they weren't good at that and instead had an entire sonic palette of their own. Buchla was perhaps the exception who had no intention of trying to make existing sounds; Don shunned even the idea of a keyboard as an interface, but that's another story. A Juno-106 is incredibly limited, yes. That was the example Woody gave and so I agreed that I wasn't surprised given his needs at the time. However, I totally disagree that exploration of analogue sound is (or was) done, on the contrary, I can find new sounds every single day with my modular system. But I agree you'd struggle to find many new sounds with a Juno-106! And absolutely - a D-50, an M1, a Wavestation etc were an _enormous_ jump in technology and sonic possibilities. Samplers too. In terms of modern music - totally depends what you're listen to. Remember there was a lot of throw away pop in the 60s, 70s and 80s. It's just been forgotten.
hey alex, yeah right on, as others have noted, synths have always aimed to emulate acoustic instruments, my ms20 patch diagram sheets are full of trumpets, violins and pianos! but when digitals came along, and even more so samplers, they actually did sound somewhat realistic. we're lucky today to have the capabilities and sounds of digital synths combined with the front panel controls that you and I enjoy so much! look forward to hearing what you do with your J-X. cheers mate.
I remember those ages. I just decided to study engineering and I had no money. When I tested a DX7 I was shocked: I didn't like it at all and editing was impossible. I thought it was nothing interesting for me. I bought an M1 years after and started again to edit sounds for my band
indeed, it reminds me that most of us had ataris, macs and amigas so guys were programming their synths from pc editors and librarian software packages.
After watching your video, I understand why the D-50 and DX-7 were so revolutionary back then. The fact is that people in the 80s listened to music recordings mainly from cassettes and vinyl. And compared to a tape recording, the direct sound from any digital synthesizer sounds incredibly clear, bright and precise, with plenty of high frequencies and crisp digital detail. The same applies to listening to CDs for the first time. It was a real revolution, it was a contrast not only with the sound of analog synthesizers, but also with what people used to hear in general. Today, we underestimate the precious perfect fidelity of digital audio because it is so affordable. We are used to it, so the contrast with a stable and accurate digital sound ... something muddy, something non-static, imperfect, saturated, developing over time, something with its own non-linear timbre character, small pitch-shifting, clicks and pops, etc. Modern people percieve lo-fi as something more interesting than crystal clear audio. But there is also another way: how Roland creates its hi-fi mathematical models. The sound is still wonderful, clear and crisp, it's still digital (24 bits of Roland digital audio via USB means over 100 dB of crystal clear dynamic range!!!), but it becomes non-repetitive, with a controlled amount of stability or drift... I truly think that modern Roland (both ACB and ABM) synths do sound not only as good, but even better than their analog predecessors. Today we have everything, both digital and analog. Thank you, Woody, you always say something that inspires me and makes me love music and synths more and more.
thanks for the comment, you make some great points., actually I did record some discussion about the revolution of consumer audio from cassette tape, vinyl to CD, and even how the recording studios transitioned from tape, to digital tape, and then hard-disk. but I cut it out coz the video was going on too long !:) thanks again for the great comment and kind words.
TLDR; The grass is always greener on the other side. 😉 On that note though, as an older chap myself (mid 40s) and not a musician but a listener, I did buy some vintage Sony's MD format to relive those years. It was sorely lacking in the US in its prime. The recording industry made a huge fuss about digital copies and made it prohibitively expensive. There are other retro folks that are dabbling in old cassette tapes which I don't miss one iota. They were a great tech at the time but to me a wonderful stepping stone to greater things. I won't be filling my ebay cart with those anytime soon. 🤣
I did something worse. Back in the early 90s, I had a JX8P, PG800, DW800, all in immaculate, showroom condition and with their own hard cases and manuals. I swapped the whole lot for a Korg M1 with a broken end panel and three broken keys. With hindsight, the Korg M1 was the second worst synth I ever owned (after the Roland D70) and I have been carrying this story like an albatross round my neck ever since.
I highly disagree on th M1. Agree on the DW-8000. I swapped my DW-8000 with the EX-8000 amazing synth, baught a TX-802, M1 and swapped my RD-250 with the D-70, and that was the best set up I had for years. I loved both the D-70 for Its many good samples for the time, and the M-1 totally changed digital keyboards and even the D-50 was much loved for Its sound, the M1 was King. I upgraded to the T-3 which still sits at Home, beside the Kronos😘. Unfortunately the display’s backlite is almost totally burned out. It depends how we Connect with each instrument. I just totally loved the Korgs, and that D-70 was awsome. 76 really nice keys and so many good sounds. The strings and organs of both the T3 and th D-70 was propably the reason I decided to sell the EX-8000 and TX-802, which I highly regret ever to sell, together with my Dynachord CLS-22 leslie sim
@@mrdali67 The biggest problem I had with the M1 was its filter. Having worked mostly with analogue Roland synths for 7 years at that time, the M1 was my first non-FM digital synth (other than the DW8000) and I found that no matter how you filtered those somewhat mediocre samples, you'd always recognise the raw PCM waveform. The D70, to me, was just a U20 on steroids. But you are right, it depends how you connect with an instrument. Those two just didn't do it for me.
@@gcoudert You are right the filters in the M-1 and T-series arent the best. It’s kinda what made the DW much better with those wavetables, It’s analog filters. One of my friends called the M-1 the “midrange” synth because it lacks definition in the top, but many 1st generation romplers and also the DX-7 had that problem, mainly due to poor DAC’s, plus the fact that the M and T-series was based on 12bit samples. The D-70 also had a rather mediocre filter ADSR but Roland’s samples was rather high quality for how little memory they used. I was focusing most on how realistic you could get them to sound and not so much on making interesting synth sounds from them. The Roland romplers was what killed off samplers, cause you had to be extremely good if you were to create your own multisamples at the same quality of those factory sounds and expansion pcm cards.
@@WoodyPianoShack Oh, it went yeeeaaaars ago. After it was fixed and I used it for a while, I swapped it for a broken D50, which was also repaired and used for a while!I sold that D50 for £150 back in the early noughties (don't ask) 😂 Now I'm sticking to my Kronos, Jupiter-X, Arturia V-Collection and PPG Wave 3.V.
"SoundTrack" is also one of my favorite Roland D-50 presets. This preset is in the first bank at position 3-7 on D-50 of the Roland Cloud. I also really like the "Fantasia" preset" 😀
This is undoubtedly the "Soundtrack" patch! Bought my D-50 20 years ago and it is, besides the Nord Lead, still one of my favourites! Excellent performance!
I started with the CZ series so completely missed the analog heyday, but because I couldn't create the sounds I wanted I very luckily brought a Sci Pro One £200, Juno 106 £250 and Jupiter 8 £840 at the tail end of the 80's and start of the 90's and I still have them all.
Having lived through the 80s this was a very entertaining video. I remember selling my Juno 6 to buy a second hand DW8000, which itself was going cheap due too the arrival of the D50. I was blown away by the DW8000. Also had a DX7 but never liked it very much, partly due to a lack of appreciation of the value of putting it through external FX. Juno had chorus, DW8000 had a built in delay, so I guess I expected synths to be able to sound good on their own. But also the DX7 was so prolific in the 80s, that every time I used it I felt I was just sounding like everyone else. Plus it was impossible to program, unless you liked messing up things in random ways, which most of the time ended up with an unusable sound. I’m not sure why these old synths now command such high prices, unless it is driven by hipsters wanting to do retro stuff. Todays modern synths remain much more capable and there are plenty of affordable modern analogs, which typically do more than the 80s versions.
Great video, thank you. After many years, I've arrived at the conclusion that disparate things are meant to complement one another, more so than to compete against. I remember hearing Mike Oldfield's "To France" as a teen and instantly loved it. It was one of my favorite songs, and not just because of Maggie Reilly's dreamy voice (that must have been one of the best vocal recordings of all time). It was really one of the first songs that I've heard, where there was this tug of war of Renaissance-style instruments, combined with the synths of that era. And the song was a fantastic example of blending those seemingly different worlds together. And I think it's like this with digital and analog synths, and there's plenty of room for all of them to coexist in a single song :).
Ah! Those lovely old Woody's videos ;) Funny how times change (or do they?). Having lived those years, what's really striking to me is all those revolutions, those novelties and their impact. Granted, being younger plays a role, and that once you cross a certain threshold, there is not much you can do and improve upon, but still, even if we are surrounded by great tech in abundance, I guess the magic has faded a bit.
you're such a good keyboarder, big joy to listen! thanks for bringing that development into context and connecting it with your personal journey! yes - these instruments accompany us and are pieces of art, we live in exciting times!
DX-7 was my first synth... Still have a soft spot for it - actually gave mine to a cousin who was about 10 years younger. Now I'm going analogue of course ;)
My first synth was a sequential circuits sixtrak, my second a casio cz101. I always tried to make them sound like ppg's, synclaviers and fairlights. I must have been absolutely bonkers, but i learned so much from that.
Normal, Soundtrack was added in the GM specifications, lots try to sound the same, none managed to get where the D-50 went with that patch. (GM1: PC #98)
Analogue synths were pretty useless at emulating acoustic instruments, however the DX7 isn't particularly good at emulating these either. I think that this is the main reason why the DX isn't held in high regard today. The presets were mostly aimed at emulating real instruments and nobody bothered to learn how to program them. I love the DX7- it is particularly good at evolving pad sounds. If you learn to play to it's strengths, it is a unique and powerful synth. Although I also love analogue synths, I agree about the Juno 106- very overrated IMO.
I feel like what kind of synth you use can, in part, simply depend on what you’re using it for. I have an analog Minitaur for my bass lines, but I use a Jupter-XM for pads and leads. I like the clarity up top, I like the warmth down low. I do use a TR-8 (mostly the 909 sounds) for drums often enough, but I process them to add in some warmth and width. Granted, were I not doing EDM/House I probably would want a different setup buuuuut… My only point is that I don’t think it’s wise to go fully digital or fully analog, I think it’s good to have a mix of both because the textures are unique so why not include both? Picking one, to me, is like saying “I want my orchestra to have brass to the exclusion of woodwinds”. Why? Why not have both?
In 1989 I was able to buy a pristine 1973 Minimoog Model D for only USD 75 from a studio garage sale. The guy who sold it wanted to get rid of his Roland VP-330 mk I too for USD 110. I bought both.
@@WoodyPianoShack yes, although the minimoog's oscillators' tuning needs some tuning. The VP-330 still working, though the sliders are really stiff and scratchy now.
Woody, I was a touring musician in the 70's and 80's, and remember having a binder full of sheets that showed the knob and slider settings I needed for my Moog, it was quite an ordeal to have to be making dozens of changes between songs to get the sound I needed. It had an impact on the order of songs as well, as it was faster to do songs that either had a similar setup, or if I was playing guitar on a particular song. When I got my DX7, I rarely brought the my Fender Rhodes or the Elka string machine anymore, though they sounded much better (especially the Rhodes). But years of carrying that thing up and down backstage steps was taking its toll, and the digital revolution made travel much easier. I had friends with B3s and Leslies, I envied the sound they got, but never the problems that had moving them. Today I still have the Rhodes, but sold the DX7 and the Elka. Also have a Korg M3 which is wonderful, and a MODX7, as well as a Korg Minilogue XD, for times when I want a thicker analog sound (yes, I know it's digital - but it sounds as good as analog to my ears).
thank you for sharing your journey, that's a perfect example of what I was talking about. you're right, it was the same for me, I forgot how changing sounds would dictate the setlist, if you've already got the bass patch setup on the MS20, then string together a few songs that use the similar sound!
I can appreciate that. I have a 3/4 Grand Piano in my living room, and a Roland RD-2000 in my music room, along with my other gear. I know which I would rather give recitals on, and I know which one I would rather take to Gigs.
The last last outdoor event I did was on an ancient pristine Juno 6 and that was just over 3 years ago. The young children listening to an improv performance seemed stunned and amazed. Its one of those ancient synths you can wrap your head around while playing on the fly. The limitations and good solid controls are its strength I figure going forward I would like a simple modern wavetable synth like the Hydra, it takes expressive to another level and the best digital synths offer for live performances Its a mystery why analogue synths have risen in price, a collectors thing?. A Korg minilogue with the right keyboard is good. I should have bought my buddys moog fatty, that is a brilliant thing for live performances and scalable, again with the right controller, keyboard or other midi instrument. It depends on ones needs, one can work in the box for all things, Serum, Vital, Phaseplant, Surge XT , Dexxed etc... all good, FM sythesis is more approachable now than ever. Vital is my newer poison for many things
Thank you for your wonderful dosage of perspective. It's really amazing how people forget what things were like at that time. I can remember getting a Polysix, or a Juno-106, or a Yamaha SK-15, or whatever for between 75 and 200 dollars. And your assessment of the 106 was spot on. It was never a great sounding synth, it was just easy to program quickly and held up well on stage. (The newer model X blows me away every time I turn it on). I've caught some of your other videos, and I appreciate your singular attention to history as it actually happened. Please keep up the good work. I look forward to your next one.
those simple og junos sounded quite plain, until you activated the chorus, and even then they benefited greatly from needed outboard reverb, my keyboard amp had spring reverb so sounded pretty cool:)
The sound of those early digital synths is nostalgic to me. To me they represent childhood nostalgia, the DX7 in particular. In the mid 80’s Korg had interesting budget polysynth called the poly-800. It is often seen as an analogue synth in sound but in styling it looks more like a digital one. It’s a bit of strange beast, it’s a synth with split personality. It’s hard to classify what it is. Is it analogue or digital? Inside it’s a mix of analogue and digital parts. The main tone generator is a computer sound chip, but it’s paired with analogue filters. The approach reminds me a bit of the SID chip and I think it was quite a novel approach into creating a budget 8-voice polysynth (from a design engineering perspective with certain cost constraints).
I had access to a Poly 800 when they came out, I recently digitized some cassettes with tracks I made using it, strings and flute were awesome...awesomely spooky!
Our beloved JD-Xi is a tiny lightweight device which has 256 voices of polyphony, two polyphonic synths (each of them has three separate layers with individual envelopes and LFOs, so a true stereo is possible before the signal hits the FXs), a drum machine (with a good hundred of sounds), a one-voice analog synth, a vocoder, an FX processor and a nice sequencer. Some people in the 80s probably would kill to get the JD-Xi.
too right! if you offered a JUNO owner in 86 to swap their analogue synth for a JUNO-X they would have bitten your hand off in the blink of an eye! yet, there are guys today that say they would prefer the JUNO... :p those folks probably weren't making music in the late 80s is my guess. :D
I got my fully working Minimoog (also almost perfect cosmetic shape) in 1993 for $200 and the guy threw in Roland cv to midi converter to boot. Still have both. I was fresh out of college, there were so many deals around for cool gear I always wanted but nobody used anymore. I couldn't afford any of it at the time though lol...but I saw the mini and knew I needed it. I think I ate ramen noodles and cereal for three weeks to pay for it.
I was given my first keyboards - a Fender Rhodes, ARP Axxe, and a Korg Trident in the early 90s, basically because no-one wanted them. I bought another Rhodes for £150 at around the same time. Fast forward 10 yrs, and thanks to Neo-soul, and a resurgence in interest in 70s music, they came back into fashion, and I sold them (not having space for them anymore) off bit by bit, making a healthy profit, and replaced them with an iPad, apps and a midi keyboard. The biggest problem is that they are ageing electronic circuits and components, and where I live, the only shop I know that could repair them closed a long time ago. I miss the Rhodes piano - no matter how many VSTs or simulations I play, they don’t offer the same experience. I have the ARP ODYSSEi app, which is fun, but I’ve yet to see anything to replace the Trident - perhaps the Korg MonoPoly app?
I dumped my Rhodes,Horner D6 and Moog Rouge and Crumar Stringman for about $600 kept my Korg Poly 6 added a Mirage Sampler, Korg DW6000 and Cazio Cz 300 should have kept the D6.
I think a big part of the reason people started to go back to Analog synths in the mid 90s especially was the knob per function thing. Digital Synths didn't tend to do that - and it's still not super common. as early as 1991 though, Roland noticed the last 6-8 years of knobn't was wearing on people and the novelty of preset machines had worn off, so gave us the JD800. IMO, the period you're talking about was a really cool one for innovation but kind of a nightmare in terms of user experience. The Junos you hated so much were kind of a step in the right direction in terms of the DCOs/tuning stability, later MIDI and having the knob per function. Along with the SH101 They also really brought synths "to the people". The DX7 et all may have been somewhat more affordable, but only highly technical people could make original sounds with them. That's probably why the Juno continued to sell well in the early days of the DX7. Of course with the Juno's DCOs you do miss on those "analog imperfections" somewhat - another thing that can be hard to capture in digital. The imprecisety is the other thing a lot of people liked. The novelty of "Realisticish" instruments wore off after a while. I'd argue even the D50 future proof itself a lot by having a mix of more realistic sounds and the dreamy and abstract pans, and plenty of analog-like sounds, being the first synth to have a stab at analog emulation in it's own way. I feel like the best use case is to use all these sorts of synths together which is what people do nowadays and have done for a while. It's hard to beat the sound of a good fat Moog style bass or a TB303 squelch. Luckily we're at the point where high quality analog emulations(and more stable analog) are affordable. You should check out the Cherry Audio Dream Synth, which does very much try to be the best of both worlds of the 80s and 90s.
Another great video, and I think we’re of a similar ‘vintage’ ourselves with similar opinions at the time. In 1987, aged 15, I was on the lookout for a drum machine. I went to Soho SoundHouse in London, where they had a grubby second-hand TR-909 for the same price as brand new Roland TR-505’s. I left the shop with a brand new TR-505. Doh !
Part of the problem with digital synths is that we have all heard the same patch dozens of times before. Yesterday i was listening to a track played live using just two mono-synths, a Powertran Transcendant 2000 and a Yamaha CS5 (plus some nice effect units). It sounded like the sci-fi future was supposed to sound.
yeah, that's a good point I think, makes me wonder though, on analogue synths, don't we tend to dial in the same synth brass, synth bass, strings, so you could argue we hear the same patches all the time on analogues too.
@@WoodyPianoShack Except Analogue synths often don't sound the same even from the beginning to the end of the same song. Always sounding the same was the problem with samplers when not used creatively. Compare the annoying repetition in ruclips.net/video/FQlAEiCb8m0/видео.html With the mix of textures in ruclips.net/video/QSMIzCRinpg/видео.html Of course the Polymoog could be reproduced digitally. However, it is far more complicated than sticking some samples in a Rompler. p.s. Have ever tried a Roland JP8000 ? The sound of trance music.
Thank you for sharing this. I'm not alone then... stood in the music store in 1983 about to set up a midi studio. In front of me: a DX7 on one side and a Memory Moog on the other. I played the moog and loved it. The windows and walls shook. But The Moog was almost 4k and only 6 voices , no midi. The sales guy ssuggested the Dx7. Had midi, 8/16-ish voice, was just over 2k. Played it and it was this thin bllep bleep. Was he serious? Hated it! Got the moog. Spent another 2k retroviting the midi, which was minimal at best. But today, the Dx7 is worth 4k, and the plugin sounds better. The moog is now worth 20k, no plug matches it, and it still breaks glasses and brings tears to my eyes: I love her so so much :) PS: I had a Juno 106 and hated it too, 'cept for base for some reason. My MS20 and Roland Sh1000 were lost in a fire. But the Memory moog still rocks after all these years.
The Juno 106 was actually used by Vangelis on one of his earlier albums. Vangelis is who started me on the road to playing keyboard instrumentals considering I am a lead guitar player. I miss the breathy D-50. It is still a very unique keyboard to me. On the other hand, I thought the J-106 was a splendid keyboard but was limited in capability but nevertheless effective. For drums I had the Alesis HR-16 oh back in the year around 88 or so and would borrow my buddy's EMU Proteus-1 sound module. The Proteus-1 is/was a killer module. In the demos I sent on cassette to record companies back when I was young, I used the DX7, J-106, and the JX-3P. I love old keyboards. By the way, I assume the Patch you are asking about is called "Sountrack" found #3-7
Good morning Woody , That's a brilliant trip down memory lane on a Sunday morning , so many cool synths demoed in your video , its amazing how synths have evolved over such a short time , makes you wonder how much better they will be in the future , time will tell , but in the here and now we are spoiled for choice for making music on synths and computers , Really enjoyed your video this morning .....kinda killed my hangover in a good way ....gonna chill out and play on my keys , Big thumbs flying high from a galaxy far far called Ireland ..... Alan 😎AK☘ 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘
I still have my D50 and TR626 which I bought together in Australia in about 1988. The D50 has a few keys that dont work, but I still connect it up to my PC via midi to play a huge library of sounds downloaded online (including the standard CDROM card releases by Roland which were worth a fortune in themselves)
I love that Soundtrack preset. I bought the tiny Roland “Boutique” version of the D50 for $240.00 with a coupon. Now, even that relatively recent module will sell for $900.00 new on EBay.
that's hilarious! but really, that was the best use for the analog synths, nobody would dream of actually using those stale boring sounds at that time!
@@WoodyPianoShack Before that I had an SH-01 monophonic synth. I also had a Dod guitar FX unit so I could use delays to build up some sort of polyphony :D such a good little synth though and it taught me the basics about building analogue sounds. Sold it for $100. They were going for over $1000 a year or two later haha
I never liked the sound of the DX7. It did always sound sterile to me. A situation made worse by seemingly every mid-late 80's song sounding like a Yamaha advert. A friend of mine loaned one to me for a few months and trying to create new sounds was indeed like trying to paint the hall through the letterbox - and only being allowed to use various shades of grey.
Agreed. I was hugely disappointed the first time I acquired a DX7 (which wasn't until the late 90s). For an instrument that supposedly made analogue synths obsolete overnight, I expected much more.
@@andygriffith5160 I know what you mean - I’ve owned more than 15 DX7s over the years (taking advantage of buying them cheap in the early days of eBay and then selling them on) but most of them still had the majority of their 1983 presets inside, which - apart from a few - were a bit ‘average’. The best patches came later on. You really need to put the DX7 through an effects processor (bit of reverb. Bit of chorus) to get the best out of it. What the DX7 gave though, which most analogue synths didn’t, was a decent amount of polyphony for ‘proper’ playing (16 notes is actually quite hard to exceed), and a massive degree of expression: whether that’s down to the velocity, aftertouch or mod wheel. But yeah - when I first heard a DX7 layered with a JX8P live (around 1986), I did assume the ubiquitous DX7 was responsible for the luscious pad sounds. Soon afterwards I played one for the first time and realised that it must have been the JX8P which sounded the ‘smoothest’ !
This is spot on. I starting playing in the late 80s. I have an Ensoniq ESQ1 that I bought in 88. But I cursed the lack of realistic instruments and drums. And I really couldn't understand why anyone would want a monosynth. I lusted after the subsequent generations of workstations from Korg and Roland. It took me 30 years to appreciate what those older synths offered. I wonder how many SH101s, Minimoogs, etc I must have walked past at Car Boot sales and Audio jumbles and didn't take any notice of. Would have been a great investment, given the silly money they now go for.
yes, we never imagined them becoming desirable and valuable again and we could have all got pretty rich if we had been more forward thinking. there was a time when even hammond organs, fender rhodes and arcade amd pinball machines were dirt cheap! same goes for many of my old cars that are considered desirable classics today, but I scrapped them due to not wanting to pay £100 to repair them...
Funny. I kinda knew what the preset was going to before you pressed the keys. It’s an interesting argument you put forward. It’s like the hardware vs VST argument. With a decent midi keyboard like Asturias Keylab with all the sliders matched to, let’s say, the new Korg VST versions of wavestate or opsix, what’s the damn difference apart from a few hundred dollars?
I personally prefer soft touch buttons to knobs and sliders. Roland typically used micro switch buttons in many of their devices in the late 80s and early 90s and those type of buttons have that satisfying click to them ( although having a rotary control or slider for value makes it quicker to browse through settings and sound editing ). But to be honest even freeware VST instruments do quite a good job at emulating analogue synths and VST at least made 80s synth sounds accessible to anybody. I personally prefer sound modules because you can stack them. PCM sounds on the other hand can be very difficult to emulate with VST but FM software synths have kept my interest in Yamaha Porta Sound keyboards alive and lead up to me buying a couple with Digital Synthesizer including the PSS-680, if you had a PSS-680 back in the late 1980s you were "the cool kid in town" but I was lucky enough to start out with a Casio CT-700 and Yamaha PSS-790 which use lofi PCM wave table quality sounds.
so would I, as far as I know there is no evidence recorderd, sadly the tech was not as easily available back then, and even it it were, we didn't realise what a special thing we had going and wouldn't have bothered. what idiots!
@@WoodyPianoShack Of course, it wasn't that common to record lot of evidence of that day to day work, as it was more expensive to do, but it is very interesting to listen to the recollections! Now analog synths are loved, relevant, and worthy to some people. It may have to do with the fact that digitals are everywhere, a question of "authenticity", and perhaps more importantly, new uses people find with them and new music that it's done with them.
When the hipster shift back to analog happened (mid 90s here) for a while old 80s giggers didnt know about it. Thats where I got most of my analog synths cheap. That being said. By that time DX7s were _also_ passé. So I got the main DX7 behind our research then too. Ahh blessed days
The early 90s’ we’re such a fun time! Every second-hand shop had analog synths for a scant few hundred bucks or even less! I snagged a few because I was strapped for cash as a young guy, but I also passed up on so many dirt cheap synth deals at the time, I kick myself now! That $200 Prophet 10 would have been amazing, but there was no room for its huge size in my room! 😂
that' so true, it seems so unbelievable in this day and age, it's worth flicking through the classified ads for used gear in the old music magazines of the time to see that it was really true. we needed to offload the analogues to afford the akais, emus etc. if only we had known how things would flip around 30 years later!
That's why the 303 and 808 became iconic, they hardly set the world on fire and therefore were cheap 2nd hand. The 303 was supposed to be some sort of bassline accompaniment for guitarists and the 808 was comically outdated at launch when drum machines with samples were the hot thing.
@@6581punk The sad thing is I am old enough to have bought that stuff then, and I didn't. I had a rubbish JVC keyboard and even that I sold long before it was worth anything.
yeah, and we should have held on to our mk2 escorts and capris whilst we were at it. maybe even our walkmans and boomboxes. hindsight is a wonderful thing.
I remember helping a friend buying a Juno-60 not that long ago (12 years ago maybe) and it was 500€. I thought it was a bit high but it was the cheapest one available. Still think that’s what they’re worth, at best.
The DX-7 was a classic. It was the main pro synth for sale when I got into synths. I tried them out in music stores, and had a friend or two with one. But it seemed very apparent to me they sound very different than most analog synths. While I appreciate both, it never seemed you could really replace an analog synth with a DX-7 too effectively, depending on the patches you need. But as you pointed out, there was a digital synth that could do a reasonable job of that task, and it was called the Casio CZ. My first hardware synth in the mid 80s. Casio was known for making toy keyboards & cheap watches in the 80s and very few people took them seriously as a musical instrument company. But.....I knew better! My CZ's covered the analog sounds pretty well in my bands. I still was interested in the original analog synths that were used on the recordings of many songs I covered, but I simply could not find them. The CZ's were one of the first digital competitors to the DX-7 that offered MIDI, but the phase distortion synthesis sounded much closer to an analog synth and was great for lead sounds and sweeps especially. They were very affordable, preset patch memory, light and compact, and reliable. Sure we have better options now, but they were great for the mid 80s. The Yamaha FB-01 was my economical alternative to the the DX-7 in the 80s, and I got the TX-7 tabletop DX-7 in the 90s. As for realistic sounds you mentioned, the Korg M1 was king at that when it came out in 1988. You mentioned your all time favorite synth patch being from the Roland D-50. I'll mention my favorite patch of all time is a thick unison lead sound frequently used by the American band Styx on many albums, on a song called "Fooling Yourself". It was recorded on the new Oberheim Four Voice keyboard based on SEM modules. Two incredible patches were used in the song. The intro sound synth solo, and the think unison patch I mentioned in the middle & ending solos. This patch could be closely replicated in the OB-X series of keyboards too. Styx was hugely popular in the USA, but barely known in Europe from what I understand. Have you heard their work? Rick Wakeman's son who also played in Yes has frequently made it clear they were his biggest influence, and I assume he grew up in England but I"m not sure.The only reason he probably heard of them was because his Dad was on the same record label and given albums from A&M records. Anyone else blown away by these incredible sound patches? Never mind the great playing, take a listen to these sounds! They really just take over the whole songs and dominate. I have them reasonably replicated on my VST synths. These were the kind of sounds I was after when I started playing synths. The CZ came a lot closer than the DX usually did. ruclips.net/video/AtzIWPeun7c/видео.html
Back in the 80s, my flatmate gave me money to buy a new LP. I'd heard Styx (it sounded superloud!) and I brought it home. He heard it, and threw me over the balcony.
@@Ndlanding 😆. Which album was that by the way? Styx never really caught on to Europeans for some reason, especially in the UK where many purely prog rock bands who influenced them such as Yes, ELP, Genesis etc. started out (many of my favorite bands). Styx was sort of like the Beatles, in that they were often all over the map in what they did, and often not well understood and a lot of misconceptions about them. In the late 70s into the very early 80s, they were America's most popular band. Styx had 3 lead singers whom all sounded vastly different from each other, and whom often wrote very different styles of music. For a "very small" segment of what they did, Styx was a hard rock band. To others, they were elevator music. 😆To most, they were America's answer to more radio friend version of prog rock. The contrast between light & heavy were astounding, and often they'd play them live back to back almost as a joke of how vastly different they were. The biggest hit Styx has was "Babe". Do you consider that hard rock? members of Styx thought it sounded too much like Barry Manilow or Air Supply (known for very light music), and they were so upset that it became their only #1 hit and barely classified as rock, for a few weeks they threw out it's songwriter/lead singer and main founder of the band because the record company wanted to release another "light & easy song" that would destined to be another smash hit, that didn't rock enough for them. But he returned, and the result of the next album went to #1 album, so I guess they weren't complaining about his return (or enjoyed the money), but they eventually tossed their main singer/songwriter in 1999 because......he didn't rock enough for their tastes. 😆 Wrote the largest share of their recorded songs, and nearly all of their hits songs. Another well known song from Styx was Lady, recorded for their debut album of 1972, but held back til the 2nd, and a top 10 hit after the 4th album had come out. Styx basically set the blue print for "power ballads". They have "many" songs that range from extremely light and easy listening, and a few (not tons) that would be considered hard rock. The hard rock songs were mostly sang and written by one person. He was usually limited to only doing one or two songs per album. I'd say you hugely misjudged Styx if you think they were a hard rock band. But with the few songs they have that were, I can a little understand the mis-confusion. Styx biggest hit in Europe isn't even a rock song at all. Take a listen to "Boat on the river". It features an accordion and a mandolin. By the way, they formed in 1962 before The Beatles were known in America, didn't get a record deal for 10 years while learning their craft, and due to a lot of similarity in their fan base, they toured with Yes in the 2000s although neither and had their classic liine-ups. Or is Yes considered a hard rock band? I suggest you check out their catalog. Classifying them as a hard rock band is almost laughably incorrect, but if one member had their way with his one or two songs an album, they would have been. His allowance on the latest (awful) record due to key members missing, was a half a song.
@@classicarcadeamusementpark4242 Thanks for your lengthy history of Styx. Firstly, the Album I referred to was Cornerstone (I just checked), and it impressed me with its intro (immensely-loud power chords and drums). Unfortunately, it also included the vomit-inducing "Babe". Now I played and wrote in a band at the time, and unfortunately the singer thought "Babe" was the epitome of musical achievement (along with David Cassidy), and that led to the demise of our great band. Let it be known!!! At NO point did I say Styx were a hard-rock band. More like a bunch of poofters in pink tights. Clear?
@@Ndlanding Got ya. Cornerstone was their most popular album in Europe I believe. It was a very different record than those they made before it (and especially the album made just before it). As I mentioned, they were all over the map when it came to styles. "Babe" is not representative of their entire body of work, though it was a mass hit for the band, and hated by a couple members of the band so much, one refused to play on the track. Also, it's probably their only song where all the backing vocals were done by the lead singer. The song was not intended to be a Styx song. Dennis Deyoung wrote it for his wife and recorded it as a present to her. There were no intentions to release it as a Styx song. Once record companies heard it, they made other plans for it. I'd recommend listening to some other songs from them, and you'll quickly see they did a ton of other completely different styles of music.
@@classicarcadeamusementpark4242 Oh yeah? The record company just accidentally happened by accident to accidentally hear a very rough version of "Babe" recorded on a Dictaphone, purely by accident? Sorry, but I've lived in that world, and know better.
All down to one word....Zeitgeist. I can't lie, I hate/d that bloody DX7 "Whitney' piano patch, but i loved what Bronski Beat did with the DX7. I went through a few phases, back then, but always had a love for the analogues, still do. It's a funny thing, but i love finding a patch that sounds like its from a famous song, and we all love playing said songs, but for me, those old DX sounds are only really any use if you are deliberately going for that 80s vibe. 32 years ago I bought a Yamaha TG 33 'Tone generator' but it sits unplugged on a shelf. Even with all it's lo-res sample and synthesis vibe, I don't really have much use for it. It does some things very well, but it feels dated, and a bit FMey, and that's a Zeitgeist thing i went through. Lord knows, I love Modern 'realistic' keyboard sounds, great for different moods, but I now have analogue stuff, and it feels like home. Great video Woody. love watching you tease the best out of old stuff.
cool man, loved the comment, sounds like you're one of the exceptions I mentioned in the video, that stayed true to the analogs, good on you and nice foresight!
Nice personal retrospective. My first synths were the Electrocomp 101, the ARP 2600, and an Arp Omni II. Eventually I had a Roland Alpha 2 - but by 1985 I was mostly digital like everyone else - A Yamaha CX5m for sequencing, an RX15 Drum machine, a Kawai K3m for just a little bit of variety, and a Korg DSS-1 as the master controller. The ARP 2600 today would be a massive windfall if I had held onto it, but like you say nobody wanted it then. Of course I didn't hold onto most of my digital synths either as technology advanced, except for a few exceptions - The Roland JV2080 I bought in '97 I still have, and the Fairlight CMI IIx that was "loaned" to me (permaloan?) for some sound design work and will probably never leave my studio.
hang on a sec chris, you list some fabulously wonderful gear, and then in the last sentence blow everything out of the water! wow, that's awesome, thanks for sharing the comment!
@@WoodyPianoShack Just proves your point that times changed and what people wanted to hear and use changed - today most would consider your TR 707 a classic and the price reflects that - using it the way your band did is hilarious today, but just reality then. I’ve owned probably all the boards considered classics today, and been lucky enough to learn what I liked and didn’t - that would have been impossible without the price changes brought about by changing times.
My studio is essentially virtual apart from a mox-f and a triton le. It would be nice to have some analogue kit, but the digital gear and software synths, many of which I created myself to serve my own needs do the trick for me and allow my to have a studio set up that I could otherwise never afford. That said, the instrument I seem to write most for is a digital analogue hybrid (SID chip)…
As for digital synthesizers, I remember playing a Kawai K5000 in a music store in the nineties. Oh my God, how mesmerizing it was. I felt like those sounds were from another world.
Remember, synthesizers were invented to replace real world instruments. After many years digital synths did exactly that using sampling and physical modeling. But along this way synthesizers become instruments on their own just because of their limitations in the beginning. That's why analog synthesizers are more popular now, because they are musical instruments and not an emulator.
yeah, i agree with that sentiment! and some of the very iconic sounds were when guys ventured away from trying to emulate acoustic instruments, like cranking up the decay on the 909 kick or resonance on the 303 filter! the designers of the instruments probably never envisioned anybody doing that.
Synthesisers were designed to generate new sounds, not attainable with regular instruments, in my opinion. Electronic music pioneers like Delia Derbyshire, Kid Baltan or Karl Heinz Stockhausen used tapes and laboratory instruments to create new sounds instead to simply write a score for an orchestra. They used a crude form of samplers not to sound like an instrument, but to modify and stretch the sound. On the other hand electric guitarists normally use a weird modular synthesisers and they call it a pedalboard, but their aim isn't a realistic acoustic guitar sound but a totally distorted one.
Hi Woody, I had a SIEL DK-70 in the 80's but got out of playing until a few years ago. Once I got back to playing I have had the fortune to get a few of the synths that I missed in the 80's and early 90's for not too much money. I know you have seen the DX7 for $127 delivered and maybe the Juno1 for $79 delivered. I think I am up to 22 now and enjoying playing whenever I can. As for analog or digital... I tend to like both. I think KEBU had a good point when he said that he liked the analog synths because the limit's made him more creative. Having both I can see his point. Cheers. Nathan. Citizennerd.
Roland did the best job in my opinion of preserving some of the analog experience, by always having resonant filters, developing the Analog Feel function for their PCM synths, and producing optional programmer units for many of the 80s synths. The JD-800 was a highpoint, although not a big seller to the weekend warriors. It makes me sick to remember when a Jupiter 8 could be picked up for $1000!
that's a remarkable price for the J8, good bargains to be had, if only we had known... i agree about roland, some even classify the D50 as one of the first virtual analog synths.
wait, you're that guy! i love the track, and listened to a lot of your other music too! i did reach out to you for permission but never got the reply, so really glad that you don't mind me using it. great track, thanks again!
I was there at that time and yes, people hated analog synths. I had a DX-27, a Korg M1, an Emax II (still have it) and a Roland TR-707 and analog synths were super cheap. I remember looking at a mini Moog because I love all the sliders and vintage synth (I was 14 years old and I was fascinated watching Kraftwerk video clips on MTV playing with those machines) and when I went to see the synth, even when it was super cheap, the idea to wait for the synth to warm up and the lack of so many things that my digital things had, pushed me away because, after all, it was old technology and nobody wanted it anymore. Plus, on TV, especially MTV, all the bands at that time were playing DX-7 or Emulators or amazing digital synths and samplers.
so right, i enjoy watching totp videos, concerts from that era, and yeah, it's all romplers and fancy samplers. in fact, just listen to any commercial pop hits from early 1990 and you'll only hear romplers and samplers. dx7, m1 pianos and organ presets all over the place... :D well, with exception of early house music who adpoted the 909 and 303. gosh, how much I drooled after an Emax at that time, congrats on yours!
I'm one of those people that thought these new sounds of the 80s were cold, clinical and unnatural. I think I never bought any record with a DX7 on it. Like I commented somewhere else (I'm 'studying' FM synthesis now), I think in the beginning the advances took place in technical limited circumstances leading to compromises, and people with certain kinds of hearing/ears would notice these compromises (I'm not implying they are better listeners, they just hear different, one hears the progress, others hear the shortcomings, and those go together hand in hand). Anyway, I didn't think these new sounds were realistic at all. But they were new (and I think most people are attracted by novelty), and these bell-like and metallic sounds certainly weren't heard before, and in that way were impressive. Consistently with that I really welcomed a band like Air. That was how things should sound. By now I guess digital has more computational power to its disposal, and it sound less unnatural to me (like CD was succeeded by SACD, a little bit can make a difference)). I must have got used to it too. On the other hand, everyone that uses a DAW now adds saturation etc, to make things sound analog. On a deeper level we could discuss, like we are used to in vision, don't we see and hear what we think we hear? Doesn't our brain tells us what to hear? What do we hear blindfolded? Interesting topics. Apart from sound, like you mentioned, digital has some clear practical advantages. We had a Rhodes in the band. The weight alone.... Weight, tuning, presets...In times when synths were mainly bought by gigging musicians no wonder analog behemoths went extinct. BTW I believe the number those classic analogs were build in are tiny tiny compared to the sales numbers of the DX7.
I didn't like the DX7 revolution in music, but I did like Fairlight/Synclavier sounds and the M1 and D50 were much more enticing to me than the Junos. Anybody could play a Juno anytime, and no-one wanted to, but the teacher kept the digitals locked up and you had to beg or break in. Such was late 80s life. EDIT: in the early 80s I was too young to have access to anything but a piano, accordion and Casios😂
Just got my DX7-most for the sheer aesthetics and collectibility of it and that Level 42 patch was one of the first one I played!!! And ironically Keyboard Magazine on line features it on the cover of this months issue.
i guess that dx brass patch must have been preset 1... :D i heard dx7 first when my piano teacher got one, and played me the timpani patch! my mind was blown :D i knew immediately then that my juno was obsolete. i was right, but only for 20 years.
I remember seeing MiniMoogs and various other classics in used music shops that just gathered dust. Nobody wanted them, even people who were doing electronic music. I was involved with some industrial projects, and we used analog synth samples through an EPS and couple of Mirage samplers rather than buy any of the analog stuff that was available cheap.
@@WoodyPianoShack Not far fetched at all... The up and down swing was fairly rapid though (if you consider 3-7 years as rapid) I think a point worth remembering as well (and it's something vintage keyboard 'dweebs' don't acknowledge enough) is that it was actually house music that brought many analogues back... Why? because they were cheap, you could get a unique sound and the bass of the moogs (in particular) still outdid everything else on the market. Digital top end with a good 'thrash' of old analogue! I remember noticing analogues getting more expensive around that time (when house was on the up). I'd look in 'loot' and Exchange & Mart! (UK) Happy Days...
Maybe most interesting could be digital synth with analogue filters. Somehow I have a theory, that today's hate to digital synth came from General Midi soundcards, which has been hearth breaker for every young aspired musician in 90's, as nobody of them could afford to buy and hear Roland JV/ JD, Korg Trinity, or Yamaha EX5. There was one funny story, where somebody says, if JV-1080 is good enough for Vangelis, it should be for enyone. :-D
No, the reason "digital synth is hated", is because Korg M1, Roland JV-1080 are preset synths, simple as that. No one made their own sounds. Impossible to load new samples , or edit/shape the samples directly before the layering stage. All you do is layer samples and add FX. It's just high quality MIDI for fast results of film composition, nothing more! It's not a synthesizer with depth. You only have a specific set of internal sounds to choose. Yes you can dig into internals, but you are limited by the sample set contained in the unit, which I hate. D50 and Wavestation have better ways to modify sounds, but you still cannot load custom samples. The sound designers were the engineers only, who wrote their samples to EEPROMs, and you as the user, cannot gain that level of control again.
Very enjoyable video, thanks! I wanted to hear more about the Korg M1 as that was my dream synth back in the day. I couldn't afford one but did end up buying a Korg 707 which was nowhere near the M1, but I had a lot of fun with it.
Awesome. Analog death days. My purchases: TB-303 - $100, SH-101 $80, Maplin 5600s - $60, Wasp $50, MKS-30 $120. Used to get sooo excited going to buy them, worried that I will get beaten to them. The 303 was 2 hours on the train, by the time i got there he had like 100 calls, was a famous 80s musician that had never really used it - was having a clear out at his farm studio! Ended up having to sell it due to hunger :-(
This is a cool video! thank you for this! And that preset.... is it called 'Soundtrack' or something like that? I had a lowly D5 and used this sound a lot! But the name escapes me.
The preset on the D-50 sounded familiar. I may have had it on the D-110. I can't put a name to it . My favourite preset of all time is the combi 90 Freetime on the Korg 05RW/X5/X5D/X5DR. I've used it many, many times.
I think about this a lot... I had a 106 that I paid $350 for and sold for about $400... Know it inside and out... and will die on the hill that they are worth maybe a few hundred more than that max...
It makes me sad how much people care for the prices instead of the actual gear. I bought both my 909 and a year later the 808 for pretty much what they go for these days, a little less tbh. BUT, I do not care that they were cheaper in the past. I am actually using 909 samples for 25 years and in my genre, the 909 is the foundation. But... I always thought samples are pretty much the same and I never felt the need as I was happily making 909ish beats. Then two years ago, it really struck me and I got the 909. I cannot express how much I love this machine. Yes, was expensive, but I never think about that. I "just" enjoy making music with it. It is 100% what I need in regards of drums. One year later, I bought an 808 in because I felt the need for having one. And it was even more expensive. That is my "love affair" drum machine now. It´s so unique. Love it. That being said, this is even crazier with oldtimer cars. They went up way more. A few thousand bucks will not get you anywhere in that market.
i really enjoyed my time with the 909 too, it's all about the controls and immediacty, sure it's same with 808. i don't thinksamples can be a fully adequate substitution either, with each tweak of the control knobs you get another infinite set of sound variations. a much better and closer alternative would be one of the new clones from Behr or roly themselves. congrats on your drum boxes anyway, i'm envious!
@@WoodyPianoShack One thing that I cannot replicate with samples is this; the Snare Drum shares its noise generator with the Hand Clap, so when they both play at the same time - not even necessarily on the very same beat, just enough for their noise-parts to overlap - then some special kind of phasing occurs 🥰 That depends on what you programmed in regards of accents and/or flams and on the volume-ratio between these two. On the 808, which is fully analogue, repeated triggers of the same sound render each hit very different. Like clap rolls or cymbal rolls. When you use some air in between these rolls, like one or two blank steps, the circuit can regenerate a little before being "poked" again, but it depends on how much the "settled". So tempo is key, too. The units from Behr really do not cut it, especially on the 808 - listen closely to the cymbals and hi hats. On the 808 they're smooth and pleasant to listen to whereas I find the ones on the Behr-machine super harsh and very hard to "behr" ;-) Both the 808 and the 909 are very "complete" machines. All their sounds fit very well together, and they both - despite having a pretty different overall sound - sound just great right off the bat. Thank you, it really felt like coming home. I settled now, no inner search any more :-) The thing is that I really DO like the sound of certain keyboards, but luckily (for my wallet) am very untalented with playing skills. Like you with the DX7 or Espen with the Jupiter-8 or Matt from Jamiroquai with the Prophet-10. I LOVE hearing you guys playing these gems...
Around 2010 vintage synths like Minimoog or TR909 were already very rare in Europe and extremely pricey. When the Minimoog Voyager came out it was selling like crazy even though it was very expensive, it still cost a fraction of the vintage synth. Even less hyped Polysix or Juno 106 were very expensive. They were more or less damaged or not fully functional. All the famous digital synths like DX7, D50, JV2080, M1, AN1x, EX5, VL1 always cost a lot. I don't know when TR909 or Juno 106 could cost $100. Maybe 20-30 years ago, for a very short period of time, only in the USA, prossibly damaged. I've seen a fatigued D110 rack 10 years ago sold for the equivalent of $80. But nobody was interested in D10 or D20 then, everybody wanted the D50.
you're right, it was quite a short window, of just a few years when analogue synths and drum machines were rock bottom prices, but you really could get a classic for a couple of hundred pounds or dollars. we all wanted samplers, akai, emu, or anything sample/rompler based from roland, yamaha and korg. you can hear it in the music of the time, late 80s and early 90s, it's all m1, dx7, d50, until house music came along then the 909 and 303 became sought after again.
I bought a Korg Micropreset for $30.00, a Rhodes for $200.00, but missed getting a Prophet for $100.00. A friend of the seller bought it out from under me while I was driving to pick them up. I also remember a Jupiter 8 for sale at a pawn shop for $500.00, but someone was making payments on it.
Hey Woody, you know what would fit here? A nice long review about the Arturia V Collection 9 which covers all the new but also the "old" instruments which had already been included in previous versions of the V collection. I have not found a single decent or even good video which covers all 32 instruments now included in the V Collection!
hey thomas! can you imagine how much time and effort it would take to research, learn and demo those 32 deep instruments! i shudder to think of it... i feel that arturia should do it themselves :) but I do appreciate the suggestion, thanks!
Woody, how could we forget your emotional segment with the D-50 and the 'Soundrack' patch?, I saw that when it premiered. It is because of you, that I am the proud owner of an absolute MINT D-50. It was a 'bedroom' keyboard for the original owner. With a little cleanup and dusting (just like your 'sprucing' of the DX-7), an absolute bargain at $100 with a Roland volume pedal (O: Thanks for your informative presentations.
hi gary, i'm really chuffed to read about your good fortunes, that sounds like an amazing deal of a lifetime. congrats, and enjoy. i really miss not having mine around, but you can't keep 'em all.
@@WoodyPianoShack Thanks Woody. Being 70 years old, and buying my first analog synthesizer in 1976.....well, I still have quite the collection as a recently retired pro keyboardist due to Covid that shut down our tribute band of 19 years! Some of the interesting things I bought NEW and STILL own are (I had two of these for the live rock band days late 70ies, sold one them years ago), MS-20 with matching SQ-10 sequencer, and they still work! Also in storage since 1991, a bedroom keyboard (never gigged with), Yamaha CS-60. It is still like new in everyway. I paid $2400 back in 1979 which was BIG $$$ back in that day. Many more classics in the stable. Around 1986, I toured with a Korg DW-8000, and their flagship sampler, the DSS-1. We had to put our setlist together according to the wait time of that floppy drive! Too many stories. Thanks for your response to my comment. We could talk for hours on this one! (O:
I totally agree. My first polysynth was a Juno 6 and it was utterly useless as a live instrument since you had no presets, and even with presets (juno60) it all sounded the same because of the chorus. I added a dx7 and that expanded my range of sounds tremendously, but I was still missing the fat analog sounds that I liked from US recordings ( oberheim , prophet) , so when the Ensoniq Esq-1 came out I sold the Juno6 and got the Esq. this stayed my no1 synth for many years and I still have it. Btw it’s unbelievable what Eric persing contributed to the development of synths. He should really get a livetime achievement award for it. What a genius sound designer
My first synth was a Roland D-10 and - at least from the perspective of a beginner - it was boring gear. Sure, you could hook up a sequencer (which I didn't own at the time) to unleash its multitimbral capabilities and the built-in drummachine was very usable. But I never programmed a sound myself due to the overwhelming parameter djungle and only one data entry slider available. What I want to say is that I would have had certainly more fun with an analog synth with knobs and sliders and an built-in arpeggiator. On the D-10 it was not even possible to tweak filter and resonance while playing. Glad that times have been changing and we have at lot of new (virtual) analog synths at our disposal.
yes, tweaking the front panel controls is extremely satisfying and rewarding, but strangely, hardly anybody missed it or complained about it when the early digitals dominated. it took another 15 years before filter knob and amplifer controls made a comeback, thanks goodness!
I thoroughly enjoy all of your clips Woody! You and I share the same love for the DX7 - bought my first when I was 17. The DX7 has made good friends with more recent acquisitions of mine (a D10 and a Korg DW8000). I continue to find it ironic that 25/35 years ago, analog was junk and digital was king, and now its a complete 180.
at the age of 16 , I "bought" Roland D-50 , well that's an overstatement, I got it on installment a lump sum each month , however the shop went bankrupt and the owner had no order in his system so I never saw any bills, it cost something like 2000? USD in 87. That machine started of my musical carer and I'm still out gig'ing around
I've had mixed experiences with buying and selling old gear. Bought my Juno 106 new for £880 in 1984, and went to sell it in the early 2000s but was offered about £150 so hung on to it. Eventually sold it a couple of years ago for more that I paid for it! Also picked up a Moog Source for £100 in 1989 (rrp £899) and sold it for £1200 ten years ago - they're double that now! On the flipside, bought the Roland S50 sampler for £900 in 1989 and sold it for just £50, also ten years ago. I also picked up an Alpha Juno 2 - I actually quite liked it - in 2011 for £150 and sold it for twice that three years later but, as you say, prices have risen high on that one, so wish I'd hung on to it a bit longer but needed the space! Soundtrack, btw :-) (Sold my D50 but replaced it with the boutique D-05 - don't judge me!)
Kinda got bored with pure analogues, so I bought up lots of hybrids and got them for great prices. ESQ1 for £250, SQ80 for £300. As for D50, I'm very sorted on that front, D550 rack, V-Synth mk1 with D50 card and a V-Synth XT.
great stories and prices there, thanks bill! interesting that vintage digital synths and samplers have plummeted in value and are rock bottom at the moment, whilst their analogue predecessors have gone up 10x. i wonder (but doubt it) if the early digitals will eventually follow the same trajectory.
I come from the same era but couldn't understand why everyone was abandoning analogs and only using digital. Grew quickly to hate FM sounds because it was so overused in songs at the time. However I did love getting good deals like getting a Memorymoog or Jupiter 6 for $300. Unfortunately I would just keep something for a little while and sell it for something else, wish I would have held on to some things. Loved the Juno 106 for its simplicity and great sounds. Today's new analogs fill that need for me because they're cheaper than a lot of vintage analog and more reliable. If Behringer ever comes out with some of those vintage poly clones I may have to grab one though..
@@WoodyPianoShack I kind of did the rompler and sampler thing for a while, then got back into analog-ish sound with a JP-8000. Should have kept some of those analogs!
I'm about the same age as you and remember those times very well. I couldn't afford a DX-7 or a D-50 as a 20 year old, so I bought an old Korg Polysix for around 200 pounds. With that, a MiniKorg 700 (30 pounds) and a TR-707, I was off! :) Thanks for the video.
The Timing of this, Dave Smith just passed away, he ws 72 years old and was supposed to attend NAMM here in California. Sad News, perhaps a tribute to him in the future.
@@klaasj7808 He didn’t die of Covid, he died from “Complications of a Heart Attack” according to his wife Denise Smith. But the vaccine could have been contributed to his health condition.
I remember these days well. In 1988 I picked up a TR-808 for £80 because you could barely give them away, and a D-20 was far more desirable than a Juno, and with those two together you had a band. Much as I love analogue sounds and noodling around though, if I'm playing a set of poppy synthwave numbers there's no way on earth I'll have a single item of analogue equipment on stage. Our digital revolution gave us reliability.
Fav patch from the D50 is defo Soundtrack. And can be made slightly better with a slightly longer attack and longer decay and heavy reverb. But as far as Iconic sounds go, look no further than Fantasia, one of the stock D50 sounds that is a staple GM preset, along with plenty of others from other manufacturers. Good stuff.
I paid $400 for a Jupiter-8 in 1996. (still have it❤)
this comment makes me so happy. well done and good for you Jacki!
Good lad :)
I’d also be interested today if i could get it for 400 😝
$300 in 1998. Still have mine too. Also Juno 60 about 3 months earlier for $200.Still have it too. Those were days for buying analog synths for damn near nothing. We shall likely never see them again. I never had any idea at the time that they would worth what they are today.
@@PatrickRosenbalm I think I’ll have to block this video, it’s too depressing. I sold a Jp-8, a Moog rogue, and an sh101 for less than a sh101 these days!!
Interesting perspective. I noted that you said how many people were after "realistic sounds" and also functionality. What's appealing about analogue synths is that they don't sound realistic at all, they sound like something altogether more interesting and malleable.
Their relative simplicity and hands-on interfaces are also an asset rather than a drawback.
But if that's not your goal, then I can totally understand why a Juno and a 909 would be painfully limited vs a workstation or something more modern.
Thanks for the viewpoint Woody, very interesting.
Although there were people that loved analogue synths in the late 80s, the market showed that the majority of buyers were more interested in the "realistic" and new digital synth world. I think the biggest contribution of the Nord Lead was giving people back what they'd lost. It ushered in a new generations appreciation for subtractive synthesis, and a wave of virtual analogs that started displacing the romplers with few realtime controls.
But Woody is absolutely spot on with his analysis. By the way already starting with the Preset monos and the first Polys in the 70s, it was obvious Synthesizer keyboards were thought to emulate natural sounds. Hence Presets like Piano or Violin on these. Also the Prophet 5 sold as well not because of a synthbrass patch but a brass. Look at the sound charts that Moog or ARP added to their Minis or Odysseys, or those in the keyboards magazine of the time. I mean there were editions about how to emulate the realistic sounding blip for a trumpet. Only later we've realized these sounds actually never WERE realistic but they became iconic for what they were:synthesizer sounds. Which proably was why on portable keyboards of the 80s, you had preset called "synth 1" or "pop synth". And then go further and think of what the job of a keyboarder in a cover bands (which most bands were and probably stil are) is: The guy who didn't learn a guitar (maybe that's why you see it differently... ) who didn't know how to wear leather jackets and pose with an axe on stage. He had to play all that stuff guitar, bass and drums couldn't do. Piano, Organ, Strings, Brass, Clavi, E-Piano. Trumpet, Trombone, Flute, maybe a Sax or later choir. He may have written the arrangement and checked for the stage sound, but he wasn't the guy girls looked after. He was some weirdo, probably understanding these strange computers. So if he'd come up with a super creative distorted solo sound with his MS-20, he wasn't even supposed to do that - not from the audience, not from his band mates. All that stuff the techno heads are lusting after: you couldn't really play them in a band. To be honest - for most parts you still can't. The list of what you can play in band kontext has expanded nowadays. By Synth Brass, Synth Pads, Bells, Samples. If the Singer is not singing and the Guitarist isn't soloing. Main things you'll need for gigs: Pianos, Organs, Epianos, Clavinet, Strings and these synth sounds. On Fly, without interfering the sound too much. Hence the Nord Stage, the Kronos and the Montage and the Fantoms are still so successful, they give any keyboarder enough or more than he'll actually ever gonna need. You may add a Nord Lead or some other Synth to look cool and have your 2 solos. No reason really to come up with a Modular or a Prophet. And the Pros? They're gonna use Mainstage anyways.
Another aspect Woody covered but maybe it's not even clear enough: The Analog subtractive world was coming at its end because it has been really figured out, exploited and there was nothing new to come. The DX, the Wave, the Samplers, the D-50 and even the M1 actually came with non-realistic sounds, soundscapes that were totally new!. Fantasia, Soundtrack and Digital Native Dance were never supposed to imitate something existing. Neither were a bunch of quite famous DX-7-Sounds. They were new and couldn't ever had been done before. Analog synths weren't capable of these anymore. I mean it's quite hard to remember the times where it actually was rewarding for record companies to always come up with songs with new sounds and styles, but that was the case at least until the early 90s. Then music world split up into Techno/House, Crunch/Alternativ/Heavy/Nupunk etc., Hip Hop, and that horrible Eurodance crap/Boybands stuff. In each section (maybe except Hiphop), it was about repeating the styles and sounds. Since the 2000s nothing matters anymore musically, top 40 radio is using the same and same sound just with autotune for the lead vocal. So yes now you can still use the 106 or some plugs. It won't matter anyways.
@@torbenanschau6641
Yep, when subtractive synthesizers first came about the intention was to synthesize acoustic instruments, but they weren't good at that and instead had an entire sonic palette of their own.
Buchla was perhaps the exception who had no intention of trying to make existing sounds; Don shunned even the idea of a keyboard as an interface, but that's another story.
A Juno-106 is incredibly limited, yes. That was the example Woody gave and so I agreed that I wasn't surprised given his needs at the time. However, I totally disagree that exploration of analogue sound is (or was) done, on the contrary, I can find new sounds every single day with my modular system. But I agree you'd struggle to find many new sounds with a Juno-106!
And absolutely - a D-50, an M1, a Wavestation etc were an _enormous_ jump in technology and sonic possibilities. Samplers too.
In terms of modern music - totally depends what you're listen to. Remember there was a lot of throw away pop in the 60s, 70s and 80s. It's just been forgotten.
hey alex, yeah right on, as others have noted, synths have always aimed to emulate acoustic instruments, my ms20 patch diagram sheets are full of trumpets, violins and pianos! but when digitals came along, and even more so samplers, they actually did sound somewhat realistic. we're lucky today to have the capabilities and sounds of digital synths combined with the front panel controls that you and I enjoy so much! look forward to hearing what you do with your J-X. cheers mate.
I remember those ages. I just decided to study engineering and I had no money. When I tested a DX7 I was shocked: I didn't like it at all and editing was impossible. I thought it was nothing interesting for me. I bought an M1 years after and started again to edit sounds for my band
indeed, it reminds me that most of us had ataris, macs and amigas so guys were programming their synths from pc editors and librarian software packages.
After watching your video, I understand why the D-50 and DX-7 were so revolutionary back then. The fact is that people in the 80s listened to music recordings mainly from cassettes and vinyl. And compared to a tape recording, the direct sound from any digital synthesizer sounds incredibly clear, bright and precise, with plenty of high frequencies and crisp digital detail. The same applies to listening to CDs for the first time. It was a real revolution, it was a contrast not only with the sound of analog synthesizers, but also with what people used to hear in general. Today, we underestimate the precious perfect fidelity of digital audio because it is so affordable. We are used to it, so the contrast with a stable and accurate digital sound ... something muddy, something non-static, imperfect, saturated, developing over time, something with its own non-linear timbre character, small pitch-shifting, clicks and pops, etc. Modern people percieve lo-fi as something more interesting than crystal clear audio. But there is also another way: how Roland creates its hi-fi mathematical models. The sound is still wonderful, clear and crisp, it's still digital (24 bits of Roland digital audio via USB means over 100 dB of crystal clear dynamic range!!!), but it becomes non-repetitive, with a controlled amount of stability or drift... I truly think that modern Roland (both ACB and ABM) synths do sound not only as good, but even better than their analog predecessors. Today we have everything, both digital and analog. Thank you, Woody, you always say something that inspires me and makes me love music and synths more and more.
thanks for the comment, you make some great points., actually I did record some discussion about the revolution of consumer audio from cassette tape, vinyl to CD, and even how the recording studios transitioned from tape, to digital tape, and then hard-disk. but I cut it out coz the video was going on too long !:) thanks again for the great comment and kind words.
Sure millenial. most synth sounds were heavy filtered. So raw synth sounded flat
TLDR; The grass is always greener on the other side. 😉
On that note though, as an older chap myself (mid 40s) and not a musician but a listener, I did buy some vintage Sony's MD format to relive those years. It was sorely lacking in the US in its prime. The recording industry made a huge fuss about digital copies and made it prohibitively expensive. There are other retro folks that are dabbling in old cassette tapes which I don't miss one iota. They were a great tech at the time but to me a wonderful stepping stone to greater things. I won't be filling my ebay cart with those anytime soon. 🤣
I did something worse. Back in the early 90s, I had a JX8P, PG800, DW800, all in immaculate, showroom condition and with their own hard cases and manuals. I swapped the whole lot for a Korg M1 with a broken end panel and three broken keys. With hindsight, the Korg M1 was the second worst synth I ever owned (after the Roland D70) and I have been carrying this story like an albatross round my neck ever since.
I highly disagree on th M1. Agree on the DW-8000. I swapped my DW-8000 with the EX-8000 amazing synth, baught a TX-802, M1 and swapped my RD-250 with the D-70, and that was the best set up I had for years. I loved both the D-70 for Its many good samples for the time, and the M-1 totally changed digital keyboards and even the D-50 was much loved for Its sound, the M1 was King. I upgraded to the T-3 which still sits at Home, beside the Kronos😘. Unfortunately the display’s backlite is almost totally burned out. It depends how we Connect with each instrument. I just totally loved the Korgs, and that D-70 was awsome. 76 really nice keys and so many good sounds. The strings and organs of both the T3 and th D-70 was propably the reason I decided to sell the EX-8000 and TX-802, which I highly regret ever to sell, together with my Dynachord CLS-22 leslie sim
@@mrdali67 The biggest problem I had with the M1 was its filter. Having worked mostly with analogue Roland synths for 7 years at that time, the M1 was my first non-FM digital synth (other than the DW8000) and I found that no matter how you filtered those somewhat mediocre samples, you'd always recognise the raw PCM waveform. The D70, to me, was just a U20 on steroids. But you are right, it depends how you connect with an instrument. Those two just didn't do it for me.
@@gcoudert You are right the filters in the M-1 and T-series arent the best. It’s kinda what made the DW much better with those wavetables, It’s analog filters. One of my friends called the M-1 the “midrange” synth because it lacks definition in the top, but many 1st generation romplers and also the DX-7 had that problem, mainly due to poor DAC’s, plus the fact that the M and T-series was based on 12bit samples. The D-70 also had a rather mediocre filter ADSR but Roland’s samples was rather high quality for how little memory they used. I was focusing most on how realistic you could get them to sound and not so much on making interesting synth sounds from them. The Roland romplers was what killed off samplers, cause you had to be extremely good if you were to create your own multisamples at the same quality of those factory sounds and expansion pcm cards.
too bad! little did we know back then. well, hang on to the M1, prices are rising. :D
@@WoodyPianoShack Oh, it went yeeeaaaars ago. After it was fixed and I used it for a while, I swapped it for a broken D50, which was also repaired and used for a while!I sold that D50 for £150 back in the early noughties (don't ask) 😂 Now I'm sticking to my Kronos, Jupiter-X, Arturia V-Collection and PPG Wave 3.V.
"SoundTrack" is also one of my favorite Roland D-50 presets. This preset is in the first bank at position 3-7 on D-50 of the Roland Cloud. I also really like the "Fantasia" preset" 😀
3-7, yes, that's the same magical number as on the hardware!
Ah yes, "Soundtrack" - a signature bread-and-butter Roland sound - also #37 on my aged yet still functional MT-32!
I like making pads out of the Soundtrack and Fantasia presets on Roland keyboards, FA/Integra-7/Jupiter-50 do it best.
This is undoubtedly the "Soundtrack" patch! Bought my D-50 20 years ago and it is, besides the Nord Lead, still one of my favourites! Excellent performance!
I started with the CZ series so completely missed the analog heyday, but because I couldn't create the sounds I wanted I very luckily brought a Sci Pro One £200, Juno 106 £250 and Jupiter 8 £840 at the tail end of the 80's and start of the 90's and I still have them all.
Having lived through the 80s this was a very entertaining video. I remember selling my Juno 6 to buy a second hand DW8000, which itself was going cheap due too the arrival of the D50. I was blown away by the DW8000. Also had a DX7 but never liked it very much, partly due to a lack of appreciation of the value of putting it through external FX. Juno had chorus, DW8000 had a built in delay, so I guess I expected synths to be able to sound good on their own. But also the DX7 was so prolific in the 80s, that every time I used it I felt I was just sounding like everyone else. Plus it was impossible to program, unless you liked messing up things in random ways, which most of the time ended up with an unusable sound. I’m not sure why these old synths now command such high prices, unless it is driven by hipsters wanting to do retro stuff. Todays modern synths remain much more capable and there are plenty of affordable modern analogs, which typically do more than the 80s versions.
Great video, thank you. After many years, I've arrived at the conclusion that disparate things are meant to complement one another, more so than to compete against. I remember hearing Mike Oldfield's "To France" as a teen and instantly loved it. It was one of my favorite songs, and not just because of Maggie Reilly's dreamy voice (that must have been one of the best vocal recordings of all time). It was really one of the first songs that I've heard, where there was this tug of war of Renaissance-style instruments, combined with the synths of that era. And the song was a fantastic example of blending those seemingly different worlds together. And I think it's like this with digital and analog synths, and there's plenty of room for all of them to coexist in a single song :).
well that's a perfect way to sum up the situation, thanks. now i must go listen to the track!
Ah! Those lovely old Woody's videos ;) Funny how times change (or do they?). Having lived those years, what's really striking to me is all those revolutions, those novelties and their impact. Granted, being younger plays a role, and that once you cross a certain threshold, there is not much you can do and improve upon, but still, even if we are surrounded by great tech in abundance, I guess the magic has faded a bit.
you're such a good keyboarder, big joy to listen! thanks for bringing that development into context and connecting it with your personal journey! yes - these instruments accompany us and are pieces of art, we live in exciting times!
DX-7 was my first synth... Still have a soft spot for it - actually gave mine to a cousin who was about 10 years younger. Now I'm going analogue of course ;)
0:04 - Level 42 - Running In The Family
2:23 - Styx - Babe
Great video and a very interesting perspective/insight.
My first synth was a sequential circuits sixtrak, my second a casio cz101. I always tried to make them sound like ppg's, synclaviers and fairlights. I must have been absolutely bonkers, but i learned so much from that.
CZ101's for the win. This is the most awesome "kawai" synth. Totally cute. It looks and sounds incredible.
19:05 I dont know what that sound is but it's been replicated Many times on many physical and soft sythersizor presets.
Normal, Soundtrack was added in the GM specifications, lots try to sound the same, none managed to get where the D-50 went with that patch. (GM1: PC #98)
Your favourite preset. Wasn't it called Soundtrack or something.
Analogue synths were pretty useless at emulating acoustic instruments, however the DX7 isn't particularly good at emulating these either. I think that this is the main reason why the DX isn't held in high regard today. The presets were mostly aimed at emulating real instruments and nobody bothered to learn how to program them. I love the DX7- it is particularly good at evolving pad sounds. If you learn to play to it's strengths, it is a unique and powerful synth. Although I also love analogue synths, I agree about the Juno 106- very overrated IMO.
I feel like what kind of synth you use can, in part, simply depend on what you’re using it for. I have an analog Minitaur for my bass lines, but I use a Jupter-XM for pads and leads. I like the clarity up top, I like the warmth down low. I do use a TR-8 (mostly the 909 sounds) for drums often enough, but I process them to add in some warmth and width. Granted, were I not doing EDM/House I probably would want a different setup buuuuut…
My only point is that I don’t think it’s wise to go fully digital or fully analog, I think it’s good to have a mix of both because the textures are unique so why not include both? Picking one, to me, is like saying “I want my orchestra to have brass to the exclusion of woodwinds”. Why? Why not have both?
well said, totally agree, it's like having a strat and a tele, why not indeed?
@@WoodyPianoShack I'll tell you why not. My '65 Tele has 3 pickups. Nuff said?
In 1989 I was able to buy a pristine 1973 Minimoog Model D for only USD 75 from a studio garage sale. The guy who sold it wanted to get rid of his Roland VP-330 mk I too for USD 110. I bought both.
that's incredible, just another example of how it was for a few years. still got them?
@@WoodyPianoShack yes, although the minimoog's oscillators' tuning needs some tuning. The VP-330 still working, though the sliders are really stiff and scratchy now.
Woody, I was a touring musician in the 70's and 80's, and remember having a binder full of sheets that showed the knob and slider settings I needed for my Moog, it was quite an ordeal to have to be making dozens of changes between songs to get the sound I needed. It had an impact on the order of songs as well, as it was faster to do songs that either had a similar setup, or if I was playing guitar on a particular song.
When I got my DX7, I rarely brought the my Fender Rhodes or the Elka string machine anymore, though they sounded much better (especially the Rhodes). But years of carrying that thing up and down backstage steps was taking its toll, and the digital revolution made travel much easier. I had friends with B3s and Leslies, I envied the sound they got, but never the problems that had moving them.
Today I still have the Rhodes, but sold the DX7 and the Elka. Also have a Korg M3 which is wonderful, and a MODX7, as well as a Korg Minilogue XD, for times when I want a thicker analog sound (yes, I know it's digital - but it sounds as good as analog to my ears).
thank you for sharing your journey, that's a perfect example of what I was talking about. you're right, it was the same for me, I forgot how changing sounds would dictate the setlist, if you've already got the bass patch setup on the MS20, then string together a few songs that use the similar sound!
I can appreciate that. I have a 3/4 Grand Piano in my living room, and a Roland RD-2000 in my music room, along with my other gear. I know which I would rather give recitals on, and I know which one I would rather take to Gigs.
The last last outdoor event I did was on an ancient pristine Juno 6 and that was just over 3 years ago.
The young children listening to an improv performance seemed stunned and amazed. Its one of those ancient synths you can wrap your head around while playing on the fly. The limitations and good solid controls are its strength
I figure going forward I would like a simple modern wavetable synth like the Hydra, it takes expressive to another level and the best digital synths offer for live performances
Its a mystery why analogue synths have risen in price, a collectors thing?. A Korg minilogue with the right keyboard is good. I should have bought my buddys moog fatty, that is a brilliant thing for live performances and scalable, again with the right controller, keyboard or other midi instrument.
It depends on ones needs, one can work in the box for all things, Serum, Vital, Phaseplant, Surge XT , Dexxed etc... all good, FM sythesis is more approachable now than ever.
Vital is my newer poison for many things
👏🏾👏🏾 Great video, love to see u getting emotional on the D50, no idea what the patch is called. Thanks for sharing 🙏🏾
Thank you for your wonderful dosage of perspective. It's really amazing how people forget what things were like at that time. I can remember getting a Polysix, or a Juno-106, or a Yamaha SK-15, or whatever for between 75 and 200 dollars. And your assessment of the 106 was spot on. It was never a great sounding synth, it was just easy to program quickly and held up well on stage. (The newer model X blows me away every time I turn it on). I've caught some of your other videos, and I appreciate your singular attention to history as it actually happened. Please keep up the good work. I look forward to your next one.
those simple og junos sounded quite plain, until you activated the chorus, and even then they benefited greatly from needed outboard reverb, my keyboard amp had spring reverb so sounded pretty cool:)
"Guess what this patch is called"
ME: DIGITAL NATIVE DANCE!!!!
The sound of those early digital synths is nostalgic to me. To me they represent childhood nostalgia, the DX7 in particular. In the mid 80’s Korg had interesting budget polysynth called the poly-800. It is often seen as an analogue synth in sound but in styling it looks more like a digital one. It’s a bit of strange beast, it’s a synth with split personality. It’s hard to classify what it is. Is it analogue or digital? Inside it’s a mix of analogue and digital parts. The main tone generator is a computer sound chip, but it’s paired with analogue filters. The approach reminds me a bit of the SID chip and I think it was quite a novel approach into creating a budget 8-voice polysynth (from a design engineering perspective with certain cost constraints).
great description of the p800, a synth that's aways slipped under my radar. thanks!
I had access to a Poly 800 when they came out, I recently digitized some cassettes with tracks I made using it, strings and flute were awesome...awesomely spooky!
I got one of those back in 1987. I still have it, and it still goes.
@@russ254They do, I love it!
Our beloved JD-Xi is a tiny lightweight device which has 256 voices of polyphony, two polyphonic synths (each of them has three separate layers with individual envelopes and LFOs, so a true stereo is possible before the signal hits the FXs), a drum machine (with a good hundred of sounds), a one-voice analog synth, a vocoder, an FX processor and a nice sequencer. Some people in the 80s probably would kill to get the JD-Xi.
too right! if you offered a JUNO owner in 86 to swap their analogue synth for a JUNO-X they would have bitten your hand off in the blink of an eye! yet, there are guys today that say they would prefer the JUNO... :p those folks probably weren't making music in the late 80s is my guess. :D
I would have been amazed to have something like a Casio CTK series back in 88
I got my fully working Minimoog (also almost perfect cosmetic shape) in 1993 for $200 and the guy threw in Roland cv to midi converter to boot. Still have both. I was fresh out of college, there were so many deals around for cool gear I always wanted but nobody used anymore. I couldn't afford any of it at the time though lol...but I saw the mini and knew I needed it. I think I ate ramen noodles and cereal for three weeks to pay for it.
I love the Soundtrack preset, too. I bought a D-50 when it was new, using money from a part time job in college. I still have my D-50.
I was given my first keyboards - a Fender Rhodes, ARP Axxe, and a Korg Trident in the early 90s, basically because no-one wanted them. I bought another Rhodes for £150 at around the same time. Fast forward 10 yrs, and thanks to Neo-soul, and a resurgence in interest in 70s music, they came back into fashion, and I sold them (not having space for them anymore) off bit by bit, making a healthy profit, and replaced them with an iPad, apps and a midi keyboard. The biggest problem is that they are ageing electronic circuits and components, and where I live, the only shop I know that could repair them closed a long time ago. I miss the Rhodes piano - no matter how many VSTs or simulations I play, they don’t offer the same experience. I have the ARP ODYSSEi app, which is fun, but I’ve yet to see anything to replace the Trident - perhaps the Korg MonoPoly app?
for trident in software, maybe try triton vst? probably close than monopoly.
I dumped my Rhodes,Horner D6 and Moog Rouge and Crumar Stringman for about $600 kept my Korg Poly 6 added a Mirage Sampler, Korg DW6000 and Cazio Cz 300 should have kept the D6.
yeah, i'd probably want to swap those back again!
I think a big part of the reason people started to go back to Analog synths in the mid 90s especially was the knob per function thing. Digital Synths didn't tend to do that - and it's still not super common. as early as 1991 though, Roland noticed the last 6-8 years of knobn't was wearing on people and the novelty of preset machines had worn off, so gave us the JD800.
IMO, the period you're talking about was a really cool one for innovation but kind of a nightmare in terms of user experience. The Junos you hated so much were kind of a step in the right direction in terms of the DCOs/tuning stability, later MIDI and having the knob per function. Along with the SH101 They also really brought synths "to the people". The DX7 et all may have been somewhat more affordable, but only highly technical people could make original sounds with them. That's probably why the Juno continued to sell well in the early days of the DX7. Of course with the Juno's DCOs you do miss on those "analog imperfections" somewhat - another thing that can be hard to capture in digital.
The imprecisety is the other thing a lot of people liked. The novelty of "Realisticish" instruments wore off after a while. I'd argue even the D50 future proof itself a lot by having a mix of more realistic sounds and the dreamy and abstract pans, and plenty of analog-like sounds, being the first synth to have a stab at analog emulation in it's own way.
I feel like the best use case is to use all these sorts of synths together which is what people do nowadays and have done for a while. It's hard to beat the sound of a good fat Moog style bass or a TB303 squelch. Luckily we're at the point where high quality analog emulations(and more stable analog) are affordable.
You should check out the Cherry Audio Dream Synth, which does very much try to be the best of both worlds of the 80s and 90s.
thx for the thoughtful comment, to answer you specific question, yes, i have a license but yet to try it out! thx for your suggestion.
@@WoodyPianoShack let me know what you think! thinking about picking it up myself, I loved their JUpiter 4
Another great video, and I think we’re of a similar ‘vintage’ ourselves with similar opinions at the time. In 1987, aged 15, I was on the lookout for a drum machine. I went to Soho SoundHouse in London, where they had a grubby second-hand TR-909 for the same price as brand new Roland TR-505’s. I left the shop with a brand new TR-505. Doh !
remember their ads very well in SOS at the time! oh well, if any consolation I would have taken the 505 as well, or perhaps waited for the HR16... :)
Part of the problem with digital synths is that we have all heard the same patch dozens of times before. Yesterday i was listening to a track played live using just two mono-synths, a Powertran Transcendant 2000 and a Yamaha CS5 (plus some nice effect units). It sounded like the sci-fi future was supposed to sound.
yeah, that's a good point I think, makes me wonder though, on analogue synths, don't we tend to dial in the same synth brass, synth bass, strings, so you could argue we hear the same patches all the time on analogues too.
@@WoodyPianoShack Except Analogue synths often don't sound the same even from the beginning to the end of the same song. Always sounding the same was the problem with samplers when not used creatively.
Compare the annoying repetition in
ruclips.net/video/FQlAEiCb8m0/видео.html
With the mix of textures in
ruclips.net/video/QSMIzCRinpg/видео.html
Of course the Polymoog could be reproduced digitally. However, it is far more complicated than sticking some samples in a Rompler.
p.s. Have ever tried a Roland JP8000 ? The sound of trance music.
Thank you for sharing this. I'm not alone then... stood in the music store in 1983 about to set up a midi studio. In front of me: a DX7 on one side and a Memory Moog on the other. I played the moog and loved it. The windows and walls shook. But The Moog was almost 4k and only 6 voices , no midi. The sales guy ssuggested the Dx7. Had midi, 8/16-ish voice, was just over 2k. Played it and it was this thin bllep bleep. Was he serious? Hated it! Got the moog. Spent another 2k retroviting the midi, which was minimal at best. But today, the Dx7 is worth 4k, and the plugin sounds better. The moog is now worth 20k, no plug matches it, and it still breaks glasses and brings tears to my eyes: I love her so so much :) PS: I had a Juno 106 and hated it too, 'cept for base for some reason. My MS20 and Roland Sh1000 were lost in a fire. But the Memory moog still rocks after all these years.
great story, so nice to hear the memory moog still going strong!
The Juno 106 was actually used by Vangelis on one of his earlier albums. Vangelis is who started me on the road to playing keyboard instrumentals considering I am a lead guitar player. I miss the breathy D-50. It is still a very unique keyboard to me. On the other hand, I thought the J-106 was a splendid keyboard but was limited in capability but nevertheless effective. For drums I had the Alesis HR-16 oh back in the year around 88 or so and would borrow my buddy's EMU Proteus-1 sound module. The Proteus-1 is/was a killer module. In the demos I sent on cassette to record companies back when I was young, I used the DX7, J-106, and the JX-3P. I love old keyboards.
By the way, I assume the Patch you are asking about is called "Sountrack" found #3-7
and bonus points for the patch number!
Good morning Woody , That's a brilliant trip down memory lane on a Sunday morning , so many cool synths demoed in your video , its amazing how synths have evolved over such a short time , makes you wonder how much better they will be in the future , time will tell , but in the here and now we are spoiled for choice for making music on synths and computers , Really enjoyed your video this morning .....kinda killed my hangover in a good way ....gonna chill out and play on my keys , Big thumbs flying high from a galaxy far far called Ireland .....
Alan
😎AK☘ 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘☘
always happy to be your hangover cure, all the best..
Love a bit of L42
should refresh my l42 repertoire, lots of people digging it.
18:45 I totally feel you. Those are the moments we live for man! 👍
I still have my D50 and TR626 which I bought together in Australia in about 1988.
The D50 has a few keys that dont work, but I still connect it up to my PC via midi to play a huge library of sounds downloaded online (including the standard CDROM card releases by Roland which were worth a fortune in themselves)
great combo and respect for hanging on to them over all these years.
I love that Soundtrack preset. I bought the tiny Roland “Boutique” version of the D50 for $240.00 with a coupon. Now, even that relatively recent module will sell for $900.00 new on EBay.
gosh, so much! the OG is still available for about $400. you did well, congrats!
I had a Juno 106 in the early 90s but I used it mostly as a midi keyboard (It was dead cheap) for my JV-880 sound module lol.
that's hilarious! but really, that was the best use for the analog synths, nobody would dream of actually using those stale boring sounds at that time!
@@WoodyPianoShack Before that I had an SH-01 monophonic synth. I also had a Dod guitar FX unit so I could use delays to build up some sort of polyphony :D such a good little synth though and it taught me the basics about building analogue sounds. Sold it for $100. They were going for over $1000 a year or two later haha
I never liked the sound of the DX7. It did always sound sterile to me. A situation made worse by seemingly every mid-late 80's song sounding like a Yamaha advert. A friend of mine loaned one to me for a few months and trying to create new sounds was indeed like trying to paint the hall through the letterbox - and only being allowed to use various shades of grey.
Agreed. I was hugely disappointed the first time I acquired a DX7 (which wasn't until the late 90s). For an instrument that supposedly made analogue synths obsolete overnight, I expected much more.
@@andygriffith5160 I know what you mean - I’ve owned more than 15 DX7s over the years (taking advantage of buying them cheap in the early days of eBay and then selling them on) but most of them still had the majority of their 1983 presets inside, which - apart from a few - were a bit ‘average’. The best patches came later on. You really need to put the DX7 through an effects processor (bit of reverb. Bit of chorus) to get the best out of it. What the DX7 gave though, which most analogue synths didn’t, was a decent amount of polyphony for ‘proper’ playing (16 notes is actually quite hard to exceed), and a massive degree of expression: whether that’s down to the velocity, aftertouch or mod wheel.
But yeah - when I first heard a DX7 layered with a JX8P live (around 1986), I did assume the ubiquitous DX7 was responsible for the luscious pad sounds. Soon afterwards I played one for the first time and realised that it must have been the JX8P which sounded the ‘smoothest’ !
Soundtrack patch is alive and well in the Roland Juno DS as SL-Soundtrack in the vocal/pad category.
This is spot on. I starting playing in the late 80s. I have an Ensoniq ESQ1 that I bought in 88. But I cursed the lack of realistic instruments and drums. And I really couldn't understand why anyone would want a monosynth. I lusted after the subsequent generations of workstations from Korg and Roland. It took me 30 years to appreciate what those older synths offered. I wonder how many SH101s, Minimoogs, etc I must have walked past at Car Boot sales and Audio jumbles and didn't take any notice of. Would have been a great investment, given the silly money they now go for.
yes, we never imagined them becoming desirable and valuable again and we could have all got pretty rich if we had been more forward thinking. there was a time when even hammond organs, fender rhodes and arcade amd pinball machines were dirt cheap! same goes for many of my old cars that are considered desirable classics today, but I scrapped them due to not wanting to pay £100 to repair them...
5:22 what song is that? sounds so familiar.....
Funny. I kinda knew what the preset was going to before you pressed the keys. It’s an interesting argument you put forward. It’s like the hardware vs VST argument. With a decent midi keyboard like Asturias Keylab with all the sliders matched to, let’s say, the new Korg VST versions of wavestate or opsix, what’s the damn difference apart from a few hundred dollars?
I personally prefer soft touch buttons to knobs and sliders. Roland typically used micro switch buttons
in many of their devices in the late 80s and early 90s and those type of buttons have that satisfying click
to them ( although having a rotary control or slider for value makes it quicker to browse through settings
and sound editing ). But to be honest even freeware VST instruments do quite a good job at emulating
analogue synths and VST at least made 80s synth sounds accessible to anybody. I personally prefer
sound modules because you can stack them. PCM sounds on the other hand can be very difficult to
emulate with VST but FM software synths have kept my interest in Yamaha Porta Sound keyboards
alive and lead up to me buying a couple with Digital Synthesizer including the PSS-680, if you had
a PSS-680 back in the late 1980s you were "the cool kid in town" but I was lucky enough to start
out with a Casio CT-700 and Yamaha PSS-790 which use lofi PCM wave table quality sounds.
I'd like to listen to the Elvis Tribute with the 909!
so would I, as far as I know there is no evidence recorderd, sadly the tech was not as easily available back then, and even it it were, we didn't realise what a special thing we had going and wouldn't have bothered. what idiots!
@@WoodyPianoShack Of course, it wasn't that common to record lot of evidence of that day to day work, as it was more expensive to do, but it is very interesting to listen to the recollections!
Now analog synths are loved, relevant, and worthy to some people. It may have to do with the fact that digitals are everywhere, a question of "authenticity", and perhaps more importantly, new uses people find with them and new music that it's done with them.
When the hipster shift back to analog happened (mid 90s here) for a while old 80s giggers didnt know about it. Thats where I got most of my analog synths cheap. That being said. By that time DX7s were _also_ passé. So I got the main DX7 behind our research then too. Ahh blessed days
It always helps to not follow fashion and trust your own instincts. That's how I got all my vintage computers cheap.
@@6581punk same for vintage computing and gaming.
The early 90s’ we’re such a fun time! Every second-hand shop had analog synths for a scant few hundred bucks or even less! I snagged a few because I was strapped for cash as a young guy, but I also passed up on so many dirt cheap synth deals at the time, I kick myself now! That $200 Prophet 10 would have been amazing, but there was no room for its huge size in my room! 😂
that' so true, it seems so unbelievable in this day and age, it's worth flicking through the classified ads for used gear in the old music magazines of the time to see that it was really true. we needed to offload the analogues to afford the akais, emus etc. if only we had known how things would flip around 30 years later!
A prophet 10 for $200!!!! That's unreal, that beats my £50 303 ad £1000 Arp 2600!
It would be nice to have a time machine and go back and buy some of those things when they were still cheap.
That's why the 303 and 808 became iconic, they hardly set the world on fire and therefore were cheap 2nd hand. The 303 was supposed to be some sort of bassline accompaniment for guitarists and the 808 was comically outdated at launch when drum machines with samples were the hot thing.
@@6581punk The sad thing is I am old enough to have bought that stuff then, and I didn't. I had a rubbish JVC keyboard and even that I sold long before it was worth anything.
yeah, and we should have held on to our mk2 escorts and capris whilst we were at it. maybe even our walkmans and boomboxes. hindsight is a wonderful thing.
I remember helping a friend buying a Juno-60 not that long ago (12 years ago maybe) and it was 500€. I thought it was a bit high but it was the cheapest one available. Still think that’s what they’re worth, at best.
The DX-7 was a classic. It was the main pro synth for sale when I got into synths. I tried them out in music stores, and had a friend or two with one. But it seemed very apparent to me they sound very different than most analog synths. While I appreciate both, it never seemed you could really replace an analog synth with a DX-7 too effectively, depending on the patches you need. But as you pointed out, there was a digital synth that could do a reasonable job of that task, and it was called the Casio CZ. My first hardware synth in the mid 80s. Casio was known for making toy keyboards & cheap watches in the 80s and very few people took them seriously as a musical instrument company. But.....I knew better! My CZ's covered the analog sounds pretty well in my bands. I still was interested in the original analog synths that were used on the recordings of many songs I covered, but I simply could not find them. The CZ's were one of the first digital competitors to the DX-7 that offered MIDI, but the phase distortion synthesis sounded much closer to an analog synth and was great for lead sounds and sweeps especially. They were very affordable, preset patch memory, light and compact, and reliable. Sure we have better options now, but they were great for the mid 80s. The Yamaha FB-01 was my economical alternative to the the DX-7 in the 80s, and I got the TX-7 tabletop DX-7 in the 90s. As for realistic sounds you mentioned, the Korg M1 was king at that when it came out in 1988.
You mentioned your all time favorite synth patch being from the Roland D-50.
I'll mention my favorite patch of all time is a thick unison lead sound frequently used by
the American band Styx on many albums, on a song called "Fooling Yourself". It was recorded
on the new Oberheim Four Voice keyboard based on SEM modules. Two incredible patches were used in the song. The intro sound synth solo, and the think unison patch I mentioned in the middle & ending solos. This patch could be closely replicated in the OB-X series of keyboards too. Styx was hugely popular in the USA, but barely known in Europe from what I understand. Have you heard their work? Rick Wakeman's son who also played in Yes has frequently made it clear they were his biggest influence, and I assume he grew up in England but I"m not sure.The only reason he probably heard of them was because his Dad was on the same record label and given albums from A&M records.
Anyone else blown away by these incredible sound patches? Never mind the great playing, take a listen to these sounds! They really just take over the whole songs and dominate. I have them reasonably replicated on my VST synths. These were the kind of sounds I was after when I started playing synths. The CZ came a lot closer than the DX usually did.
ruclips.net/video/AtzIWPeun7c/видео.html
Back in the 80s, my flatmate gave me money to buy a new LP. I'd heard Styx (it sounded superloud!) and I brought it home. He heard it, and threw me over the balcony.
@@Ndlanding 😆. Which album was that by the way?
Styx never really caught on to Europeans for some reason, especially in the UK where many purely prog rock bands who influenced them such as Yes, ELP, Genesis etc. started out (many of my favorite bands).
Styx was sort of like the Beatles, in that they were often all over the map in what they did, and often not well understood and a lot of misconceptions about them. In the late 70s into the very early 80s, they were America's most popular band.
Styx had 3 lead singers whom all sounded vastly different from each other, and whom often wrote very different styles of music.
For a "very small" segment of what they did, Styx was a hard rock band. To others, they were elevator music. 😆To most, they were America's answer to more radio friend version of prog rock. The contrast between light & heavy were astounding, and often they'd play them live back to back almost as a joke of how vastly different they were.
The biggest hit Styx has was "Babe". Do you consider that hard rock? members of Styx thought it sounded too much like Barry Manilow or Air Supply (known for very light music), and they were so upset that it became their only #1 hit and barely classified as rock, for a few weeks they threw out it's songwriter/lead singer and main founder of the band because the record company wanted to release another "light & easy song" that would destined to be another smash hit, that didn't rock enough for them. But he returned, and the result of the next album went to #1 album, so I guess they weren't complaining about his return (or enjoyed the money), but they eventually tossed their main singer/songwriter in 1999 because......he didn't rock enough for their tastes. 😆 Wrote the largest share of their recorded songs, and nearly all of their hits songs.
Another well known song from Styx was Lady, recorded for their debut album of 1972, but held back til the 2nd, and a top 10 hit after the 4th album had come out. Styx basically set the blue print for "power ballads".
They have "many" songs that range from extremely light and easy listening, and a few (not tons) that would be considered hard rock. The hard rock songs were mostly sang and written by one person. He was usually limited to only doing one or two songs per album.
I'd say you hugely misjudged Styx if you think they were a hard rock band. But with the few songs they have that were, I can a little understand the mis-confusion. Styx biggest hit in Europe isn't even a rock song at all. Take a listen to "Boat on the river". It features an accordion and a mandolin.
By the way, they formed in 1962 before The Beatles were known in America, didn't get a record deal for 10 years while learning their craft, and due to a lot of similarity in their fan base, they toured with Yes in the 2000s although neither and had their classic liine-ups. Or is Yes considered a hard rock band?
I suggest you check out their catalog. Classifying them as a hard rock band is almost laughably incorrect, but if one member had their way with his one or two songs an album, they would have been. His allowance on the latest (awful) record due to key members missing, was a half a song.
@@classicarcadeamusementpark4242 Thanks for your lengthy history of Styx. Firstly, the Album I referred to was Cornerstone (I just checked), and it impressed me with its intro (immensely-loud power chords and drums). Unfortunately, it also included the vomit-inducing "Babe". Now I played and wrote in a band at the time, and unfortunately the singer thought "Babe" was the epitome of musical achievement (along with David Cassidy), and that led to the demise of our great band.
Let it be known!!! At NO point did I say Styx were a hard-rock band. More like a bunch of poofters in pink tights.
Clear?
@@Ndlanding Got ya.
Cornerstone was their most popular album in Europe I believe.
It was a very different record than those they made before it (and especially the album made just before it). As I mentioned, they were all over the map when it came to styles.
"Babe" is not representative of their entire body of work, though it was a mass hit for the band, and hated by a couple members of the band so much, one refused to play on the track. Also, it's probably their only song where all the backing vocals were done by the lead singer. The song was not intended to be a Styx song. Dennis Deyoung wrote it for his wife and recorded it as a present to her. There were no intentions to release it as a Styx song. Once record companies heard it, they made other plans for it.
I'd recommend listening to some other songs from them, and you'll quickly see they did a ton of other completely different styles of music.
@@classicarcadeamusementpark4242 Oh yeah? The record company just accidentally happened by accident to accidentally hear a very rough version of "Babe" recorded on a Dictaphone, purely by accident?
Sorry, but I've lived in that world, and know better.
All down to one word....Zeitgeist.
I can't lie, I hate/d that bloody DX7 "Whitney' piano patch, but i loved what Bronski Beat did with the DX7.
I went through a few phases, back then, but always had a love for the analogues, still do.
It's a funny thing, but i love finding a patch that sounds like its from a famous song, and we all love playing said songs, but for me, those old DX sounds are only really any use if you are deliberately going for that 80s vibe.
32 years ago I bought a Yamaha TG 33 'Tone generator' but it sits unplugged on a shelf. Even with all it's lo-res sample and synthesis vibe, I don't really have much use for it. It does some things very well, but it feels dated, and a bit FMey, and that's a Zeitgeist thing i went through.
Lord knows, I love Modern 'realistic' keyboard sounds, great for different moods, but I now have analogue stuff, and it feels like home.
Great video Woody. love watching you tease the best out of old stuff.
cool man, loved the comment, sounds like you're one of the exceptions I mentioned in the video, that stayed true to the analogs, good on you and nice foresight!
Nice personal retrospective. My first synths were the Electrocomp 101, the ARP 2600, and an Arp Omni II. Eventually I had a Roland Alpha 2 - but by 1985 I was mostly digital like everyone else - A Yamaha CX5m for sequencing, an RX15 Drum machine, a Kawai K3m for just a little bit of variety, and a Korg DSS-1 as the master controller. The ARP 2600 today would be a massive windfall if I had held onto it, but like you say nobody wanted it then. Of course I didn't hold onto most of my digital synths either as technology advanced, except for a few exceptions - The Roland JV2080 I bought in '97 I still have, and the Fairlight CMI IIx that was "loaned" to me (permaloan?) for some sound design work and will probably never leave my studio.
hang on a sec chris, you list some fabulously wonderful gear, and then in the last sentence blow everything out of the water! wow, that's awesome, thanks for sharing the comment!
@@WoodyPianoShack Just proves your point that times changed and what people wanted to hear and use changed - today most would consider your TR 707 a classic and the price reflects that - using it the way your band did is hilarious today, but just reality then. I’ve owned probably all the boards considered classics today, and been lucky enough to learn what I liked and didn’t - that would have been impossible without the price changes brought about by changing times.
My studio is essentially virtual apart from a mox-f and a triton le. It would be nice to have some analogue kit, but the digital gear and software synths, many of which I created myself to serve my own needs do the trick for me and allow my to have a studio set up that I could otherwise never afford. That said, the instrument I seem to write most for is a digital analogue hybrid (SID chip)…
As for digital synthesizers, I remember playing a Kawai K5000 in a music store in the nineties. Oh my God, how mesmerizing it was. I felt like those sounds were from another world.
oh yeah, my mate had the entry level K1 I think, that first pad blew me away!
Remember, synthesizers were invented to replace real world instruments. After many years digital synths did exactly that using sampling and physical modeling. But along this way synthesizers become instruments on their own just because of their limitations in the beginning. That's why analog synthesizers are more popular now, because they are musical instruments and not an emulator.
yeah, i agree with that sentiment! and some of the very iconic sounds were when guys ventured away from trying to emulate acoustic instruments, like cranking up the decay on the 909 kick or resonance on the 303 filter! the designers of the instruments probably never envisioned anybody doing that.
Synthesisers were designed to generate new sounds, not attainable with regular instruments, in my opinion. Electronic music pioneers like Delia Derbyshire, Kid Baltan or Karl Heinz Stockhausen used tapes and laboratory instruments to create new sounds instead to simply write a score for an orchestra. They used a crude form of samplers not to sound like an instrument, but to modify and stretch the sound. On the other hand electric guitarists normally use a weird modular synthesisers and they call it a pedalboard, but their aim isn't a realistic acoustic guitar sound but a totally distorted one.
Hi Woody, I had a SIEL DK-70 in the 80's but got out of playing until a few years ago. Once I got back to playing I have had the fortune to get a few of the synths that I missed in the 80's and early 90's for not too much money. I know you have seen the DX7 for $127 delivered and maybe the Juno1 for $79 delivered. I think I am up to 22 now and enjoying playing whenever I can. As for analog or digital... I tend to like both. I think KEBU had a good point when he said that he liked the analog synths because the limit's made him more creative. Having both I can see his point.
Cheers.
Nathan. Citizennerd.
well done and congrats on your growing collection, keep playing and well said!
Roland did the best job in my opinion of preserving some of the analog experience, by always having resonant filters, developing the Analog Feel function for their PCM synths, and producing optional programmer units for many of the 80s synths. The JD-800 was a highpoint, although not a big seller to the weekend warriors. It makes me sick to remember when a Jupiter 8 could be picked up for $1000!
that's a remarkable price for the J8, good bargains to be had, if only we had known... i agree about roland, some even classify the D50 as one of the first virtual analog synths.
Nice video! I love the Soundtrack preset on the D-50 as well. Thank you for using my song (called DX7). :)
wait, you're that guy! i love the track, and listened to a lot of your other music too! i did reach out to you for permission but never got the reply, so really glad that you don't mind me using it. great track, thanks again!
@@WoodyPianoShack Thank you! I checked SoundCloud messages, and it seems I gave you permission to use the track 5 years ago. It still applies. :)
I was there at that time and yes, people hated analog synths. I had a DX-27, a Korg M1, an Emax II (still have it) and a Roland TR-707 and analog synths were super cheap. I remember looking at a mini Moog because I love all the sliders and vintage synth (I was 14 years old and I was fascinated watching Kraftwerk video clips on MTV playing with those machines) and when I went to see the synth, even when it was super cheap, the idea to wait for the synth to warm up and the lack of so many things that my digital things had, pushed me away because, after all, it was old technology and nobody wanted it anymore. Plus, on TV, especially MTV, all the bands at that time were playing DX-7 or Emulators or amazing digital synths and samplers.
so right, i enjoy watching totp videos, concerts from that era, and yeah, it's all romplers and fancy samplers. in fact, just listen to any commercial pop hits from early 1990 and you'll only hear romplers and samplers. dx7, m1 pianos and organ presets all over the place... :D well, with exception of early house music who adpoted the 909 and 303. gosh, how much I drooled after an Emax at that time, congrats on yours!
And the analog adjustments are so precise and measurable to able to repeat the sound after off and on event?
I'm one of those people that thought these new sounds of the 80s were cold, clinical and unnatural. I think I never bought any record with a DX7 on it. Like I commented somewhere else (I'm 'studying' FM synthesis now), I think in the beginning the advances took place in technical limited circumstances leading to compromises, and people with certain kinds of hearing/ears would notice these compromises (I'm not implying they are better listeners, they just hear different, one hears the progress, others hear the shortcomings, and those go together hand in hand). Anyway, I didn't think these new sounds were realistic at all. But they were new (and I think most people are attracted by novelty), and these bell-like and metallic sounds certainly weren't heard before, and in that way were impressive. Consistently with that I really welcomed a band like Air. That was how things should sound. By now I guess digital has more computational power to its disposal, and it sound less unnatural to me (like CD was succeeded by SACD, a little bit can make a difference)). I must have got used to it too. On the other hand, everyone that uses a DAW now adds saturation etc, to make things sound analog. On a deeper level we could discuss, like we are used to in vision, don't we see and hear what we think we hear? Doesn't our brain tells us what to hear? What do we hear blindfolded? Interesting topics. Apart from sound, like you mentioned, digital has some clear practical advantages. We had a Rhodes in the band. The weight alone.... Weight, tuning, presets...In times when synths were mainly bought by gigging musicians no wonder analog behemoths went extinct. BTW I believe the number those classic analogs were build in are tiny tiny compared to the sales numbers of the DX7.
I didn't like the DX7 revolution in music, but I did like Fairlight/Synclavier sounds and the M1 and D50 were much more enticing to me than the Junos. Anybody could play a Juno anytime, and no-one wanted to, but the teacher kept the digitals locked up and you had to beg or break in. Such was late 80s life. EDIT: in the early 80s I was too young to have access to anything but a piano, accordion and Casios😂
@@GizzyDillespee Trevor Horn? ;-) Owner of a lonely heart. Propaganda? Kate Bush?
This is why I want physical hardware and not the VST. That DX7 will be my next purchase in the future. That is some warm sound.
Love the Atari 520ST box there....nice nostalgic touch.
Love the stories and synth history in your vids Woody! Learning lots.
Just got my DX7-most for the sheer aesthetics and collectibility of it and that Level 42 patch was one of the first one I played!!! And ironically Keyboard Magazine on line features it on the cover of this months issue.
i guess that dx brass patch must have been preset 1... :D i heard dx7 first when my piano teacher got one, and played me the timpani patch! my mind was blown :D i knew immediately then that my juno was obsolete. i was right, but only for 20 years.
Lovely and heart-felt. Great presentation;
Just curious why the tape over the Roland logo?
it's just something we did when gigging, since the audience sees the back of your keyboard.
at 12:35 woody seems to be drunk
I remember seeing MiniMoogs and various other classics in used music shops that just gathered dust. Nobody wanted them, even people who were doing electronic music. I was involved with some industrial projects, and we used analog synth samples through an EPS and couple of Mirage samplers rather than buy any of the analog stuff that was available cheap.
thanks for confirming how I remembered it, as I was making the video it just seemed so far fetched!
@@WoodyPianoShack Not far fetched at all... The up and down swing was fairly rapid though (if you consider 3-7 years as rapid) I think a point worth remembering as well (and it's something vintage keyboard 'dweebs' don't acknowledge enough) is that it was actually house music that brought many analogues back... Why? because they were cheap, you could get a unique sound and the bass of the moogs (in particular) still outdid everything else on the market. Digital top end with a good 'thrash' of old analogue! I remember noticing analogues getting more expensive around that time (when house was on the up). I'd look in 'loot' and Exchange & Mart! (UK) Happy Days...
Maybe most interesting could be digital synth with analogue filters. Somehow I have a theory, that today's hate to digital synth came from General Midi soundcards, which has been hearth breaker for every young aspired musician in 90's, as nobody of them could afford to buy and hear Roland JV/ JD, Korg Trinity, or Yamaha EX5. There was one funny story, where somebody says, if JV-1080 is good enough for Vangelis, it should be for enyone. :-D
No, the reason "digital synth is hated", is because Korg M1, Roland JV-1080 are preset synths, simple as that. No one made their own sounds. Impossible to load new samples , or edit/shape the samples directly before the layering stage. All you do is layer samples and add FX. It's just high quality MIDI for fast results of film composition, nothing more! It's not a synthesizer with depth. You only have a specific set of internal sounds to choose. Yes you can dig into internals, but you are limited by the sample set contained in the unit, which I hate. D50 and Wavestation have better ways to modify sounds, but you still cannot load custom samples. The sound designers were the engineers only, who wrote their samples to EEPROMs, and you as the user, cannot gain that level of control again.
Very enjoyable video, thanks!
I wanted to hear more about the Korg M1 as that was my dream synth back in the day. I couldn't afford one but did end up buying a Korg 707 which was nowhere near the M1, but I had a lot of fun with it.
i got plenty of vids with the m1, now's the time to get one, pretty cheap and prices sure to rise!
Awesome. Analog death days. My purchases: TB-303 - $100, SH-101 $80, Maplin 5600s - $60, Wasp $50, MKS-30 $120. Used to get sooo excited going to buy them, worried that I will get beaten to them. The 303 was 2 hours on the train, by the time i got there he had like 100 calls, was a famous 80s musician that had never really used it - was having a clear out at his farm studio! Ended up having to sell it due to hunger :-(
The Alpha Junos shot up in value when Happy Hardcore etc came about and the "Hoover" sound (What the? On the AJ's) became popular.
Fascinating to learn the history of keyboards, Thank You!
This is a cool video! thank you for this! And that preset.... is it called 'Soundtrack' or something like that? I had a lowly D5 and used this sound a lot! But the name escapes me.
you got it!
The preset on the D-50 sounded familiar. I may have had it on the D-110. I can't put a name to it . My favourite preset of all time is the combi 90 Freetime on the Korg 05RW/X5/X5D/X5DR. I've used it many, many times.
I think about this a lot... I had a 106 that I paid $350 for and sold for about $400... Know it inside and out... and will die on the hill that they are worth maybe a few hundred more than that max...
It makes me sad how much people care for the prices instead of the actual gear. I bought both my 909 and a year later the 808 for pretty much what they go for these days, a little less tbh. BUT, I do not care that they were cheaper in the past. I am actually using 909 samples for 25 years and in my genre, the 909 is the foundation. But... I always thought samples are pretty much the same and I never felt the need as I was happily making 909ish beats.
Then two years ago, it really struck me and I got the 909. I cannot express how much I love this machine. Yes, was expensive, but I never think about that. I "just" enjoy making music with it. It is 100% what I need in regards of drums.
One year later, I bought an 808 in because I felt the need for having one. And it was even more expensive. That is my "love affair" drum machine now. It´s so unique. Love it.
That being said, this is even crazier with oldtimer cars. They went up way more. A few thousand bucks will not get you anywhere in that market.
i really enjoyed my time with the 909 too, it's all about the controls and immediacty, sure it's same with 808. i don't thinksamples can be a fully adequate substitution either, with each tweak of the control knobs you get another infinite set of sound variations. a much better and closer alternative would be one of the new clones from Behr or roly themselves. congrats on your drum boxes anyway, i'm envious!
@@WoodyPianoShack One thing that I cannot replicate with samples is this; the Snare Drum shares its noise generator with the Hand Clap, so when they both play at the same time - not even necessarily on the very same beat, just enough for their noise-parts to overlap - then some special kind of phasing occurs 🥰 That depends on what you programmed in regards of accents and/or flams and on the volume-ratio between these two.
On the 808, which is fully analogue, repeated triggers of the same sound render each hit very different. Like clap rolls or cymbal rolls. When you use some air in between these rolls, like one or two blank steps, the circuit can regenerate a little before being "poked" again, but it depends on how much the "settled". So tempo is key, too.
The units from Behr really do not cut it, especially on the 808 - listen closely to the cymbals and hi hats. On the 808 they're smooth and pleasant to listen to whereas I find the ones on the Behr-machine super harsh and very hard to "behr" ;-)
Both the 808 and the 909 are very "complete" machines. All their sounds fit very well together, and they both - despite having a pretty different overall sound - sound just great right off the bat.
Thank you, it really felt like coming home. I settled now, no inner search any more :-) The thing is that I really DO like the sound of certain keyboards, but luckily (for my wallet) am very untalented with playing skills. Like you with the DX7 or Espen with the Jupiter-8 or Matt from Jamiroquai with the Prophet-10. I LOVE hearing you guys playing these gems...
Around 2010 vintage synths like Minimoog or TR909 were already very rare in Europe and extremely pricey. When the Minimoog Voyager came out it was selling like crazy even though it was very expensive, it still cost a fraction of the vintage synth. Even less hyped Polysix or Juno 106 were very expensive. They were more or less damaged or not fully functional. All the famous digital synths like DX7, D50, JV2080, M1, AN1x, EX5, VL1 always cost a lot. I don't know when TR909 or Juno 106 could cost $100. Maybe 20-30 years ago, for a very short period of time, only in the USA, prossibly damaged. I've seen a fatigued D110 rack 10 years ago sold for the equivalent of $80. But nobody was interested in D10 or D20 then, everybody wanted the D50.
you're right, it was quite a short window, of just a few years when analogue synths and drum machines were rock bottom prices, but you really could get a classic for a couple of hundred pounds or dollars. we all wanted samplers, akai, emu, or anything sample/rompler based from roland, yamaha and korg. you can hear it in the music of the time, late 80s and early 90s, it's all m1, dx7, d50, until house music came along then the 909 and 303 became sought after again.
I bought a Korg Micropreset for $30.00, a Rhodes for $200.00, but missed getting a Prophet for $100.00. A friend of the seller bought it out from under me while I was driving to pick them up. I also remember a Jupiter 8 for sale at a pawn shop for $500.00, but someone was making payments on it.
incredible prices, thanks!
Hey Woody, you know what would fit here? A nice long review about the Arturia V Collection 9 which covers all the new but also the "old" instruments which had already been included in previous versions of the V collection. I have not found a single decent or even good video which covers all 32 instruments now included in the V Collection!
hey thomas! can you imagine how much time and effort it would take to research, learn and demo those 32 deep instruments! i shudder to think of it... i feel that arturia should do it themselves :) but I do appreciate the suggestion, thanks!
@@WoodyPianoShack I understand. I wish you a great week!
Woody, how could we forget your emotional segment with the D-50 and the 'Soundrack' patch?, I saw that when it premiered. It is because of you, that I am the proud owner of an absolute MINT D-50. It was a 'bedroom' keyboard for the original owner. With a little cleanup and dusting (just like your 'sprucing' of the DX-7), an absolute bargain at $100 with a Roland volume pedal (O: Thanks for your informative presentations.
hi gary, i'm really chuffed to read about your good fortunes, that sounds like an amazing deal of a lifetime. congrats, and enjoy. i really miss not having mine around, but you can't keep 'em all.
@@WoodyPianoShack Thanks Woody. Being 70 years old, and buying my first analog synthesizer in 1976.....well, I still have quite the collection as a recently retired pro keyboardist due to Covid that shut down our tribute band of 19 years!
Some of the interesting things I bought NEW and STILL own are (I had two of these for the live rock band days late 70ies, sold one them years ago), MS-20 with matching SQ-10 sequencer, and they still work!
Also in storage since 1991, a bedroom keyboard (never gigged with), Yamaha CS-60. It is still like new in everyway. I paid $2400 back in 1979 which was BIG $$$ back in that day. Many more classics in the stable.
Around 1986, I toured with a Korg DW-8000, and their flagship sampler, the DSS-1. We had to put our setlist together according to the wait time of that floppy drive! Too many stories. Thanks for your response to my comment. We could talk for hours on this one! (O:
I totally agree. My first polysynth was a Juno 6 and it was utterly useless as a live instrument since you had no presets, and even with presets (juno60) it all sounded the same because of the chorus. I added a dx7 and that expanded my range of sounds tremendously, but I was still missing the fat analog sounds that I liked from US recordings ( oberheim , prophet) , so when the Ensoniq Esq-1 came out I sold the Juno6 and got the Esq. this stayed my no1 synth for many years and I still have it. Btw it’s unbelievable what Eric persing contributed to the development of synths. He should really get a livetime achievement award for it. What a genius sound designer
thanks for sharing your experiences, interesting to read!
My first synth was a Roland D-10 and - at least from the perspective of a beginner - it was boring gear. Sure, you could hook up a sequencer (which I didn't own at the time) to unleash its multitimbral capabilities and the built-in drummachine was very usable. But I never programmed a sound myself due to the overwhelming parameter djungle and only one data entry slider available.
What I want to say is that I would have had certainly more fun with an analog synth with knobs and sliders and an built-in arpeggiator. On the D-10 it was not even possible to tweak filter and resonance while playing. Glad that times have been changing and we have at lot of new (virtual) analog synths at our disposal.
yes, tweaking the front panel controls is extremely satisfying and rewarding, but strangely, hardly anybody missed it or complained about it when the early digitals dominated. it took another 15 years before filter knob and amplifer controls made a comeback, thanks goodness!
I thoroughly enjoy all of your clips Woody! You and I share the same love for the DX7 - bought my first when I was 17. The DX7 has made good friends with more recent acquisitions of mine (a D10 and a Korg DW8000). I continue to find it ironic that 25/35 years ago, analog was junk and digital was king, and now its a complete 180.
at the age of 16 , I "bought" Roland D-50 , well that's an overstatement, I got it on installment a lump sum each month , however the shop went bankrupt and the owner had no order in his system so I never saw any bills, it cost something like 2000? USD in 87. That machine started of my musical carer and I'm still out gig'ing around
yeah, incredibly expensive synth and out of reach for me until 20 years later! but sounds like you did alright on yours, some you win...
10:29 I have seen somebody covering R to make Poland from Roland, but Polano? What's Polano?
just disguising it changing it up as much as i could, but I'm sure some imaginative and creative people could take it even further!
I've had mixed experiences with buying and selling old gear. Bought my Juno 106 new for £880 in 1984, and went to sell it in the early 2000s but was offered about £150 so hung on to it. Eventually sold it a couple of years ago for more that I paid for it! Also picked up a Moog Source for £100 in 1989 (rrp £899) and sold it for £1200 ten years ago - they're double that now! On the flipside, bought the Roland S50 sampler for £900 in 1989 and sold it for just £50, also ten years ago. I also picked up an Alpha Juno 2 - I actually quite liked it - in 2011 for £150 and sold it for twice that three years later but, as you say, prices have risen high on that one, so wish I'd hung on to it a bit longer but needed the space!
Soundtrack, btw :-) (Sold my D50 but replaced it with the boutique D-05 - don't judge me!)
Kinda got bored with pure analogues, so I bought up lots of hybrids and got them for great prices. ESQ1 for £250, SQ80 for £300. As for D50, I'm very sorted on that front, D550 rack, V-Synth mk1 with D50 card and a V-Synth XT.
great stories and prices there, thanks bill! interesting that vintage digital synths and samplers have plummeted in value and are rock bottom at the moment, whilst their analogue predecessors have gone up 10x. i wonder (but doubt it) if the early digitals will eventually follow the same trajectory.
£880 was still a lot of money then, early 80's Fairlights were £20,000, that would have bought you a house.
I come from the same era but couldn't understand why everyone was abandoning analogs and only using digital. Grew quickly to hate FM sounds because it was so overused in songs at the time. However I did love getting good deals like getting a Memorymoog or Jupiter 6 for $300. Unfortunately I would just keep something for a little while and sell it for something else, wish I would have held on to some things. Loved the Juno 106 for its simplicity and great sounds. Today's new analogs fill that need for me because they're cheaper than a lot of vintage analog and more reliable. If Behringer ever comes out with some of those vintage poly clones I may have to grab one though..
hi AM, seems like you had some idea of things to come, respect for not going all-in on the romplers!
@@WoodyPianoShack I kind of did the rompler and sampler thing for a while, then got back into analog-ish sound with a JP-8000. Should have kept some of those analogs!
which korg new keyboard has entire korg n364 and x5d preset
none. but the kross might be what you need.
I'm about the same age as you and remember those times very well. I couldn't afford a DX-7 or a D-50 as a 20 year old, so I bought an old Korg Polysix for around 200 pounds. With that, a MiniKorg 700 (30 pounds) and a TR-707, I was off! :) Thanks for the video.
Some one please explain to me why Jupiter 8 is selling for $40,000 on Reverb. I saw a System 55 that costs less.
omg, someone in the comments picked one up for like $800 in the 90s!
The Timing of this, Dave Smith just passed away, he ws 72 years old and was supposed to attend NAMM here in California. Sad News, perhaps a tribute to him in the future.
yes, duly noted, I would love to get my hands on a sequential, vintage or modern!
Covid vaccine took another great soul
@@klaasj7808 He didn’t die of Covid, he died from “Complications of a Heart Attack” according to his wife Denise Smith. But the vaccine could have been contributed to his health condition.
@@TechGently vaccine not covid
I remember these days well. In 1988 I picked up a TR-808 for £80 because you could barely give them away, and a D-20 was far more desirable than a Juno, and with those two together you had a band. Much as I love analogue sounds and noodling around though, if I'm playing a set of poppy synthwave numbers there's no way on earth I'll have a single item of analogue equipment on stage. Our digital revolution gave us reliability.
pretty good sum-up, thanks!
I found a Korg MS-10 for $15.00 at a Salvation Army in 94’!
oh wow, you win! ;D
Fav patch from the D50 is defo Soundtrack. And can be made slightly better with a slightly longer attack and longer decay and heavy reverb. But as far as Iconic sounds go, look no further than Fantasia, one of the stock D50 sounds that is a staple GM preset, along with plenty of others from other manufacturers. Good stuff.
nice suggest, thanks! if I could only dare to dive into the menus and make those tweaks... :D