rlr@pyuxjj.UUCP (06/14/83)
This is meant to be an overview of the current "state-of-the art" in electronic music equipment. This includes synthesizers, rhythm machines, digital synths, effects units, and recording equipment. I will try to be brief and thus will not go into great depth on any individual unit. Feel free to write me for pointers to additional info and/or my opinions and PLEASE feel free to comment further about this whole area to the net----it's been quite a while since we've seen musicians contributing to net.music on the creation of original music. I'll be submitting more on this stuff in the future. First, synthsizers: Monophonic (one-note) synthesizers seem to be a dime a dozen these days. Sequential Circuits Pro-One (makers of the Prophet) and Roland's SH-101 are small synths with sequencers built in for a low price. Most of the industry's money is now in true polyphonic synths like Korg's Poly61 which you can get for about $1K. True, it has limited functions, but it has most of what you want from a true six-voice poly-synth. Gradually going up in price, we find the Roland Juno-60, a six voice programmable (like the Poly61) poly-synth, more limited but with more "live-performance" oriented features; and Seq. Circ.'s Prophet 600 (~$1500). As in the Pro-One, SC has sacrificed the solid design of their Prophet 5/10 for low-price cheapness, but you still get a good unit with built-in polyphonic sequencer (!!!!). Digital Synthesizers - A few years ago everything in this field did EVERYTHING and cost $100K. A few years later, we got the Synclavier (New England Digital) and the Fairlight machines that did just about everything for $25K. Now things are a bit better, but don't expect to pay for one of these with the earnings from your summer job. Basic Synclaviers are now about $13K, but to get all the nifty peripherals, you're back up to $25K again. Some background: your old-fashioned (??) ANALOG synthesizers use 'voltage control' (from keyboard, oscillators) to control the pitch/timbre of the sounds produced. Thus you had electrical signals controlling pieces of electronic hardware (oscillators, filters) to produce sound. True digital synthesis uses the CPU (perhaps controlling peripheral digital processors) to simulate/and calculate the signal that would produce a requested sound. With this method, there are no electronic components as such to be kept "in tune". With the stability of this method, the composer/performer has almost limitless capability, although simulating what a synthesizer used to do in terms of filtering, etc. is more difficult than using newer methods of sound synthesis on a digital machine. One interesting application of digital technology is to 'sample' a recording of an 'actual' live sound, have the machine analyze this sound, and provide the ability to reproduce the sound at any pitch on the keyboard. More elaborate systems use multiple samples at different pitch ranges to get a more accurate reproduction of a given instrument. This external sampling capability exists on Synclavier/Fairlight machines in addition to their SYNTHESIS capabilities (generating sound from scratch by calculation). One instrument is designed ONLY to reproduce sounds derived from external ample input. It is called the Emulator, and is made by E-Mu, who were one of the most respected synth companies of the '70s. The Emulator is featured heavily on recent works by the Residents, and provided the eerie chording on (forgive me for even mentioning) M. Jackson's "Billie Jean". Since this was supposed to be short, I'll quit now. More later on sequential electronic percussion simulators (i.e., programmable rhythm units) and home multi-track recording equipment. I am trying to keep these bits interesting to both old-timers (trying to keep up with new technology) and novices (wanting to break into all of this but lacking the background), so I'm not sure about how deep I should delve into all of this. If I'm going too fast/slow or saying too much/too little about something, let me know. (Also next time: the very small amount that I know about home computer music synthesis tools and the new portable keyboard units.) Rich Rosen ....!pyuxjj!rlr
rlr@pyuxjj.UUCP (06/14/83)
This is meant to be an overview of the current "state-of-the art" in electronic music equipment. This includes synthesizers, rhythm machines, digital synths, effects units, and recording equipment. I will try to be brief and thus will not go into great depth on any individual unit. Feel free to write me for pointers to additional info and/or my opinions and PLEASE feel free to comment further about this whole area to the net----it's been quite a while since we've seen musicians contributing to net.music on the creation of original music. I'll be submitting more on this stuff in the future. First, synthesizers: Monophonic (one-note) synthesizers seem to be a dime a dozen these days. Sequential Circuits Pro-One (makers of the Prophet) and Roland's SH-101 are small synths with sequencers built in for a low price. Most of the industry's money is now in true polyphonic synths like Korg's Poly61 which you can get for about $1K. True, it has limited functions, but it has most of what you want from a true six-voice poly-synth. Gradually going up in price, we find the Roland Juno-60, a six voice programmable (like the Poly61) poly-synth, more limited but with more "live-performance" oriented features; and Seq. Circ.'s Prophet 600 (~$1500). As in the Pro-One, SC has sacrificed the solid design of their Prophet 5/10 for low-price cheapness, but you still get a good unit with built-in polyphonic sequencer (!!!!). Digital Synthesizers - A few years ago everything in this field did EVERYTHING and cost $100K. A few years later, we got the Synclavier (New England Digital) and the Fairlight machines that did just about everything for $25K. Now things are a bit better, but don't expect to pay for one of these with the earnings from your summer job. Basic Synclaviers are now about $13K, but to get all the nifty peripherals, you're back up to $25K again. Some background: your old-fashioned (??) ANALOG synthesizers use 'voltage control' (from keyboard, oscillators) to control the pitch/timbre of the sounds produced. Thus you had electrical signals controlling pieces of electronic hardware (oscillators, filters) to produce sound. True digital synthesis uses the CPU (perhaps controlling peripheral digital processors) to simulate/and calculate the signal that would produce a requested sound. With this method, there are no electronic components as such to be kept "in tune". With the stability of this method, the composer/performer has almost limitless capability, although simulating what a synthesizer used to do in terms of filtering, etc. is more difficult than using newer methods of sound synthesis on a digital machine. One interesting application of digital technology is to 'sample' a recording of an 'actual' live sound, have the machine analyze this sound, and provide the ability to reproduce the sound at any pitch on the keyboard. More elaborate systems use multiple samples at different pitch ranges to get a more accurate reproduction of a given instrument. This external sampling capability exists on Synclavier/Fairlight machines in addition to their SYNTHESIS capabilities (generating sound from scratch by calculation). One instrument is designed ONLY to reproduce sounds derived from external ample input. It is called the Emulator, and is made by E-Mu, who were one of the most respected synth companies of the '70s. The Emulator is featured heavily on recent works by the Residents, and provided the eerie chording on (forgive me for even mentioning) M. Jackson's "Billie Jean". Since this was supposed to be short, I'll quit now. More later on sequential electronic percussion simulators (i.e., programmable rhythm units) and home multi-track recording equipment. I am trying to keep these bits interesting to both old-timers (trying to keep up with new technology) and novices (wanting to break into all of this but lacking the background), so I'm not sure about how deep I should delve into all of this. If I'm going too fast/slow or saying too much/too little about something, let me know. (Also next time: the very small amount that I know about home computer music synthesis tools and the new portable keyboard units.) Rich Rosen ....!pyuxjj!rlr
chris@umcp-cs.UUCP (06/15/83)
Say, here's an idea: get a bunch of microprocessors, tie them
together with a high-speed network, put a bunch of DACs and a mixer
on them, and use each one to produce one voice in a set. They can
have (say) a page of memory allocated for an envelope, one page for
a set of pitch values making up the basic waveform for a particular
voice (perhaps several, if the waveshape changes with octaves, or
amplitude), a fast integer multiplier, and use them to produce easily-
tunable music!
That's a description of what we'd like to have. What we have instead
is a network of
lim Z80s (currently 8)
n->256
on a ring network that looks like an N by N crossbar. We've wired
up some 8255's as eight bit DACs. Quality is lacking, but the sound
is slowly improving. It's fun, though, to program these suckers to
zip in a tight loop dumping waves to an amplifier. We've gotten some
not-un-respectable 4-voice pieces working.
Has anyone ever heard of something similar? I hear there's something
called Music-11 for the PDP-11, which could probably outdo those pokey
Z80s, even with one for each voice. It would also be nice to have more
than 8 bits of DAC. I'd be interested in hearing more about Music-11,
or anything like it.
- Chris ({seismo,allegra}!umcp-cs!chris)