BRW

The price is way off, but this has lots of good stuff in it. The V-Piano, the USB power ports, the impressive Logic / Mainstage integration and most importantly - a proper sequencer with three different approaches to it. I think it's funny how much it really does look like the MONTAGE. And at least based on the Tibbs Guitar Center demo, there seems to be some sort of "motion sequencing" going on in the Fantom as well (although nowhere near that deep, it seems). it's funny that now all the major three manufacturers are in a sense using the same "grid style" GUI. First the Kronos, then the MONTAGE and now this. And at least the latter two are also always in "performance mode" - although Roland has been doing it a bit longer, since the Jupiter-80 I think. Hate the red stripe on the back!!

Granted it's a bit "retouched" (added synths etc.), but a 1971 song works surprisingly well in the 80's setting in the ST3 trailer: [video:youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEG3bmU_WaI

Its so nice to see these high quality amateur documentaries pop up on YouTube. This guy (Polyphonic) and Alex Ball are recent favorites.

And what about the fact that the chords to "Stairway" on that "deposit" copy aren't even correct?

What in the name of f...

Yeah, I think it suffered from performance issue from what I've read. I also had a chance to buy an EX5R for a relatively decent price, but passed. Also the AN section in it is monophonic.

A few people have covered this 'space' in recent months. GS1 - what a trip! But man - I wish you would"ve done an hour long (or more, I wouldn"t mind) video of this thing! I"m a major Yamaha geek so it would be super dope to just see MORE of what"s in there, even the various rack synths and hardware sequencers, effects... You don"t get good demos of most of the stuff on YouTube.

^ Thanks, they had some but no luck - they were also for the SY85 in that .G01 format. Any other suggestions?

Bought this 1990s rack synth recently. Anyone know a spot where I could download ANY sysex format patches for it (for free?) Yamahamusicians.com (in the UK) has a bunch for the SY85 - but turns out theyre in a .G01 format and not compatible (meant to load via floppy). Kinda sucks, because I thought they were identical...

There was a thread about this about 1-2 years ago: LINK

Are you serious? Article on the cats wealth

I like UVI stuff and have a bunch of them (Vintage Vault, Digital Synsations etc.) - but although the sounds work fine by themselves, they rarely work great in a mix. There are often also a tonnn of unuseable patches in these (bad programming, since they dont sample presets). That said, Im intrigued by this. The MKS is covered in Keyscape, thouhh.

was my first thought before reading your post, Rob. I could go on and on about this, but here is a tid bit. Jam and Lewis producing Janet Jackson's "Rhythm Nation 1814", Ensoniq Mirage at the helm. Among numerous others. Their (Jam & Lewis) Keyboard magazine cover story from May 1987 (I think) has a lot of info on their gear of choice at the time.

Yes, the Roland Sample Archives CDs are still very valid albeit a bit old school; I have most of them, and yes, some did appear as expansion boards - although the CDs are uncompressed. Like, the famous Keyboards Of The 60s & 70s set was originally a 2CD set. I havent tried sampling yet. The biggest limitation is the memory, which is only 32MB. My S-760 came with the optional video output board (and the rare DA400 converter box!) so you can hook it up to a color S-Video monitor! This makes working and editing much more convenient, you can even add a mouse. A more sophisticated solution to USB is something called SCSI2SD. Its a circuit board that usually replaces the floppy drive, and connects to the internal SCSI connector, making it possible to use large SD cards as hard drives.

Last year, I bought two samplers (an Akai & Roland S-760) for peanuts. I ignored hardware samplers for years, because I thought all the libraries could easily be loaded with Kontakt and such. And yet, something was missing. So I started GASsing for one. Mainly I was interested in using them as sound modules to load all their legacy libraries. First of all, they do sound different. The same patch ran through Kontakt sounds better on the Roland, for instance (and that isnt even the best Roland there was). And second, yes I do enjoy using them in the software context - I like working with hardware (I usually record both the audio and MIDI).

Doesn't the MONTAGE have both? Earlier (top model) Motifs too.

I'm almost afraid to ask, misterT, but are you that faymous guy who annadounced the band on the rode way back when and you were actually a semi truck driveeeer for thee rode crew an they let yoo up on the bayand stayand to inrodooooce the mister wonerful ban leeder? Yoo no... missah wonerful.... Mister Steely Dan Whateveh? Don never new what became of you but it was the funny est ever thing ever!! WTF?

The thing that has bugged me the most about Sampletank is the still archaic GUI. The sounds improved on ST3 a lot, and it's a nice bread-and-butter ROMpler inside your DAW, but yeah it has always lacked that "wow factor". I use it all the time (in studio work). If you play it like a bass player would (it's a skill set), and use some of the different play-style options for variation, it can sound very authentic. In mixes, I've found it can be very, well, "bass-heavy" so I need some EQ to drop some of the lowest end off.

I'm sure the idea is to complement it with a MONTAGE on top (or a MODX, probably)... That said, the Motif Voices included on the previous CP models were certainly a plus, so I am surprised if they indeed removed all those. But I guess these have more in common with the Reface CP than the CP1/4/5 - which didn't have anything besides the "electro-mechanical" sounds.

The CP73 seems to be quite close to what people (including me) have been asking - a "light-weight Reface CP". (don't know the lbs/kg but I'm guessing) Price, however, is pretty steep Not as expensive as a Nord, but still... I also don't feel a huge urge to update my CP5, even though the CP88 would probably be much lighter and the sounds have improved. The Reface CP sounds beautiful so I'm sure if the sounds are based on it, this is a winner in that aspect...

Theyre such a nostalgia trip with all the ads etc. that -I- would hold on to them. Honestly, if you look at eBay, there are people selling SINGLE issues anywhere from $5 to $20! Selling the whole bunch is really hard, unless you really just want someone to take them off your hands. Even if a single magazine costs only $2, thatd be a sweet $1000 right there

The guy who plays keyboards did this... [video:youtube] The guy who plays bass did this... [video:youtube]

"Jojo" is an amazing track.

At least Jeff Porcaro, David Paich and Lukather played and wrote on a ton of sessions of the time. In my mind, they're definitely a key ingredient in the 80's "L.A. sound" I love so much. They (well, at least Jeff Porcaro) also recorded lots in Japan for Japanese AOR artists, produced by guys like David Foster and Jay Graydon! I wouldn't say that they were a "wrecking crew" in that same sense, it was more like they were hired guns by the top honchos like Foster, Graydon, Quincy, Arif Martin etc. Also, they didn't do the sessions as a "band". Check out Jeff's sessionography and start hunting! Anything with a Porcaro drum track is worth your while Link

I recently got Keyscape. I have to agree, the Rhodes (among other things) is probably the best I've ever heard in a "virtual" format. The rest of the stuff is very inspiring and useful. My old mid-2010 Macbook Pro struggles with it, though. I have upgraded the internal HDD to a 7200rpm one, but I've only got 8GB of RAM (the maximum amount on that model). In your opinion, would it be worthwhile to upgrade the internal hard drive to an SSD? You can get a 1TB model for around $300.