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What was your "game-changing" synth?


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I bought a Korg 01Wfd and suddenly, I had enough voices that I could actually semi-orchestrate. Everything I'd learned fell right into line and the few lacks like resonant filters meant squat. The floppy drive was a real leap ahead. I could save my own work and pile up patch sets like Victor Cerullo's, who did Jexus-like work on them. A little sweat led to major pipe organ action and a better piano than you'd expect. I've grown into other instruments and methods, but I Autosampled the bleep out of it before it went to Croaked Synth Heaven. Its still part of my foundation.

 "I want to be an intellectual, but I don't have the brainpower.
  The absent-mindedness, I've got that licked."
        ~ John Cleese

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I have to vote for the following in this order.

 

1. Korg M1 / M1r

2. Yamaha DX7

3. Yamaha Motif ES series

Montage 7, Mojo 61, PC-3, XK-3c Pro, Kronos 88, Hammond SK-1, Motif XF- 7, Hammond SK-2, Roland FR-1, FR-18, Hammond B3 - Blond, Hammond BV -Cherry
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My first synth was a Micro-Moog. One thing I liked about it was that it came with an owners manual that gave a clear explanation of the signal flow. It compared the synthesizer to the trumpet: oscillator = mouthpiece, filter = valves, and amplifier = bell. Or something like that :)

 

Anyway, it was enough for me to learn the basics, and the ribbon awakened a desire to play lines with twiddling.

 

Who remembers the name of the Moog associate who wrote the manual with the clever analogy?

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Multimoog. My first synth which I bought in 1979 and still have and use. Changed my life. I took it with me when I auditioned for my first road band. Wouldn't have gotten the gig without it. They wanted a keyboard player that could sing. I couldn't sing, but I knew they lacked a strong soloist, so I brought the Moog and wailed a bit. It's definitely showing its age but I still love that thing.

 

Who remembers the name of the Moog associate who wrote the manual with the clever analogy?

 

Tom Rhea

Custom Music, Audio Post Production, Location Audio

www.gmma.biz

https://www.facebook.com/gmmamusic/

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Multimoog. My first synth which I bought in 1979 and still have and use. Changed my life. I took it with me when I auditioned for my first road band. Wouldn't have gotten the gig without it. They wanted a keyboard player that could sing. I couldn't sing, but I knew they lacked a strong soloist, so I brought the Moog and wailed a bit. It's definitely showing its age but I still love that thing.

 

Who remembers the name of the Moog associate who wrote the manual with the clever analogy?

 

Tom Rhea

 

There ya go. A very bright guy.

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The D-50 because .... It"s the D-50. Eric Persing programmed the sounds and he is a genius. Never had a board before that with quality digital effects. Still have it. Mostly use the D-05 today. I like the cleaner audio output on the D-05

"It doesn't have to be difficult to be cool" - Mitch Towne

 

"A great musician can bring tears to your eyes!!!

So can a auto Mechanic." - Stokes Hunt

 

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Like RM, multiple game changers for me:

  • Ensoniq EPS
    -- my first workstation, it was my backup band for years. It also had the deepest sampling / sample manipulation I have ever owned. I had two of 'em at one point.
  • Ensoniq SQ-2/32
    -- native effects (a first for me) and I could split it into piano, synth horns, and distorted guitar all at once.
  • Kurzweil K2500/K2600/PC3
    -- VAST allows some very deep sound editing, and the modulation routings make the PC3 the most expressive musical instrument I've ever played, let alone owned.

-Tom Williams

{First Name} {at} AirNetworking {dot} com

PC4-7, PX-5S, AX-Edge, PC361

 

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Alesis Andromeda, though I never owned one. I walked into a store that had a Korg MS2000 and a few Waldorf boards as well as the latest Korg/Yamaha/Roland romplers, and I played them for a while until finally I plugged my cans into the Andromeda sitting on the bottom of a 3-tier stand below the MS2000 and one of the Waldorfs. Oh, right, that's what a synth can sound like. Way out of my price range (AUS$8k), but at least I knew where things stood.

Gig keys: Hammond SKpro, Korg Vox Continental, Crumar Mojo 61, Crumar Mojo Pedals

 

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Rhodes Chroma. I had been playing with a stack of monophonic analogs including the MiniMoog Model D. Was working at a coal company during the day and a working band at night. Saved up my money, quit my job, and bought a SERIOUS stack. MemoryMoog, Rhodes Chroma, Moog Source, Sequential SixTrax and DrumTrax. Moved to the city and became a full time musician. The Chroma was a level above anything else I had. Velocity, release velocity, split and layers, wonderful pitch and modulation controls. Whomever programmed the patches was a wonderkind. I've never had a synth with better default patches. This keyboard taught me to slow down and play the note. It was also a big change going from a completely non-programmable setup to a fully programable setup.

 

You have not lived until you scramble to manually edit patches in a 4 keyboard setup during the 5 second pause between songs, in the dark.

This post edited for speling.

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You have not lived until you scramble to manually edit patches in a 4 keyboard setup during the 5 second pause between songs, in the dark.

 

Truth. I used to have 2 Multimoogs and would pride myself at being able to play one while setting up the next sound on the other.

Custom Music, Audio Post Production, Location Audio

www.gmma.biz

https://www.facebook.com/gmmamusic/

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From a performance perspective Korg Setlist on the Kronos was a biggie for me. If I wasn"t playing Pop and didn"t need 10,000 song specific sounds maybe it wouldn"t. I hate extraneous doo-dads like tablets running MIDI manager apps.

"It doesn't have to be difficult to be cool" - Mitch Towne

 

"A great musician can bring tears to your eyes!!!

So can a auto Mechanic." - Stokes Hunt

 

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I couldn't afford a DX7 when they first came out and instead purchased it's little brother, the DX9. Less operators and no aftertouch/velocity. But the relative simplicity was a gift as I actually learned how to program FM.

 

I put music away for a long time and when I came back to it I struggled with the keyboards of the day that required deep menu diving in a tiny little screen. I didn't realize how bad it was until I bought an OB-6

 

The OB-6 really opened my mind. Even though it's way simpler, it's so much easier and faster than anything that I'd worked with before that I was sold on the "knob per function" concept.

 

Now have a Hydrasynth (not technically knob per function but still very knobby) and have a PolyBrute on the way.

You want me to start this song too slow or too fast?

 

Forte7, Nord Stage 3, XK3c, OB-6, Arturia Collection, Mainstage, MotionSound KBR3D. A bunch of MusicMan Guitars, Line6 stuff

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First synth: Arp Odyssey.. ended up separating the key bed from the body and wore the keys with a strap inspired by Edgar Winter doing likewise with a full keyboard..

 

First synth that I used the most: Juno 106..sold it, bought another in the late eighties..

 

First synth that was a game changer? Ensoniq Mirage..when I heard that piano and horns and my voice and whatever I sampled, being played on that board, I was blown away..sold it eventually and bought a rack unit..

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For me, it was the Korg MS-10 (my first synth), followed by the Mono/Poly. Sadly, I no longer own either today. More for their bare bones access to sound shaping, the knowledge I've acquired from these two synths alone allowed me to teach all my fellow keyboardists how to program their own machines at the time (Prophet 5, OB-xa, Jupiter 8...).

 

Sort of O.T. I do still own a Ensoniq VFX. Although it doesn't have a resonant filter, I can still program just about any "synth" type sound, even today's "modern" sounds. i.e. If your synth has the basics and you know your way around it, you can sculpt just about any sound.

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For a couple of years when I was just starting my own studio, my rig was entirely centered around an Oberheim Xpander. I scrimped, saved, and called in favors for nearly a year to buy it with my graduate student's budget, and when I got it, I dived in and didn't come up for air for years. It was everything to me: modular synth, lead and pad machine, arpeggiator and sequencer sound source (all at once!), endlessly programmable, rock solid, flexible as hell, and connected to both CV/Gate and MIDI. I took everything I had learned in academic studios and carried it even further; that Xpander could do more than a lot of the modulars I'd learned on. It set the stage for a lot of my future steps in the world of electronic music.

 

I sold the Xpander a couple of years ago, to someone who is capable of keeping it running in good health and giving it the love it deserves, for nearly twice what I paid for it 34 years earlier. My friends couldn't believe I'd sell it; they joked that if our house ever caught on fire, I'd save the Xpander and then ask my wife where the kids were. But it was time, I'd gotten what I needed out of it over many happy decades, and I was moving on.

 

Since then, I have developed no obsessive love for any one synthesizer... not even the Hydrasynth (yet). You never forget your first, and I will never forget Thing One.

Dr. Mike Metlay (PhD in nuclear physics, golly gosh) :D

Musician, Author, Editor, Educator, Impresario, Online Radio Guy, Cut-Rate Polymath, and Kindly Pedant

Editor-in-Chief, Bjooks ~ Author of SYNTH GEMS 1

 

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First synth - Moog Sonic 6. Got me hooked.

 

ARP Odyssey - learned to 'hear' what my knob-twisting was gonna sound like. Never will forget when the pitch dial was off center for the synth solo in 'Can"t Get it Out of My Head', and a nice ballad came out like a broken carousel.

 

Game-changer? - Yamaha CS60. Learned a lot with the help of their fantastic owners manual. Gorgeous sound (with some FX added on). Quirky signal flow - 3 sets of cutoff/resonance sliders. Weighed a ton. One oscillator went out of tune a lot. The ribbon eventually started to fall into the panel. Many, many gigs with it.

My avatar has me behind it with a CP30 underneath (B3 to my left in the shadows. That had the Odyssey on top. MIA - an Elka string machine that usually spanned the B3 and a corner of the CP30 - must"ve been in for one of its many repair jobs).

Loved that setup. Loved it more when I replaced the CP30 with a CP70! Must"ve been over 700 lbs. of stuff - good thing my band mates liked me.

Professional musician = great source of poverty.

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First one? Roland Alpha Juno. Game changer? Korg DS8. I know, not posh at all and I should have gotten an M1 instead, but that DS8 was sexy as hell. Many strange decisions followed (like an Alesis QuadraSynth and Fusion) but I was hooked.
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The leader of one of the first bands I was in had a Juno-106 that he let me use. It was my first experience with a hardware, non-ROMpler synth. I still love the Juno sound (and very happy to have the Arturia Jun-6 and Jup-8 emulations in software).

My Site

Nord Electro 5D, Novation Launchkey 61, Logic Pro X, Mainstage 3, lots of plugins, fingers, pencil, paper.

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JX3P...

I had been playing hammond, piano & wurlie for years and never wanted to have anything to do with a synthesizer. When the 3P came out, all of a sudden I could do gigs with the one little board, and it made life a little easier...not to mention lighter.

Now, with hindsight, I wish I had bought a DX7 instead, but I was spooked by the whole FM synthesis thing... not foreseeing the rise of third party sound & patch developers.

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Just saw a VFX for $250 at a Pawn Shop today.

Drool. The VFX had the best french horns of any keyboard that I have ever played, including Kurzweil.

 

I would caution that the VFX had an extremely high failure rate. When I worked music retail back in its day, I used to joke with the service tech that he should send Ensoniq a Christmas card for providing him so much work.

Custom Music, Audio Post Production, Location Audio

www.gmma.biz

https://www.facebook.com/gmmamusic/

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I guess the first game changer was my first synth the MiniKorg (1st version 1973) that I got for Christmas 1976. I'd always been wanting to orchestrate my original music and already had a Yamaha D3 Electone organ with the built-in drum machine that I got in 1973. So the MiniKorg added to that and my acoustic piano and Univox Compac electronic piano gave me some decent timbral resources back in the mid 1970s.

 

I added a Crumar Performer in the early 80s to my band rig which was serviceable but the next game changer was the Korg Polysix. Programmable and quite versatile - great at strings, pads, squelchy synth leads (in mono mode) and pretty good at emulating bells, vibes and harpsichord. It could sound a lot like a Prophet 5 thanks to the built in chorus and ensemble effects and had 4 LFOs - one routable to the VCO, VCF or VCA, one for PWM, one for the arpeggiator, and one for the effects.

 

Another game changer was my next synth the Korg DW8000, my first synth (1985) with a built-in DDL. 16 digital waveforms too! It could do DX7-type sounds quite well.

"The devil take the poets who dare to sing the pleasures of an artist's life." - Gottschalk

 

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