Slashdot Mirror

Blimey, just checked the Wikipedia article for Turbo Pascal and it did indeed pre-date the ST. In a weird piece of synchronicity, the article mentions the Nascom computer, since that's where the Turbo Pascal compiler originated. It's the second time in the last few days the Nascom has intruded on my consciousness, as it's the basis of a very rare drum computer that's just been added to the Vintage Synth Explorer.

I have an E-Mu SP-12 Turbo sampler/drum machine that saves its data to a 1541 drive. It's my favorite sampler/sequencer and many other people's as well.

I have three 1541s in my basement as backups.

(what do you do when you decide you want some background sounds from a symphony orchestra? Use a synth? the record labels would pay out for the real thing if you wanted it).

Easy. You'd use this or this or this or even this. If it's just "background sounds" what makes you so sure you could tell the difference? Good arrangement is much more important than virtuous playing. More professionals are using this stuff than you think. A sensible producer would certainly think twice before booking an orchestra if it isn't going to add anything.

I'm currently using the Arduino to construct an effects processor inspired by the long discontinued Waldorf 4-Pole. Writing the software for the envelope generator, display, and LFOs has been a great way to brush up on my long-disused C programming skills. Even though the AtMega168 that the Arduino platform is based on is not a DSP, the hardware seems powerful enough to do some direct digital synthesis; I believe there actually is an open source hardware synthesizer based on the AVR microcontroller.

The article left out a very important category: the best keyboard for music. Everyone has their own personal preference, but I prefer this vintage bad boy.

While the lose of something like a supply of floppy disks doesn't seem that bad from a PC standpoint (after all, PCs become obsolete fairly quickly), there are a lot of pieces of musical equipment that continue to use floppy disks, that are still desirable pieces of equipment.

Here are just a few:
http://www.vintagesynth.com/akai/mpc2000.shtml
http://www.vintagesynth.com/emu/emulator3.shtml
http://www.vintagesynth.com/misc/sequencers.shtml# q80

While the lose of something like a supply of floppy disks doesn't seem that bad from a PC standpoint (after all, PCs become obsolete fairly quickly), there are a lot of pieces of musical equipment that continue to use floppy disks, that are still desirable pieces of equipment.

Here are just a few:
http://www.vintagesynth.com/akai/mpc2000.shtml
http://www.vintagesynth.com/emu/emulator3.shtml
http://www.vintagesynth.com/misc/sequencers.shtml# q80

While the lose of something like a supply of floppy disks doesn't seem that bad from a PC standpoint (after all, PCs become obsolete fairly quickly), there are a lot of pieces of musical equipment that continue to use floppy disks, that are still desirable pieces of equipment.

Here are just a few:
http://www.vintagesynth.com/akai/mpc2000.shtml
http://www.vintagesynth.com/emu/emulator3.shtml
http://www.vintagesynth.com/misc/sequencers.shtml# q80

Damn.. link did not work. HERE's the link again.

Pre-PC age musicians used sequencers to record music. Nearly all of these had a scroll wheel to scroll through menus, notes, disk contents etc. Hardly new or obvious in any way.

...of this fully armed and operational BASS STATION

No, this is a Bass Station. That's just a run-of-the-mill Death Star / subwoofer. ;)

From Vintage Synth Explorer's Kurzweil K250 page:

One of the first keyboard samplers, it was great then and still good today. It has an adjustable sample rate of 5kHz to 50kHz which means 100 to 10 seconds of sampling time, respectively. Its sampler was also 16-bit. Many other samplers of this time had much more limited sampling/digital audio specs which made this synth a very prominent keyboard. By todays standards, however, this synth has many limitations such as samples are stored directly on Apple Mac disks only. But it had extremely modern features that make this synth easy to use and quite versatile.

It has a 12-track sequencer, chorus, transpose, tune, 36 ROM sounds, 96 pristine quality acoustic instruments, 341 presets, 12 voice polyphony, 2 LFO's per voice, variable sampling rate, truncation, looping, velocity crossfading, full 88 weighted keyboard, MIDI and more! Of course the newer K2000 series is supposed to be better, but the K250 still seems like a major contender even in todays modern synthesizer era. It was also available in keyboardless Expander (pictured above) or as a rackmount module.

It has been used by Stevie Wonder, Sean Hopper, Richard Wright, Patrick Moraz, Paul Shaffer, Lorin Hollander, Michael Kamen, Kitaro, and John Carpenter.

Check out the rest of the range: http://www.vintagesynth.com/kurzweil/

Anyone ever heard of Stereolab? Prolly not, they don't get played on the radio too much. But they have a rabid following and are enormous fans of the fat analog sound. They use Moog's of all shapes and sizes, farfisas, and just about anything else they can get thier hands on. And it's all Brilliant. Influenced by punk, bossanova, 50's space age lounge ( Esquivel), and modern day dance music (jungle/tech-step, trip hop, disco-house) they are what is RIGHT with music today. OH yeah, and their songs get used to sell cars too... (but that's another story)

To blame an INSTRUMENT, a piece of technology for the downfall of modern music is as ignorant as it is ridiculous. All technology can do is bring more power into the hands of individuals. It is up to those individuals whether or not they decide to innovate and pursue art or just mimic everyone else in the quest for the almighty dollar/rupie/pound sterling/lire/yen/etc. To further calrify, here is a link for the FAMOUS TB-303, a hack if ever there was one. This crappy analog bass synth, when tweaked in just the right way, came up with sounds that couldn't be fit into any preconceived notion of music. It opened doors. IT didn't lead us to Britanny Spears... OTHER HUMANS did.