Let's see your KEYS/SYNTHS!

[Dr. Sherman Sticks M.D.]

if u like 90s dance hits the korg m1 is where its at
or the nintendo ds version totes gets u there for a fraction of the cost (and physical space)

not sure how the midi implementation is on these things
but u could build yourself a sweet midi controller to do all the things under the hood

i recently did something similar for my casio console piano and it was soooo worth it

[Zork]

I reworked my live synth setup today. Before it was all cobbled together in quite a messy way. Now it's all but the theremin on one stand so it can be moved easily on and off the stage and I only need to connect one power and one audio cable:



It's a simple but powerful setup: The theremin goes into rubberneck and holy grail to the small behringer mixer. The Sub37 through the M9 into mixer.
From there it goes in a DI to FOH. The M9 changes presets with the Sub37 via midi. That's it. I used to run much more complicated and bigger setups but I have to sing and play guitar, too, so less is more. And it does sound awesome.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Rationalising to usable live setups is kinda boring but I feel one of the biggest change you can make to your ability to make noises and play well in a live situation when you're not worrying about a crazy setup.

WHat kinda stuff are you doing with this?>

[Zork]

Yes, definitely. I don't know how often I fucked up live just because some level was turned down by accident...

I use the synth for some solo parts and in the more improvised, spacy moments and there are some songs with sequencers running through. The theremin is for the psychedelic squeals and bleeps mostly. I try to play some actual melodies but it's really fucking hard...

We play some kind of Space Rock with a bit of Kraut and Prog in the mix. We just released an album, have a listen: https://moseisleyspaceport.bandcamp.com/album/further

[moozz]

We play some kind of Space Rock with a bit of Kraut and Prog in the mix. We just released an album, have a listen: https://moseisleyspaceport.bandcamp.com/album/further

Congrats on the release! Tasty space prog with plenty of strong Hawkwind vibes. Not a big fan of the vocals but I am rarely a fan of any vocals that are not inhuman shrieking/growling.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Fun stuff! Like the classic prog stylings, will definitely be listening more

[Zork]

[Warpsmasher]

The reviews don't lie, time is proving that M9 has the mojo. When it comes to creating deep and flexible patches fast it's just so straightforward, and no usb needed to get there. Underrated/unrecognized as a piece of synth gear, but it's really a quite powerful one, with all the filters and other effects a great range of synth voices is achievable, and more quickly and easily than with most high end monosynths.

[Pepe]

Last month I picked up a Kawai K4 digital synthesizer from 1989 that I bought for very little money at an ebay auction. The synth was declared as defective, but despite from being dirty as hell and having a noticeable nicotine smell it worked fine.

I thoroughly cleaned every little part of the synthesizer. I installed new tactile switches and I also replaced the EPROM for one with the latest firmware for less distortion and better performance when playing several keys at once. All the keys were treated with my favourite plastic polish to make them shine like (almost) new. Now they are white again and the synthesizer doesn't smell like an ashtray anymore. And after that procedure the Kawai K4 looks like this:

[Zork]

Cool. How does it sound? I'm kinda looking into something similar, a Yamaha SY35. I think those 90s synths can offer some unique styles and can also serve as good midi master keyboards. Shame they often look so boring.

[Pepe]

The sound is definitely good, albeit quite limited, due to the ROM chips that contain very short samples of just 1.5 MB in total. Too bad that it doesn't have a card slot for waveform cards like the KORG M1 or other later synthesizers.

The majority of the short looped sounds are common synth waveforms like saw, square, pulse, sine, etc. But there are also more complex sounding snippets, similar to those that you can find in the DW-8000 or MicroKORG. And then there are a bunch of multisamples like strings, choir, piano, guitar etc. These can sound really nice, but they draw more processing power than the short loops sp that the underpowered processor has difficulties to spit them out at once. Even with the latest firmware the Kawai K4 has noticeable lag when you try to play eight notes at once with sound programs that are based on the multisamples, especially with four mutlisamples per single key.

Overall it offers very complex sounds with all these waveforms. The "Single" sounds can be programs with four stacked waveforms and each of them has their own pitch (also auto pitch bend), envelope, etc. Programming is fairly easy once you understand it. I'm sure that I will have lots of fun programming my own patches in the future.

This is a good video to show the potential of the Kawai K4:

[behndy]

i grabbed a smaller desk, let's me reach everything without moving. digging it a lot so far.

[Heraclitus Akimbo]

So, in one of those sad turns of events, a friend's father-in-law passed away and he was cleaning out the condo. I got a text a few days back, asking if I wanted a keyboard that was laying around. Sure, I said, what's one more keyboard? It turned out to be a hell of a thing, a pro-level late 80's Roland sampling synth.



I was very impressed with this but trying not to get my hopes up. Not only had it been in a storage locker for who knows how long, I found out these things actually need to boot up like an old computer... from a 3.5" floppy. Even when we found the floppy in the disk drive I was trying to prepare myself for disappointment.

But... it booted up! I have a functioning vintage synth! The real fun will be in trying to work out how to load in my own samples, but that's at least possible! And I have the stock sounds to play around with:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dGCawrjexA

[dubkitty]

better make a backup copy of that floppy (or more properly semi-rigid) disc sooner rather than later.

[Heraclitus Akimbo]

better make a backup copy of that floppy (or more properly semi-rigid) disc sooner rather than later.

Ya, I had some fears that it could be a works once + that destroys it scenario. Fortunately, the disk images (and further sample banks etc) are readily available on the web.

The bigger question now is how much dough I'd want to sink into this. There's an active modding community for these, so I've found videos/documentation for people replacing the floppy with a USB disk emulator and some other modernization/quality of life improvements. I'm gonna have to send an email to some of the local synth repairer/restorer folks and get a ballpark what that would set me back. Probably could use a good cleaning inside at the least.