More years ago than I care to mention, I was messing around with early MIDI technology. After a few weeks of head scratching and frustration, I eventually managed to interface my very early Apple MAC computer with my digital Piano and a couple of other Midi instruments I had access to. It was slow, unreliable, but also really good fun. To be able to produce some multi layered music at home with basic equipment was, I guess the very start of the Garage Band Era. As well as the basic Digital Piano, I also had a coveted Yamaha DX7 Keyboard that both baffled and delighted me in almost equal measures. Programming the DX7 was a test of patience, dexterity, and was underpinned by the need to understand the complex, and often amusingly translated, pseudo English handbook.
What was engaging about this pastime was the requirement to build an understanding of not just Music, but of Sound, and the way various instruments shape the waveforms that produce their unique signature. It is for me an incredibly absorbing topic, and the start of a very creative process.
My recent inspiration to learn the Theremin has rekindled the latent Synthesiser Enthusiast in me, that has been dormant since I watched a young man, who bought my DX7, carry it off down the garden path. He didn’t take the handbook.. “Don’t need it, because nobody can understand it anyway !” he told me, with a shrug of his shoulders. As I sit here and write this, I realise I miss that rather awkward lump of 80s technology, just a teeny little bit..
One of the things I never got to play with back then was an Analogue Synthesiser. The closest I ever got to that, was setting up and testing, Leslie Speakers with Hammond Organs, which was still a fantastic sound BTW. The huge rack mounted Moogs and ARPs of the day held a special fascination for me. These often immense towering units, spewing miles of patch cables appeared to hold a mythical status with anyone who knew of them, probably because they were so prodigiously expensive and getting close to one was a rare event.
Over the last few weeks, I have read, watched, and listened to as much vintage analogue synth information as I can get my hands on. I’m rapidly rediscovering my fondness for LFOs, VCOs and Attenuated Inputs 🙂
The distraction of rediscovering a long-lost passion, is having a positive effect on my Mental Health, and as well as my ongoing progress towards improved fitness and health I have a couple of musical goals…
My intention to learn new skills, and to create music has carried me through some challenging moments recently. It may not be everyone’s idea of fun, but crawling into a book about the intricacies of Analogue Sound, or the apparently dark art of Modular Patching is completely captivating. The early work of Wendy Carlos has also been of particular interest, and a massive inspiration. The record she released in the late 1960s “Switched on Bach” is genius. She painstakingly recreated some of Bach’s finest compositions on a Monophonic Modular Moog.
If you want me, I’ll be in the Studio, My Studio, well the room formerly known as the back lounge if you must know, with my head in a book, or sat at a Synth with a handful of patch cables <3 looking happy…..
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