What if a workstation arrangement keyboard were designed for DJs and synth rockers instead of, uh, whoever normally buys workstation arranger keyboards? Casio has taken the wraps off their new keyboards, and they appear to be affordable, all-in-one electronic beasts. Oh, except one of them has an organ. And an arpeggiator and step sequencer. So you can certainly step-sequence your drawbar organ, if you like.

There are also some retro-Casio CZ sounds, numbering in the thousands, loaded into these machines, so it seems Casio hasn’t forgotten why we loved them in the 80s.

And we hear the announcement via some charmingly-awkward headlines. They seem not so much lost in translation as something that makes me wonder what the original intent was:
A Groove Synthesizer with Many of the Cool Sounds and Features a DJ Uses in a Club

A Performance Synthesizer Specially Designed for Creating Sounds and Expressive Playing

That’ll otherwise be known as the XW-G1 and the XW-P1, respectively. I’m not sure which name is worse, so I’ll proceed.

I think all of this calls for celebration. Calvin Harris was echoing through my mind as I thought about CZ PCM waveforms:

Here’s what’s actually in these things.

A Groove Synthesizer with Many of the Cool Features a DJ Uses in a Club basically combines:

• A step sequencer with 100 pattern banks and 16 trigger buttons, and the ability to sequence multiple patterns together into bigger patterns
• A 100-phrase phrase sequencer
• Assignable keys (I think; here I get lost in translation)
• Solo synth (monophonic Virtual Analog) and PCM presets you can dial up
• Arpeggiator
• Sample looper with 19 seconds storage, overdubbing, and the ability to load samples as user PCM waveforms
• 61 full-size keys
• A “designated rubber holding space” – read, a mat that you can use to sit other gear on your keyboard

There’s 128KB of memory, but there’s also an SD slot, though it appears you can only use the SD to play SMF files.

You get a surprising amount of I/O: aside from USB, MIDI in and combined MIDI out/thru, you get a mic in, a line in, and a minijack line in. And the whole thing weighs just 5.4 kg (under 12 lbs).

The solo synth is truly monophonic. The routing appears to start with either a PCM or a Synth (hopefully Virtual Analog) pair of oscillators, or a hybrid (1 VA + 1 PCM), then route through filter and amp as expected.

There’s also a noise block, though, so you could presumably program some percussion sounds. And you can route an external input through the filter and amp envelope, via a pitch shifter, which is a bit more out of the ordinary.

There’s also a reverb, chorus, master EQ, and DSP block, though the DSP and chorus and Solo Synth all appear to use the same DSP.

80s jokes aside, in other words, this is not in any way an 80s synth.

A Performance Synthesizer Specially Designed for Creating Sounds and Expressive Playing is more or less the same synth, but with:

• “Hex Layer” for up to six-part combo “ensemble” sounds
• 50 drawbar organ presets
• 2,158 PCM waves, including presets from the CZ series (though I’m not sure if some of those CZ sounds aren’t also on the DJ model)

In fact, the Phrase Sequencer, Step Sequencer, and Arp are all in the “performance” synth, too, along with all the same I/O; it only lacks that loop recorder.

So, DJ version: 10 user wave slots and a looper.

Performance version: More presets overall, with the same synth presets, but “Hex Layers” for ensemble combos and some drawbar organ sets.

In other words, unless you really want to play a lot of organ or I learn it lacks those CZ PCM waveforms, you’d get the “DJ” version.

We know these are shipping in March and April, and that’s about it. I obviously need to pay the Casio booth a visit and find out if they’ll say anything about price, and get a look at these crazy-looking control layouts.

This NAMM, more than is even typical for NAMM, seems to fold back in time. I’m not sure if it’s 1978, 1988, or 1996. Or, at times, I think I may be at Macworld in the iPhone section.

I just wouldn’t write this keyboard off yet, as it might be some fun. It’s biggest challenge is going up against more-focused offerings from KORG that focus on pattern, looping, and other features. I’ll check it out.

Now, I’m just going to be very, very careful talking to US TSA airport security and Customs, because I don’t want to wind up in a “designated rubber holding space” on my way out of here Saturday.

Official PR announcement

Nod to Synthtopia, whom I’m fairly sure aren’t sleeping

Amidst renewed conversation about what drum machines should be – see heated comments – it’s enlightening to revisit the drum machine as marketed in 1982. This vintage Linn Electronics LM-1 “Drum Computer” ad captures a moment in the birth of the modern drum machine. Some of what’s desirable then remains desirable today. Others – “Real Drum Sounds” – are amusingly far less novel, looking back from far deeper into the digital age.

Real time programming, mixing functions, and friendly design, though, remain important – and you can thank designer Roger Linn and his LM-1 for the profound influence they’ve had on drum machine design. In fact, quite a bit of the personality of the LM-1′s front panel and programming approach remain in the imminent Dave Smith – Roger Linn collaboration, the Tempest.

What I find interesting is that the economy of the LM-1′s front panel could still offer something to someone making a new drum machine, whether it’s your humble Pd or Max for Live patch, an iPad/tablet app, or DIY hardware.

Looping back on another impassioned discussion from last week, it’s worth noting Roger’s background: in 1978, as he began the LM-1 design, he was – and is – a guitarist. It took a guitarist to help create the modern sampling and drum programming revolution. (Well, you wouldn’t have expected a drummer to do it, would you?)

Call it future shock. Love of retro gear is more than nostalgia; sometimes it takes time to appreciate what technology means. And so, today, classic digital samplers and drum machines like the E-mu SP-1200 and SP-12 can inspire even greater passion than they did when new. Today, producers can feel love not only for retro analog, but retro digital.

With plenty of 12-bit digital dirt, the original SP samplers sound gritty, warm, and unique. And one of my favorite samplists, Hugo of Gold Baby Productions, does a nice job of capturing that personality – enough for me to take note of a soundware set, which is something I tend not to do often on this site.

You can grab the second volume of SP-12 and SP-1200 samples for US$29, but Hugo also has a free holiday gift: over a hundred 24-bit samples from the SP-1200, none of which is in the paid version, have been added to the various nice free stuff on offer on his site:
http://www.goldbaby.co.nz/freestuff.html

Hugo talks to CDM a bit about sampling vintage equipment, good fodder for inspiration if you’re thinking of taking up a similar project yourself. (It’s a great way to spend the winter months, I think, fellow residents of the Northern Hemisphere.)

To start with, I have an extensive collection of drum machines, real drums, and percussion, all recorded by me over the last 20 years. I took a selection of these and got a Dubplate made. I also re-recorded some of them to tape. This made it easy to recreate one the SP’s more famous tricks — pitching down to get aliasing. The Dubplate was pressed at 33 rpm then played back at 45 rpm, then sampled and tuned down on the SP. Hello, aliasing! I used the same process on tape. I could have done this using pitch software via the computer, but that is not the Goldbaby way!

Back in the day, this trick was not originally done for sonic reasons. With a sampler only having limited sampling time, it was a ghetto way to get more [recording time]! So, with the analog filters and the 12-bit, 26.4 kHz sampling engine, you get both grit and warmth!

Another trick with old hardware samples is experimenting with how hard you hit the sampling input. For instance, snares sound great if you hit the input really hard. It kind of acts like tape and squashes the transient; it gives them punch. A high hat can sound grittier if you sample them at a very low level — it kind of works like bit reduction. Also, using threshold record triggering can help give a drum a sharper attack. It basically is a function where you select a threshold level for the sampler to start sampling.

Whatever you do, don’t read the sampler manual! All the advice they give is for getting clean-sounding drums.

I also did a few recording sessions with some newly-acquired percussion and drums.

I went through some of my old synth product audio demos and and sampled them also. I wanted to get that ‘sampled from a Moog concept album’ sound!

I also have a portable recorder I carry everywhere at all times. My field recording folder is a great place to dig for new sound ideas. I used a few in this product — check out Drum_Festival1_SP1200R.wav. The world is filed with sound…

So two months of doing this gets you about 1500 samples.

I think DRTFM (don’t read the f***ing manual) could be a new watchcry. Some sound samples:

SP-1200 Volume 2

All photos courtesy Hugo at Goldbaby; used by permission. (Is anyone aside from me impressed with how modern the panel designs look on the E-mu? I think we need an alternate MeeBlip case that looks like this – our plastic housing is the same shape as the SP-12. Any takers?)

Got vintage gear you like to use? Found inspiration for modern digital techniques from equipment from the past? Let us know in comments.

Side note: a project inspired by digital samplers of yesteryear worth mentioning here is the open-source Where’s the Party At. (It’s an 8-bit sampler, though; the E-MU would be easy enough to ape in a Max or Pd patch if you wanted to use the retro hardware as a jumping-off point.)

In a Hollywood overrun with remakes, a new Tron has quite a daunting challenge. The original film may be a cult hit for its 80s arcade cool, but it also was a seminal moment in the evolution of computer animation, at the nexus of obsessive-compulsive optical effects that came before and digital effects that came after. (Google Perlin Noise, if you must.) But where the bits of the effects look uneven or dated alongside the brilliant, it’s nearly impossible to top the genius of Wendy Carlos’ score. Her deft blend of choirs, orchestras, organs, and rich electronics wasn’t just forward looking: it’s fresh today, an alternative to some of the signature sameness in today’s games and films.

Perhaps Tron Legacy will do what other belated sequels have not: express love for the original. With Daft Punk helming the score and a reverent, inspired crew ready to make Tron live again, the trailer last week was the real sleeper hit of Comic-Con.

If that’s not enough layers of fandom, though, head to GearSlutz for a lesson in film scoring and a recreation of the trailer in Reason, custom Reaktor patches, and Ableton Live. This is not much of an infomercial for Live: because Ableton’s arrange view doesn’t quite understand frames, scoring with Live is a bit of a beast. (Live 9, anyone?) But it’s a great example of love for the movie and its original score. And hey, everyone need a source of joy, even a film.

Ableton Live for Sound Design :Tron Legacy [GearSlutz forum]

Stripped the original audio and redid all of the sound from scratch using Reason/NI Reaktor/Ableton Live 8. An M-Audio Axiom 49 was used to perform the Lightcycle Engine Oscillations

Wendy Carlos, if you’re out there, we get it. You revolutionized film scoring and electronic orchestration, and we’re all in your debt. It’s not so much that you switched on Bach or switched on Moog or even switched on Kubrick and guys in glowing skin-tight outfits. You switched on sound, and nothing has been quite the same since.

Now, we just have to hope 2010 can show us a good time, too.

You’ve heard the chip hype. But there’s something behind it: vintage digital chips can make wonderful sounds. And I’m thrilled that someone has painstakingly reproduced those sounds in an upcoming package.

Emulating analog circuitry, from amps to classic synths, has been long understood. But we’ve finally reached an age when people begin to appreciate the odd idiosyncrasies of digital technology, too. There hasn’t ever been a comprehensive attempt to emulate each detail of a range of 80s sound chips before – until now. Plogue (makers of the highly underrated Plogue Bidule patching environment) and David Viens have tackled just that as a labor of love, and you’ll be able to use the resulting “chipsounds” library later this spring.

Plogue’s chipsounds recreates the blippy personality of the Commodore 64, the Nintendo NES, the Game Boy, the Atari, the Vic20 – and circuit-bent and abused variations, too. It’s got a powerful artist endorsement from 8 Bit Weapon and Computer Her (pictured here). There are arpeggiators, noise patterns, distortion emulation, custom software, all built on the ARIA synth/sampling engine.

The basic specs:

• 7 chips: TIA, 2A03 PAPU, VIC-I, SN76589AN, AY-3-8910, POKEY, and SID. Haven’t heard of all of those? No worries. But you’ve probably heard the chips. The horribly-named SN76589AN was used in my very first computer, the IBM PCjr, my first game console, the Colecovision (boy did I pick them), and in the TI. The 2A03 is from the original NES. The TIA was in the Atari.
• Tricks, built in: One-shot arpeggiators, rapid waveform changes, envelope resync tricks are all built in – stuff that’s hard to pull off, as the creators note.
• Emulations of psuedo noise patterns, distortion
• Switch on each chip’s limited resolution and pitch values – or switch them off, and create sounds the PCjr couldn’t
• Presets from 8 bit Weapon and ComputeHer

When analog synth emulation came out, we all got something more convenient, but it didn’t necessarily do wonders for the music. Here, I think the situation is very different. Many of the original chip instruments have woefully primitive possibilities for actual composition. (The Game Boy’s wonderful LSDJ and Nanoloop are a notable exception.) Compare that to the software emulations of, say, a Moog modular, which lost a lot of what was great about the original – the interface. You can’t necessarily say that about the AY-3-8910, unless you’re the Ludwig van Beethoven of Assembler. (If you are – we love you.)

And the chip scene has also matured to the point that it’s ready to break out a bit. Getting these emulations on computers can help warp them into music and sound ideas they haven’t discovered before. I believe these sounds are really something special, not just a novelty.

I personally can’t wait to use this.

We have extensive details from a Plogue flyer – you can get it here on CDM, or if you’re on the floor of NAMM, you might get it from the Plogue guys themselves.

Flyer – Front

Flyer – Back

And if you want to hear these sounds making fantastic music, go give the artists a listen:

8 Bit Weapon

Computeher

ARIA is an important announcement; I’ll be catching up on news from Gary Garritan soon.

We’ll have sound samples of this too, as well.

It’s campy horror sounds, remixed into digital music — the perfect way to celebrate the holiday! From our friend TRASH_AUDIO’s Surachai, who’s on the compilation:

We have teamed up with Cock Rock Disco to compile a horrific compilation of the very best campy 80′s horror movies ever made, remixed by some of the greatest digital grind, metal, breakcore, and electro artists from around the world. Artists including Silon Fist, Terminal 11, Vytear , The Teknoist, Sgure, Toecutter, Duran Duran Duran, Eustachian, Bong-Ra, Captain Ahab, Surachai, Dead Noise, DJ Floorclearer, Droon.
Enjoy the ride into hell, because this will be your last!

Happy Halloween – Free Compilation [TRASH_AUDIO]

Here’s another mix — thanks, Kempton!
http://kemptonmooney.com/audio.html

The Fairlight CMI, the ground-breaking digital synth created by Australians Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie, is well known for its contribution to music. Think names like Peter Gabriel, Hans Zimmer, David Bowie, Herbie Hancock, Kate Bush, Bono, and … hang on, I’ll stop before this becomes a very long list. With tablet input and sophisticated sampling capabilities, the CMI holds up reasonably well against even modern tech, even if it cost as much as a luxury car. (See Keyboard Magazine‘s 2006 write-up.)

But less known is the CMI’s influential visual sibling, the CVI — Computer Video Instrument. Introduced to the market in 1984 at around US$6500, the CVI also used a tablet interface, accessing not a hybrid analog/digital design for visual effects and digital painting in real-time.

You may not know the name, but you’ve seen the effects — the ubiquity of the CVI’s distinctive effects, unfortunately, also made it a cliche in 80s design. But the idea of making an integrating visual instrument is still meaningful today.

It’s not really worth reading about the CVI. It’s better to watch it. We’ve been following videos uploaded by co-creator Vogel onto YouTube, as well as from aficionados of the hardware from the VJ community, on our video sister, Create Digital Motion:

State of the 80s: Fairlight CVI Demo Video, BBC on "Tomorrow’s World"

Video: Fairlight CVI Video Instrument Development, Ca. 1984

Glitch, Synthetic and Real: Free Vintage Fairlight VJ Clips, Glitch in Jitter

Retro Ad of the Week

Thanks to Zach Steiner for this one!

Just don’t circuit bend that MT-100 — then you might run afoul of the policeman.