hi all,

I'm gathering samples from cheap pcm synths (pcm = sample based, cheap = really short and lo-fi samples), like the ones produced by Casio, Yamaha et al in the 80's / early 90's. I'd like to make some "best of cheap synths" soundfonts or even VSTis - most of those synths were really crappy but had at least one or two sounds that were special.

So far I've only got samples from the ones that I own, namely Yamaha PSR-32 and Casio Rapman. It seems the web is full of (cheap) drum machine samples but instrument samples are harder to find.

The good thing about this is, if you loop the samples correctly, each patch will only be a few kilobytes. That way you can have hundreds of instruments in a simple VSTi!

C'mon, I know you've got an old Casio taking up closet space! Get it out and sample it, and then you can finally get rid of it.

Alternatively, if you have a good internet resource for this type of samples, please let me know!

Man, I should break out my old GR-50 guitar synth. It had lots of cheesy sounds on it.

I have an old Roland U 20....anything you might be interested in samples from???

I have a Concertmate 980 & a Yamaha PSR-78:



Some of the sounds on the Concertmate are goods, & some on the PSR too but the thing is its really hard to put perfect loop points because the keyboards are so cheap that the sounds is always fluctuating differently! But if you want the samples no problem, if you're interested I'll post them in my Yahoo Group:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/samplingart/

I like the idea, I thought of making a VSTi version of the Yamaha PSR-78 but changed my mind when I realise how hard it is to make perfect loop points for pad & strings presets!

good luck

Hmm, I guess i could sample my Casiotone... But I can't do loop points etc.

if you just sample your cheesy synth (maybe a second of each sound is enough) and post the samples then I can do the looping etc.

I know lots of these synths have a cheesy vibrato, I was thinking about using some type of Autotune effect, then loop it, and then add cheesy vibrato again.

Come on, don't be afraid - sample away!

I'm mostly in it for the saxophone, slap bass and "synth" sounds - those are usually the cheesiest! But that's up to you which sounds that stand out from the rest.

You probably don't need to sample any higher than 22050 Hz either...

Oh gods that concertmate looks sooo cheesy! Sorry, I threw my casio out

Hhhmmm, I was toying with a project for my EX5 to recreate the Casio VL-1 (I already did the RapMan as well ). Got all the samples tweeked and cleaned here with me in a nice folder on my disk. Want me to Zip them up and mail to you?

John, that would be great! But how big are they? If the .zip is >1MB, you better send it to stadler_at_speech.kth.se instead.

I own the Casio VL-1 , and it's not actually PCM-synth, but a digital synth made with VLSI technology. Which was kind a ahead of it's time in 1981, that it was fully digital synth, and analogue was all the rage then.
It has even programmable ADSR envelopes and such found in real synths, and not in home organs.

It has one preset which is legendary and used in many commercial records in that era: the "Fantasy"-preset.
Human League's "Get Carter" track from their "Dare" album is made entirely with that preset. Classix Nouveaux used it too on their "La Verite" album a lot, one song has a minute long intro done entirely with "Fantasy" preset from Casio VL-1.

And of course there is Trio, who did the Da-Da-Da hit entirely with Casio VL-1. I have listen to it closely, and the song uses the presets "Violin" and even the cheesy "piano" preset and of course the the famous ticking rhythm from Casio, with added real snare drum to "fatten" the cheesy snare drum from Casio.

So I wouldnt include Casio VL-1 in your cheesy synths collection, because it is not a PCM-synth.

Isn't Svante's RapMan the same thing then?

I just checked Svante, I have a 'stereo' version with me that my 'engineer buddy' had worked on. It's a hefty 5.8MB (Each voice has 3 multi-samples C2/C3/C4) But I also have a little rougher 'Mono' version of the same thing at home. It's just as good IMHO , and if you're good at sampling, it won't take much to make them better. (I suck at FFT's and all that - get my 'pro's' to do it.) Plus, I don't think I can send anything from here that's over 4MB? Do you know WinRAR?

Or wait till 'Mono Monday'?

Is the idea to make these machines sound worse? I own a U-20 myself, and though not being "a proud U-20", I think, as far as I can remember,(it´s been years since I listened to its own sounds) it´s not really bad sounding. It´s just the sounds that are not very useful because they´ve been heard so many times, so standard-ish, but their quality is ok, technically spoken in terms of bit resolution and sample frequency, and you don´t hear the loop points and so on. But I can imagine that if you take one snippet of each, loop it, and play it back at 22 Khz! That would end up with an odd result, a la Amiga trackermusic But well, that I think would happen to all kinds of sampled material, regardless of whether it´s from a PCM-sample player.. so, why especially these?

i also have a korg NX5R...maybe not that old, but it sounds really bad imo...tellme if you want it...the sounds that is

Not speaking for Svante, but alot of the 'early' stuff he's after has a unique tone to them, be it digital or PCM or DIY sampling. With all this technology and sampling at our disposal, you'd think it be easy to recreate a cheese ball mini keyboard on a Nord Lead or Synth Edit VST et al. But these little suckers can come under the same scrutiny that 303 purists put on a 'real' TB303. Something about the khz hum on the output, the less the pristine filtering inside, the connect the dots ADSR envelopes preprogramed inside, the death of a battery even? Some of these little suckers just have a 'umph' about them that only they can do.

edit

I've got a Casio SK1 hanging around here somewhere . . . I'll dig it out and see if it's still working if you like ?


T.

I have a Yamaha CS-01 mini mono synth glued to the wall...the grey one, not the black and dayglo green w/ resonant filter upgrade. Tres fromage, with the added excitement of pulse width modulation AND discreet steps to the portamento at slower speeds. Dunno if it's PCM, but I can pry it loose and sample some fizzy goodness if you want...

k

okay all, thanks for your replies. Yes any old, digital, cheesy-sounding synth is of interest to me. Especially those who try to mimic real instruments and fail horribly!

All you need to do is sample about a second of the C3 note of your favorite cheesy presets (if you want to do multisamples, that's nice but not necessary), and mail them to me.

So why do this? I've found these sounds pretty nice when you mix them with real instrument sounds. It gives a nice contrast to all the supershiny Atmosphere/FM7/etc sounds. Yes, I admust admit I'm very much in love with the Neptunes sound, which highly relies on cheap synth sounds.

John, you can either mail the files to the above-mentioned adress (why not split it into two emails?) or if you have some webspace where you can put it temporarily, that would be good too. Yes I have winRar.

Thanks again everyone!

Roman Empire wrote:

Is the idea to make these machines sound worse? I own a U-20 myself, and though not being "a proud U-20", I think, as far as I can remember,(it´s been years since I listened to its own sounds) it´s not really bad sounding. It´s just the sounds that are not very useful because they´ve been heard so many times, so standard-ish, but their quality is ok, technically spoken in terms of bit resolution and sample frequency, and you don´t hear the loop points and so on. But I can imagine that if you take one snippet of each, loop it, and play it back at 22 Khz! That would end up with an odd result, a la Amiga trackermusic But well, that I think would happen to all kinds of sampled material, regardless of whether it´s from a PCM-sample player.. so, why especially these?

I also have a U-20, and would not consider it a cheesy synth but rather an outdated high quality bread'n'butter synth. The U-20 is very smooth sounding, while the characteristic cheesy synth is rough, or even 'funky' sounding. The reason for sampling at 22Khz is, most these synths use sample frequencies between 10 and 20 KHz, so sampling at CD quality would be a waste of memory. I was thinking of running the samples through an autocorrelation function in Matlab to find the original sample points, so it would sound the same. Most of these synths use envelopes though which makes it harder - but not impossible. Let's see where this thing goes! Hopefully the original cheesiness will be intact. I'm also considering implementing slightly unstable LFOs to further enhance the cheapness...

Hih, here you go, about 20 or so of the instruments from my 1991 yamaha, qy10 pocket sequencer thingy, cheesy!

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bennyleeds7/qy10a.rar

thanx donk, those sounds are great! Now come on you lazy bastards, sample away!

kaden wrote:

I have a Yamaha CS-01 mini mono synth glued to the wall... Dunno if it's PCM...

Nope, it's an analog unit.

Hey Svante:
Would you mind to explain a little more in deep what do you mean by "applying autocorrelation function in Matlab"...
I'm curious to know what is this (just to expand my poor knowledge)
Thanks.

Rere

I have an ancient Casio PT-20, PT-1, and a Yamaha SHS-10. None of those are PCM, but they're definitely cheesy. Any desire for sample sets from these?

- m

Markleford: yes anything cheesy sounding is of interest, although I'm mostly in it for the failed attempts at recreating real instruments (I love those casio saxophones! )

Rere: Correlation is a mathematical function operating on two functions, and autocorrelation is the correlation of a function with itself. Mathematically, the correlation is:
xycorr(u) = integral(x(t)*y(u-t)) --- something like that... Anyway what you get is a measure of how much the function resembles itself over time, which makes it ideal for finding loop points. If you google for "autocorrelation tutorial" or something I'm sure you'll get plenty of hits.

Thanks!
Now I understand it...should be a good way of finding loops on moving material.

Rere

OK, I'll sample the Casiotone then - you have been warned!

Svante wrote:

I also have a U-20, and would not consider it a cheesy synth but rather an outdated high quality bread'n'butter synth. The U-20 is very smooth sounding, while the characteristic cheesy synth is rough, or even 'funky' sounding. The reason for sampling at 22Khz is, most these synths use sample frequencies between 10 and 20 KHz, so sampling at CD quality would be a waste of memory. I was thinking of running the samples through an autocorrelation function in Matlab to find the original sample points, so it would sound the same. Most of these synths use envelopes though which makes it harder - but not impossible. Let's see where this thing goes! Hopefully the original cheesiness will be intact. I'm also considering implementing slightly unstable LFOs to further enhance the cheapness...

Ok, I understand more, and I think it could become a cool instrument with a sound like no other vsti - maybe it´ll create a whole new underground movement?
What about MT-32? I don´t have one, but I remember it was a really bad sounding module, and probably the samples in it were PCM.

there is a tool called Seamless Looper, which should make looping easy. it isn't free though, it's shareware.

Comin' up Svante! But the other question - stereo, or mono do you prefer? (I forgot to snag the mono ones still. )

I'll try to start pumping these to your e-mail in one way or another?
I just mastered the fax machine, and am still learning the internet, so please bare with my slowness.

Good job, John! I think mono is preferrable - I can't imagine any of these crappy keyboards uses stereo samples...

If you don't know if they're stereo, I recommend a stereo scope like this one:

http://voyager.adsl.dk/knef/vumeter/

Thanks Svante! But honestly, I really bite at serious sampling. I have WaveLab 4.0 which is amazing. But it's like giving a Ferrari to a club crawling 16 year old really. I can do 'rough' things with it, but when it comes to the crunch of putting out a serious CD or project, my buddy engineers get some extra homework from me.

Have fun, and best of luck!

hey all, keep sampling those cheap keyboards. Here's a little track I did mainly with samples from Yamaha PCM-48:

http://home.swipnet.se/funken/trax/Svante-Smoke_Grass.mp3

I must admit this was done under the influence at 4 am. That might explain the weirdness. But is it just me, or are these sounds ultra-cool?

Tarkus wrote:

I own the Casio VL-1 , and it's not actually PCM-synth, but a digital synth made with VLSI technology. Which was kind a ahead of it's time in 1981, that it was fully digital synth, and analogue was all the rage then. It has even programmable ADSR envelopes and such found in real synths, and not in home organs. It has one preset which is legendary and used in many commercial records in that era: the "Fantasy"-preset. Human League's "Get Carter" track from their "Dare" album is made entirely with that preset. Classix Nouveaux used it too on their "La Verite" album a lot, one song has a minute long intro done entirely with "Fantasy" preset from Casio VL-1. And of course there is Trio, who did the Da-Da-Da hit entirely with Casio VL-1. I have listen to it closely, and the song uses the presets "Violin" and even the cheesy "piano" preset and of course the the famous ticking rhythm from Casio, with added real snare drum to "fatten" the cheesy snare drum from Casio. So I wouldnt include Casio VL-1 in your cheesy synths collection, because it is not a PCM-synth.

still cheese tho aint it
when can we start gettin these sounds then