Sound of the 80s

[Numanoid]

Not so sure about your notes, though, haven't heard that song in ages

When I state B, it could be H for you

I think Vince Clarke played it in a different key, but playing it in E-minor, there is not a need to use the black keys.

[BBFG#]

The keyboards I sold most in the early eighties were:
Juno-6/60; Poly-61; Prophet 600 (which were junk); DX-9
(DX-7's were on short supply and usually sold long before they arrived to an elite few).

The keyboards I sold most in the late eighties were:
D-50/10/20; S-70; eMax; DSS-1; K-1/3/5; FZ-1; VX-90; S-900

The market en masse of the later eighties were more about sampling/wavetable than direct straight synthesis. And there's some interesting trivia concerning each 'sponsored by one company only' bands such as Toto and Thompson Twins (as well as the others). We adopted a game in watching 'live videos' we called 'spot the man behind the curtain' who usually had a competitor's synth that wasn't allowed to be shown by the sponsor's synth.

[fluffy_little_something]

Not so sure about your notes, though, haven't heard that song in ages

When I state B, it could be H for you

I think Vince Clarke played it in a different key, but playing it in E-minor, there is not a need to use the black keys.

Si rather
What's wrong with the black keys?

Was just checking the song on YT. Interesting how the singer has changed for the better in terms of looks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLTGs4fqxBk

And 30+ years later:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQNnSitntYg

She used to look really mean

[fluffy_little_something]

The keyboards I sold most in the early eighties were:
Juno-6/60; Poly-61; Prophet 600 (which were junk); DX-9
(DX-7's were on short supply and usually sold long before they arrived to an elite few).

The keyboards I sold most in the late eighties were:
D-50/10/20; S-70; eMax; DSS-1; K-1/3/5; FZ-1; VX-90; S-900

The market en masse of the later eighties were more about sampling/wavetable than direct straight synthesis. And there's some interesting trivia concerning each 'sponsored by one company only' bands such as Toto and Thompson Twins (as well as the others). We adopted a game in watching 'live videos' we called 'spot the man behind the curtain' who usually had a competitor's synth that wasn't allowed to be shown by the sponsor's synth.

Did you ever sell or even see a DX-1? There must have been very few of those, Al Jarreau's keyboarder used t play one back then. He had the necessary cash

And expensive photo

[beely]

My awesome list of favourite all-time synths includes the DX1/DX5, Prophet T8, Matrix-12, Jupiter 8, PPG Wave 2.3, OB8, CS80...

DX1's are amazingly lovely (despite being, well.. FM... bleurgh) ...

[BBFG#]

Did you ever sell or even see a DX-1? There must have been very few of those, Al Jarreau's keyboarder used t play one back then. He had the necessary cash

GX-1? I remember seeing those in album liner notes only.
DX-1 I've only seen in historical pictures. There wasn't any real mention of those during the time they were suppose to be in existence.

Our high end gear in the store I worked at in the eary 80s was a Prophet T-8.
IMO the best thing they ever did and with the best quality since they turned out so much junk
(manufacturing and support problems, not initial design).
Our highest end gear of the store I worked in the late 80's was the EIII, but by that time, much of the market was jumping to higher price marks anyway. Sold a couple of the EIII, but sold many more of the S-70 in relation to it at half the price. But even more of the lesser priced eMax; FZ-1; S900.
DX's by that time were considered dead, but I still preferred it over the D-50 and opted to upgrade my old one to the 7s instead of buying into the D-50 frenzy (which made them overused and passe almost as quick). My set-up then was the DX-7s; MemoryMoog (and I still had my Rhodes & Clavinet D-6) all run through Lexicon racks and Boss stomp boxes. Didn't buy into the romplers until the early 90s with a M1/DPM-V3/DPM-SP/ProteusFX and later adding the S4+ (which were all stolen in 96)

The synths I sold most were the ones being used the most by live and studio musicians though.
The rest seemed more studio only and not used nearly as much as we seem to think.

[Numanoid]

DX1's are amazingly lovely (despite being, well.. FM... bleurgh) ...

They still sell for $10000

[layzer]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLTGs4fqxBk

this here is the example of a proper 80's bass!!

[BBFG#]

A further bit of trivia:
The Jupiter 6 was made after the Jupiter 8 and addressed some of the shortcoming of the 8. More importantly, they added longer envelope times to the six and you could actually get more and better sounds out of it than the 8 (just with two less voices).
My favorites that I still wistfully look at in memory are the Prophet T-8; Memorymoog+; Jupiter 6 and Prophet VS (the only other rock-solid instrument that the 'SC of FOA' ever produced). And once I knew what the FOA stood for, I have since looked at everything SC/DS does with great skepticism.

[fluffy_little_something]

A further bit of trivia:
The Jupiter 6 was made after the Jupiter 8 and addressed some of the shortcoming of the 8. More importantly, they added longer envelope times to the six and you could actually get more and better sounds out of it than the 8 (just with two less voices).
My favorites that I still wistfully look at in memory are the Prophet T-8; Memorymoog+; Jupiter 6 and Prophet VS (the only other rock-solid instrument that the 'SC of FOA' ever produced). And once I knew what the FOA stood for, I have since looked at everything SC/DS does with great skepticism.

Which is it?
http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/FOA

The problem with US products then and now is that either they are good and you can't afford them, or they are, um, not so good for the same price you get solid Asian or even European stuff for instead.

[BBFG#]

A further bit of trivia:
... And once I knew what the FOA stood for, I have since looked at everything SC/DS does with great skepticism.

Which is it?
http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/FOA

The problem with US products then and now is that either they are good and you can't afford them, or they are, um, not so good for the same price you get solid Asian or even European stuff for instead.

Ha! None of those. Sequential used to have an advertising campaign to 'Join the Ear Force' complete with really cool artwork. They were also known quite well for their indifference to customer support and by many of those that worked for them to not be the best employer in the Valley. (I lived in Santa Clara County at the time and knew many of them). So if you can find one of these 'EarForce' posters look for the FOA somewhere in the art. I always assumed it was the artist's signature until several employees informed me otherwise. It was a general sentiment towards its customers and became equally as such from the employees to upper management in return. We, the customers were the 'A'. You can guess what the 'FO' is from there.

[fluffy_little_something]

I see
It is striking that the Japanese synth companies all survived and flourished while the American ones went bankrupt. The FM concept used by Yamaha was developed by an American. He demonstrated it to US companies, but none wanted it. So he went to the Japanese, who obviously realized the potential.


Anyway, since several people mentioned Linn and Simmons, why is there no emulation for the Oberheim DMX? That was pretty popular back then

[fluffy_little_something]

Demo cassette, gee, tape, those were the days

[BBFG#]

95% of Sequential Circuits customers never knew their units had problems.
Because Sequential Support was instructed to convince them (if they even called) that it was suppose to work that way. If you could go the rounds with them though, they would eventually admit the problem and correct it. Not a good situation when it was the store selling them that demanded the fix and not the occasional customer they couldn't convince. Among these were:

Prophet V's dumping memory on a regular basis.
Pro-One's not having the Mod-wheel switching wired properly
Six-Trax having normally closed circuits shipped with normally open settings.
Prophet 600's having unusual rates of oscillator drifts (especially noticeable under stage lights often rendering them completely unusable).
T-8's they seem to give more attention to (but sold far less) and the VS finally started to address previous manufacturing problems when they finally seem to figure out that if you build it right in the first place, less support is actually needed. But by then, they were well on their way out, being bought up by Yamaha and pieced out to other companies that Yamaha controlled at the time, like Korg.

[fluffy_little_something]

At least it was all rather tangible hardware back then, you could open the device and maybe even understand what was wrong and fix it. Today it is basically computers in keyboard cases