What was your first hardware synthesizer?

Anything about hardware musical instruments.
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sh-101, '92 or '93, still have it. followed quickly by juno-60.

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Kawai k1. I was 11, I had really no idea what I was doing with it. It had a cool joystick though.

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thremuc2 wrote: Wed Apr 28, 2021 1:18 pm Hi everyone. First post here, nice to meet you all.

My first was a Roland MC-303! Groovy, haha.
Welcome to KVR!

MC-303 was my first one as well. It was before computers had VST tech, so I used the groovebox a lot and really learnt the ins ans outs of it. Most of the sounds it had were pretty bad, but the interface was really good, just a fun machine. I bought it cheap with some small issues, fixed them, used it for years and sold on profit.

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Roland D-5 from a local music shop when it first came out. I'm really glad this was my first, because it did have a rather comprehensive synth architecture and was a great learning tool for programming synths in general, despite the convoluted patch hierarchy. An easy synth to underestimate based on its rather unimpressive presets - it was actually capable of some very cool and useful sounds.

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thecontrolcentre wrote: Wed Apr 07, 2021 4:53 am Mine was a Casio VL-Tone :)
Same. I still recall that demo song.

A few years later my dad found a Moog Micromoog in a pawn shop and brought it home for me, along with a bass amp. :D

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For someone who never used a hardware synth before, what can you suggest for me to get first?
I make Contemporary R&B music mostly.

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They use synths in R&B? :o

I'd say you'd be better served by a...










a...











...hardware workstation. :wink:

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Fornicras wrote: Tue Aug 24, 2021 11:26 am For someone who never used a hardware synth before, what can you suggest for me to get first?
I make Contemporary R&B music mostly.
I'd first ask what your definition of contemporary was?
Early synths of R&B were most often Roland, ARP and Moog.
Mostly Roland as time went on.
These days? I'm not even sure if two people talking about R&B are talking about anything close to each other.

Of course, anything can be used in R&B and should be whatever clicks with the user/player/producer.
I suggest heading down to your local B&M and finding what grabs you.

While not strictly R&B, I do consider Corey Henry to be one of the great players incorporating Jazz, R&B, Gospel here. On this, he's using all Korg. (From about 4:20 on.)
https://youtu.be/L_XJ_s5IsQc

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I actually had to google to find out, all I could remember was that it was a Kawai synth. I got it for $20 and thought it was mostly meh at the time, as it wasn't polyphonic, and that it was a cheap synth. In retrospect I realised it had a really fat analog sound. Apprently it was a Kawai S100P. It used to get out of tune after a while, and I thought it wasn't worth anything, so it ended up in the trash

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My first keyboard would have been, if I can remember correctly, an old Yamaha PSR-620. I was a pretty dumb kid and picked it over some nicer synths at the store because I really liked one of the drum kits. It had this huge distorted sounding snare with a big gated reverb and I knew that having that snare sound would make me Skinny Puppy. In case you were wondering, it did not.

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My first hardware synth was a second hand Korg T2EX I bought from the shop I was working full time. It was amazing and I got a lot from that 8 track sequencer. I was just frustrated that the filter was non-resonant.

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Korg 800DV (aka Maxi-Korg by Univox) was my first 'real' synth before the Realistic MG-1 (Radio Shack). The Maxi-Korg is an amazing synth.

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Waldorf Blofeld

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Yamaha DX11

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Yamaha RS7000 :love:

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