03.19.10
The Terrible Twins…
I put these two together because they are both products on Ensoniq, an American company that flourished in the ’80′s but didn’t survive.
The Mirage was the first affordable sampler..8 bit with a cryptic 2 Digit interface that belied the complexity of what lay beneath the hood. It took 3.5 ” floppy discs and came with a pretty impressive (for its time) library.
We used this for horns,strings,orchestral hits,drums,vocal samples..anything. It made great use of release velocity, a sadly underused feature before and since in other synths.
The ESQ-1 came a year later in 1986…it was multi-timbral,had 120 sounds(!) and a built in,really usable sequencer. My partner Kevin and I each had one and we got a lot of mileage out of them.
He constructed the whole intro and basic part of “When The Radio Is On” for Paul Shaffer with it.
Dave Goessling said,
May 4, 2010 at 10:07 pm
Uh, excuse me but is this Matt Noble who went to American University in the mid-70s and whose family owned a radio station in the US Virgin Islands? Who I used to jam with, along with his multi-talented brother int he basement of their rented house someplace in suburban Arlington VA, while I was studying classical guitar with Regis Ferruzza and the late John Marlow?
There’s no email link that I could find on your blog…
Please let me know!
Dave Goessling