06.04.10
Posted in Instruments at 11:00 pm by Administrator
This was IT..the real deal……
Roger Linn started it with the Linn Drum and brought the concept to fruition with this beast.
I was in the middle of trying to rescue the production of “When The Radio Is On” for Paul Shaffer, a song that my partner Kevin and I had written for him. We didn’t get to produce it but everybody hated what the “big time producer” had done so it was up to us to reprogram the entire backing track,keeping only the vocals and raps (which included Will Smith,Carole King, Ellie Greenwich,Dion,Johnny Maestro,and more) When we got the 24 track 2″ tapes, the sequencers that we were using wouldn’t lock up correctly so we headed to Sam Ash in White Plains and rented the MPC-60. This machine was so intuitive that it was locking and we were rocking within an hour….we had to have one.
We did the entire backing track with this, the MKS-80,ESQ and EPS….the only thing they kept was a little sax part.
Paul promised me lifetime seats to Letterman but when I called him later (and after the song had tanked) for tickets, he told me that he couldn’t help me, as he “had no pull with the Letterman show”…I guess he really is “Mr. Show Biz”.
Anyway…I used the MPC-60 to death and was even a beta tester for the MPC-60 II (thanks to my buddy Andy Marvel) and got to speak with Roger himself as he sent updates…he is the nicest guy and a freaking genius in my book.
I upgraded as far as the MPC-3000..it had an HD interface, was 16 bit (instead of 12) and a bunch of other great features..but I eventually had to give it up for a Mac based sequencer, starting with MOTU’s Performer (nice but iffy on the timing) and moving over to Logic.
(side note: I did the entire “Jason’s Lyric” soundtrack’s midi-music sequencing using the MPC-60 slaved to a VHS machine that had audio on one channel and SMPTE on the other..talk about old school…)
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06.02.10
Posted in Instruments at 1:56 pm by Administrator
..that about sums up my next purchase.
On the fat side was the Roland “Super Jupiter” (MKS-80) analog rack synth (with programmer).
This synth had an amazing sound but ironically,many of the presets were attempts to emulate “real” instruments like horns and strings. It was a killer for bass and actually fun to program,unlike the Yamaha “FM” synths that were out,like the DX-7.
The DX-7 WAS good at emulating real instruments..it did an amazing electric bass and rhodes piano,with a metallic crispness and attack that could not be matched by the analog Rolands.
I didn’t really want another full keyboard so I opted for the small rack version of “FM”..the “TX 81Z”.
This scaled down,single rack space synth was almost impossible to program but had some great presets..the “Lately Bass” one was used to death on many productions of this time period.
The last synth that I put in my rack at this time was Roland’s attempt to move ahead with their analog line by employing DCOs
(Digitally Controlled Oscillators) instead of the VCOs (Voltage Controlled Oscillators) of the previous generations of synths. These DCOs were supposed to give more stability to the waveforms and tunings and add some extra crispness..they were definitely feeling the heat from Yamaha. I got this with the programmer as well..this was yet another fantastic sounding synth from Roland.
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Posted in Instruments at 1:30 pm by Administrator
So it was the early to mid 1980′s…synth fever was everywhere. I started to notice that NY studio control rooms were starting to resemble the keyboard section of Manny’s Music on 48th Street.
All of the major players (Moog,Oberheim,Sequential) were expanding their lines,making them smaller (Pro 1) and bigger (Prophet 10). There were contenders for “Top Drum Machine/Sequencer”..models by Alesis,EMU and Linn/Akai…and the last one standing is Roger Linn’s venerable MPC line (more on this later). The great thing was that it was possible to try out all of this cool stuff at the studios before actually buying any of it.
And of course,there was Roland……
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Posted in What's New at 1:19 pm by Administrator
…since the last post….I was waiting to try to get some link to sounds for the Logic EXS but am having some technical difficulties.
So the “Instrument” saga continues…
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