So today I got to listen to a one-man band who was doing mostly 50s-60s rock, basically running the gamut from Presley's Return to Sender to Tommy James' Mony Mony. He was using an Ensoniq TS 12 keyboard and that's it. I asked about his backing tracks -- were they MIDI, WAV, etc.? because he sounded pretty good. No, all the backing tracks (bass, horns, drums. whatever) were just sequenced using the Ensoniq's internal sounds, one note at a time. The Ensoniq is a mid-90s synth. It came with 2MB of user RAM, upgradable to 8MB. The contents could (and can) be saved to floppy disk. A floppy disk can hold about 12 of his sequenced performances, so he has to swap out disks two or three times per show. I was somewhat blown away by what he accomplishes with these limited resources!
He said he owns about a dozen of the Ensoniqs in varying states of repair. He manages to keep one functional at any given time so he can do his gigs. He obviously sequenced all this stuff back in the 90s and does not care to start from scratch and repeat all that work with a new system.
By the way, the actual sounds were not bad. They are not up to current standards by any means(the Hammond was particularly shrill at the higher end) but no one in the audience seemed to notice or mind because he had a pretty good groove going.
Folks, we have it easy.
