Archived compositions from 1990's-SY77

[Jokeyman123]

Managed after a hiatus of, well many years-life has been a one helluva ride....finally rendering some of my early 1990's work I did when I first got my grubby little hands on one the first SY77's. Guess i went s little overboard. I have a good 40-50 more I never put out anywhere, I'm shy.... I am not worthy, I am not worthy!! But can you tell, I loved the sound of this monster. Funny how my M3 and Fusion don't impress me quite as much anymore-better drums maybe, but....I actually had to "play" these tracks, instead of having "Karma" do it for me, much more rewarding. No fake guitar either, that's silly on a keyboard (IMO)> I have stooped that low but not on these.

[sonic2000gr]

I enjoyed your tracks and would like to listen to more!
Having my 77 right next to me at the PC, I played along with 'For Sammy'. It's reminiscent of a song that begins as a seemingly random jam on the keys, but halfway through, you recognize there's something special going on (prompting to hit record so it's not forgotten). But then again most of my ideas just come this way.

[Jokeyman123]

Thank you sonic2000

I will be putting a few more on Soundcloud as soon as I have the time. Some of my pieces were thematic (like Sammy) with distinct melodies, some were more jamming style arrangements. Its hard to come up with interesting chord changes, so much has been done already from the simplest to the most complex be-bop lines. Tried mostly to opt for arrangements that exploited the unique qualities of the SY77's early sound creation capabilities. I also was striving to keep most relatively short-2-4 minutes although I will post 1-2 longer compositions that might test your patience if you don't like "new agey" style stuff. I did not dwell on more orchestrated classical type compositions, which had already been done with ththe SY77 back then. I do not like the sound of digital imitations of orchestral instruments-even the best sound libraries still sound fake to me...has everything to do with performance technique more than the quality of the samples sounds, but that's another debate I have no time for. LIsten to the Beatles with George Martin and the BBC orchestral musicians-or the Wrecking Crew which covered just about everything you ever heard as background music or TV show themes in the 60's into the 70's and maybe beyond, I lost track.

Most of the sounds I tend to favor-are timbres that can be clearly distinguished for the faster more rhythmic arrangements especially the FM EP's that the SY took a step beyond the DX series in some respects. I played an FB-01 for quite awhile to cut my FM chops and which had dozens of FM pianos but none quite as interesting as the SY77. I also majored in percussion, studied/play all the mallet instruments-so I tend to favor more rhythmic sounds, the SY has excellent vibraphone, marimba and other keyboard percussion sounds in it. Add FM to this, and whew.

If I was going for a more "ethereal" approach, the evolving textures the SY77 is capable of fascinated me-but again by blending sounds in and out-I sometimes was trying to create a completely different sound, not always successfuly. I have to give the gifted sound designers for all these sounds credit-I am only a messenger in a sense.

The only evolving textures I have been able to match the SY77 with other equipment is Steve Howell's later created "Nebulae" group he designed for the Alesis Fusion. which are pretty amazing on their own. But then, the Fusion can do FM. I have a few Fusion eps that sound identical to a few of the SY77 eps I prefer. "Crystal" ep comes to mind, a rather thin-sounding delicate ep with alot of high-end which surprisingly can come across other much thicker sounds. Somehow the SY77 sounds even better than the M3 and Fusion for certain ep sounds but I haven't monitored much without effects. And the Korg M3-none of its ep's sound like the SY77 despite it's seemingly endless array of those, although many are just slight variations on the same set of samples!

Why FM is so powerful I guess-no 2 eps sound the same. I have one disk that consists of only ep's for the SY which I studied carefully back then comparing to the DX, the FB-01 and the Casio PD sound architecture. And another disk- "B3's" by SoundSource-again these stand up to all my other organ engines-and I have a Ferrofish B4000+ and the M3 with a combi designed to turn it into a drawbar organ to compare. Add a Neoventilator or similar pedal (I use a Line 6 Tonecore rotomachine pedal, a cheaper alternative) and the SY77 sounds amazing for Hammond sounds. If it had drawbars, I wouldn't have needed anything else for a Hammond clone except for a good 3rd party leslie effect such as mentioned. After all the SY is a Master's course in how to program sine waves, and that is what the Hammonds use to create their tone settings, among a few other things.

The SY77 gave even these Fusion"Nebulae" sounds a serious revisiting for its evolving textures. The Wavestation disk is good for these too, another SoundSource creation.

I also give credit to the creator of the independently created "Minotaur" collection of SY77 programs years ago, who I was never able to locate after I acquired these, I have never been able to locate this collection anywhere, I've been careful to not lose or erase it. You will hear these sounds when I add my "UFO's" arrangement to Soundcloud. One of, maybe the most interesting and complex groups I own, even further out there than the SoundSource/Voice Crystal and other independent creator's collections I have. Minotaur creator, if you are out there...let me know. And thanks again Sonic2000 for your interest.

[sonic2000gr]

I do not like the sound of digital imitations of orchestral instruments-even the best sound libraries still sound fake to me...has everything to do with performance technique more than the quality of the samples sounds, but that's another debate I have no time for.

This is part of a much bigger debate, asking whether a synth should try to recreate acoustic instruments or have it's own unique 'synth' sound (or both). Apparently Yamaha was pushing the acoustic emulation back then, but the early AWM and quite a few poorly done presets mostly failed it. Of course recent instruments like Montage and MODX are way more successful. But forgetting this for a moment, there are always creative ways to use these early samples, while not chasing acoustic instrument fidelity.
It's obvious that you've put significant effort in creating and researching all this.