Although the Yamaha DX7 is often generally equated with FM synthesis, this is not entirely accurate. And also unfair, but more on that later. Although the basic principle is generally the same for every FM engine, it is not identical. This has become apparent over the years. Today, FM synthesis is as ubiquitous in the world of electronic sound generators as analog synthesis. So if you look at different FM synthesizers, you can attribute a different basic character to each one. Sometimes this is not particularly striking, but it is at least subtly audible.
I noticed this particularly clearly a few years ago with the Alesis Fusion. Since then, I’ve been referring to its FM engine as “hot”. What does that mean? Depending on the operator modulation, the sound becomes quite biting, almost coarse, at higher amplitude levels. We already know this from the forefather Yamaha DX7, which can show this sonic face quite well with basses, for example. Other FM engines, on the other hand, are at the other end of this spectrum and seem downright tame in comparison. And there are some whose character sits somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. To illustrate this, I have put together some videos for this blog post. You’ll hear sounds from the Yamaha DX7, Alesis Fusion, Korg Opsix, and the two software FM synthesizers Tracktion f’em and Sugar Bytes Aparillo.
To round it off, there are two more videos, each of which is compared to the DX7. These are the Korg Kronos and its MOD7 FM section and the Yamaha MODX. We already know such comparisons quite well from the Minimoog and its emulations and clones. Now that the text is done, let’s move on to the sounds and the videos. Have fun!
We are currently living in the seventh decade of electronic musical instruments. Initially, it was the synthesizer that surprised us with its completely new sounds at the time, followed later by samplers and physical models. Synthesizers became increasingly diverse, as the journey went from analog to FM synthesis, phase distortion, wavetables, additive synthesis and other subgroups. While musicians initially had to cope without touch dynamics, knobs and buttons were used instead as a means of dynamization. These were actually intended by the manufacturers for basic creation and provided on the control panels. But as musicians are, they want to express the music. Emotion, drama, fun, aesthetics, atmospheres.
All in the service of the songs, the corresponding lyrics and also in the movie as a suitable background for the scenes. The Filter Cutoff quickly developed into the central color control, because the effect of changing the sound from brilliant to dull is striking and thus the thick brushstroke in the type of musical expression. The so-called controllers such as pitch bend and modulation wheel were also available right at the beginning, so that you could bend the sound like a guitar and play with vibrato like a violin. When velocity sensitivity was added in the 80s, it was a milestone in the construction of electronic keyboard instruments. Pianists were immediately attracted to it, also thanks to the reasonably comfortable polyphony. And when the first samplers came onto the market not much later, pianos were soon digitized. At first they were still very flat with only one dynamic level, usually forte.
But when the velocity switch was invented, it was suddenly possible to play several dynamic levels from pp to ff, even on keyboards with weighted keys. The path to the digital piano was now paved. This digitalization had consequences. Firstly, a lot of musicians turned away from analog synthesizers. Their rediscovery would take a good decade. Samples were the order of the day, across the entire range of acoustic and electric instruments. You could always tell from the 8 and 12 bit sampleplayers that you were dealing with samples. The distance to the sampled models was immediately audible. This was also due to the fact that they were often recorded using very simple means. A dynamic microphone held close to the violin, a few bow strokes later and the thing was in the can. However, some made a special effort to perform the sonic appearance of these actually primitive sounds in such a way that the musical result sounded quite appealing. With volume pedals, wheels and skillful playing techniques typical of the instruments, it was possible to get quite close.
However, you could still hear the difference in sound between the samples and an actual orchestra. This was to change as the sample quality improved, as did the recording techniques used to create them. Expensive recording studios with high-tech microphones and the finest peripheral equipment for refinement made the recordings of orchestral instruments in particular better and better. The know-how of the sound designers who transformed these results into playable presets also made enormous progress in some cases. But there was a catch: Now the musicians had to keep up. And that failed, at least for many of them. Operating systems that were anything but inviting to learn to master certainly played a role in this. Not always, there are virtuosos on the keys who manage to breathe life into these high-quality sounds. Using controllers and appropriate playing skills, where they master the matter with musical ideas and inspiration.
But they are the exception, at least in industrial music. Now that the Golden Age, namely the 80s with its endless number of great songs and bands, is over and the industry is even dictating the assembly line of music and has exploitation chains all the way to supermarkets and petrol stations with their intrusive background sound, things have gradually become lousy for musicians. Why? Well, if you play a fantastically sampled cello on the keyboard and put your hands on the keys lovelessly and cluelessly at the same time, it just sounds pathetically weak. Which you can hear especially in legato passages. Powerless, without any lively emotion, no virtuoso details whatsoever, as any decent cellist can do, whom you have as a role model and somehow imitate. They approach with a great tone, the bowing is perfect and the dynamic range is enormous. A live performance by a cellist is a treat for the listener. The grottily played digital counterpart tends to make the listener fall asleep or run away, there’s no interest in that.
Maybe not for everyone, because there are people with wooden ears who don’t notice. They are numb to the constant bombardment of the music industry anyway and apparently put up with any musical filth that doesn’t even begin to deserve the term music. It’s all about that assembly line production that is made with loops, MIDI chords and all kinds of automated computer stuff including auto tune, copy/paste and quantization like chewing gum that you spit out after enjoying it. It’s thanks to the outstanding sound quality of the samples that you can now clearly hear all this. And turn away from it. As a listener. We also encounter an influx of sounds with which synthesizers and software instruments are stuffed. Hard to beat in terms of irrelevance, lacking any kind of dynamic spectrum. Musicians trample around like clogs through a flower bed.
Some sound designers struggle with so-called signature sounds, but these are no good if they lack any real character of their own, as well as the right musical signature, and are therefore arbitrary. So we are at a moment where we can realize that this is the wrong highway exit for further development and that we have to go back to the further evolution of electronic instruments. The musicians now have to keep up with the technology, which is a very unpleasant situation. And manufacturers should stop developing faceless mass-produced goods where you can no longer tell the difference between them and the competitor’s product. Digital pianos that all sound almost the same? That’s not the best idea. Mountains of synthesizer souds that you won’t remember once you’ve heard them. Electronic instruments should be an inspiration? Yes, absolutely. But first and foremost a suitable tool for making music. But that doesn’t work by simply packing in more and more features.
But with aspiration, dedication and love on the part of the makers. Manufacturers and musicians have to work hand in hand as equals. And the musician must feel all this when he plays the new instrument for the first time. Let it appeal to them to such an extent that they are only on their fifth preset after an hour of trying it out. So the next development phase has begun right now. Here we go.
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