Post a controversial music opinion

"Radioactive"'s drum sound doesn't bother me as much as the overcompressed farty fretless bass.

ok now that we're on the topic of ONE THING THAT I WOULD CHANGE ABOUT 80S RECORDINGS BY POST-LEDZEP D00DZ:

RBlunt's nasally compressed/chorused strat tone *almost* ruins The Principle of Nothing for me. I know it was considered to be an arch move to sound like that in 1982 but a fuller tone (LP/SG & esp using more than just bridge p/u) with spring (rather than hall) reverb would have made his contribution far more palatable to my ears. Should mention that PCollins' drums sound great (not dated at all) on this record btw...

Collins sounds solid here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7pKkR8ZipI

Collins' drums sounded great on just about every 80s record he guested on. Especially the ones he also produced. Such as
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTBSFmwLeLc

Prefecture, sorry to go on and on but the very same radio stations were playing "How Will I Know," "Hungry Like the Wolf," "She's Strange," "Valley Girl," "Lucky Star," and "Pass the Dutchie." Plus "Whip It."

As I said, a magical time.

CJV: PC's drumming on (*cringe*) the Band Aid sessions in 84 is really great in terms of performance and engineering:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeZnZfxGKvg

i'm looking at that ABC cd and its in great shape. case, disc, everything. it's almost 40 years old! which seems crazy.

i have a really nice rotel cd player now with a good dac and that thru the marantz into the old klipschs can be eye-opening. and one of my fave things to do now is find old CDs that sound amazing. you never know which one its going to be. that $100 audiophile disc of Avalon? yeah, it sounds good. but holy shit this semi-legit cd with two Lime albums on it? sounds awesome! you just never know. its fun.
you definitely get some stinkers but its fun to find the unlikely gems sound-wise.

I miss my CDs. More than my vinyl.

also wanna give Roy Thomas Baker a shout, another revelation I had recently is Oh, No! It's Devo which sounds fat as hell on a good system

he also produced a Starcastle album I really like, granted it's from the 70s but it does have a really cool drum sound to it

Every time I watch that clip of Phil all I can think is, “Sit up straight! You’ll ruin your back!”

LIME

fuck yeah

Thanks for that clip, Steve Shasta.

I know people love to hate on Phil, but the dude could play.

i'm not a huge Brand X fan, but the technicality of his playing on that record is just mind-blowing

There's a technological reason too, I think. The eighties got the flood of affordable digital gadgets, and it took a while to sort out how to use them most effectively.

The default patches built into the Yamaha DX7 were so pervasive throughout the 80s precisely because programming your own was so incredibly difficult. The DX7's 11. E.PIANO 1 and 15 BASS 1 *is* the sound of the 80s in my head.

I remember reading that the keyboard sound on Miles Davis's Star People was literally preset A1 on the Oberheim synth.

The DX7's 11. E.PIANO 1 and 15 BASS 1 *is* the sound of the 80s in my head.

Dunno about NO but Prince certainly did! I was surprised to read that he was also a big preset user and only made minor tweaks on his synth patches.

creating new sounds in FM synthesis is insanely complicated and frustrating and time consuming

I think using presets was the common practice, it's not fun or intuitive like messing with an analog synth

"I don’t know much about their gear though!"

i read once about the time that kraftwerk visited new order and checked out their equipment and basically said in german: get the fuck out of here. you made blue monday with THIS crap?

i'm paraphrasing. but they couldn't believe new order's cobbled together set-up.

that's my memory of it anyway. someone should make that movie.

Auf Wiedersehen, Manchester
directed by Christopher Nolan
Cillian Murphy as Ralf
Michael Cera as Bernard

Oberheimer

I remember one time Shakey was dismissive of Pet Shop Boys for being 'Preset Kings' or something.

Love will Fairlight us apart

Miles Davis' TUTU has some **gorgeous** DX-7 programming going on. There were some folks who were suitably adept at nerding and programming these machines - analog or digital - and getting the best out of them. And then you had folks like New Order who kind of clunked their way through and made magic. I remember seeing them live in the mid 80s and how brittle and dry their machines sounded and how their sequences felt like they would fall apart at any minute. Super exciting. Bootlegs out there from that time give a good idea ( Chicago, Milan '85). No big reverbs, either!

The thing with DX7s and Oberheims is that they were early polyphonic synths (the Oberheim significantly earlier than the DX7, and there was probably something before the Oberheim). Whereas in the '70s, people like Hancock and Corea obviously had synths, for melodic use, those only accommodated single-note lines, so they had to lug around a Rhodes for anything chordal. The new polyphonic synths gave a whole generation of keyboardists who'd been raised on chord inversions, substitutions, voicings and such a way to do that on a synthesizer for the first time.

The Prophet 5 was similar to the DX7 (albeit slightly earlier) in that it was a widely-used polysynth that was difficult to program, so everyone just used the presets. Having attempted to program one of the things myself I can concur that they're not exactly user-friendly. That early 80s soft electric piano sound? "In The Air Tonight" string patch? All Prophet. A few more creative people took it to interesting places (YMO etc) but most didn't bother as the presets were pretty decent.

Did New Order ever use DX7?

They had a DX5, which provided the bassline in "True Faith".

Since we're on the subject of newfangled synths, here's Herbie Hancock explaining/demonstrating the Fairlight to David Letterman:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29mx2bYvrJk

And Oscar Peterson with a Synclavier:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI-4HNQg1JI

Having attempted to program one of the things myself I can concur that they're not exactly user-friendly.

I think the Prophet-5's control panel is very easily followed once you understand how each "block" (VCO, VCF, ADSR, etc.) contributes to the sound. It's essentially a polyphonic Minimoog. But yes, because the factory presets are not bad, a lot of owners just made do with them.

I own a Prophet-6 ( similar architecture) and it’s a breeze to program if you put in a small amount of time. I’ve owned some “classic” synths that all but asked to be hurled out a window if it hadn’t been for their sweet, sweet voices.

I own a Prophet-6 ( similar architecture) and it’s a breeze to program if you put in a small amount of time. I’ve owned some “classic” synths that all but asked to be hurled out a window if it hadn’t been for their sweet, sweet voices.

(sorry for the 2x post)

one of my fave synth discovery stories. about 2 minutes in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERFUbX648S4

Another big player around that time was the Roland Juno, right?

I don't actually play keyboards but I remember when the Korg M1 came out a whole bunch of people in my personal orbit sighed with relief.

I would define the early milestones in programmable polysynths along these lines:

1978 Sequential Circuits Prophet-5
1979 Oberheim OB-X
1980 Roland Jupiter-8
1981 Korg Polysix
1982 Roland Juno-60
1983 Yamaha DX7

Yeah the Juno-60 is all over everything from Cabaret Voltaire's music to Nile Rodger's productions ( "Like A Virgin"). I owned and loved it. 80s in the best ways and also a remarkable machine for long, deep drones.

^ quality content

I think Duran Duran was a lot of both DX7 and Juno-60

iirc, the Roland Juno-106 was some sorta digital/analog hybrid. I remember it having presets, but it also had the usual analog filters that could be easily adjusted with sliders (but not stored as presets...at least, I don't think). I knew two people in high school who had one, and it was much more fun to mess around with than the DX7.

Gear talk does not seem very controversial.

thank god

I did post this itt cuz I thought it was controversial:

dx7 electric piano sound is good

― brimstead, Thursday, 27 December 2018 03:17 (four years ago) link

Gear talk vs. Geir talk

Hongroberheim

Wait, no: HongRoland

Prophet Hongro

Shakey Moog

lol

my Jungle Love

Hongro-ee-o-ee-o

"I don’t know much about their gear though!"

i read once about the time that kraftwerk visited new order and checked out their equipment and basically said in german: get the fuck out of here. you made blue monday with THIS crap?

i'm paraphrasing. but they couldn't believe new order's cobbled together set-up.

that's my memory of it anyway. someone should make that movie.

― scott seward

Peter Hook says he never met them, Bernard Summer attempted it but was asked to leave:

“They were streets ahead of anybody else, even from an electronic point of view. They were making their own sequencers years before anyone else. I remember seeing them at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall on the tour where they didn’t appear on stage. It was amazing to sit in a sold-out venue, watching four mannequins and have them get away with it because the music was so wonderful. They had a quadraphonic P.A. in the Free Trade Hall, and that was something else that we ripped off in New Order as soon as we were able.

“I’ve never met them. The last gig they played with Florian was at a festival in Spain in 2006, and we were playing too (as was Snoop Dogg). Barney was a little worse for wear, shall we say. He was very merry indeed and desperate to go and talk to Kraftwerk. My wife always tells me off for passing up the opportunity, but he went into their dressing room and was so fucking off his head that they asked him to leave! In a funny way, it’s probably for the best I didn’t go.”

- https://www.nme.com/features/peter-hook-florian-schneider-kraftwerk-new-order-joy-division-influence-tribute-2660805