The Technology of Old Skool Rave

The main reason why synths like these were used so much in early 90s house / techno / hardcore is that they were already old (and therefore relatively cheap to pick up second-hand) by then. Now that they've achieved cult status the prices have gone way back up. I saw a Prophet 600 (like the 5 but with MIDI) going for $600+ recently.

No, Cubase or Notator.

Liam Howlett famously basing his whole set-up around the Roland W-30 sampling workstation, right up until after the recording of The Fat Of The Land

Urban Shakedown's 'Some Justice' was recorded using two Amigas with tracker software (sourced sounds via MIDI ala Atari ST)

If you are using cubase there is plenty of stuff out there to try, I use reason with distortion to create some NASTY sounds. Although it takes patience, you learn to do with what you got though, and milk it for all its worth.

an old atari 1040 will still give the tightest midi of any computer ever made. seriously, on the midi side it'll out perform a g5 hands down. try programming triplet hi hats and hear the difference!

(xpost)

Well that and the pole position sound

(& haha k-thanx for starting this thread, don)

You mean the early '90s bleep stuff - LFO etc. ?? It really is nothing more complex than a sine wave (for both the very low bass and the high melodies). The high ones would generally have reverb and/or delay on as well. The Akai sampler range conveniently supplied a default sine wave 'test tone' sample that was ideal for the purpose. The Yamaha DX range can also be set up very easily to generate a pure sine wave. I'm surprised that you couldn't figure that out.

(I have no idea (or, currently, access) whatsoever about the technology or the music theory involved.)

for yr more rave bleeps - n joi, altern 8, strictly underground etc., the roland sh 101 was the main source.

You mean when it has an almost brassy rasp to it (not the tinkly, pure sine sound)? Yes an analog synth (or sample of one) would be used to produce that raspier sound. Not necessarily an SH-101 though. Could be anything.

Isn't it? I couldn't believe my luck when I first stumbled across it...

By the way, if anyone is using an MPC, Hollow Sun also have a bunch of classic drum machine / beatbox kits with pgms already laid out and made available for the MPC1000 via akaipro.com. Should work on the 2000 / 2000xl / 4000 as well as the 1000.

https://themagusproject.bandcamp.com/

2 eps of old school rave noise that have been extracted from recently found DATs by one of the folks from The Auteurs ('The Cellist').
despite the age of these tracks, they still sound wonderful.

as per thread title :

Made with: Cubase, Sequential Circuits Pro-1, Roland JX3P, Akai S1000, Roland S760, Yamaha FX500, Roland Juno 60. As far as I can remember.