Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: OldSynths
Subject: Yamaha CS's & Fairlights
From: Jim Combs <jwcombs@...>
Date: 2004-05-21
Yamaha CS's & Fairlights Thanks to Crow’s help in finding the documentation to tune up my newly acquired CS-50, I’ve had the opportunity to play out with it twice as part of a rig with a Roland JD-800 and Juno-6.
Everyone’s been raving about the sound of the CS-80 and 60, with good reason, but I’m loving this CS-50s sound as well. I’ve still got a long way to go to figure out how to not overplay the beast as it tends to take over the audio space, even when I narrow out the filters. Not the synth’s fault, definitely operator error. And the creamy harmonics the analog circuitry produces sounds like butter to my ears, plus the low end it is capable of can shake the walls. Hear a couple of clips of my CS in action at our recent April 24th live show at http://www.touchxtone.com/mp3s/ELC1.mp3 and http://www.touchxtone.com/mp3s/ELC2.mp3 (The CS is the buzzy and ring modulated sounds dead center in mono in both mixes)
And with the discussion of the Fairlight, I remember fondly my time working with the Fairlight IIx at Studio PASS in NYC in around ‘84. Did one of my favorite pieces using Page R that I called The Veldt after the Bradbury short story. I promptly bought a Sequential Prophet 2000 sampler, Sound Designer 1.1, and an MIDI interface for my Mac 512K. Then Performer 1.0. Never did live up to a Fairlight though. You can listen to The Veldt at http://www.touchxtone.com/mp3s/TheVeldt.mp3 (beware: lots of bass in the recording that got a little distorted in the encoding). I loved using the lightpen, such an intuitive interface. Can you believe we used to use those big 7 inch floppies for the thing? What a nightmare to carry around.
-Jim
www.touchxtone.com