Nowadays, people don’t realize how important Keyboard Magazine was. Before the internet this was my main source of information to learn about synthesizers. There was a lot of good educational articles about various synthesis methods. Lots of interviews with artists explaining various technical details regarding the production techniques and equipment they used on their album. Some of these albums are considered legendary today. Even if the internet does a good job informing us, I miss the insight Keyboard Magazine had on what techniques and equipment our favourite artists were currently using. Nowadays it’s just speculation on various forums, there’s no journalists documenting the creative process of current and upcoming artists.

@mitchelstephen7536

22 күн бұрын

Well sure, text publications were all we had back then. Either from the library or buying trade magazines. kzread.info/dash/bejne/lKZhzsyuoJion9o.html

@neilloughran4437

22 күн бұрын

Agree.. at that time the guys who ran that magazine were just names that I never had any connection to and they seemed in a different universe... these days I've either met them or have them on facebook... you realise how small the keyboard/synth/tech world is...

@jamesdefrancesco7765

21 күн бұрын

Amen.

I love seeing the magazines with Espen. Today I found many memories, about the Proteus, the Q-80 and the ART processor, which I used at that time... greetings from Argentina!!!

great issue! i recall a 1984 Keyboard interview with Pat Benatar’s keyboardist on how he created the cascading DX7 plucks on ‘We Belong’. i gotta find that issue. such an iconic performance.

Happy birthday Clarke, 64 today! 🎉

Vincent Clark is the man of synth world. Made us brits famous.😎👏👏👏☝️

Thank you for this trip down memory lane. I used to buy the US an dUk magazine mostly to find ads from their shops that sold gear a whole lot cheaper than in my country.

19:57 The *Lone Wolf* _MidiTap_ is a device with 4 MIDI Ins and 4 MIDI Outs. The MidiTap is similar to a *Roland* _A-880_ but with user programmable patches. It allows the user to name configuration patches with MIDI In, MIDI Out, MIDI channel, continuous controller settings, etc, and switch patches on the fly using the front panel or through MIDI program change messages. Like the Roland A-880, the Lone Wolf MidiTap provides for a user programmable way to expand the MIDI 16 channel limitation to 64 channels. Multiple MidiTap units may be chained together to further increase the number of discreet MIDI channels.

@EspenKraft

22 күн бұрын

Thanks for the feedback. Great summary.

Show the "Samplers" Keyboard issue where they show how the same sampled waveform was changed at the samplers output and how it gave each manufacturer a signature sound. A good example is how the Akai's waveform transient is probably why it was preferred for percussion etc. Thanks.

Still own my SY77 from 1990. New screen and USB drive. New life!

Yep this was my era... I remember all those covers... I think the first Keyboard I bought was the one with Tangerine Dream in 1988. Now I have quite a lot from 70s. Those Korg T1 keyboards were tanks!

I bought my first synth, Korg Poly 61, at Caruso Music in Conneticutt. 1984!

great review! I have the programmer connected to 03RW, a massive workflow improvement

Thanks for sharing.

Vince is playing a Roland A-50 Midi Controller(even says this in the article in the yellow area) in the live photos. i actually have this issue, as well as seeing Erasure on the Wild Tour. he used a D-50 for the Innocents Tour though.

10:57 Considering the position of the card slot on the backside it looks more like an A-50 MIDI KEYBOARD CONTROLLER.

@KidMrRemixes

19 күн бұрын

It was the A-50. Good spot. Chris Lowe used the same on PSB 1989 tour. Boring!

That next month “Film Scoring” issue I remember very well and was a great source of info. I have kept my Keyboard magazines (and others) for a long time, but at some point I thought it was wiser to feed the paper recycle chain 😀

@EspenKraft

18 күн бұрын

Too bad as you could easily get $20 or more for each issue now. Sometimes a lot more.

@Listento360

18 күн бұрын

@@EspenKraft I didn’t even know that they’ve become this valuable 😀 I have a theory nowadays that it seems like a good idea to buy 2 pieces of the same “toys” and keep one of them wrapped in the original box. If you keep both 40 years and sell the wrapped version, you will at least have your money back for both items :-)

@EspenKraft

17 күн бұрын

Sounds expensive ;-)

I remember this issue. A year later the store I bought it from hired me. Then I moved out of my parents house. Great memories!

Would be cool if all these old music mags could be found as PDFs. I'm sure there are still nuggets in there.

I've got this one and many others.

Hey Espen, looking at my Feb 06 Keyboard issue that i needed to help with my Fantom x…. “Using re-sampling to create perfect, elastic custom loops.” My manual did not explain how to do this so easily.👍

A correction about the MKS-70: parameter editing via MIDI sysex was possible since day one; it is also well documented in the user manual and the "tone" codes are the same as the JX-8P. The original firmware doesn't implement editing via MIDI CC though. I think you confused the MKS-70 with his brother JX-10 (which was crippled at MIDI implementation). I owned the JX-8P, JX-10 and still own the MKS-70 (since 1987).

I owned a DPM 3 se+ It’s was a good synthesizer, rompler and had sample playback capability and could be expanded with the SX sampling module , great filter. In my opinion, good design idea badly built.

I wonder why you never cared about Yamaha SY synthesizers.SY77,TG77 and especially SY99 are very unique synths.

@ShallRemainUnknown

22 күн бұрын

It is strange indeed, since the SY/TG77 were so advanced in terms of synthesis, both the subtractive PCM side with the very first 24dB/oct and resonant digital filters for 16-bit PCM /samples on ANY piece of gear (actually two independent 12dB/oct filters per OSCILLATOR!), plus the huge advances in FM (filters, user algorithms, etc., called "AFM"), PLUS the direct integration of the two called "RCM". Not to mention all sorts of things like dedicated panning envelopes. Some of the samples were even 44.1kHz (Korg and Roland used strictly 31.25kHz then). Yes, some of the sample ROM wasn't the best, and they should have put better fx processors in the synths. But also for the price compared to Korg (M1/T3) it was fantastic, it had a crazy amount of chips/technology jammed into it, and it was designed very quickly, right after the plug was pulled from the V80 FM workstation. Espen strangely didn't note at 21:11 the very odd ad reading "Sound Source Unlimited is proud to announce the ultimate sounds for the ultimate synthesizer... The Yamaha SY77". Sound Source Unlimited became one of the largest, most prolific, and respected 3rd party soundware companies, and no such company ever really endorsed any one synth over others in particular, so this ad was really strange (but quite accurate)!

@jamesdefrancesco7765

21 күн бұрын

I agree

I thought that was Kevin Bacon! lol

Welcome fellow hoarders!

I had quite a few issues. I bought my Ensoniq EPS 16 Plus because of this mag.

@mitchelstephen7536

22 күн бұрын

Oh yes, and there was a classified section at the back. I bought my Oberheim Xpander from Rouge Music from that in 1992. (And my Emax II from the advertisements a year and a half earlier)