Sounds so good. The EX5 really does feel like the pinnacle of something. Oozes quality

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

You're right - it's all the tech Yamaha had developed by then thrown into one keyboard.

@serhiymarchenko8361

11 ай бұрын

That was the last time when Engineering was above Marketing at Yamaha. On other hand, they just wanted to survive… People were not ready for FS1R, VL, VP and EX5 FDSP. Can’t blame Yamaha for that. The fact they invested in and developed those technologies should not be underestimated.

@fortheloveofnoise

11 ай бұрын

​@@serhiymarchenko8361Yamaha is a sleeping giant....they make some of the best speakers for the price.

@tuesss

3 ай бұрын

@@mr_floydst Not exactly: it doesn't do AFM, let alone RCM, but I guess you already know that having made some videos about the SY77 ;) I still want the EX5, but I don't think I would ever trade my SY99 for one. I wish there was a synth with all of these features while also sounding as magical as the SY77/TG77/SY99. Especially since keeping both the SY99 and the EX5 requires a lot of space...

@SeverityOne

Ай бұрын

@@tuesss So get an EX5R. It's still surprisingly large, owing to the very large PCB (the synth consists mostly of air inside), but smaller than the EX5.

the EX5 is one of the nicest sounding digital synths ever made.

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

Thanks for watching! You're right :)

@jjrtech7806

9 ай бұрын

If the devil plays a Buchla Easel, then St Peter plays an EX5 in silver. It is the sound of angels singing.

@0e0

9 ай бұрын

it's true...especially the breathy vocal pads. p.s. the Devil plays the Buchla 100 series...because he's a jackass that has one of those. @@jjrtech7806

@SeverityOne

Ай бұрын

@@jjrtech7806 Now my name happens to be Peter, and I happen to own a silver EX5, but to call me a saint is too much credit. 🙂

Amazing machine. Heavy. I love the trumpet of he EX5!

@mr_floydst

Ай бұрын

Yeah, this is a full metal synth! ;-) The VL stuff is great, and even AWM2 is editable to the very last parameter in this box.

Still got mine although it’s used as my home studio controller… but back in the day it was a great gigging synth. And heavy.

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

Yes, this board is HEAVY. And for that, it's surprisingly fragile. Most of them have damaged edges. ;-)

@dkijc

3 ай бұрын

@@mr_floydst Hey.... Are you peeking in to my studio?? How did you know about my EX5's corner cracks???!!!! lol

It is an excellent and amazing machine 🎹😎! I am also a proud owner of a EX5❤.

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

Thanks for watching and congrats on being the owner of this increasingly rare keyboards!

Great patch 👍

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

Thanks 👍It's one of the performances that's part of the factory set.

I can't help but diverge into the DS9 theme tune any time I load this one up. Many hours just randomly noodling on this with 'faery' or 'Rubystrng' from the SY85 as it's companion.

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

This sound immediately suggests "SCI-FI!" for sure. :-)

Beautiful sound😌

@mr_floydst

6 ай бұрын

Thanks for listening!

Sounds gorgeous! 🔥💯❤️💯🔥

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

Thanks for listening!

Truly one of Yamaha's greats. I don't understand why they don't produce a modern version. The CS6x, S80, and early Motifs could at least load the PLG daughter cards allowing some synthesis engine expansion. But nothing since the EX5 has offered such a range...

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

I once read Blake Angelos' blog / briefly chatted with him behind the scenes and he stated that customers simply where overwhelmed by the "tons of synth" approach in this keyboard and never utilized it - they needed some fresh sounds and a good support for live playing in their workstation. EX5 is a fantastic synth, but all the CPU/DSP use makes it's timing quite erratic, so the sequencer is prone to lags if you don't create your performances carefully. Their approach of distributing the synth engines to extension cards fixed that in later models, and eventually AWM2 sounded so good that most of the other engines were kind of redundant.

@spectre.garden

11 ай бұрын

@@mr_floydst so the take away is we cant have nice things because of the Bell Curve. SMH

@fortheloveofnoise

4 ай бұрын

@@spectre.garden I got my EX5 for $250 before the pandemic....if you look hard enough you can find them for less than double that now (mine needed repairs BTW)

Great synth 🎹

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

Thanks for listening! You're right. :-)

I kept mine for the same reason - this fantastic patch. So Vangelish...

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

Thanks for watching! It has some more great patches ("Asian Rain" comes to mind) ;-)

I had the EX5 for a while, I thought the keyboard and pitchbend/mod wheels were fantastic- great feel. The sounds too were really good, there is a quality to the sounds that still holds up IMO. But it was just too big and heavy for me. I now have a Kawai K5000W- I think the keyboard on this feels even better, the best keyboard feel (and pitch/mod) on a synth ever. A very quirky synth too, I absolutely love its unique character.

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

Thanks for sharing! You propably would enjoy @snupps synth channel ( www.youtube.com/@snuppssynthchannel ) :-)

Sad memories from watching this, but great Blade Runner playing! I had the same blue color EX5 (loved the key action) back when i lived in the UK and our pet Vinnie peed on it and make the whole thing short curcuit! 😪

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

Oh noes ;-) I hope your pet wasn't "damaged" in the process. One can replace machinery, but not living beings...

@EgoShredder

11 ай бұрын

I bet you locked your studio room after that lol

@jezgomez

11 ай бұрын

​@@mr_floydstI also hope Vinnie wasn't a human 😢

@fuckcensorship69

2 ай бұрын

​@@mr_floydst pets are easily replaced. If an animal ruined my ex5, it would be dinner that night

Shine on you crazy ex

@mr_floydst

7 ай бұрын

Beware of the crazy EX. ;-)

I got my EX5 in 1997 and have used it a lot in bands and for recording. It is a great sounding keyboard but is REALLY heavy to lug around. My only real complaint is the user manual. I swear it was written in Japanese then translated to Russian and then back to English. I also have a Yamaha PSR-280 which has some great sounds. The manual for it is super easy to understand.

@mr_floydst

6 ай бұрын

I thought the manual wasn't too bad. Not as entertaining as Waldorf's for example, but still quite informative. Only the FDSP stuff is barely explained in established terms ("wave folding", "zero-hertz operator"), which is a shame because that's where the really good stuff is at. And yes - this thing is heavay. Worst thing is if you accidentally hit something the side parts will break.

I use my EX5 for this kind of sounds. VL and FDSP are great sounds

I loved the ex5 . It is very underrated synth and still not to expensive I midi it with a korg triton and Roland xp 50 to produce very nice sounds together

@mr_floydst

10 ай бұрын

Thanks for watching! That's a nice setup for sure. :)

@andywatts8654

3 ай бұрын

I just got a perfect one for 450gbp

This is the musical intro that was used for the presentation of the new Yamaha Montage M.

@mr_floydst

8 ай бұрын

Hi, thanks for watching! Can you point me to the video please? I'd like to take a look :-)

@djfilippo1

8 ай бұрын

kzread.info/dash/bejne/c6yN1s-jgNawpto.htmlsi=0EZTbusQswl8GZVD

@danieleos

8 ай бұрын

@@mr_floydst kzread.info/dash/bejne/c6yN1s-jgNawpto.htmlsi=hNUClwrlJo418vyU

Absolutely incredible ✨

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

Thanks for listening!

@hireality

11 ай бұрын

@@mr_floydst based on your experience, what current Yamaha model comes close to / replaces EX5?

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

The last synth that had the PLG card slots was the MOTIF ES from 2003, discontinued in 2007. It could do all the things the EX5 can do apart from FDSP, and you had to buy all those expensive cards to make it so. The MODX is superb synth with it's AWM2 and FM-X engines, and it's priced competitively. With KZread creators hyping up all those "tiny boxes", it's often forgotten that those big workstation like keyboards have decades of synth building experience in them... ;-) (edit: so many typos. Need to get another coffee)

@hireality

11 ай бұрын

@@mr_floydst thank you indeed for your feedback. I enjoy being your subscriber and follow your work and learn a lot. I’m a huge Yamaha fan. My son is being trained in classical music / piano in a local Yamaha Music School. My guitars are Yamaha. Big respect for the lovely Japanese brand that is probably the most popular and well respected brand in sound and music worldwide 🇯🇵 Being from Sweden, I’m learning the basics of FM by experimenting on my Elektron Model:Cycles. Keep up the great work. Shine on ☀️

so good i had to have an EX5 and a EX5R....

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

Thanks for watching and congrats on owning both of them.

It's gorgeous for a rompler.

@mr_floydst

4 ай бұрын

Thanks for watching! Not only for a ROMpler :)

@teddym2808

4 ай бұрын

@@mr_floydst I know I know, I was being a bit facetious. I had an EX5R and I can't believe I sold it all those years ago and desperately want it back. Same happened with AN1X and I was lucky I found a flawless one in 2016 and I will never let it go again. Yamaha make great stuff, then AND now.

Hey floyd good to hear from you😊 are you going to make a video about the bones of this patch!? (pretty please)

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

Hi, thanks for watching! Well well, it's been a while since a made a EX5 video and my overall video style certainly has evolved in the meantime. We'll see. :-)

@hh-ob5bo

11 ай бұрын

@@mr_floydst i know. Its all good!

@mr_floydst

10 ай бұрын

@@hh-ob5bo That video is online now. The newest one.

Shades of CS-80

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

Yes indeed!

I miss my EX5, if only for that wonderful keybed. (It's rare to get a good keybed in that size these days) I didn't get along with the synth engines, though, so I sold it. I had upgraded it with more memory, upgraded ROMs, and a SCSI drive, too. Oh, and it was a beast weight-wise. :)

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

Awww, but yeah, it's always a matter of personal tastes. (BTW what's wrong with KZreads reply suggestion bot which recommended to answer your comment with "brilliant" or "good choice") :-)

@Psychlist1972

11 ай бұрын

@@mr_floydst lol. You must have the "kick 'im when he's down" setting turned on in KZread ;)

Well, you weren't wrong. I just bought 5 of them to play this patch in unison!

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

Thanks for listening, and i.pinimg.com/originals/ca/1d/21/ca1d215c591d2356acb0b071583798d1.png ;-)

My EX7 has been sitting in the corner for quite a while, should dig it up again ;-).

@RobbieNerve

11 ай бұрын

The only thing bugging me about the EX is that it runs out of memory / cpu so quick. Which, was totally acceptable in the late 90s.

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

Thanks for watching! It's not really great for making complex multitimbral tracks, but used for playing piano (or synth performances like this one), it's fun and expressive.

awwwwwwwwesome!

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

Thanks!

Is this some kind of Deckard situation?

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

Well, I wasn't clinging to the edge of a skyscraper for my dear life while recording this ;-)

Everything you could want in a 90's era synth is in the EX5.

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

That's correct. Having used a lot of the "so hot on KZread now" synths, I'd argue the EX5 wipes the floor with most of those feature- and soundwise. But it's sequencer is quite a letdown due to lags / timing issues and it's big and heavy. Also, it's SCSI implementation is horrible. Waiting 20 minutes for loading 64mb of data makes you wonder what they were thinking.

@serhiymarchenko8361

11 ай бұрын

Slow SCSI was Yamaha long-going issue. Many devices suffered from that (A-series, SU700, EX-series, MOTIF, RS7000). I think they never fixed it - just dropped SCSI at all in MOTIF ES instead. With USB it was faster, but still not as it could have been. I guess it was due to slow (saturated?) bus and/or controller used.

@serhiymarchenko8361

11 ай бұрын

@@mr_floydstI assume during EX5 development 64MB was large amount of RAM (pretty expensive) and they thought nobody will really use it. Also, speed could be worsened during development when CPU was “loaded” with other tasks. I think EX5 would be better with 96-voice element polyphony, instead of 126. But (I guess) marketing really wanted number “128”.

The EX-5 is a great synth. Too bad the processors were too slow. My S30 has the same problem of note delay when layering voices.

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

More DSP / CPU power would have been great indeed. But taken for what it is, it's still pretty good!

@Andronicus2007

11 ай бұрын

Korg Z1 is even worse/slower!

Nicely done! Is this patch included in your "Yamaha EX5 patches"? I have the EX5r. The only thing that's missing there is the 3rd control wheel.

@mr_floydst

8 ай бұрын

Hi, this is not by me, it's on one of the original demo disks that came with the EX5. You can find those on www.ex5tech.co.uk/patches.html for example.

@jlindborg1105

8 ай бұрын

@@mr_floydst Do you remember the patch name?

@mr_floydst

8 ай бұрын

The patch name is "Celebration" and it's on the demo diskette. It's one of the performances. You can also use the "Oasis" patch in the I1/I2 somewhere, which is the brass sound only, without the choir.

@jlindborg1105

8 ай бұрын

@@mr_floydst Thank you! Found them. :)

Great synth, I've had my EX5 for many years now.

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

Great to hear! There's still nothing like FDSP. (Which is quite hard to learn because the manual uses lofty terms that don't describe what's happening on a technical level).

@KeltyVince

11 ай бұрын

@@mr_floydst Indeed, tbh I haven't programmed it extensively, probably due to having to many other synths, on another note, I've noticed you have a few other synth I also have, seems our curiosity has put us on a similar path of collection, I enjoy your video's and tutorials, great work !

Dude, can I use sysex and PC to inject/modify /restore my EX5? Thanks

@mr_floydst

3 ай бұрын

Yes you can (see my answer on your other post)

OMG. The return of the Blue Beast...

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

It's never been gone :-)

Nice programming! Long live Big Deep Blue!

@mr_floydst

8 ай бұрын

Thanks - but that's not my work, it's one of the factory presets. You already saw the video I dissected this in, though. ;-)

@productamadeus8745

7 ай бұрын

@@mr_floydst Oh cool! Have you ever had to replace the audio outputs on an EX5? Is it hard?

Does it have looping envelops like the SY77?

@mr_floydst

9 ай бұрын

There's a loop function on the EX5's envelopes, yes - see manual page 96, for example. I have a SY99 here but I didn't have time to dig into the synth's engine to tell you if there are differences. (Perhaps ask me again on my inevitable SY99 video). ;-)

I think it was used in songs like He Wasn't Man Enough by Toni Braxton, Try Again by Aaliyah, Survivor by Destiny's Child and Without Me by Eminem. I could be wrong

@mr_floydst

5 ай бұрын

Thanks for pointing that out! I'm really bad at pop music history.

@elizabethpate

5 ай бұрын

@@mr_floydst I see. So aren't you good at Hip Hop music history? Sorry if you don't like me asking this

@mr_floydst

5 ай бұрын

@@elizabethpate I'm not good at knowing which production tech was used in particular songs (regardless of their genre). I know these songs, but I don't consider myself knowledgeable in hip hop, or to be honest, anything pop/rock/r&b/whatever. I could not and I should not make videos trying to explain how a certain song was produced. ;-) But I really like to listen to other people telling these stories!

@elizabethpate

5 ай бұрын

@@mr_floydst Okay. Btw, I think I Can't Touch This by HC Hammer used the Korg M1

@mr_floydst

5 ай бұрын

@@elizabethpate The M1 and the D50 were all over late 80s and early 90s music, so that's very likely.

Is this a factory patch? Which bank and number?

@mr_floydst

3 ай бұрын

This is one of the performance patches on the first of the four disks that came with the EX5. If you don't have those, please visit www.ex5tech.co.uk Patch is called "Celebration", as seen in the videos description.

@dectomusic

3 ай бұрын

@@mr_floydst thx for the reply, I got those. Was asking for the bank and number :)

Nice patch. Would you share it or sell?

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

It's the "Celebration" patch, which came preinstalled on the original machine. You'll find it on the demo disk if you overwrote it.

@fortheloveofnoise

11 ай бұрын

​@@mr_floydstThe guy I bought mine from used the synth for soundtracks....makes sense....I have to look for this patch now.

Does anyone know, where I can download this sound! It sounds absolutely big! 👍😎🇦🇹

@mr_floydst

4 ай бұрын

It's on the 4 diskettes that came with the Yamaha EX5. If you don't have them, see www.ex5tech.co.uk

@rudolfkrebs2311

4 ай бұрын

Thank you very much! I have them! 👍😎🇦🇹

@rudolfkrebs2311

4 ай бұрын

​@@mr_floydst Thank you very much! I have them! 👍😎🇦🇹

i Tell people that Roland synths are NOTTT so innovative and they look at me like . . . well, there you have it, the Unsung hero EX5 !! The closest thing that attempted to do the same (in that Era/age) was the Ensoniq VFX with its Dark Soundscapes patches, but this sounds MUCH more CLEAN and the engineering behind the effects and panning are FAR more creative than on the Ensoniq. It is a pity that the DX7 took first prize when you realize that the EX5 was in fact FAR more capable ! But obivously No ONE wanted to carry such a HEAVY steel box around, so size and specifically weight . . . DOES matter after all 💁💁.

@mr_floydst

6 ай бұрын

Yes. This is a studio synth. If you even look at it too sharply, the plastic enclosure will snap. :-) Still, one of my all-time-favourite synths. I will never sell this one.

Is this a factory patch?

@mr_floydst

7 ай бұрын

Hi, thanks for watching - this is a "performance patch" which should be preinstalled on a factory EX5. If it isn't on yours, you'll find it on the EX5 demo disks that came with the synth or can be downloaded from www.ex5tech.co.uk

@replikantofficial

7 ай бұрын

@@mr_floydst I have an EX7 actually - do you think it would be on it?

@replikantofficial

7 ай бұрын

@@mr_floydstFound it! Cheers

Giving me blade runner vibes.

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

Thanks for listening! You're right, that was my intention here. The EX5 has some great-sounding filters (though they're digital of course) allowing for some really expressive sounds. They used that for some CS80 references (the synth that Vangelis used for that Blade Runner brass lead sound) to great effect.

Would enjoy learning how this patch was constructed (especially the bass part, if that's different). Maybe describe it in a video like you did here: kzread.info/dash/bejne/ZXZ6lNKcmZDJnag.html

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

Hi Glenn, thanks for your input. I think I'll do this, it's the kind of video I personally enjoy making most.

Sounds like the Patch KEON used on HYDROPLANE Treat Your Ears go take a Listen

@mr_floydst

11 ай бұрын

Ah, thanks for the suggestion. Awesome track! ( kzread.info/dash/bejne/p62k2sOJh7mzks4.html ) You're right, it's quite similar.

A great board, it was heavy, but the 76 key version, i had to help the wife carry it!

@mr_floydst

4 ай бұрын

Thanks for watching! Then, Sir, you are a true gentleman (and your wife has a great taste in musical instruments). ;-)

That sounds outstanding! Any synth can achieve that type of patch? I have a Kawai K1m and a Volca FM

@mr_floydst

10 ай бұрын

Hi! You can get close for sure, but this kind of tech creating those very subtle distortions in the saw wave lead sound is unique to EX5. Some people asked me to explain this in a video, and that's what I'll do. ;-)