SYNTHETIC WEEK 2024: Preset synth patches are either a blessing or a nightmare depending on one’s programming skill. For many “serious” synthesizers, they constitute a kind of escape: simple spoon-shaped answer choices to impress drunken locals at the local party. Inn Lounge.
However, the vast majority of keyboard players rely on presets to compose and record their arrangements.
It’s no coincidence that the first synthesizer that was successful in sales arrived with the right presets. In fact, Yamaha’s legendary DX7 was also notoriously complicated to program and almost single-handedly introduced the third-party patching industry.
It is the case that a tool is explained through a handful of presets: Korg’s Wavestation is a clever example. Filled to the brim with rhythmic, complex, and motion-filled soundscapes, it’s a safe bet that not many other people have bought a Wavestation. for its bass and Clav sounds.
Some presets have been used (and abused) so much that they’re immediately recognizable, screaming over the noise of the popular music they helped define. So let’s take a look at 10 of the most well-known preset patches, the synths they were provided on, and the songs that etched them into our cultural consciousness.
Before Sequential Circuits introduced the Prophet-5 in 1977, synthesizer presets were rare, mostly relegated to non-programmable tools such as ARP’s Pro Soloist. Sequenial’s clever blend of patch garage and polyphony ensured the P5’s popularity, with an impressive 8,000 sets sold, many of them renowned artists.
One of the musicians was Greg Hawkes of The Cars, who temporarily took advantage of one of Prophet’s nasty oscillator sync presets for the band’s memorable riff that powers Let’s Go, the debut single from their old LP Candy-O. This nasal sound and heart-wrenching main patch, like many of the Prophet’s presets, would be incredibly overused in the years following the instrument’s release.
Released in 1975, the original Polymoog was a 71-note synthesizer that provided split organ-style polyphony and 8 depressing presets. However, this temperamental tool, concerned from the start, found favor with many prominent users, including Rick Wakeman.
However, it was the second and subtle version, the Polymoog Keyboard, that recorded its sonic signature in the history of synthesizers, thanks to one of its other presets, the mythical Vox Humana patch.
This sound was greatly appreciated through Gary Numan, who featured prominently in The Pleasure Principe. It’s the first sound on this album. Ideal for somber soloists and low, bowed string pads, it’s easy to see its appeal.
When Wolfgang Palm introduced his PPG Wave synthesizers in 1981, not many people had heard of such synthesizers before. A fiendishly clever mix of virtual wavetable oscillators and analog filters that only the wealthy elite can afford.
Therefore, although few were sold, those that did seem destined for the charts. Many tool presets will be known with the New Wave of the 80s, with the famous PPG Choir being just one example.
Tangerine Dream used the haunting metallic vocal patch on their old album Exit, and Depeche Mode added it to See You, from their LP, A Broken Frame.
Few synthesizers have achieved such a lasting effect as Yamaha’s DX7. From its exceptional playability to its sterile, knobless front panel, it was nothing like the analog gear that dominated the synthesizer market in 1983.
In fact, it is unlike anything else. With its crisp, high-pitched percussion, crystalline bells, and clinical basses, it’s the ultimate antidote to a decade of analog waveforms.
Unfortunately, the tool that ushered in virtual synthesis would bring with it an impenetrable architecture to the maximum of operators, algorithms, and envelopes, all available through tedious menus and a small screen. So, the good thing is that it was loaded with presets. In fact, max DX7 players have never bothered to create their own sounds and a third-party patching industry has evolved around this tool.
That didn’t stop many ballad enthusiasts from employing the now-famous DX Rhodes emulation, a sound that would be a mandatory inclusion in any and all keyboard workstations for decades to come.
From its launch in 1985, Roland’s Alpha Juno was a harbinger of things to come. Keeping with the Juno call that in the past was related to inexpensive, slider-laden polysynthesizers, the Alpha Juno’s spartan front panel lacked the immediacy of its predecessors. at $895, it was more affordable than the Juno 106 that had preceded it.
Upon its release, it found favor with many cash-strapped musicians, but it’s long-term second-hand buyers who will be zeroing in on a single preset called What The, a buzzing sonic explosion that will be widely known as “Hoover. “
Very popular when it was released in 1987, Roland’s D-50 featured a new subtractive synthesis technique that combines sampled attack transients, synthesized waveforms, and a handful of looped samples that can be mixed, filtered, and processed through EQ, chorus, and reverb. Pertenencias. Es a brilliant recipe, devoured by no less than 200,000 musicians from all over the world.
A number of D-50 presets were subsequently released into the air, but none are as immediately recognizable as Digital Native Dance, a shaky atmospheric patch that began as a novelty devised by one of Roland’s PCM engineers. Lead patch programmers Eric Persing and Adrian Scott were very impressed and used the loop to create what would become the signature sound of the D-50, which would be used by everyone from OMD to Miles Davis.
The 4-operator TX81Z was another synthesizer that was largely unknown at the time and popular with dance music makers years after its release.
Much of their newfound notoriety is based entirely on that biting bass sound. Without apologies digitally, the LatelyBass patch would make its way into countless Italo disco tracks, as well as some pop songs. Producer Eliot (Spice Girls) Kennedy knew he would stick with one TX81Z just for this sound, while Babyface’s two out-of-tune TX81Zs would be permanently plugged into the patch. And, of course, there’s Madonna’s Vogue.
Released in 1988, Korg’s M1 replaced the synthesizer industry for good. Designed as an all-in-one workstation, the M1 featured multi-sampled tools of unprecedented realism and combined them with a complicated multi-track sequencer and a wide variety of virtual effects.
Never before has so much production force been concentrated in a single instrument. Relatively convincing pianos, organs, basses and guitars, full drums with velocity sensitivity and plenty of evocative timbres have made the M1 the must-have synthesizer.
It included a lot of now-cliché presets, adding Universe, one of the most productive chorus patches we’ve heard at the time. Even Queen, who proudly proclaimed that their records lacked synthesizers, couldn’t make the call.
If a ROMpler had the strength to go beyond the limitations of pattern-reading synthesis, it was Wavestation. Why, then, did so many players feel the desire to get stuck on Ski Jam, the first and identifiable patch?
Mind you, some would have possibly pressed the rightmost slider button several times to land on The Wave Song, almost a demonstration of the instrument’s rugged wave sequencer, but that amounts to the same curious lack of imagination.
Admittedly, programming the Wavestation can simply be an exercise in frustration, and the sound is really great, but this specific beat was ubiquitous in the early 1990s and made its way into many pop songs, soundtracks, and identifying each and every one. local radio station.
Virtual analog synthesizers were precisely unusual in those days, but there was once an exciting new rarity that promised an idealized edition of classic analog synthesis in a modern, stable, and reliable package.
Roland’s JP-8000 was one of the first tools of its kind to appear on the scene. While paying homage to the tools of the past, the JP-8000 included many modern subtleties, such as the ability to memorize button and cursor movements and the upcoming Super Saw waveform to be overused, which consisted of seven out-of-tune sawtooth waves played from a single oscillator.
Their highly imitated Super Saw patches would be a favorite among trance producers.
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