02- The Baldwin Fun Machine- Soloists (presets) part 1
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.พ. 2025
- Here is a demonstration of the sound and functionality of the presets found on the Baldwin Fun Machine.
The theme music for this demonstration was created entirely with the Baldwin Fun Machine in combination with a small amount of rhythm parts assembled out of GarageBand drum loops.
This video was funded by the Patreon supporters of Automatic Gainsay. Support the creation of this video and all of the Automatic Gainsay videos that have helped you by becoming an Automatic Gainsay supporter on Patreon!
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That noise and hiss is the vintage magic oozing out
Whoever designed this did a great job for their time!
As a Queens of the Stone Age fan, I AM SO EXCITED for this series! I've also really been curious about how transistor organs work.
You know it's going to be good when named Fun Machine. Cool stuff, thanks Marc!
I love the broad concept of a "Fun Machine". Looks like it's out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Side note - it has the same on/off switch as the ARP synths from the Odyssey onwards.
I thought I recognized that thing! :D
My first job out of college was selling these at a Baldwin Dealer's concession in a department store in Brooklyn. The year was 1975 .
I love how the old home organ has a waterfall keyboard, which is something a lot of keyboardists frequently cry for.
Literally could not be any more fun.
Hahahaha I found one of these on a sidewalk for free a few years ago, still have it 😆 really is fun!
Thanks Marc Doty Keep up the Good Work 👍✌
I take advantage of the paraphonic fx of the VC-340, interesting video, thank you.
Hey there! I recently got a fun machine. It turns on, but it doesnt make any sound other than a faint hum. Does anyone know how I could fix it?
The noise is called vibe.... people pay extra for that in the DAW age
Nice vid.
Have you played a yamaha D85 or E70?
D85s are amazing.
Obviously Baldwin, a piano manufacturer, didn't design the electronics for this thing.. it would be interesting to research the provenance and development of this product. Dollars to donuts it was a Maestro type situation where they integrated components from other companies. I wonder who designed the built in drum machine. I love those pre-1980 cheeseball organ drum sounds.
My guess is the hiss and distortion is old capacitors that need to be replaced.
No such thing as distortion and hiss, it's called "analogue warmth". Package it all in a VST, and call it The Baldwin Warmizer. You'll thank me later... with some fat royalty cheques ;)
I have one very similar to this that I am having to sell. How much could I expect to get for it? It is in good/excellent condition.
I've found that the answer to that question depends very much on what size city you live in, and what your local keyboard music scene is into... :/
'Baldwin' always' did a good job on producing interesting keyboard sounds'.My family had a Baldwin organ in the early 60's and my dad chose it over a 'Hammond' because he liked the sound better.Later,my brother and I wished he had bought an M-3!Ha!
This sounds like others of the type, like the Genie We tended to evaluate them in terms of organs since they were being sold by organ companies. With the exception of the flute, it doesn't sound much like the other instruments that it was supposedly imitating The predecessor to Bob Ross, Bill Alexander, used something like it in his theme music, so it may have found a home in novelty songs. It would have went somewhere in the late '60's. Besides, the Polymoog came out a year later and even if you told us it had a Moog filter in it, what good would it be since you couldn't do anything with it? There was also the RMI electronid instruments like the Rock-si-chord and even home organs often had percussion voices like piano, guitar and banjo as well as auto-wah/wah-wah and the built-in rhythm presets marked it as a "toy". You could have fun with it but not do the heavyweight stuff. Do you know that for the last few decades one of the sought-after instruments has been the toy piano One such was used in 1962 in POOR LITTLE PUPPET by Cathy Carroll. Besides, at the time, we were too procupied with the 'string machines", which also produced brass and you could do stuff with the filter
I have played a very wide variety of organs. My assertion that this one is different is born of experience. Home organs simply never seemed to have the character this weird thing has. Granted, I haven't played all of the super-simplified "beginner" organs, like, for example, the Hammond one. Still, this organ's filter arrangement isn't like the "this brass is obviously employing a filter" sort of organ stop. This filter can be applied to almost any preset on the device. And, as you'll see, unlike most organs, these presets can be chosen TOGETHER resulting in totally different patches. It is simply NOT like other organs, which is why it is much easier to think of it in terms of a simple synthesizer.
It would matter if it had a Moog filter in it because the overarching joy of a Moog filter isn't its FUNCTION but its SOUND. I'm going to guess that Baldwin didn't tread on the Moog patent, though... it might be a diode ladder filter. But I'll find out. Still, as you'd find out if you watched this whole series instead of the first half of the first video, there is much to be done with the filter even if it doesn't have individual settings. AND, I have no doubt at all that anyone with some electronics skill could make this filter into a fully-controllable filter without much effort.
AND, as you would undoubtedly discover by watching this entire series, if not from these first three videos alone, my point ISN'T that this is the same as a fully-functional typical polyphonic synthesizer. My point is, as it has been stated NUMEROUS times, that if you were a musician who wanted polyphonic synthesizer-sounding chords in your rock song, you could have used this to GREAT success and still had every bit of the impact that anything at at that time when complex monophonic patches, let alone complex polyphonic patches weren't what was exciting people.
@@automaticgainsay By 1974, the type was kind of pegeionholed by musicians Now, musicians did not really understand enough of synthesis to distinguish one filter from the next. Also, organs were generally understood to let you pile up voices (in organ terms, a "voice" is a timbre/frequency rgeister as a unit; this was before the umltiphinic synth). Most of these intruments did not let you pile up voices and most of the voices were not that true to what they were labelled as. As to filters, those of us who were a bit more into the intrument (organ) nad some understanding. In a 1968 issue of RADIO ELECTRONICS, Richard Dorf of Schober Organs wote an articl on horgan filters and how they shaped the timbre of organ voices (Trumpet, oboe, strings etc). I also had some experience. We had a 1955 Hammond Chord Organ. This had a two-channel treble KB On was two polyphonic voices: Flute and Strings and a monophonic, high note priority voice that was controlled by a row of tabs that set frequency register Tenor, Alto, Suprano separatley or combined, a "woodwinds" tab that changed the waveform such that if one of the frequency ranges was in, it was a square wave and if more than one was in, it was some kind of narrow pulse. and ending in 5 'voice" tabs running from Mellow to Brilliant It was on this instrument that I experimented with the characteristics of sound at age 13 in late '58 amd
59. I was not using it for music, just to learn about sounds. id use it for musical purposes beginning in '67. You might youtube it up to see what is was like, but that monophonic voice was definitly a primitive form of synthesizer Beginnnig in late '66, I became interested in organs, first because of REE RUBBER BALL and then by virtue of the Doors. Also, by mid '74. Moog was producint the Orbit for use by Thomas in 3 KB models,then the free-standing Satellite, ARP had the Soloist and Roland had the SH-2000. These were non-VC units. Also, some of the organ companies were including string and brass Solina-style systems in their organs.In late '6i7. Sowrey put out something calle an electronic piano , whicvh looked like a piano with 5 tabs wich made sounds approximatating pianos and harpsichords with the last tabe labelled "organ" wich only changed the envelope on on-off. The Vox Baroque had a set of voices like piano et all and some company pit out a double-manual instrument that looked like a Compact Duo called the "Recital" the top deck of which was all piano type voices. As to the kerfuffle of "organ" vs sunth. That kind of began with the Polymoog, I recommend THE WHOLE SYNTHESIZER CATALOG compiled from KEYBOARD Magazine articles. The Geni/FunMachine instruments were regarded as a kind of low-grade synth since, for the most part, they voices were one-at-a-time but the polyphony had us flummoxed. I don't thenk the monphonic Roldand SH=5 (or was it seven) a true synth since the various "footages" could be piled up. However, is a synthesizer defined by the nature of the oscillators or sound source such that non-VCO's define a machine out of the category. Many modular and other synths had external audion source and trigger inputs so that one could feed in an external sound and it would share the filter and articulation with the native osc's and how many hybrids, like the ESQ's are there?
Another instrument you might care to look at is the Suzuki Qchord, the follow-on to the Omnichord. It looks like something out of STAR TREK. There are plenty of TH-cam vids and it was listed in the Bintage Synth Esplorer. I should look there for the Baldwin Fun Machine. It would be great if Suzuki would resurrect it in modern, computer-based form. It had MIDI and an output jack and apparently had been used professionally and has a following much like the Optagan. I'd like to get my hads on one of those although the native speaker and a couple of the 100 boices sucked. It could benefit from being a rompler
Doesn't bother me if it sounds like an organ. I love those old analog organs.
I worked in the factory when I was 22 years old. My task was to test all the equipment and detect probable faults or defects in the assembly.
In those days it was a nice instrument and if you knew how to play well, you could even liven up a wedding party with that thing... but nowadays its sound seems to me very artificial and poor.
It was a nice time in my life....
Thank you SO much for posting your experience! It is so valuable to hear from someone who is involved in the history.
While the sound may be quite dated, it's still pretty amazing for instruments doing similar things around the same time!
always fun when they call sounds like "Flute", guitar, piano" etc and they sound nothing like that...hehe
I guess this was typical of this period :)
Maybe the distortion could be fixed, it's a cool machine
It probably is dirt in a button or knob, somewhere. I kind of like it. :D
@@automaticgainsay It is kind of funny how, for all the exciting new stuff, people still get enjoyment out of the more 'limited' synths, whilst forgetting how much music was (and is) made with them still. Except shit techno, which is quite popular.
@@automaticgainsay Lucky to have it, nice sounds off it