Well this was just delightful. Loved your Amiga sampler video some years ago too and this feels like a perfect sort of follow-up. Glad to see you back on YT and I’m stoked to see part two!
I wish I had seen this video in 1988, when I was 12 years old. Alas, for lack of anyone around to tell me and for lack of the Internet, I discovered the joy of MIDI only 25 years later. Oh well, never too late !
My middle school choir teacher used one of those proprietary-floppy-format Roland boxes to record her accompaniment and then play it back while we practiced! I remember taking the floppy disk for a song I really liked, and then being extremely disappointed when the format wasn't MIDI.
Great video ! My obsession for Atari ST Cubase (esp. v2) is so high that I created a cheap SD card adapter for the ST (electronics and all): the ACSI2STM. This was a 3 years journey of reverse engineering, painful tweaking, and a bit of help from a small community. After 4 versions, and a few dozen nights spent understanding the hardware and the horrible OS of the ST, I have something that can actually provide full SD card compatibility, up to 2TB per card, and removes/works around most ST's filesystem bugs. What a journey, but well worth it !
As a teen in the 80s, I had no clue what all this was, how it worked, etc. So I stayed away from synths and workstations and just played acoustic instruments. Decades later this video just brought it all together and now it makes sense. I understand now how it works and I really appreciate it. Thank you.
Man ! You just made an awesome 1993 fighting game stage track ! I really hope you compose for some retro video game projects in the future ! You'd nail it !
Genuinely... these videos set the bar for what a TH-cam video can be. These are a joy to watch which is why I rewatch them constantly. Your passion for the subject matter, your cahrisma and the production value make for an experience you dont get a lot on this platform. So yeah Thanks for making these (:
The compositions in this video, and your career in general, are insane and deep. Being limited to only four tracks really pressurized your creativity into a laser.
In 1990 I owned an Atari STe, a Roland D70 and a Roland SC55 and no mixing gear whatsoever. And my first software was Steinberg Pro 24, the predecessor of Cubase. When later Cubase came out, it was a complete revelation.
My dad, a musician, bought an Atati ST the same week I was born in 1988, so I grew up on the things and have had an affection for them ever since. But man he used that thing for Midi with Notator and the C-Lab Unitor-N midi port peripheral (he had that roland MT-32 as well, and a bunch of Roland guitar synth stuff too) well into the late '90s when he then replaced the ST with.....an Atari STacy, the laptop/luggable version of the ST which he used until like 2006. I remember he did all sorts of really cool shit with the MIDI capabilities like sequencing the entire score to Little Shop of Horrors for a high-school musical production. He wound up selling the STacy to a computer museum because it was one of the rare 4MB RAM/40MB HDD models and has a very low digit serial number. Still 18 years of use out of a platform ain't too bad.
this is actually quite bizarre, ive seen your videos before, it wasnt until near the end i realised you are ctrix... dude, you are what got me started with music on the amiga, your protracker mods were an exellent source of samples and techniques for me as a young kid with no money but eager to learn
The first keyboard I ever bought was a PSS680 in 1988. The first sound module I bought was an MT32. My first computer sequencer was an ST520 using Pro 12. A year later I was working as the synth/hi tech guy at a local music store. I sold two K1s to a couple of young lads in 1990. Thirty three years later and all three of us are still friends and still making music. It was a nice trip down memory lane. Thanks.
This takes me back... the Atari ST was the main staple of my studio for such a long time as a cash strapped young man. I started with the Alesis MMT-8 sequencer and then graduated to the Atari with Emagic Notator Logic (before it was bought by Apple). My keyboard was a DX11 without velocity sensitivity. I did have use of an MT-32 for a while, but my drum machine was a TR-606 Drumatix - frickin' loved it. My most expensive purchase back then was a Roland U-20 keyboard which really pushed my music forward... I could go on, but thank you for this trip down memory lane
This video never ends. Just after I say "wow! What a video" It continues to show another cool thing. Because the video is so dense it felt like I was watching this for an hour. Once again, great job!
The synth sounds on that Yamaha are unlocking ancient childhood memories. I must have had something from the same line as a kid, though certainly a cheaper model. I didn't know what I was doing with it, and it was long gone before I started learning about making music for real.
I had an Atari ST - plugged in into a Yamaha keyboard and used the cubase software. While on a plane I got talking to a guy who was a professor of music and we talked computers, music and MIDI - he recommended Cakewalk software, a Roland Sound Canvas sound generator and a midi interface to connect to a PC. I was in a music store in LA and asked about the Sound Canvas - it was pricey but after being shown the inbuilt demo tunes - wow! - take my money! - that was in 1992. I still use it these days for piano sounds layered with an electric piano. I also stayed with Cakewalk , upgrading software and PC as it grew from a DOS based MIDI editor to a very powerful top of the range DAW, Sonar Platinum - until Gibson dumped it. I vowed never to buy another Gibson product after that - guitar, plectrum or polishing cloth - NO more Gibson - ever.
Hey, I beat that Atari ST with an Atari 400 and a Roland D-5. I special-ordered the Atari with 16K because it came with 8 (yes, K not G or T). Bought it with money from cutting lawns and delivering newspapers. I even wrote a custom Sys-ex program to change the D-5’s parameters. Good memories, thanks for bringing them back!
If you were mainly using the Atari 400 as a patch changer, then it would have been a great value synth for 1989! It's amazing how long some of those 8-bit machines hung around for. They had solid accessible software and did the job, so you can see why people didn't bother with the expensive 16-bit gear!
These videos inspired me to start making music after a decade of false starts. I would download Ableton, get overwhelmed, and quit out of frustration. It was so helpful to see a walkthrough on a simpler interface. More importantly, you're the first person who made it look fun. So glad you're making videos again!
Oh yeah, the MIDI interface and the very crisp SM124 was the main reason I bought a 1040STF back then. It was perfect to learn programming and also to make music. I had a Yamaha DS55 and a Roland R-5, and still have both. Software, there was Steinberg Twelve, a budget light version of Twenty-Four, and yes, I still have it ;) But my fav thing was to program stuff myself and send MIDI events with GFA-Basic. Great times, thanks for the video!
@@CTRIX64 You could absolutely do this! Back then I made a sound editor for that Yamaha DS55 with envelopes and such, and it mostly was a matter of understanding the midi specs in the manual. Unfortunately, the DS-55 isn't much of a synth, more like a nice keyboard by 80's amateur standards, with 61 keys. Today, I basically use it as a giant vintage MIDI controller, alongside a Push2 and some others. :D But I guess the main thing was, this setup was the beginning of my lifelong journey in making electronic music, with all its ups and downs. :)
@@CTRIX64 GFA BASIC guy here too. What a great programming environment! I so wanted GFA 3, but GFA 2 that came on a coverdisk of ST Format mag was pure gold to me for a few years. Hint - try to find the compiler, to compile your .lst to a .prg. My brother bought it for my 13th birthday when we was working for a summer in London.... Superb video. Thank you!
I bought my first ATARI FM (4MB) 1987 and still own an Atari STE 1040 and MT32 with all these programs. I took them up couple of years ago and connected to an Akai S3000 (and MT32) and voila! Everything was like the old days 🙂. It was nice to see this video which brings back old memories. Well done! Thanks!
You really make me even more proud to have bought my pss-680 on ebay years ago, just cause it allowed me more control of stuff that my 470 gave me. Didn't realize when buying it how capable it was controlling my other synths via midi until I looked up the manual, and then my mind was blown. This video is gold. Meow 💜 ✌️
Today, with a basic home computer and FREE Public domain softweare and libraries, you can record a Jacob-Collier-level masterpiece for free. You'll want a decent mike for vocals and a midi keyboard with slider and knobs to enter CCs, but - that's ALL you need. Amazing, and wonderful.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane - those were heady times. In 1988 I can C-Lab Notator running on a 1040ST with an Ensoniq ESQ-1 and a Roland U-110 for natural sounds (no filters and awful to program).
Man, not only was this super informative, you've got some serious skills making music like that! Slammed that subscribe button like there's no tomorrow!
wow, that pss580 demo is incredible! layering the drums with aliasing noise is a really great idea, helped bring out the punch the drums lack on their own. i bought a pss480 4-5 years ago, let's say i never pushed it quite that far heh. having them in the argos catalogue back then explains why i got mine so cheap (maybe that's different now, not really into low end keyboards anymore). thanks for another well produced informative video, ctrix!
Here's another trick, do an octave up to octave down pitch dive with the pitch control using the default organ sound. This makes a sub-osc you can run together with the built in kick. And hold on to your chair...
I had a PSS480 too (in fact, it's still in the attic). I hooked it up to my Atari a few times, but always got frustrated with how limited it was. I may have to revisit it.
Incredible how technology has evolved since then. A very nice history review to acknowledge and honor our beginnings. But finally it always comes down to the talent of the musician. You sure got much talent !
My thought actually was how little it has evolved in 35 years. Yes, it’s far more advanced now and there are better sounds available for free than what you would pay a fortune for back then. But the sequencers were actually a lot more advanced than I remember them to be, and they still work in the same way.
@@henrikpetersson3463 I was thinking the exact same thing. The principle and even the user interface of the software is very close to today's sequencers
The MT32 and a Yamaha YS100 were my window into making a small living, making backing tracks for cabernet acts. Great trip down memory lane thanks for posting:)
It can actually do even wilder / harder stuff. I might explore programming sub-osc-kicks in part 2. I've made a hard-house banger with a donk on it, and when I ran it though a compressor (RNC1773), I was laughing for about an hour at how legit it sounded. Never underestimate FM!
In 88 I bought an Atari ST, a Roland D10 and Notator by C-Lab. My first home studio. A year later I bought a MT32. Both synths are still in my studio. I sold the Atari and Notator last year.
Watched this video tons of times. It's great for inspiration, seeing as I have a D-110 myself, which is similar to the MT-32 in many ways. Looking forward to part 2 and what you do with your own sounds on your MT-32
I love the sense of optimism and leveling up with this era of tech throughout this entire video. You had me rooting for the music-made-with-less, and it always punched higher than its weight class. Loved the arcade-y tunes!
I have good memories of my budget "student" set up. An Atari ST running Cubase through a hi-res emulator into a TV (so all the small writing was blurry), with a Yamaha DX21 as the controller, and a TG100 as the sound module. They went into the Aux input on my stereo, and if I wanted to add vocals or guitar, I'd use the twin tape deck to go from one side to the other and overdub through the Mic socket. Kids today don't know how good they've got it.
Ohhhh a hi-res emulator... that would have been rough!! hahaha. I can sort of imagine out how that would work. I wonder if I can find one.... Yeah, I did the mic-mix trick too!
@@CTRIX64 The day someone gifted me a hi-res monitor was wonderful. I'm currently in the process of building my dream 80s/90s set up. I still have the original ST and TG100, but now I have a second ST (which I intend to use an external source to trigger them with MTC, giving me 32 channels of sync'd MIDI), and a MIDI patch bay so I can choose between the TG100, an MU90, a TX81Z and a few others. If I really feel like a challenge, I could hook up the PSS480.
that's was an easy subs for you !, very delightful to hear all the sounds are produce with the sync that are out decades back, looking forward for part 2 !!
So good to see all this stuff again. Back in the late 80s I had an Atari ST, MT-32 and Yamaha FB01, all synced to a Yamaha MT2X 4 track (for recording vocals and guitars). Good times.
Great video. Brings back fond memories of simpler times. There is no doubt that Atari was the best choice if you were into music back then. My setup was an Atari STe 4mb, Cubase 2.01 connected at first to a Korg O1/w, and aa Kawai Digital Piano and later to a Korg Trinity. Instead of sending program changes at the start of the song I saved the sys exclusives message that configured the whole Trinity mixer in its sequencer page in the first bars. Btw it's amazing how much you get out of the Yamaha.
Awesome! I actually saved the SysEX to config the K1 too. Just dumped it as a patch. Like the Trinity, The K1 actually does amazing dumping back and forth. The little joystick works as a volume / pan control in the "mixer" mode on it too. It was very much designed to be tweaked with on hardware rather than in MIDI.
@@Mopark25 Early on in my MIDI journey I would agree, but once you become more experienced its much easier to use SysExc as the commands are short and snappy (easier for the synth's CPU to process), plus there are a ton of features that bog standard MIDI commands simply can not access, e.g. tweaking reverb settings for room size, density etc.
cannot express how impressive, entertaining and informative this was. it's truly stunning how powerful cubase has already been back then. looking forward to part 2 ! :)
Loving this. Someone really showing the expressiveness and process of MIDI on the Atari and the evolution of it through the years. Reallllly looking forward to part 2.
Yoo! ctrix got the style and the knowledge amazing composer indeed Thanks to you i got into chiptunes since square tokyo 2013 hope you doing fantastic looking forward the next video.
Fantastic video, your compositions are always so damn good! Super impressed with the K1, I don’t know much about vintage synths but I’m surprised it’s classified as “Lo-fi”. Unless they mean in terms of budget. It sounds great imho!
I agree! I think it's because of the 8bit oscillators in it - although they are maximised so you don't really hear any artefacts. You can tell when playing some instruments that it has a fuzziness under it (the slap bass I demo for instance). But once playing a few notes at once, you don't hear the 8-bit osc at all. Go figure!
@@CTRIX64 ahhhh! - I just watched AudioPilz’s “bad gear” review and playing individual instruments the 8-bit “crunchiness” noise is more noticeable. You did a really good job with your composition. It’s really difficult to hear quantisation noise until the very end fade-out👌
@@CTRIX64 I recently picked K1 up for a sixpack and saved it from dumpster. From the memory, EMF used one back in the day. Saying that, I had a privilege to get M1 in 1990 and a few mates got bored with theirs DX7s and 909s that I could "borrow". Shame I could've never put my grubby mits on Emulator II back in the day, nobody could afford one, unlike Ferries Bueller
It’s because it’s 8-bit and noisy. The K1 II was my first synth. It was the poor mans M1 or D50. It didn’t approach the sound quality and the effects (K1 II) were terrible compared. The drum sample were lame. If you like the character of the sound forget the K1 and to immediately to the K4. It basically a 16bit K1 with expanded single-cycle samples and effects
What a nice surprise to see another video from you :-) And about a part of growing up in the UK during the late 80's' I'd forgotten about! Our music studio at school had maybe 20 of these synths including a few impressive ones with a lot of buttons and all with red LED displays. Imagine 30 odd 12 year old kids playing them together, it must have driven our music teacher mad!
What really sent the teachers mad (because every student world-wide thought it was the funniest thing) was when kid turned the volume to max and everyone pressed the demo button at the same time! 100% did that as a kid. 100% got a detention for instigating it!
Nice to see you back again - I've always appreciated the quality of your videos, and this is no exception! My first job was at Steinberg, and at least in 2008 their support (never been there again as a dev) STILL had an Atari ST with the copy protection extension standing there and running... that's also where I got my second MT-32 - it was on a pile of trash that should be sorted out soon. Thankfully wih a newer ROM version that fixed buffer overflows... I think it's worth mentioning that some musicians STILL use their Atari ST and made entire tracks on it - Norman Cook alias Fatboy Slim is such an example. Also hats off for your performance - I was especially impressed what you could get out of the Yamaha! I own a Yamaha FB-01, and I think it could have been another cheap synth (can't remember its original selling price at the moment) that could companion the ST!
Got lucky with that MT32! I thought about the FB01, I guess the thing is it's not super easy to get good drums from it. And if you are using 3 of your 8 voices for a kick, snare, hats and percussion... you are getting a bit low on poly. It was certainly considered, but Yamaha really wanted you to buy a drum machine to go with it (lets face it!)
@@CTRIX64 Ah, interesting thing... honestly I got it for cheap and got never really to play with it - but still want to! I (also) wanted the boxed version of the IBM MFC, which had at least a few quite well-sounding games. Just saw you're at Evoke this year! Can't make it this time, but good luck with your performance there, and enjoy it!
The best vid in my feed for ages and my fastest like ever. Great job in finding interesting topics and fun angles for your videos, and kudos for the setup. It's easy to see that a lot of time and work went into this. Keep up the good work, you are easily in my top 3 on yt. Looking forward to pt 2.
You are a genius. I miss it, I bought and used MT32. My master key was yamaha, shorkey. But I could not make a great sound like yours. Then I bought M1 and bought SY77. I had a hard time with loan payments.
Hi, today everything is so easy. VSTs everywhere, multi midi outputs, usb connections, what u want is quickly to have. I remember about 1987 (I was 17) to connect (via midi) D-50, DX-7 and so on, you must used in and thru in cascade mode....it was so artificial but was marvelous. Thnaks for this video just to remember to new generations how it worked before. Cheers from Italy.
So fascinating watching a musician work with retro technology. I can sort of imagine what happened behind the scenes of some of my favourite video games (and music in general) of the era. Thank you so much for your hard work!
Crazily, I probably had the most expensive bedroom midi studio in 1988, having purchased a Fairlight Series III that year. I already had a Fairlight IIx (ex Alan Parsons) which cost me around £6k. Equally crazy that at £28,000 the Series III cost half the price of my then house. Sold it in 2005 for just £6,000. I also had the Atari ST which ran Steinberg software to control my three Yamaha DMP7 mixing desks. For the time that mixing rig was astoundingly good and I did a number of live audio-visual events with it and the Fairlight III.
Offt. That's quite the setup! I'm curious about your credits now ;-) It was wild how expensive the Fairlights were, but it was just the cost of RAM and DSP back then I guess! The price discrepancy from the II to the III is also huge; it must have been terrifying having equipment date that quickly. I'm guessing Alan cut you a pretty good deal for 6k! I've seen those little DMP7 mixers! They look amazing and I've always been on the look out for one, but they rarely come up for sale here in Australia. 3 of them would have been a huge flex... especially with computer control. In my noodling around in Cubase I did discover the "draw your own interface" designer where you could do an incredible amount of MIDI control too, so I'm curious if you went down that rabbit hole at some point too. What a time for tech hey!
What a fantastic trip down memory lane?! I can see so much of myself in you and used much of the same tech over my 10 odd years in the music and live performance industry throughout the 90's. Seeing how the home midi studio was born made for some great insights into when I started my own journey from a lifelong piano player, into re-creating my own movie themes and pop tunes in my home studio with Cubase and some synths and samplers. Such an awesome time of discovery and creativity, Love your work thanks.
Tremendous! Hoping to have a play around with MIDI on my Atari ST. Liked the video and little details like the VHS tapes used to prop up the keyboard. Period correct support.
I was wondering if anyone would notice that... cheers! The MIDI timing is super tight on the Atari; especially with sending SysEX and the like. Synths that just don't want to program on a USB MIDI interface are often rock solid from the ST.
My family had an STE for 10 years! My mum was a musician, so we actually had decent synths and keyboards to plug in. Also the RCA jacks to output stereo to your HiFi was nice. Yes, played a lot of games too.
What a great video. Having gone to college in 99 to study music technology i'd love to see you continue this series on how things developed over the next decade withthe introduction of General MIDI and various rack mount synths.
I'm certainly following the GM story. I've got version 1.0 GM boxes from Yamaha, Roland and Casio. Need to pick up a Korg one! It was amazing knowing they all agreed on a soundset but comparing them before things inevitably picked up the SoundCanvas-like set is interesting. I don't have much in the way of Rack synths... might be able to borrow some tho :)
@@CTRIX64 Having a rack full of gear was a real status symbol in the 90s, and gave visitors a clue to what you were about and what to maybe expect during a session. It was often something that documented your own music journey to date, with old gear mixed with the new. Maybe people today do something similar with their plugins I dunno, but there is something truly magical about sitting in front of your rack gear with all the memories they evoke.
Mate, your videos are just the best! I'm a modular synth guy but you make such interesting and fascinating stuff and often I can take little nuggets of info and apply them to my own work flow. I recently shared your deflemask video on reddit because it's the video that really helped me get my head around FM synthesis. Looking it up, I was sad to see you hadn't posted in 3 years - and now I've come off a long 12 hour night shift at the hospital and came home to this lovely video of your triumphant return to TH-cam to wind down to! What a lovely surprise!! As always, I'm astonished by your musical and compositional talent. When you busted out that electric guitar I went bananas! I hope your time away was lovely and I can't wait to see what else you've got in store. Can't believe I've watched so many of your videos and hadn't yet subscribed. Thank you so much for all the hard work you put into making your videos. From the work bringing this gear back to life, sharing the history from the magazines, making sense of it all and putting out amazing tracks - It really shows!! We appreciate you, welcome back!
I was born in '88, so while I lament not having been immersed in this stuff growing up, there's a bit of irrational joy to know that my year had some amazing stuff come out in it. And as usual, you make all of these synths shine fantastically! Great work! And it's great to see your return!
Agree, most genius product ever these Yamaha PSS keyboards (Amazing how you got that monster tune going off the PSS580.👌). I personally was first introduced to yamaha minikeys- portatone music-station (all USP keywords) series via a pss680, and then used all through them never looked back (still have PSS780,680 and 580, plus DJX-11). With MIDI, custom drums and FM synth alone they were amazing value (on their own but also critically as "controllers" for other MIDI gear/modules etc), but I think the one/greatest feature on these machines was the way the on-board "sequencer" could be used: just 5 monophonic "melody" lines and 5 "chord" memory banks , BUT which not only could store any voice (preset or custom) but each melody bank operated independent of any other! this meant you could start or stop any melody line at anytime - leading to true realtime arrangement/remixing of songs or parts on the fly, and with no limit to time!! try playing 2 hours+ live on a modern linear sequencer (*memory alone wont do), or if the vocalist started at the wrong measure of the song/sequence!! The only thing comparable nowadays to this functionality is perhaps "phrase" lines that you can drop in or out of a song , but still not as simple or half-as efficiently doable as on the PSS- eg. you could do custom drums as well as live percussion /live playing/ sythn modulations all alongside therecored song lines. I was thus thoroughly disppointeD when Yamaha tried to reproduce these gems (so I thought) in the shape of the Reface minikeys series- no wonder these didnt catch on as the original portatones.
Well this was just delightful. Loved your Amiga sampler video some years ago too and this feels like a perfect sort of follow-up. Glad to see you back on YT and I’m stoked to see part two!
yeah man! same here. hang on... LGR? ahahaha. yo dude!
sometimes we do our best work by giving ourselves 36 months of runway
@@sparklesparklesparkle6318 aha! Yes. That pesky LGR christmas clone. Hahaha.
I was literally just thinking, "Classic computers and MIDI synths? This is a video LGR would like" ... and there you are in the comments. 😁
@@sparklesparklesparkle6318 oh shut up. lol. tf?
I wish I had seen this video in 1988, when I was 12 years old. Alas, for lack of anyone around to tell me and for lack of the Internet, I discovered the joy of MIDI only 25 years later. Oh well, never too late !
Just so you know, you've got unbelievable talent bringing these old sounds to life within your compositions. Love to see it!
SHEESH the gang's all here
Nice to see you here fellow music producer 🎸🎹🎺🖥🎵🎼🔉🎶🎚🎧🎤
Or hear it, lol :)
My middle school choir teacher used one of those proprietary-floppy-format Roland boxes to record her accompaniment and then play it back while we practiced! I remember taking the floppy disk for a song I really liked, and then being extremely disappointed when the format wasn't MIDI.
The amount of research for this video 😱🚀
Great video !
My obsession for Atari ST Cubase (esp. v2) is so high that I created a cheap SD card adapter for the ST (electronics and all): the ACSI2STM. This was a 3 years journey of reverse engineering, painful tweaking, and a bit of help from a small community. After 4 versions, and a few dozen nights spent understanding the hardware and the horrible OS of the ST, I have something that can actually provide full SD card compatibility, up to 2TB per card, and removes/works around most ST's filesystem bugs. What a journey, but well worth it !
Do you sell those?
As a teen in the 80s, I had no clue what all this was, how it worked, etc. So I stayed away from synths and workstations and just played acoustic instruments. Decades later this video just brought it all together and now it makes sense. I understand now how it works and I really appreciate it. Thank you.
Sounds like background music on a video game.
Never get intimidated by something that can’t kill you! 😁
Atari and Jean Michael Jarre ….the kings 🎉
That demo on the music station, such a good sound!
Return of the king
oath
absolutely
Truth
randomly found this in my recommendations and now im tempted to buy an atari ST just for cubase
Man ! You just made an awesome 1993 fighting game stage track !
I really hope you compose for some retro video game projects in the future ! You'd nail it !
I can imagine a Sega fighting game with that song
Yeah, definitely getting Streets of Rage vibes. Love it.
My thoughts exactly - a good 2D Scroller fight game. Great job!
Fr
Genuinely... these videos set the bar for what a TH-cam video can be. These are a joy to watch which is why I rewatch them constantly. Your passion for the subject matter, your cahrisma and the production value make for an experience you dont get a lot on this platform.
So yeah
Thanks for making these (:
My guy just casually drops a banger video after being MIA for 3 years
MIA, but in the cave repairing and brewing the tunes. Thanks for checking in :)
The compositions in this video, and your career in general, are insane and deep. Being limited to only four tracks really pressurized your creativity into a laser.
i genuinely cant handle how good this man is sometimes, awesome video, every single one you post is a delight
In 1990 I owned an Atari STe, a Roland D70 and a Roland SC55 and no mixing gear whatsoever. And my first software was Steinberg Pro 24, the predecessor of Cubase. When later Cubase came out, it was a complete revelation.
My dad, a musician, bought an Atati ST the same week I was born in 1988, so I grew up on the things and have had an affection for them ever since. But man he used that thing for Midi with Notator and the C-Lab Unitor-N midi port peripheral (he had that roland MT-32 as well, and a bunch of Roland guitar synth stuff too) well into the late '90s when he then replaced the ST with.....an Atari STacy, the laptop/luggable version of the ST which he used until like 2006. I remember he did all sorts of really cool shit with the MIDI capabilities like sequencing the entire score to Little Shop of Horrors for a high-school musical production.
He wound up selling the STacy to a computer museum because it was one of the rare 4MB RAM/40MB HDD models and has a very low digit serial number. Still 18 years of use out of a platform ain't too bad.
this is actually quite bizarre, ive seen your videos before, it wasnt until near the end i realised you are ctrix... dude, you are what got me started with music on the amiga, your protracker mods were an exellent source of samples and techniques for me as a young kid with no money but eager to learn
The first keyboard I ever bought was a PSS680 in 1988. The first sound module I bought was an MT32. My first computer sequencer was an ST520 using Pro 12. A year later I was working as the synth/hi tech guy at a local music store. I sold two K1s to a couple of young lads in 1990. Thirty three years later and all three of us are still friends and still making music. It was a nice trip down memory lane. Thanks.
and we are still waiting for the part 2...
This takes me back... the Atari ST was the main staple of my studio for such a long time as a cash strapped young man. I started with the Alesis MMT-8 sequencer and then graduated to the Atari with Emagic Notator Logic (before it was bought by Apple). My keyboard was a DX11 without velocity sensitivity. I did have use of an MT-32 for a while, but my drum machine was a TR-606 Drumatix - frickin' loved it. My most expensive purchase back then was a Roland U-20 keyboard which really pushed my music forward... I could go on, but thank you for this trip down memory lane
Omg. 3 years of waiting to watch such a gem. You would have made millions in the 80s/90s just making themes for various tv shows!
This video never ends. Just after I say "wow! What a video" It continues to show another cool thing. Because the video is so dense it felt like I was watching this for an hour. Once again, great job!
The synth sounds on that Yamaha are unlocking ancient childhood memories. I must have had something from the same line as a kid, though certainly a cheaper model. I didn't know what I was doing with it, and it was long gone before I started learning about making music for real.
I had an Atari ST - plugged in into a Yamaha keyboard and used the cubase software. While on a plane I got talking to a guy who was a professor of music and we talked computers, music and MIDI - he recommended Cakewalk software, a Roland Sound Canvas sound generator and a midi interface to connect to a PC. I was in a music store in LA and asked about the Sound Canvas - it was pricey but after being shown the inbuilt demo tunes - wow! - take my money! - that was in 1992. I still use it these days for piano sounds layered with an electric piano. I also stayed with Cakewalk , upgrading software and PC as it grew from a DOS based MIDI editor to a very powerful top of the range DAW, Sonar Platinum - until Gibson dumped it. I vowed never to buy another Gibson product after that - guitar, plectrum or polishing cloth - NO more Gibson - ever.
Hey, I beat that Atari ST with an Atari 400 and a Roland D-5. I special-ordered the Atari with 16K because it came with 8 (yes, K not G or T). Bought it with money from cutting lawns and delivering newspapers. I even wrote a custom Sys-ex program to change the D-5’s parameters. Good memories, thanks for bringing them back!
If you were mainly using the Atari 400 as a patch changer, then it would have been a great value synth for 1989! It's amazing how long some of those 8-bit machines hung around for. They had solid accessible software and did the job, so you can see why people didn't bother with the expensive 16-bit gear!
These videos inspired me to start making music after a decade of false starts. I would download Ableton, get overwhelmed, and quit out of frustration. It was so helpful to see a walkthrough on a simpler interface. More importantly, you're the first person who made it look fun. So glad you're making videos again!
ahhh memories! I had a PSS790 back in the day. Now I do part-time guitar/keyboards production for rappers.
Oh yeah, the MIDI interface and the very crisp SM124 was the main reason I bought a 1040STF back then. It was perfect to learn programming and also to make music. I had a Yamaha DS55 and a Roland R-5, and still have both. Software, there was Steinberg Twelve, a budget light version of Twenty-Four, and yes, I still have it ;) But my fav thing was to program stuff myself and send MIDI events with GFA-Basic. Great times, thanks for the video!
Nice! I haven't played with GFA-Basic yet. That would have been fun in the day! I'm curious to if it can send SysEX now
@@CTRIX64 You could absolutely do this! Back then I made a sound editor for that Yamaha DS55 with envelopes and such, and it mostly was a matter of understanding the midi specs in the manual. Unfortunately, the DS-55 isn't much of a synth, more like a nice keyboard by 80's amateur standards, with 61 keys. Today, I basically use it as a giant vintage MIDI controller, alongside a Push2 and some others. :D But I guess the main thing was, this setup was the beginning of my lifelong journey in making electronic music, with all its ups and downs. :)
@@CTRIX64 GFA BASIC guy here too. What a great programming environment!
I so wanted GFA 3, but GFA 2 that came on a coverdisk of ST Format mag was pure gold to me for a few years.
Hint - try to find the compiler, to compile your .lst to a .prg. My brother bought it for my 13th birthday when we was working for a summer in London....
Superb video. Thank you!
I bought my first ATARI FM (4MB) 1987 and still own an Atari STE 1040 and MT32 with all these programs. I took them up couple of years ago and connected to an Akai S3000 (and MT32) and voila! Everything was like the old days 🙂. It was nice to see this video which brings back old memories. Well done! Thanks!
You really make me even more proud to have bought my pss-680 on ebay years ago, just cause it allowed me more control of stuff that my 470 gave me.
Didn't realize when buying it how capable it was controlling my other synths via midi until I looked up the manual, and then my mind was blown.
This video is gold.
Meow 💜 ✌️
Today, with a basic home computer and FREE Public domain softweare and libraries, you can record a Jacob-Collier-level masterpiece for free. You'll want a decent mike for vocals and a midi keyboard with slider and knobs to enter CCs, but - that's ALL you need. Amazing, and wonderful.
I clicked for the nostalgia, didn't expect to watch a high-quality documentary and great music making. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for the trip down memory lane - those were heady times. In 1988 I can C-Lab Notator running on a 1040ST with an Ensoniq ESQ-1 and a Roland U-110 for natural sounds (no filters and awful to program).
Man, not only was this super informative, you've got some serious skills making music like that! Slammed that subscribe button like there's no tomorrow!
I had a 520STFM, Steinberg Pro-12, and a Yamaha PSS-480. And I rocked. 😆
wow, that pss580 demo is incredible! layering the drums with aliasing noise is a really great idea, helped bring out the punch the drums lack on their own. i bought a pss480 4-5 years ago, let's say i never pushed it quite that far heh. having them in the argos catalogue back then explains why i got mine so cheap (maybe that's different now, not really into low end keyboards anymore). thanks for another well produced informative video, ctrix!
Here's another trick, do an octave up to octave down pitch dive with the pitch control using the default organ sound. This makes a sub-osc you can run together with the built in kick. And hold on to your chair...
I had a PSS480 too (in fact, it's still in the attic). I hooked it up to my Atari a few times, but always got frustrated with how limited it was. I may have to revisit it.
Great, what a nostalgia! This was my setup 32 years ago, an Atari ST and the PSS-580.
This brings back memories of me spending countless hours with Dr. Ts on the Atari ST. Shocking to think it all worked off a floppy.
It's like computers somehow got worse as they got better.
I had that Yamaha keyboard as a kid! 😀
Thanks for the memories
Incredible how technology has evolved since then. A very nice history review to acknowledge and honor our beginnings. But finally it always comes down to the talent of the musician. You sure got much talent !
My thought actually was how little it has evolved in 35 years. Yes, it’s far more advanced now and there are better sounds available for free than what you would pay a fortune for back then. But the sequencers were actually a lot more advanced than I remember them to be, and they still work in the same way.
@@henrikpetersson3463 I was thinking the exact same thing. The principle and even the user interface of the software is very close to today's sequencers
The MT32 and a Yamaha YS100 were my window into making a small living, making backing tracks for cabernet acts. Great trip down memory lane thanks for posting:)
Desperately waiting for the follow up to this 😊
Stoked to see another video. Love the music and sounds in this
i'm actually surprised just how hard that first track went, who knew a cheap Yamaha could do that!
It can actually do even wilder / harder stuff. I might explore programming sub-osc-kicks in part 2. I've made a hard-house banger with a donk on it, and when I ran it though a compressor (RNC1773), I was laughing for about an hour at how legit it sounded. Never underestimate FM!
@@CTRIX64 Oh damn, I would love to hear it!
This was the best thing I've watched in awhile on youtube. Where is part 2!?
So awesome! Very impressed with your ability to figure this all out and explain it so well. Thank you.
My teenage kit from circa 1990 was a Yamaha SY22, Roland SoundCanvas SC55, a Brother pdc-100 sequencer and a Tandy 1000EX
This was amazing. My dad and grandpa were huge Atari ST users so I enjoyed showing them this video to. Excited for part 2
In 88 I bought an Atari ST, a Roland D10 and Notator by C-Lab. My first home studio.
A year later I bought a MT32. Both synths are still in my studio. I sold the Atari and Notator last year.
Yes. Finally another video!!
Watched this video tons of times. It's great for inspiration, seeing as I have a D-110 myself, which is similar to the MT-32 in many ways. Looking forward to part 2 and what you do with your own sounds on your MT-32
I love the sense of optimism and leveling up with this era of tech throughout this entire video. You had me rooting for the music-made-with-less, and it always punched higher than its weight class. Loved the arcade-y tunes!
I have good memories of my budget "student" set up. An Atari ST running Cubase through a hi-res emulator into a TV (so all the small writing was blurry), with a Yamaha DX21 as the controller, and a TG100 as the sound module. They went into the Aux input on my stereo, and if I wanted to add vocals or guitar, I'd use the twin tape deck to go from one side to the other and overdub through the Mic socket.
Kids today don't know how good they've got it.
Ohhhh a hi-res emulator... that would have been rough!! hahaha. I can sort of imagine out how that would work. I wonder if I can find one.... Yeah, I did the mic-mix trick too!
@@CTRIX64 The day someone gifted me a hi-res monitor was wonderful.
I'm currently in the process of building my dream 80s/90s set up. I still have the original ST and TG100, but now I have a second ST (which I intend to use an external source to trigger them with MTC, giving me 32 channels of sync'd MIDI), and a MIDI patch bay so I can choose between the TG100, an MU90, a TX81Z and a few others.
If I really feel like a challenge, I could hook up the PSS480.
Wow, that PSS-580 jam sounds like a proper Sega Mega Drive tune like Yuzo Koshiro's Streets of Rage or something out of OutRun! Sounds great!
that's was an easy subs for you !, very delightful to hear all the sounds are produce with the sync that are out decades back, looking forward for part 2 !!
What an absolute adventure. Well done.
So good to see all this stuff again. Back in the late 80s I had an Atari ST, MT-32 and Yamaha FB01, all synced to a Yamaha MT2X 4 track (for recording vocals and guitars). Good times.
Fantastic video!!! Not only brought this back a ton of memories, but also how I got hooked on game music meets jazz fusion.
That was awesome, that first demo such a tune from such a limited synth
Great video. Brings back fond memories of simpler times. There is no doubt that Atari was the best choice if you were into music back then. My setup was an Atari STe 4mb, Cubase 2.01 connected at first to a Korg O1/w, and aa Kawai Digital Piano and later to a Korg Trinity. Instead of sending program changes at the start of the song I saved the sys exclusives message that configured the whole Trinity mixer in its sequencer page in the first bars. Btw it's amazing how much you get out of the Yamaha.
Awesome! I actually saved the SysEX to config the K1 too. Just dumped it as a patch. Like the Trinity, The K1 actually does amazing dumping back and forth. The little joystick works as a volume / pan control in the "mixer" mode on it too. It was very much designed to be tweaked with on hardware rather than in MIDI.
Wouldn't exactly call this simpler 😅
Korg Trinity ❤️ they used it in the Sonic Adventure soundtrack!
@@Mopark25 Early on in my MIDI journey I would agree, but once you become more experienced its much easier to use SysExc as the commands are short and snappy (easier for the synth's CPU to process), plus there are a ton of features that bog standard MIDI commands simply can not access, e.g. tweaking reverb settings for room size, density etc.
This is what I had :) I had an Atari 1040STF and a cheap Yamaha Midi keyboard with drum pads. Loved it!
cannot express how impressive, entertaining and informative this was. it's truly stunning how powerful cubase has already been back then. looking forward to part 2 ! :)
You just bring so much memories back in my head rn, I think I'm becoming a child again, thanks dude, and see'ya for the part 2
Loving this. Someone really showing the expressiveness and process of MIDI on the Atari and the evolution of it through the years. Reallllly looking forward to part 2.
Yoo! ctrix got the style and the knowledge amazing composer indeed
Thanks to you i got into chiptunes since square tokyo 2013 hope you doing fantastic looking forward the next video.
Cheers! Sounds like you had fun at SST2013. What times those were 🙂
Fantastic video, your compositions are always so damn good! Super impressed with the K1, I don’t know much about vintage synths but I’m surprised it’s classified as “Lo-fi”. Unless they mean in terms of budget. It sounds great imho!
I agree! I think it's because of the 8bit oscillators in it - although they are maximised so you don't really hear any artefacts. You can tell when playing some instruments that it has a fuzziness under it (the slap bass I demo for instance). But once playing a few notes at once, you don't hear the 8-bit osc at all. Go figure!
@@CTRIX64 ahhhh! - I just watched AudioPilz’s “bad gear” review and playing individual instruments the 8-bit “crunchiness” noise is more noticeable.
You did a really good job with your composition. It’s really difficult to hear quantisation noise until the very end fade-out👌
@@CTRIX64 I recently picked K1 up for a sixpack and saved it from dumpster. From the memory, EMF used one back in the day. Saying that, I had a privilege to get M1 in 1990 and a few mates got bored with theirs DX7s and 909s that I could "borrow". Shame I could've never put my grubby mits on Emulator II back in the day, nobody could afford one, unlike Ferries Bueller
It’s because it’s 8-bit and noisy. The K1 II was my first synth. It was the poor mans M1 or D50. It didn’t approach the sound quality and the effects (K1 II) were terrible compared. The drum sample were lame. If you like the character of the sound forget the K1 and to immediately to the K4. It basically a 16bit K1 with expanded single-cycle samples and effects
My nan has and still uses a PSS-780, the first keyboard I ever used and the reason I'm still playing with them now :D
What a nice surprise to see another video from you :-) And about a part of growing up in the UK during the late 80's' I'd forgotten about! Our music studio at school had maybe 20 of these synths including a few impressive ones with a lot of buttons and all with red LED displays. Imagine 30 odd 12 year old kids playing them together, it must have driven our music teacher mad!
What really sent the teachers mad (because every student world-wide thought it was the funniest thing) was when kid turned the volume to max and everyone pressed the demo button at the same time! 100% did that as a kid. 100% got a detention for instigating it!
Great video. Brings back memories of my teens back in the 80s. Had a casio cz 101, and then saved like hell to get a kawai K1.
Nice to see you back again - I've always appreciated the quality of your videos, and this is no exception!
My first job was at Steinberg, and at least in 2008 their support (never been there again as a dev) STILL had an Atari ST with the copy protection extension standing there and running... that's also where I got my second MT-32 - it was on a pile of trash that should be sorted out soon. Thankfully wih a newer ROM version that fixed buffer overflows...
I think it's worth mentioning that some musicians STILL use their Atari ST and made entire tracks on it - Norman Cook alias Fatboy Slim is such an example.
Also hats off for your performance - I was especially impressed what you could get out of the Yamaha! I own a Yamaha FB-01, and I think it could have been another cheap synth (can't remember its original selling price at the moment) that could companion the ST!
Got lucky with that MT32! I thought about the FB01, I guess the thing is it's not super easy to get good drums from it. And if you are using 3 of your 8 voices for a kick, snare, hats and percussion... you are getting a bit low on poly. It was certainly considered, but Yamaha really wanted you to buy a drum machine to go with it (lets face it!)
@@CTRIX64 Ah, interesting thing... honestly I got it for cheap and got never really to play with it - but still want to! I (also) wanted the boxed version of the IBM MFC, which had at least a few quite well-sounding games.
Just saw you're at Evoke this year! Can't make it this time, but good luck with your performance there, and enjoy it!
Welcome back! Now that you’re here, there is probably more than just me waiting to jump into parts 2 and 3 of the Deflecmask tutorials. 😊
I've talked to a few people about this over the past week. I'll try and get onto it later in the year if I get time. Cheers!
What about the next parts of Amiga Samplers? Glad you're back anyway!
The best vid in my feed for ages and my fastest like ever. Great job in finding interesting topics and fun angles for your videos, and kudos for the setup. It's easy to see that a lot of time and work went into this.
Keep up the good work, you are easily in my top 3 on yt. Looking forward to pt 2.
Appreciate this very much :) It'll take a few months, but I'll get there! Might have a part 1.5 in the middle. Take care!
You are a genius.
I miss it, I bought and used MT32. My master key was yamaha, shorkey.
But I could not make a great sound like yours.
Then I bought M1 and bought SY77.
I had a hard time with loan payments.
Mate, you are a fantastic composer and musician. Thanks for sharing this with us!
Hi, today everything is so easy. VSTs everywhere, multi midi outputs, usb connections, what u want is quickly to have. I remember about 1987 (I was 17) to connect (via midi) D-50, DX-7 and so on, you must used in and thru in cascade mode....it was so artificial but was marvelous. Thnaks for this video just to remember to new generations how it worked before.
Cheers from Italy.
So fascinating watching a musician work with retro technology. I can sort of imagine what happened behind the scenes of some of my favourite video games (and music in general) of the era. Thank you so much for your hard work!
Your video kinda made my day! Concise, informative, creative and not a single dull minute. Cheers!!!
Keep those sick beats coming! Your channel is my musical haven! 🎧❤
That was amazing. Thanks! Can't wait for part 2!
Great vid! There's a lot of my music, gear and Atari history in there! And thanks for the shout out!
Crazily, I probably had the most expensive bedroom midi studio in 1988, having purchased a Fairlight Series III that year. I already had a Fairlight IIx (ex Alan Parsons) which cost me around £6k. Equally crazy that at £28,000 the Series III cost half the price of my then house. Sold it in 2005 for just £6,000. I also had the Atari ST which ran Steinberg software to control my three Yamaha DMP7 mixing desks. For the time that mixing rig was astoundingly good and I did a number of live audio-visual events with it and the Fairlight III.
Offt. That's quite the setup! I'm curious about your credits now ;-) It was wild how expensive the Fairlights were, but it was just the cost of RAM and DSP back then I guess! The price discrepancy from the II to the III is also huge; it must have been terrifying having equipment date that quickly. I'm guessing Alan cut you a pretty good deal for 6k! I've seen those little DMP7 mixers! They look amazing and I've always been on the look out for one, but they rarely come up for sale here in Australia. 3 of them would have been a huge flex... especially with computer control. In my noodling around in Cubase I did discover the "draw your own interface" designer where you could do an incredible amount of MIDI control too, so I'm curious if you went down that rabbit hole at some point too. What a time for tech hey!
What a fantastic trip down memory lane?! I can see so much of myself in you and used much of the same tech over my 10 odd years in the music and live performance industry throughout the 90's. Seeing how the home midi studio was born made for some great insights into when I started my own journey from a lifelong piano player, into re-creating my own movie themes and pop tunes in my home studio with Cubase and some synths and samplers.
Such an awesome time of discovery and creativity, Love your work thanks.
Amazing video! Thank you for this journey.
Tremendous! Hoping to have a play around with MIDI on my Atari ST. Liked the video and little details like the VHS tapes used to prop up the keyboard. Period correct support.
I was wondering if anyone would notice that... cheers! The MIDI timing is super tight on the Atari; especially with sending SysEX and the like. Synths that just don't want to program on a USB MIDI interface are often rock solid from the ST.
I used to play with the same MT-100. I loved that "E.Pno1" preset.
My family had an STE for 10 years! My mum was a musician, so we actually had decent synths and keyboards to plug in. Also the RCA jacks to output stereo to your HiFi was nice. Yes, played a lot of games too.
The last guitar overdub is *a blast*! Very very tasty, composition-wise and from a sound design standpoint!
What a great video. Having gone to college in 99 to study music technology i'd love to see you continue this series on how things developed over the next decade withthe introduction of General MIDI and various rack mount synths.
I'm certainly following the GM story. I've got version 1.0 GM boxes from Yamaha, Roland and Casio. Need to pick up a Korg one! It was amazing knowing they all agreed on a soundset but comparing them before things inevitably picked up the SoundCanvas-like set is interesting. I don't have much in the way of Rack synths... might be able to borrow some tho :)
@@CTRIX64 Having a rack full of gear was a real status symbol in the 90s, and gave visitors a clue to what you were about and what to maybe expect during a session. It was often something that documented your own music journey to date, with old gear mixed with the new. Maybe people today do something similar with their plugins I dunno, but there is something truly magical about sitting in front of your rack gear with all the memories they evoke.
I love how almost 30 years later, quantize in Cubase is still "Q". Cubase is my main DAW of choice and idk it just made me smile :)
Mate, your videos are just the best! I'm a modular synth guy but you make such interesting and fascinating stuff and often I can take little nuggets of info and apply them to my own work flow. I recently shared your deflemask video on reddit because it's the video that really helped me get my head around FM synthesis. Looking it up, I was sad to see you hadn't posted in 3 years - and now I've come off a long 12 hour night shift at the hospital and came home to this lovely video of your triumphant return to TH-cam to wind down to! What a lovely surprise!!
As always, I'm astonished by your musical and compositional talent. When you busted out that electric guitar I went bananas! I hope your time away was lovely and I can't wait to see what else you've got in store. Can't believe I've watched so many of your videos and hadn't yet subscribed.
Thank you so much for all the hard work you put into making your videos. From the work bringing this gear back to life, sharing the history from the magazines, making sense of it all and putting out amazing tracks - It really shows!! We appreciate you, welcome back!
Much appreciated! Likewise, I've learnt many things from watching my friends in the modular world 🙂
That song was phenomenal! Proud to say I still use my PSS680 in my setup for nice crunchy lo bit sounds, it sounds great with some extra effects
Been waiting too long. Glad your back.
You’re an absolute master. So much nostalgia in these tracks.
So good to see a video from you again, this was super solid. Great music as always.
Really enjoyed seeing this early tech. Makes me more appreciative for what I have.
I was never interested in music making process, but your videos really captured my attention. Thank you and keep up the good work. Cheers
You are so talented. Thanks for a fantastic video.
I was born in '88, so while I lament not having been immersed in this stuff growing up, there's a bit of irrational joy to know that my year had some amazing stuff come out in it. And as usual, you make all of these synths shine fantastically! Great work! And it's great to see your return!
Agree, most genius product ever these Yamaha PSS keyboards (Amazing how you got that monster tune going off the PSS580.👌). I personally was first introduced to yamaha minikeys- portatone music-station (all USP keywords) series via a pss680, and then used all through them never looked back (still have PSS780,680 and 580, plus DJX-11). With MIDI, custom drums and FM synth alone they were amazing value (on their own but also critically as "controllers" for other MIDI gear/modules etc), but I think the one/greatest feature on these machines was the way the on-board "sequencer" could be used: just 5 monophonic "melody" lines and 5 "chord" memory banks , BUT which not only could store any voice (preset or custom) but each melody bank operated independent of any other! this meant you could start or stop any melody line at anytime - leading to true realtime arrangement/remixing of songs or parts on the fly, and with no limit to time!! try playing 2 hours+ live on a modern linear sequencer (*memory alone wont do), or if the vocalist started at the wrong measure of the song/sequence!! The only thing comparable nowadays to this functionality is perhaps "phrase" lines that you can drop in or out of a song , but still not as simple or half-as efficiently doable as on the PSS- eg. you could do custom drums as well as live percussion /live playing/ sythn modulations all alongside therecored song lines.
I was thus thoroughly disppointeD when Yamaha tried to reproduce these gems (so I thought) in the shape of the Reface minikeys series- no wonder these didnt catch on as the original portatones.