This channel came out of nowhere and filled a massive gap I didn't know was in my life, because I assumed it would NEVER be a thing. A guy who worked on scores and albums I absolutely love going "let me break this down in detail myself while also giving a college course on how synth works, how the synclavier works, and how we used it to score your childhood" Cannot thank you enough for the work, and for what you're doing now giving us all this behind the scenes insight.
the synclavier was an iconic piece of alot of these tracks but i think anthony just has a real affinity for nice sounds and making music sound pleasant
What's not mentioned here: The process of specifying timbre frames was done in the Signal File Manager. You started with a sample that would be recorded via the Sample-to-Disk (a separate box containing an A-to-D converter, and some DMA bits for shooting data directly into buffers that could be sent out to the winchester disk, typically a 10 megabyte IMI disk.). A sample could, in its most basic form, be loaded into the performance program, and played via the keyboard, and sequenced via the memory recorder (sequencer). The sample would literally be streamed off the disk, onto a sound channel via DMA. It was monophonic. But NED realized very quickly, that Fourier Resynthesis could be used to analyze the sound, break it up into frequency/amplitude components, and the changes could be specified via timbre frames, they are quite analogous to "key frames" in animation, and thus a sound that previously existed as a monophonic sample coming off the hard drive, would be transformed into a synthesizer instrument that could be played polyphonically on the keyboard, and into the memory recorder. But the process of resynthesis had a hefty manual component: the specification of the timbre frames. This was implemented via the "label" feature in the signal file manager, which had been previously used for editing/trimming. You would specify labels of a specific naming convention (I forget precisely), and the typical pattern was to place these labels (and therefore the frames) at the transient portions of the sound, where there were drastic changes. For many instrument-like sounds, this was the attack of the sound. Given the speed of terminal redraw (the terminal ran at 9600 bits per second, sending a mash of Tektronix 4010 and VT-100 commands for graphics and text, yes, this was what the RetroGraphics VT-640 was, a board that added Tektronix graphics to a DEC VT-100 terminal), this was very slow, and thus you spent an awful lot of time zooming in and out with the PF keys, and moving the cursor with the arrow keys to find a place to place a timbre frame. I got very tired of this. I had, through tons of begging and pleading, gotten a copy of the Scientific XP/L compiler, and language manual from NED, and learned the language. It was sort of the weird schism of PL/I and BASIC, with lots of functions to handle complex math, particularly matrix math (a really good thing if you're working with data that has frequencies and you wanna transform them somehow)., and had started writing some of my own little programs (using the full screen editor on the Synclavier. The operating system on the Synclavier was probably the largest deployment of the Dartmouth Time Sharing System, outside of Dartmouth, and was the reason that the various commands were as they were, CATALOG, OLD, NEW, SCRATCH, etc.), and I wrote the dumbest most naive little program to find the highest amplitudes in a signal, and place labels on them, because this was most likely where the action was, and where they needed to be in the first place. It worked on source material output by the Reverse Compiler. It worked great, and allowed me to make resynthesized sounds in half the time. :) the PSMT re-design ultimately meant that the Synclavier's synthesis, resynthesis, and sample-to-disk features would take a back seat, and NED would eventually stop working on that part of the system, altogether, as Synclavier morphed into a post-production direct-to-disk recorder and editor, in much the same way that the Fairlight CMI became the MFX.
I never heard of resynthesis in the Synclavier. Incredible. Amazed to learn the title and score were changed so late in production. It was the right decision, as the message and music work so well.
I was originally here to learn about Thriller, but these recent synclavier videos (Thriller or other films) have been so enjoyable to watch and learn. I had no idea what the synclavier was capable before this. Thank you Anthony and the rest of the team!
I've been carefully watching since you started your series with complete fascination. I'm constantly blown away with everything. The fact you can remember it all alone is amazing in itself! What a blessing we have in you passing it all on. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it ❤
Very cool. I haven't seen that picture in a long time, but I liked it very much as a kid and I never took away that it had a "synthy" score. So cool to see the range of flashy "New Sounds" as Michael would say ...all the way to the tastefully inconspicuous supporting roll this instrument is capable of in the right hands. Thanks and cheers.
The Synclav, and what Marinelli was doing on it was 30-40 years ahead of its time. Now many of us can try and learn from some of his great work. Its great technology has been democratized to the point where we can do this all in a DAW without a lot of $$.
I remember seing this function in Arturia's Synclavier V ... I was blown away, and couldn't believe that a synth could have this kind of functionality back in the 80s. To me it is one of the most innovative features ever...
Very amazing i have a hardware fm synth but copying sounds is a different level of hard. You have alot of experience Anthony to make magical compositions.
I always appreciated the sparse nature of the score as it was really emotive and captured the mood perfectly. Never realised it was done on a Synclavier though. Another amazing video Anthony.
Had no idea that you were involved with Stand By Me, Anthony! What an amazing story! That film is so iconic, and the song so well known, that people probably overlook “the score”. Hopefully you’ll be looking into the music for Starman! 👏🙌
Believe it or not, I was doing resynthesis a week or two ago on a Kawai K5000 (1996) using Soundiver software intended for Windows 95 (!). The way the Kawai does it is a bit different, it uses additive synthesis but what it's trying to do is similar. Of course the Synclavier was a much, much more expensive system, and came out more than a decade earlier, but the process and results are quite similar.
9:07 _"Well, they say that because it's an amazing movie."_ Ahahaha. :) Great work, Anthony Marinelli! That's right! 9:20 _"[It's] a good sound, but it's in an amazing song."_ :) Context!
I really love these film score videos you’ve been doing, Anthony. The Synclavier is such a fascinating machine and I have enjoyed learning about the various things it’s capable of. I never realized that it could do resampling like this until now! I’m impressed that you were able to get anything done, with how much fun you must have been having! Keep up the great work, and thanks so much for sharing your secrets!
Another fantastic video! Thank you 👏🏾❤️👏🏾 will you please do a video about your score for YOUNG GUNS? Its easily the most underrated film score of the 1980s!!! 🙏🏾❤️🙏🏾
That's awesome! Just found this channel through a comment on youtube! Really like the sound design but also the stories behind your work with other artists! Would be nice to see a studio tour at one point! Cheers!
Thank you. I watch many of your Videos and such an inspiration especially since I do mostly everything in Entertainment by myself. it's a joy because the work is not hard it's just never ending and sometimes I just need a piece of mind. Then I'll come across your videos and homework sets in and then it's Go time.
'Stand by me' is one of the samples that comes in my mind when I play a meeting preset on a synth. I did not know it was used in a movie, but I can understand it became a link along the scenes as it is like becoming an obsession when I comes to play it, as I also play soprano and bass recorder. I'm just begining on Clarinet, but I guess it will becomes the same.
I realy love this channel! Scoring a cue in free time, juste playing with your fingers and your soul while looking at a scene: Actualy I did that a lot, like a silent movie pianist, and sometimes it's great.
This was great! So those resynthesized frames are basically different FM sounds that get morphed into one another over time? Interesting concept! Makes me wonder how other sounds like cellos, vocals and the like would sound like!
Hey Anthony, a bit of a technical question for you. When adding the resynthesis function to the synclavier it upgraded the system from 8 bit to 16 bit from what I understand. Did you find a difference in the core tone of the instrument when this change was made? Thanks.
Which synthesizers were used during the Starman end credits? Was it soley the Synclavier II or Arp 2600 and Synclavier? Also, which Starman track has the resynthesized mosquito? If you can remember that far back, id love to know! Your videos have good content, sound, and editing. I appreciate all the hard work that you out into these and always look forward to your videos. Thank you!
is the original sample analysis using some sort of FFT? If so, then reconstituting the sound using FM (for anything deemed "too complex" for simple additive sine waves?) seems a pretty complex way to go about it in terms of reverse engineering ... admittedly you would save a lot of output sine waves, but there'd be a lot of computational overheads to get there, and a significant error margin i would imagine. i.e. Is this not just resynthesis based on additive synthesis with a restricted number of partials? there was a fairly advanced pure additive capability after all in the Synclavier if i am not mistaken ... with a relatively high number of sines available for the time ... If it is using FM, i'd very much like to understand a little more about how that analytic reduction took place. And one wonders why it hasn't been embraced since? (or has it?)
Being that I am tired of youtube thought poiice I will be leaving youtube. I won't give them my traffic. Are you posting anywhere else? If not this is goodbye, I won't have a third party spying on me.
This channel came out of nowhere and filled a massive gap I didn't know was in my life, because I assumed it would NEVER be a thing. A guy who worked on scores and albums I absolutely love going "let me break this down in detail myself while also giving a college course on how synth works, how the synclavier works, and how we used it to score your childhood"
Cannot thank you enough for the work, and for what you're doing now giving us all this behind the scenes insight.
My sentiments exactly! I've loved nerding out on all this Synclavier content.
I knoooow. This is what the internet is made for.
the synclavier was an iconic piece of alot of these tracks but i think anthony just has a real affinity for nice sounds and making music sound pleasant
What's not mentioned here:
The process of specifying timbre frames was done in the Signal File Manager.
You started with a sample that would be recorded via the Sample-to-Disk (a separate box containing an A-to-D converter, and some DMA bits for shooting data directly into buffers that could be sent out to the winchester disk, typically a 10 megabyte IMI disk.). A sample could, in its most basic form, be loaded into the performance program, and played via the keyboard, and sequenced via the memory recorder (sequencer). The sample would literally be streamed off the disk, onto a sound channel via DMA. It was monophonic.
But NED realized very quickly, that Fourier Resynthesis could be used to analyze the sound, break it up into frequency/amplitude components, and the changes could be specified via timbre frames, they are quite analogous to "key frames" in animation, and thus a sound that previously existed as a monophonic sample coming off the hard drive, would be transformed into a synthesizer instrument that could be played polyphonically on the keyboard, and into the memory recorder.
But the process of resynthesis had a hefty manual component: the specification of the timbre frames. This was implemented via the "label" feature in the signal file manager, which had been previously used for editing/trimming. You would specify labels of a specific naming convention (I forget precisely), and the typical pattern was to place these labels (and therefore the frames) at the transient portions of the sound, where there were drastic changes. For many instrument-like sounds, this was the attack of the sound. Given the speed of terminal redraw (the terminal ran at 9600 bits per second, sending a mash of Tektronix 4010 and VT-100 commands for graphics and text, yes, this was what the RetroGraphics VT-640 was, a board that added Tektronix graphics to a DEC VT-100 terminal), this was very slow, and thus you spent an awful lot of time zooming in and out with the PF keys, and moving the cursor with the arrow keys to find a place to place a timbre frame. I got very tired of this.
I had, through tons of begging and pleading, gotten a copy of the Scientific XP/L compiler, and language manual from NED, and learned the language. It was sort of the weird schism of PL/I and BASIC, with lots of functions to handle complex math, particularly matrix math (a really good thing if you're working with data that has frequencies and you wanna transform them somehow)., and had started writing some of my own little programs (using the full screen editor on the Synclavier. The operating system on the Synclavier was probably the largest deployment of the Dartmouth Time Sharing System, outside of Dartmouth, and was the reason that the various commands were as they were, CATALOG, OLD, NEW, SCRATCH, etc.), and I wrote the dumbest most naive little program to find the highest amplitudes in a signal, and place labels on them, because this was most likely where the action was, and where they needed to be in the first place. It worked on source material output by the Reverse Compiler. It worked great, and allowed me to make resynthesized sounds in half the time. :)
the PSMT re-design ultimately meant that the Synclavier's synthesis, resynthesis, and sample-to-disk features would take a back seat, and NED would eventually stop working on that part of the system, altogether, as Synclavier morphed into a post-production direct-to-disk recorder and editor, in much the same way that the Fairlight CMI became the MFX.
Wow!
This channel has the best comments
Another Throwback SUPER!!
I never heard of resynthesis in the Synclavier. Incredible. Amazed to learn the title and score were changed so late in production. It was the right decision, as the message and music work so well.
I was originally here to learn about Thriller, but these recent synclavier videos (Thriller or other films) have been so enjoyable to watch and learn. I had no idea what the synclavier was capable before this. Thank you Anthony and the rest of the team!
I've been carefully watching since you started your series with complete fascination. I'm constantly blown away with everything. The fact you can remember it all alone is amazing in itself! What a blessing we have in you passing it all on. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it ❤
This channel has important historical value - simply amazing content!
I can't overstate how much I'm enjoying these Synclavier videos. What an incredible piece of technology, not only for its time, but in general.
YO YOU GOTTA DO STARMAN THEN… THAT SHID IS THE JUICE
Thank you so much for this! It looks you have made the sounds and score for most of my favorite films. An amazing movie with an amazing soundtrack.
Very cool. I haven't seen that picture in a long time, but I liked it very much as a kid and I never took away that it had a "synthy" score. So cool to see the range of flashy "New Sounds" as Michael would say ...all the way to the tastefully inconspicuous supporting roll this instrument is capable of in the right hands. Thanks and cheers.
This is history, synthesis, purpose, and tutorials all in one video. Thank you for sharing all of this information. It is invaluable!
Great rundown of the production process. So much easier and more effective doing it in real time vs time code and notes.
The Synclav, and what Marinelli was doing on it was 30-40 years ahead of its time. Now many of us can try and learn from some of his great work. Its great technology has been democratized to the point where we can do this all in a DAW without a lot of $$.
Amazing! Iconic sounds and scores...New fave channel!
The bass player from my old band loved that movie, and he had the book too. :-)
I remember seing this function in Arturia's Synclavier V ... I was blown away, and couldn't believe that a synth could have this kind of functionality back in the 80s. To me it is one of the most innovative features ever...
Every now and then the TH-cam algorithm gets the recommendations right for me… love this channel now!
Very amazing i have a hardware fm synth but copying sounds is a different level of hard. You have alot of experience Anthony to make magical compositions.
I always appreciated the sparse nature of the score as it was really emotive and captured the mood perfectly. Never realised it was done on a Synclavier though.
Another amazing video Anthony.
Had no idea that you were involved with Stand By Me, Anthony! What an amazing story! That film is so iconic, and the song so well known, that people probably overlook “the score”. Hopefully you’ll be looking into the music for Starman! 👏🙌
Totally want more back story on Starman! Sounds interesting for sure.
+1 on Starman, sounded crazy
One of my favorites as a kid.
Thanks for doing these videos!
Looking forward to this one!
Hi Anthony, This is great content. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us.
Glad it was helpful!
Believe it or not, I was doing resynthesis a week or two ago on a Kawai K5000 (1996) using Soundiver software intended for Windows 95 (!). The way the Kawai does it is a bit different, it uses additive synthesis but what it's trying to do is similar.
Of course the Synclavier was a much, much more expensive system, and came out more than a decade earlier, but the process and results are quite similar.
9:07 _"Well, they say that because it's an amazing movie."_ Ahahaha. :) Great work, Anthony Marinelli! That's right!
9:20 _"[It's] a good sound, but it's in an amazing song."_ :) Context!
Great !!!
Those resynthesized FM sounds are very very nice! Surprisingly good for FM.
Excellent channel,-
Thank you very much!
Looks like a really interesting episode!
First time I hear about resynthesis. The Synclavier is such an amazing machine!
Awesome.Really enjoyed this. thanks ❤🙏
1:45 sounds like granular synthesis
You're the mister rogers of synthesizers...
Always so calm, and the way you explain stuff....it just relaxes me when i watch your show
Cool how almost unsettling it is. Kind of Lynch-like even.
This channel is going to blow up and be massive and I'm happy to watch that happen.
Your work is legendary!
Anthony you’ve been involved in so many songs/movies that’ve been a part of my childhood and I never even knew it. Pretty awesome ❤️
I really love these film score videos you’ve been doing, Anthony. The Synclavier is such a fascinating machine and I have enjoyed learning about the various things it’s capable of. I never realized that it could do resampling like this until now! I’m impressed that you were able to get anything done, with how much fun you must have been having! Keep up the great work, and thanks so much for sharing your secrets!
Well damn....At first I thought maybe Anthony here was dropping the big bombs a little too quickly, but maybe hes just never going to run out of ammo.
I’m just getting started!
@@anthonymarinellimusic and this late 80s baby is here for it, my man!
The wine glass sound is amazing!
I'd love to see more of your soundtrack work! Great series.
I always thought resynthesis is realized strictly additive. Still nice shirt, presentation, story, words & everything....
Beautiful video, Anthony. Thanks so much!
Thanks Anthony! Very inspirational, your message really resonated with me. 👏🏼🤘🏼
Another fantastic video! Thank you 👏🏾❤️👏🏾 will you please do a video about your score for YOUNG GUNS? Its easily the most underrated film score of the 1980s!!! 🙏🏾❤️🙏🏾
That's awesome! Just found this channel through a comment on youtube! Really like the sound design but also the stories behind your work with other artists! Would be nice to see a studio tour at one point! Cheers!
Thank you. I watch many of your Videos and such an inspiration especially since I do mostly everything in Entertainment by myself. it's a joy because the work is not hard it's just never ending and sometimes I just need a piece of mind. Then I'll come across your videos and homework sets in and then it's Go time.
Keep the videos coming!
Thank you for this fantastic lesson ❤
'Stand by me' is one of the samples that comes in my mind when I play a meeting preset on a synth. I did not know it was used in a movie, but I can understand it became a link along the scenes as it is like becoming an obsession when I comes to play it, as I also play soprano and bass recorder. I'm just begining on Clarinet, but I guess it will becomes the same.
Your content is so awesome. I watch EVERY video you put out, they are all awesome and the way you explain everything is awesome.
I realy love this channel!
Scoring a cue in free time, juste playing with your fingers and your soul while looking at a scene: Actualy I did that a lot, like a silent movie pianist, and sometimes it's great.
Would be very interested on seeing a video about sounds on starman. Tbh I thought that was all Jack Nitchsche..and a lot of roland d50
I LOVE your videos!!! So interesting. Give us more . 😊
please make an Starman episode, or two 🤭 i watched it last night, great sounds and music!
Priceless.
The resynthesis concept is cool, it transformed PCM sounds into FM vectors, must have been useful back in the day when hardware resources were scarce.
Please talk about your Model D and it's modifications. Thanks!
incredible video. i had no idea the synclavier had such a feature “resynthesis”.
Wow. I just stumbled upon your channel. What an amazing and informative video. I'm a fan and new subscriber. Thank you!
This was great! So those resynthesized frames are basically different FM sounds that get morphed into one another over time? Interesting concept! Makes me wonder how other sounds like cellos, vocals and the like would sound like!
Always loved the Young Guns score. Would love some music bts on that one.
I love you 😭😅🔥🔥
I’d like to hear some more about the Star Man soundtrack!
Soon !
Yes. Me too
How is it that have you worked on so many things that I grew up loving?
Hey Anthony, a bit of a technical question for you. When adding the resynthesis function to the synclavier it upgraded the system from 8 bit to 16 bit from what I understand. Did you find a difference in the core tone of the instrument when this change was made? Thanks.
So cool! Is there any film you wish you’d had the opportunity to work on?
❤❤❤
Does anyone know what mic was used for the narration in the movie?
Which synthesizers were used during the Starman end credits? Was it soley the Synclavier II or Arp 2600 and Synclavier? Also, which Starman track has the resynthesized mosquito? If you can remember that far back, id love to know! Your videos have good content, sound, and editing. I appreciate all the hard work that you out into these and always look forward to your videos. Thank you!
is the original sample analysis using some sort of FFT?
If so, then reconstituting the sound using FM (for anything deemed "too complex" for simple additive sine waves?) seems a pretty complex way to go about it in terms of reverse engineering ... admittedly you would save a lot of output sine waves, but there'd be a lot of computational overheads to get there, and a significant error margin i would imagine.
i.e. Is this not just resynthesis based on additive synthesis with a restricted number of partials? there was a fairly advanced pure additive capability after all in the Synclavier if i am not mistaken ... with a relatively high number of sines available for the time ...
If it is using FM, i'd very much like to understand a little more about how that analytic reduction took place. And one wonders why it hasn't been embraced since? (or has it?)
+ 1 Marinelli for the Algorithm
th-cam.com/video/Hl8Qay0V1yo/w-d-xo.html
Something about Frank Zappa and his Synclavier works
"Resynthesis" sounds like the title of a Stephen King novel.
🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻
Pure Diamonds and Gold content for producers🫡🫡🫡
Being that I am tired of youtube thought poiice I will be leaving youtube. I won't give them my traffic. Are you posting anywhere else? If not this is goodbye, I won't have a third party spying on me.
Tik tok and Instagram 😔