Please thumb this comment up if you would like to hang out with Synthmania in his home studio for an entire evening. Just you and him reminiscing about the 80's music scene, witnessing him perform original demos, and sharing homemade cookies together with a large glass of cold milk.
Hey Paolo, I don't know if you know but in america you have one guy called Mike, that sells a very inexpensive kit to mod the poly800 ; I did it to my EX800, and a few month ago there was an update, now the sequencer of the poly/EX 800 has 8 memory, it is syncable, it has an arppegiator, and so many cool stuff !! It took me more than 2 year to learn how to use the synth after the mod because it add so much ; but I'm very happy :)
SynthMania: Could you do a studio tour please ? Nothing fancy just you walking around with the camera pointing & talking a little bit about the synths etc... how long you've had them, that kinda thing :-)
Ha! I have a Poly-800 and a Roland TR-626, and when I saw the thumbnail of the video, I thought that's what your drum machine was, too. Thanks for reminding me that you could use the sequencer to program rests! I gave up on using it 30 years ago (when I started to use the Commodore 64 to sequence things via MIDI.
Thanks for doing this video in my birthday, I have a poly 800 and always searching videos where we can see it in real action, but all we can find is some sound isolated demos. I've seen a lot of your videos, you are offering great knowledge and talent material. Various of your songs make me remember Yuzo Koshiro, specifically in Streets of Rage soundtrack game, you both share the same creativity and talent style.
That's exactly how synth music was done in the 80s, with hardware sequencers. Then, layered to a multitrack and mixed with additional EQ, effects, compressors, etc.... simple & great. :-)) totally old school!!
I say the same, I have a poly and always search for videos about this synth, all we can find is some sound demos only.... nice to see this video was made in my birthday's day.... also 24/2 is the international EBM day, my favourite music genre, video is not ebm but not far from it
This guy making up a complete song with almost no effort in literally five minutes, which would take me with my creativity at least a whole day and I still wouldn't come close.
For some reason I get a really strong "early 90s PC games" vibe from this. Not the Amiga or Roland MT-32 sound card which used samples (and could therefore sound like anything and were therefore sought after by Sierra Online for their adventure games), but the Adlib Gold or Soundblaster PC cards which had a very distinctive, tinny low-quality sound whenever they tried to sound like bass or orchestral sounds (especially horns) because they relied on Yamaha FM chips for their sounds. There was a short-lived period (literally from about 91-94) where PCs were powerful enough to play full music but not powerful enough to play decent full music. Thank god we got past that era quickly, although it still has its aficionados.
A lot of compositions I hear in this channel make me remember the soundtrack for the game Streets of Rage made by Yuzo Koshiro , this guy and Koshiro share the same creativity and talent line. watch?v=siC1gKWOzmA
Really nice, as always. I haven't heard the DX100 sound like that before. All I've been exposed to have been the sub-basses in jungle and such. If you keep using the 505, I might finally get mine sent off to be circuit-bent! I love that little thing.
*Fantastic!* I am about to receive a Poly-800 😀 In order to bridge the waiting time, I watch some Poly-800-videos here. When I saw the setup, I could exactly imagine what this would sound like and was pretty much right! I do not own a TR-505, but I guess the 707/7x7-combo will do just fine. Then some reverb and delay -> WOHOOO
Hey my friend I never could afford a Dx7 back in the day when they first came out but when I worked at a store called MARS music in the late 1998 a little known Grove box called Yamaha loop factory Dx200 came out that I bought for 200 bucks because it didn't catch on. It is a dx 7 sound engine in a box with knobs to control all of the fm features. What I do remember is the Dx 7 was hard to access the edit features. If you can find a used dx200 you should buy it, it's a secret gem.
MrPiratebrain, Yes Dx200 & An200 are great machines!! The An200 is based on the An1x keyboard. I have the Quasimidi Rave-O-Lution 309 also but I have to replace the volume control it finally wore out. And the Quasimidi Polymorph is one of the trippiest I have ever played with! Check it!
nice jam... poly 800 was my first analogue synth bought used back in the 90 ties, great synth for organs and basses... i did nt really got the sequencer synced that days but only played the synth over midi cool sequencer mode...,
My reverse-key 800 had similar..wavering filter effect, without my intervention! Some times pitch would be effected too. Opened the base to find lots of hair (yuck) lint + other mystery contaminants laced around the joystick assembly. Vacuuming it out, cleaning the 2 pots with Caig F5 & swab metal traces with isoproypyl 99% then re-greasing cured it, thankfully. No more scratchy
I love my Poly800!! Paolo, great demo of the sequencer which is always overlooked! Sure the Poly800 doesnt have tweekable knobs but for its price you can get some great strings out of it!! Nice work once again!!
Sounds like the LFO kicks in on the filter after a short delay, envelope controlled? I think I remember that the Poly 800 had the one filter so the filter is "wobbling" the sequenced notes depending on how long the right hand solo notes are held. Interesting possibilities.
Considering everything you're using is very inexpensive vintage gear, it sounded quite good. Shows what you can do with a few hundred dollars worth of synths. :)
So i have the poly 800 2 About to have the internal battery replaced finally after many years of the sequencer not working anymore need that battery!!!
Wait, the POLY 800 had a sequencer! #$%#$*(#$(%#$ In my day you just stared at the numbers on the top of the case, wondered what it all meant, and tried to find a way to switch through presets.
nice demo. sounds like your Poly's joystick is going bad.. it's modulating when you aren't even touching it.. mine does that too.. unfortunately you can't replace the split pots in them to fix it.. or at least I can't seem to find an appropriate replacement :(
+SynthMania that's good. It's hard to find a good working one due to age/wear to these old synths. I upgraded the firmware in mine with the Hawk800 kit. It makes it a totally different synth!
thanks for the video, interesting as usual. Apart from the novation circuit, dsi tempest, and akai rhythm wolf do you know of any standalone single machine that combines a drum machine and chromatically playable bass?
That was funky. Did you have a Fairlight in the background in one of your older videos btw? Is it working? :) Would love to see something with that if so.
Thanks for mentioning this forgotten little machine. My 1st cd Transcendence has a Poly 800 module all over it. Yes ambient music with a Korg Poly 800! A fun and simple synth when marinated in the right effects sounded rather good. The opening chords/pads on Transcendence is ALL poly 800! Sounds like an Oberheim Matrix 6! If you care to hear it hrresonance.bandcamp.com/album/transcendence
question: i have a korg er 1 i use as a sequencer but when i have my poly 800 synced to the er 1 it receives all the midi messages from the er1. how do i get my poly 800 to only be on the same clock as my er 1??? thank you !
It's a limitation of the Poly-800's architecture. You can get more info about the single vs multi mode trigger of the DEG to the VCF at page 18 of the manual.
awww what great video just goes to show that going back to basics and using old gear like keyboards drum machines and sequencer much better then this modern technology if some offend me new mac with keybored and some software I would say no I would rather have loads of old gear not just because I it like its because its the best lot of modern rock bands are using old 80s synth keyboreds they sounds great my dad always told me old stuff better because it last for years and years not like this modern stuff its crap I got my self usb midi keybored and mixcraft 7 software I tired to make some music its hard work i could not get what I wanted and bass guitar keybored did not sound like 80s bass cant get realistic sound on software and after watching 8bit keys and synthmania made me realise that sounds on music software sound crap compared to this
Please thumb this comment up if you would like to hang out with Synthmania in his home studio for an entire evening. Just you and him reminiscing about the 80's music scene, witnessing him perform original demos, and sharing homemade cookies together with a large glass of cold milk.
Mdelta2000 I feel like I would leave the session a new artist
Mdelta2000 i would really like to have his studio just for couple of days.
the only studio i have is fl studio + 1 midi keyboard lol
Yes, but no cookies and milk, no deal!
i would but i dont have anything to reminesce
Hey Paolo, I don't know if you know but in america you have one guy called Mike, that sells a very inexpensive kit to mod the poly800 ; I did it to my EX800, and a few month ago there was an update, now the sequencer of the poly/EX 800 has 8 memory, it is syncable, it has an arppegiator, and so many cool stuff !!
It took me more than 2 year to learn how to use the synth after the mod because it add so much ; but I'm very happy :)
Oh man! What memories. My high school setup was a Poly 800 and a TR505, along with a Fostex X15. Lol. Good to see!!
Right on!
My first synth! I was the first to get one in my area, and I loved it.
That’s bad ass. I have a TR-505 too. I have a DX-11 and have been looking at Poly 800’s.
Love both the Poly-800 and DX100 synths!
Omg.. I had the poly800 and a tr505.. It was my fav setio.. Together w a jv3p, alesis m4 and the cheap protracks windows seq.. Those were the days man
your videos have always been great man, but lately you are on fire!! every time you play, you make me want to play!!
I love the p800 sequencer, many chord progressions have I punched haphazardly into this beautiful board.
SynthMania: Could you do a studio tour please ? Nothing fancy just you walking around with the camera pointing & talking a little bit about the synths etc... how long you've had them, that kinda thing :-)
retweet
Ha! I have a Poly-800 and a Roland TR-626, and when I saw the thumbnail of the video, I thought that's what your drum machine was, too.
Thanks for reminding me that you could use the sequencer to program rests! I gave up on using it 30 years ago (when I started to use the Commodore 64 to sequence things via MIDI.
Thanks for doing this video in my birthday, I have a poly 800 and always searching videos where we can see it in real action, but all we can find is some sound isolated demos. I've seen a lot of your videos, you are offering great knowledge and talent material. Various of your songs make me remember Yuzo Koshiro, specifically in Streets of Rage soundtrack game, you both share the same creativity and talent style.
watch?v=siC1gKWOzmA
That's exactly how synth music was done in the 80s, with hardware sequencers. Then, layered to a multitrack and mixed with additional EQ, effects, compressors, etc.... simple & great.
:-)) totally old school!!
Thank you, I've never seen an actually good video of the poly-800 sequencer
I say the same, I have a poly and always search for videos about this synth, all we can find is some sound demos only.... nice to see this video was made in my birthday's day.... also 24/2 is the international EBM day, my favourite music genre, video is not ebm but not far from it
It's the most easy sequencer ever build
@@lowtek4475 if you want Parade Ground yes
This guy making up a complete song with almost no effort in literally five minutes, which would take me with my creativity at least a whole day and I still wouldn't come close.
tjeerdnet just musical experience mate.. this guy has years on the keys
Abe has it right.Time is the space between you and him. Keep at it.
You are a great man. Grandissimo! grazie mille saluti di monaco di baviera
Watching you work makes me want to invest in vintage gear!
Maaan, that *is beautiful!* What a solo.
You should be the biggest synth guy on TH-cam. Just fantastic❤
For some reason I get a really strong "early 90s PC games" vibe from this. Not the Amiga or Roland MT-32 sound card which used samples (and could therefore sound like anything and were therefore sought after by Sierra Online for their adventure games), but the Adlib Gold or Soundblaster PC cards which had a very distinctive, tinny low-quality sound whenever they tried to sound like bass or orchestral sounds (especially horns) because they relied on Yamaha FM chips for their sounds. There was a short-lived period (literally from about 91-94) where PCs were powerful enough to play full music but not powerful enough to play decent full music. Thank god we got past that era quickly, although it still has its aficionados.
A lot of compositions I hear in this channel make me remember the soundtrack for the game Streets of Rage made by Yuzo Koshiro , this guy and Koshiro share the same creativity and talent line. watch?v=siC1gKWOzmA
Haaahh...that's excactly the set-up I had, at one stage...some 300 years ago! It seemed endless, especially with external
reverbs and stuff...nice!
Really nice, as always. I haven't heard the DX100 sound like that before. All I've been exposed to have been the sub-basses in jungle and such. If you keep using the 505, I might finally get mine sent off to be circuit-bent! I love that little thing.
Such a funky jam at the end!
*Fantastic!* I am about to receive a Poly-800 😀 In order to bridge the waiting time, I watch some Poly-800-videos here. When I saw the setup, I could exactly imagine what this would sound like and was pretty much right! I do not own a TR-505, but I guess the 707/7x7-combo will do just fine. Then some reverb and delay -> WOHOOO
Thanks so much for this upload. Literally something I've been stuck on for months!
Nice jam. Love the bass tone on the Yamaha DX100. Cheers!
Hey my friend I never could afford a Dx7 back in the day when they first came out but when I worked at a store called MARS music in the late 1998 a little known Grove box called Yamaha loop factory Dx200 came out that I bought for 200 bucks because it didn't catch on. It is a dx 7 sound engine in a box with knobs to control all of the fm features. What I do remember is the Dx 7 was hard to access the edit features. If you can find a used dx200 you should buy it, it's a secret gem.
MrPiratebrain, Yes Dx200 & An200 are great machines!! The An200 is based on the An1x keyboard. I have the Quasimidi Rave-O-Lution 309 also but I have to replace the volume control it finally wore out. And the Quasimidi Polymorph is one of the trippiest I have ever played with! Check it!
Seems hard to find these days, i'm interested, did made any videos about it?
That's $500 worth of, decent, and impressed 😃 not bad for an inexpensive set up.
Great tune! Loved the improv!
Really nice, I have a Poly-800 and couldn't get anything musical out of it. It always sounded off. You have talent!
Very helpful! The enable/disable switch... of course... thank you sir!
You must make this one a complete song
thanks for this! i couldnt figure out how to use my poly 800's sequencer until i saw your vid!
Also the Quasimidi Rave-O-Lution 309 is a very good sounding groove box. The filters are great sounding
Reminds me of the soundtracks of various transport simulators.
nice tr-505. nostalgia. I also owned one. great synth Play of you!
I've been waiting for someone to do a video like this, thank synthmania
that bass! :)
SmEn nEmS FM. :)
nice jam...
poly 800 was my first analogue synth bought used back in the 90 ties,
great synth for organs and basses...
i did nt really got the sequencer synced that days but only played the synth over midi
cool sequencer mode...,
Lars, thank you
hi pal ,great videos. I have just purchased korg m1 synth. I have a floppy disc with loads of sounds for this synth.
2:37 awesome bass line man...excellent.
Haha, your Poly-800 has got the same scratchy modulation pot problem that mine has :-D
My reverse-key 800 had similar..wavering filter effect, without my intervention! Some times pitch would be effected too. Opened the base to find lots of hair (yuck) lint + other mystery contaminants laced around the joystick assembly. Vacuuming it out, cleaning the 2 pots with Caig F5 & swab metal traces with isoproypyl 99% then re-greasing cured it, thankfully. No more scratchy
what a tasty demo! I got the poly 800 recently but the tr-505 is gone (I don't have much space). looking forward to start playing with the poly.
Wow, great music!
I love my Poly800!! Paolo, great demo of the sequencer which is always overlooked! Sure the Poly800 doesnt have tweekable knobs but for its price you can get some great strings out of it!! Nice work once again!!
Mine has. Cutoff, resonance and FM knobs can be "easily" added as a mod. It turns it into a totally different beast!
Very useful. Maybe get my Mk I Poly 800 out of the attic and try and get it going again. Happy memories.
Awesome video Paolo. I agree with old punks comment below. You're on fire! Thanks for the upload. Sam.
Today I got mine from the postoffice, just took een test on it. sounds great. Will have to look for some sparetime to dig into its posibilities.
Sounds like the LFO kicks in on the filter after a short delay, envelope controlled? I think I remember that the Poly 800 had the one filter so the filter is "wobbling" the sequenced notes depending on how long the right hand solo notes are held. Interesting possibilities.
I had one of those.... a 707, too. The sequencer didn't work for live because the tempo wasn't stable enough in free-running mode.
No VST instrument beats this awesome 80s junk. Thumbs up!
Considering everything you're using is very inexpensive vintage gear, it sounded quite good. Shows what you can do with a few hundred dollars worth of synths. :)
DDCO (digital digitally controlled oscillator) although a lot of people mistakenly think the oscillator is analog.
Nice touch again!
Love classic 80s gear. Would Iove to see you incorporate a Roland jazz chorus..
Also underrated (though mine was janky) the esq 1
Nice sound!!!
awesome - good work
that track was fire omg :D
So i have the poly 800 2
About to have the internal battery replaced finally after many years of the sequencer not working anymore need that battery!!!
This video makes me wanna play games on my commodore 64 :-)
Fantastic, fun video c:
Love you keep up the great videos man
very nice jam indeed!
Wait you can have a sequence playing on the poly-800 and play leads on it simultaneously? !
The King of Synthesizers! :-D
Nice setup
Wait, the POLY 800 had a sequencer! #$%#$*(#$(%#$ In my day you just stared at the numbers on the top of the case, wondered what it all meant, and tried to find a way to switch through presets.
ha! so true...that's why i threw mine out. then someone magically gifted one to me so it's back in my life.
Beautiful
sold mine! was a pretty decent synth
very nice dude!
First midi synth i ever had! Still have it but it flops out when warm?!?!
Excellent!
Nice jammy! :)
awesome !!!
Anyone know how to make the sequence longer than 3 measures? No matter what I do I can't get it to play more than that.
Dude that was so awesome haha
one of the most hated/underrated synths.... not a fun first synth.. but can be great .... love that stick!
nice demo. sounds like your Poly's joystick is going bad.. it's modulating when you aren't even touching it.. mine does that too.. unfortunately you can't replace the split pots in them to fix it.. or at least I can't seem to find an appropriate replacement :(
I have another one that's working perfectly, now :)
+SynthMania that's good. It's hard to find a good working one due to age/wear to these old synths. I upgraded the firmware in mine with the Hawk800 kit. It makes it a totally different synth!
this is awesome
I wish there was a way to trigger the sequencer with an analog trigger…like the arp trig in of the Poly61
Awesome.
thanks for the video, interesting as usual. Apart from the novation circuit, dsi tempest, and akai rhythm wolf do you know of any standalone single machine that combines a drum machine and chromatically playable bass?
That was funky. Did you have a Fairlight in the background in one of your older videos btw? Is it working? :) Would love to see something with that if so.
Is that a mini DX9 next the TR-505?
is there any way of transfer them onto the synth? would be most grateful if you could help. cheers ian
Korg Poly 800, with free built-in wow & flutter effect ;) Is it the keyboard scaling filter? Great stuff dude!
Super
Great!!
Thanks for mentioning this forgotten little machine. My 1st cd Transcendence has a Poly 800 module all over it. Yes ambient music with a Korg Poly 800! A fun and simple synth when marinated in the right effects sounded rather good. The opening chords/pads on Transcendence is ALL poly 800! Sounds like an Oberheim Matrix 6! If you care to hear it hrresonance.bandcamp.com/album/transcendence
question: i have a korg er 1 i use as a sequencer but when i have my poly 800 synced to the er 1 it receives all the midi messages from the er1. how do i get my poly 800 to only be on the same clock as my er 1???
thank you !
Hi, Good video, like the others , what patch are u using for the bass on DX100 ? Is it a factory patch ? thx
Hi, yes, it's a factory patch called "Mono Bass"
Cheers !
those filter artifacts at around 1:24-1:28 from the korg poly 800. ❤️👍 Do you know what that's from? also around 2:43 and other places
It's a limitation of the Poly-800's architecture. You can get more info about the single vs multi mode trigger of the DEG to the VCF at page 18 of the manual.
@@SynthManiaDotCom Well it's a cool sound from the limitation. 👍❤️
@@dpalaoro Glad you like that sound.
Can you store these sequences on the 800 or are they lost after the power is off?
IIRC it keeps it in memory
What patch were you using on the DX7?
that on top is a dx100?
Please do 303! :)
cool
how to fix internal PSU?
awww what great video just goes to show that going back to basics and using old gear like keyboards drum machines and sequencer much better then this modern technology if some offend me new mac with keybored and some software I would say no I would rather have loads of old gear not just because I it like its because its the best lot of modern rock bands are using old 80s synth keyboreds they sounds great my dad always told me old stuff better because it last for years and years not like this modern stuff its crap I got my self usb midi keybored and mixcraft 7 software I tired to make some music its hard work i could not get what I wanted and bass guitar keybored did not sound like 80s bass cant get realistic sound on software and after watching 8bit keys and synthmania made me realise that sounds on music software sound crap compared to this