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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 ม.ค. 2009
- Arturia produces a software version of this synth coded by one of the original inventors, Cameron Jones, who was also my boss when I worked there. www.arturia.com/synclavier-v/.... I started writing software at New England Digital right out of college--a total dream job.
![บุษบา - วงชานเมือง [LiveCoverVertion] Original : เมนทอล](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Dm81sKcd9rs/mqdefault.jpg)
I left KORG and joined Synclavier as Production Manager in 1983. Most people don't know that NED and Yamaha both claimed FM Synthesis as their invention. Ultimately, they reached a workable settlement, and both companies continued. It's a comment on the acceleration of technology that this great little company went down in 1993, and that just about everything the Synclavier could do - and more - can now be done with a couple thousand bucks worth of off the shelf software and hardware.
You’re kidding.
Interesting story. I’d be curious to know how John Chowning figured in to all of that.
@@dustincassidy my understanding is that Chowning would have to be considered the true pioneer, if not “inventor”. But he was a Stanford professor, a teacher, intellectual. And never truly sought financial gains through patents, development, production.
@@digeett99J I think he’s pushing the facts for sake of argument to make a point about progress. There were aspects to the Synclavier (at least at the 9600 level) that we don’t see to this day. Such as DAC cards for every single voice. Poly AT is just now reappearing in a handful of synths.
Maybe he should have said “several thousand dollars, and specific equipment.”
Nothing sounds like a real synclavier and nothing will ever be built to such high specs ever again, nice try
Great to see this. Although the later Synclavier PSMT and 9600 systems did super sampling and disk screaming, a lot of people don't realize just how amazing of an additive synthesis and FM digital synth the Sync was. It had a very unique sound, with a ton of hardware power that made it sound outstanding across the entire keyboard, at any volume. In some ways, it's power architecture still has not been repeated or recreated to this day.
It was Daniel Miller's instrument(producer). The Synclavier was used by Depeche Mode for the albums "Some Great Reward" and "Construction Time Again".
Amazing synth, ahead of its time
@pacific707 the architecture of the Synclav was based on an FM and sample-based hybrid model. It used samples as operators in higher-end configurations. The sound is quite complex. It's mostly FM based (outside of PSMT configs that had sampling, recording, mastering, and sequencing features with HDDs and external computers), but had so much more than sine waves (DX FM) to use in it's complex algorithms. So far, I haven't seen anything of the sort...yet.
The entire Starman soundtrack was composed with one of these... and it sounds so beautiful.
Its got functionality like a modern workstation! Way more versatile than most vintage synths.
May he rest in peace … 😢
This looks like Bill Gates playing a synth
+Pete Brown Lolol, the man's a computer genius but I bet his music would suck. Jobs probably would've made good music though, being more of the creative type.
You would be terribly wrong.
Thanks for the laugh. This stuff is totally outdated and stinks like a moldy old attic.
Computer genius - no. A salesman genius - yes, definitely.
lol
Prof. Appleton led my "Art and Technology" (College Course 6) at this time, so I got plenty of time on the Synclavier, and got to see him play Sashasonjon a few times. Amazing. My surreal Synclavier moment was hearing "Beat It" when it first came out, which opened with iirc Bank 1, Patch 2.
RIP the Icon Pioneer of the Synclavier pure genius
7:27 beginning of Michael jackson´s Beat it! hahaha
Wow! That's a nice synthesizer.
and the galactic cymbal sound that makes it, first is used around 1:20 :)
Yes MJ sampled the demodisk!
The beginning of "Beat it" at 7:28?!?!
Yes MJ sampled the demodisk!
same sound, not the same melody.
Tony Banks (Genesis) rocked the hell out of it on songs like "Home By The Sea" and "Mama" 'round 1983. :)
So it was this instrument to blame, when Mamma wrecked my speakers...
Nice to see this beautiful system reborn in 2022 as Regen.
Génial!! Thanks for sharing this really great video
Such an incredible synth. If I ever win the lottery, I'm getting one. I may just get one anyhow, along with a Synergy II! In the meantime, the Yamaha SY77 will have to make do.
Absolutely beautiful machine I want one
The Synclavier could be anything from a complex FM Synth or a sampler, hard disk recorder, digital transfer system.
This particular one is FM (Synclavier II)
Hard disk recorder for overdubs live instruments parts without sequences
nice video. this timeless machine has lots to offer
Tony Banks from Genesis, Depeche Mode and Frank Zappa used that instrument. A complete system was very expensive and totally unaffordable for the average keyboard player. Just like the Fairlight CMI.
A lot of those guys got their gratis, because they gave a lot of "free publicity" for the instrument. I remember Al DiMeola being asked what the best and worst things about the Synclavier were. He said the worst thing was you had to remortgage your house every time they put out a new update you couldn't live without. I remember Chick Corea used both a Synclavier and a Yamaha DX-1 (which was almost, but not quite, as prohibitively expensive as the Synclavier), and I remember joking with someone that the reason they did the Return To Forever reunion tour circa 2007 was he was still paying off the Synclavier and the DX-1.
Totally professional video. Doesn't undermine the product visually or audibly in any way. Please, take my $200,000.
He also used it during Invisible Touch tours' around 86' 87'.
@pacific707 Yeah...That's pretty much the "Beat It" sound, played about a fifth of an octave down the keyboard. There's no other synth that I know of that can accurately produce that sound, except maybe the Korg Oasys, using a sample library. I could never get a DX7 to make that sound.
I have a feeling that MANY of the sounds on this were used in TV shows in the 1980's. Because I SWEAR I've heard many of them lol
@skrikon The original song was produced on a Fairlight Series IIx CMI. While the sound you seek is most likely from the Fairlight, other instruments (Yamaha DX1 and Emulator II, notably) were also used in the original, and the remix you link to quite possibly has other machines added as well. /watch?v=N2pdGMjf2r8 has part of 1 original sequence on the Fairlight (the original used 2 synced CMIs...see /watch?v=418JaPVj0G0 where the Fairlight Page R screen is on the monitors in the background)
An epic synth !
This music remind me "Super Metroid" video game on Super Nes, same feeling of good sensation !
I can listening this music in loop mod !!
Trevor Horn, Pat Metheny, Kraftwerk, Frank Zappa, Genesis, Laurie Anderson and Depeche Mode to name but some can't be faulted on their choice of expensive digital music systems! Nothing really came close in the first part of the 80's, until the Fairlight III in 1985. I believe a stereo board was an optional extra on the Synclav II!
That demo record: th-cam.com/video/UcWLl8GlfvI/w-d-xo.html
great synth, professor frink for crying out glavin!!!!!!!
YES
@RFrayo Exactly...The MOD7 engine in the Korg Oasys uses 6 sine waves and 1 sample as operators, but that doesn't even come close to what this beast could do! It was a great tool for sound design.
Try getting the "Dirty Diana" intro sound on a DX7 or softsynth...Aint gonna happen!
there was an old film, "beat street" with rea down chong as an actress. in a sequence, the rapper in this film took a look to it in a school. even in germany test music magazine, the sync II was presented. with a sampler unit it costs up to 280.000 dm, 145.000 € or $
$200.000 of pure Nostalgia
nothing short of genius!!!!! the inventor of a whole new world
I feel like this was used to make the whole soundtrack for “Tales from the Darkside”
Dos this synth sound very different from a DX7 or a DX7II ? Is it possible to reproduce those sounds by the FM Dx7 abilities?
Cool video, but I'd much rather see Frank Zappa demonstrating it.
@sauermusicDE At $200,000-300,000 for the Synclavier the Fairlight seems like a deal!!
the patch at 7:28 is the same sound used on "beat it" by michael jackson
@envisionelec The whole song is, i think ;)
That is super cool! Where can i get one of these?
Well that's odd because NEITHER of them created FM. Yamaha bought the rights from John Chowning. Nevertheless I think the full fruition of what FM is capable of was realized by NED, in my opinion. The DX7 is fantastic but the Synclavier was INCREDIBLE. Did NED not have to license the FM algorithm from John Chowning as Yamaha did? I'm curious.
Cool !! Never heard one of these before but now for the BIG question:
"Can it core a apple?"
To hear interesting music made with this machine, listen to Michel Redolfi's "Pacific tubular waves" and "Immersion".
The most puzzling synth I have ever heard. Peculiar is a mild word. And suddenly it makes the "Beat it" intro sound. But I like it, it could be that it has a warm tone to it despite being digital. So it appears futuristic despite the old archive film. This must be the first one? Later models used by ABBA sounds different right? And later it did sampling?
Morrisound recording studios in Tampa bought a synclavier back in the late 1980 and paid $250,000, because it did 16 bit, cd quality sampling. When it comes to sampling today, we have no idea how lucky we are and how far we have come.
Ken R.B. it's like a software system just like computer like library samples
@PsytranceMan777 good luck... these things are pretty much non existing at this point... an awesome old synth...
This Beast must have been awesome and hellish expensive in its day ... I think I would have preferred this to the "Fairlight"
I'm not an electronic music composer, just an electronic music fan. I wonder exactly what it is about Synclavier that makes its sound instantly recognizable 30 years later.
SweetSweetWaldo I'm an musicians and composer but you can trying some things about electronic music instrument
That it's FM synthesis was mass-marketed in the Yamaha DX7, which was way more affordable.
Amazing instrument for 1984! This synth was used exclusively on the Thriller album.
It's even more so when you consider that by '84, it had already been out there for several years. It's really based on research done in the 70's. Some (not you) that look at it from the modern "couple of months and a device/technology is obsolete" perspective, may not be able to fully appreciate the amount of work that actually went into creating instruments like these.
Good 'ole Moore's Law ;)
the song "Thriller" was made with Jupiter 8, Moog and Linn Drum
not what i heard..
He made an incredible machine but man, it looks like somebody woke up him at that moment to do this video! They could let him sleep 5 more minutes!
The thing had 12 operators each key, and (I think) 16-voice polyphony stock. What made it's sound what it was had more to do with the full-analog parameter attenuation. This meant that there was an analog VCA for everything you could make quiet or loud. This is one thing that might be hard to recreate. The other is the interface, which I don't think one could understand without actually using the thing and....see one around lately? :D
Was this mostly additive , fm and sampling in the synclavier ?
Did it have any analogue osc 's?
You SynthNerds are killin me.
i love that video. klink-a-plonk-a at its best...
There's a LOT of things the Synclavier could to that have never been repeated or exceeded since. It was an amazing machine.
Although, now I know who to blame for the "one-knob does everything" trend that's ruined all things music/electronics.
Actually, there was a synth from the 70's that had something similar, but I can't remember what it was called. It had a keypad, and you had to enter in all your parameter changes using the keypad.
@@Kohntarkosz You might be thinking of the Fairlight. It could do samples but it was really intended to generate sounds with envelopes for individual partials up to the 32nd place or something like that. I think 99% of the time, they just used it for samples, shame.
@@wado1942 No, there was a synth that compeltely flopped, that had a little keypad. Definitely not the Fairlight I'm thinking of. Keyboard magazine did a couple articles on "synth flops" back in the mid 80's, and this was one of them. I wanna say it was called something like Morantz/Park or something like that, but my attempts to Google have turned up bupkiss. I can't even find anything on the general topic of "synth flops", as that search returns a bunch of stuff about "flip flop" technology or something like that.
Hi Guys Tony Banks could really play, but if you wanna listen to someone bring the funk out of the NED synclavia check out Kashif from 1983 up till 86..Lover turn me on is a track to listen to if you like.
Steve Lipson and Trevor Horn were also bad boys on the thing, not just an over expensive piece of do do like must would think. Thank for posting dude..
7:28 Beat It
7:28 THE "BEAT IT" GONG!!!
At 1:46 you can hear a pretty famous sound used by Tangerine Dream.
The 32mb of memory around 1980 explains a lot of the cost of this. That was from a period of time where most computers had 16k - 64k (not MB) of memory.
that is incorrect. it had 32k. not 32mb. for patches and sequencer notes.
it was just an fm and additive synth in its first incarnation. no samples until later versions of synclavier when converters and fm cards have been upgraded.
www.synclav.com/NED-price-list-3-22-82-8v-S2-600-web.jpg
@@clusterchord1 by 1984 the synclavier had sampling for at least 2 years , although monophonic , it was 100 khz poly sampling that you refer to
@@cnfuzz i was commeting on the "The 32mb of memory around 1980 explains a lot of the cost of this. " part of the poster above.
again, on initial release (and time of TD use on Exit) Synclavier II did not have any sampling offered. it first saw the light as pure FM synth. indeed, in 1982 they added mono sampling. however this was "sample-to-disk" system, not RAM based.
it wasn't until 1984/85 and PSMT systems that you could have regular RAM-based polyphonic sampling, and could purchase blocks of ram to go 16mb or more. freq remained 50kHz. latest serie 3200-9600 offered 100kHz.
It sounds like a Casio CZ-1.
Pity the keyboards on those ran so hot. I hope he didn't burn his fingers.
Yeah BEAT IT! :-) Finally I know where the intro sound came from.
Yes MJ sampled the demodisk!
@@lab-by-the-sea Whoohoo! thanks for the answer, finally 11 years after ^^
@@YuzoTibi Yes YuzoTibi and 39 Years after the Album release :-) TH-cam is a maze, sadly you can not watch everything on the first day, but you can discover videos (if not deleted) many years after upload. Btw. you can hear the original sample at around 6:40 on the Synclavier demodisc th-cam.com/video/yzgvJlsEyvQ/w-d-xo.html
Hi, do you have access to such a system? I'm looking for a free sound sample for Wikipedia.
the closest thingi have to one of those is a TI-83 Keyboard placed next to an AM radio.
Beat it that is!
there was a Synclavier II on eBay a couple of days ago...for less than 2 grand.
#@!
SpammerOvTheGods its gonna be frozen like a computer
@ NunuQuadros - Yes it has FM boards in it and some of the cheaper KB's could do similar sounds. But what most of the others couldn't do was analog to digital conversion, and store the music on a hard drive. This didn't just play FM instruments, it could also play sampled music and the system allowed you to edit, sequence and store the music. Try that on a regular keyboard. And maybe do a little research before trashing something you know nothing about. It was also recently used for Avatar!
Sounds like a musical birthday card!
It does!
At 1:45 you hear the sound used by Michael Jackson on Beat It.
4:31 - Every 1980's made for TV movie music composition. ;)
amazing tech.... for that time :P
I thought loads of people knew that Beat It used a Synclavier II. They also used the keyboard from the Sequential Circuits Prophet-T8.
depeche mode never had one they used the emu emulator. vince clarke though had one
There's a great synclaver users group in the yahoo user group. Just Google need synclaver users group
@sauermusicDE As I watched this I immediately saw Tony Banks..thought it was just me ;)
I really like the hard FM stabbing sounds around 1:50 & 7:31. Hmmm...So this was much, much more than a glorified sampler/sequencer. I realize now that it's all over Laurie Anderson's "Mr. Heartbreak" and in her live performances. I remember ordering a blue flexidisc of it's sounds thru Keyboard magazine in the late 70's. The only thing I remember about that was the horrible B-3 emulation. The above performance sounds 1000 times better than that demo did.
sick
PMSL! i almost spit my beer out !!!
cool awesome
hellz yeah. the name of the game, is lightworks, do as devolve says.
This just blows my mind completely.
I’d pay a lot of money for a new one (remade by someone)
Jeeeez..
Beat Street - 1984 - Double K fried the hard drive :)
And also "Black Celebration".
love to get my hands on that im gonna start a band when i get out of college and im gonna need alot of old 80s equipment drums guitars synthesizer and the synclavier wonder if i could find it on ebay
Did you ever start your band????
5:00 instant spooky 'family moving to new house, in hopes of fresh start, then die' TV horror movie
RIP
Digital is underated
Sounds like a casiotone
I know it's more than a tool for the Clangers or BBC special effects. Maybe people liked detuned squeaks back then.
I much prefer to hear some music and useful sounds.
Making the new Windows login sounds, that's what.
I've got a Major Morgan.
didn't know Bob Gail played a mean keyboard
Mellotron and Synclavier where both so amazing instruments intill those damm Synthesizers had to take the stoplight :l
Just go to synclavier-dot-com to get that software.
oh yes
Because of this synth is the reason the Yamaha DX7 was born. Well it started with the DX1 another great synth.
Can you feel the retro awesomness of this machine?!
...& look, it's made with real wood, (not that make-believe wood you get on a Korg Micro)..
I one day hope to make some emotional elevator music with this vintage sex machine.....Peace & Luv
Hes playing like the keys are hot
Frank Appleton - Synclaiver II from hell.
@LouisvilleTorn8o Surprising how good this thing sounds with only a couple of operators!