The start is usually a good place to begin, but what start do I choose?
Let’s go WAY back.
The first musical instrument that I know I “attacked” was a grandparent’s piano. On one side of my family my grandparents had an upright piano. It sat in the front room of a narrow terrace house (probably the steepest staircase I’ve ever experienced) and going increasingly out of tune and a few problems with the mechanisms inside. Both of these grandparents played to a certain extent, and though rare it was a joy to watch them play.
After a few years had passed I was taught a couple of old time waltzes – I think I was shown two chords for my left hand, G and D, and the sheet music had the names of the notes written over the top and a piece of paper wedged between the raised piano keyboard cover and the keyboard. I should try to find out the names of the pieces, one of which I can still remember probably over 35 years later. At a school talent contest/show I said I could play a couple of pieces on the piano, I demonstrated, and I was picked as an interval musician, playing on the school hall piano tucked at the side near the front.
Showing an interest my parents thought, to buy me an organ, at first a simple cheap organ and if I continued to show interest something better, so my first electrically powered keyboard instrument was a simple Bontempi (I think) electric reed organ. I don’t have a picture of what I had, but to give you an idea…
As memory recalls mine had three rows of chord buttons and the “volume” control was a rotary control (which kept sticking at one or other end of travel) under the right hand end of the organ. Basically all the time it was on a fan rotated inside blowing air around, and pressing keys let the air vibrate a “reed” to make a note. This was incredibly noisy with lots of “wind noise” at low levels (air escaping without going near the reeds) and at top volume the background noise was mostly the constant fan noise.
I kept an interest and then came a trip to a shop with lots and lots of organs, even triple manual organs with lots of switches, and I was bought a Viscount M40 Intercontinental. The lovely Internet has come up with this picture.
Two three-and-a-half octave manuals, a one octave pedal keyboard, a rhythm and accompaniment unit (termed “automatic”) and a “swell” pedal that meant the built-in amplifier went from a nice normal listening level at the lowest to “oh my god that’s loud”. If you used the accompaniment unit the pedals did “odd” things to the musical parts if I recall. The organ came with a complete set of schematic and circuit diagrams, some of which folded out two or three times. Fascinating at the time.
Later still, the third and final instrument purchased for me was a Yamaha PSS-680. Mr Internet if you please…
This was really interesting for me as though it only had mini keys it was five octaves of mini keys but it had a “synth” option where you could invent your own sounds using the 2-operator FM synth engine, and save up to five of your own sounds. I didn’t quite understand how it was working but had fun messing with the carrier and modulator options, and wrote down the settings for I believe nine parameters for a few sounds. Annoying thing was when I went back they never sounded the same. What I then discovered was you had to start from the same preset as well as having the same parameters you were allowed to edit on the front panel, because there were a lot of FM parameters you couldn’t change… Well… until some bright spark (grin) came up with a voice editor on his Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128… This was routinely re-written, version one in Sinclair ZX Basic, version two in 68000 assembly on a Commodore Amiga with totally custom screen (copied from ZX version), version three in C on a Commodore Amiga using the native UI, and I think “for fun” I started on a Windows version. These are effectively lost.
The PSS-680 also had “PCM” rhythm sounds in addition to the FM engine, with 4 banks of 8 pads you could tap. Quite fun at the time. I programmed a few songs in 8 track MIDI on my ZX Spectrum 128, a few including simple rhythms on channel 16.
I found a YouTube video containing the whole demo tune if you want to hear what it sounded like.
2024 “nexus” edit: Found a fairly new video with better audio quality.
Last of my “early” instruments was the first I bought myself, a preset only device but I believe General MIDI compliant PSR-420. You can guess where this image is coming from by now right?
About this time I started getting into “proper sequencing” on a Windows computer at first mainly step-tine sequencing with some software called MIDI Orchestrator, later using a home edition of the software that grew to become Sonar. The sounds came from a Yamaha DB50XG board riding piggyback on compatible sound cards, and later the Yamaha SW1000XG sound card, which was like having two DB50XG boards at once. Being computer cards they’re less photogenic, but I’m sure a Google image search can find pictures if you REALLY want.
As for “real time” recording… Wait for next post where I start on equipment I still own and still in working order.