finleygomez's forum posts 21

Finley!

Good to hear from you.

Right now, I think I might need this question even more than you need the answer. :D

I've been pondering this one over breakfast...

I think we can break this up into 2 fundamentals:

1. Which synths could actually produced the "famous Yamaha FM preset" sounds heard on Discovery?

2. Did Todd Edwards + DP actually record the Yamaha synths in-question, or did they just show up to the studio sessions with these classic Yamaha DX/TX samples on a Zip disk?

Re: #1: Which synths could Lately Bass?

We're talking about this section of the song.

The "true" Lately Bass patch requires Yamaha FM architecture with at least 4 operators AND the multiple operator waveforms that were introduced with TX81z/DX11/TG5/V50... strangely there weren't many Yamaha products in that era or later that were patch compatible with the TX81z and it's 4-op multi-waveform siblings. The earlier 6-operator DX7/DX7II lacked the multi-waveform capability to be fully compatible, as did many other 4-op offerings like DX100 and FB-01. Yamaha (and the rest of the world) mostly focused on DX7 patch compatibility with FM-capable products in the 90s and beyond.

All that said, you can produce the VERY similar Solid Bass factory patch on pretty much any Yamaha synth that has at least 4 operators, as that patch doesn't use any of the extra operator waveforms that are unique to the TX81z and siblings.

Lately Bass vs. Solid Bass

Solid Bass reproduced on DX7

...and you can re-create Lately Bass by leveraging some of the extra waveforms available on the later SY series workstations (as Jim mentioned) fairly well, even though you can't import TX81z patches into those workstations.

Lately Bass reproduced on SY77

In my personal experience, Lately Bass and Solid Bass are VERY sensitive to both input velocity and the DAC quality/resolution of the synth they're being played on. The same patch with the exact sequencing might sound bright and smooth out of one old yamaha synth and dark and gritty out of another -- and that's before you've messed with any of the patch parameters... so even these YouTube direct comparisons can over AND under-sell similarities between Solid Bass and Lately Bass, depending on the units being used to demo each.

So... IF you believe the sound you're hearing in Face to Face is indeed a Lately Bass patch that used some of those non-sine waveforms, then it must be either TX81z/DX11/TG5/V50 or the later SY77/SY99.

IF you belive what you're hearing could be a Solid Bass patch with some EQing, then damn near all of Yamaha's FM synths are in-play as potential perpetrators, with the DX7, DX100 and FB-01 being the most popular choices for these types of bass duties.

(note, the 1998 Yamaha FS1-R could load DX7 patches (but not TX81z type patches) and is theoretically in-play for Discovery -- just barely -- but I owned one of those back in the day and the output quality was very distinctive, it imparted it's own flavor on any DX voice you tried to recreate. The bass sound on F2F doesn't sound anything like the ultra-hi-fi sound of FS that I remember).

Re: #2: What if they just used a sample?

We're talking about a song famously made up of dozens and dozens of samples, as you are probably even more aware of than me. By the late 90s, there were all manner of factory sample CDs and early internet resources giving you pretty easy access to famous DX sounds. I don't hear any velocity-based sound modulation in the Lately Bass sound on F2F -- to me, this sounds like something that could have been achieved with just a single clean Lately Bass or Solid Bass sample.

Given this is a song that was born from DP and Todd Edwards loading "70 samples each" into a brand new Akai S6000 beast and having a go at it, what are the odds that this DX/TX "house bass" sound was just a sample they had floating around from a factory sample CD, internet FTP find, or sampled right off a Detroid techno track from the early '90s?

Wow, incredible stuff, thank you so so much for this one!!! Im glad to have opened some discussion on this, as its been bugging me for ages now.

For starters, thanks for that video of the breakdown of Lately v Solid. I think for the longest time I was under the impression that 'BASS 2' from ROM A (Take my breath away bass) was the Solid bass patch, so its great to know that it is (Somewhat) possible to recreate this on a DX7! Also, insane to discover the different tonality of each device, I think this has deffo swayed my choice for which FM synth to look into when I finally have enough to get one.

That aside, your point of the velocity being identical for each hit is a detail I think I glossed over, and that being a sample is deffo not one to rule out for Face To Face (Especially now with the recent findings of them using lots of different sample CDs on Discovery too), however, Id like to turn back to the usage of 'FLUTE 2' from ROM 2A and 'PIPES 2' from ROM 3B in Verdis Quo. Based on the above, and from your experience, would you say these were TX81z/DX11/TG5/V50/SY77/SY99 adjacent? I did try doing a side by side comparison with the original track and Dexed and came out inconclusive in the end.

Also, I know my claim of them only having one FM synth is a bit of a shot in the dark, but I feel like these types of synths were 100% one-trick-ponies (In a positive way!) so I find it very unlikely that they would have/had/rented more that one.

solid bass, that's the sine only version! I could not remember this morning! I'm not the biggest fan of those patches despite having multiple machines that do one or the other. I think my ex5 might feature BOTH, I can't recall. I so seldom use it and when I do its for the mighty sound design capabilities.

I think you made a lot of good points. I do not think its impossible that DP had a tx81z or borrowed one for that patch, they sold so many of them and by that point everyone knew about that patch. It's like the spx90. If you want lately bass or symphonic it's always been pretty easily attainable, I can't turn around without tripping over a tx81z or a spx90 or both. When yamaha hit on a good thing they cranked them out at scale and they're hyper reliable workhorses. I also wouldn't be surprised at all if they sampled someone's or had a sample lying around they got from somewhere else. I think its least likely that its sampled from a vinyl record because it would need to be soloed and even if there was a solo bass section to sample from you would probably notice the mix/master processing that was then processed some more... its possible it was sampled from a cd version of something though, that might be a little more transparent than cheaply pressed techno vinyl of that time.

Very interesting point on the sources maybe being from a Sample CD as opposed to a techno record. I think based on that, you've deffo narrowed down the search a little bit more do being 1 of 1000 different Yamaha FM synths, or a Sample CD hahaha

Hi all,

Just doing some digging into some of the Synth sounds on Discovery. One which I see brought up alot is the Lately Bass patch heard on Face To Face, as well as the Flute 2 & Pipes 2 sounds heard on Verdis Quo.

I currently have no direct source which states "They used a TX81Z or DX7", but you can clearly tell that these sounds were used on the album.

As such, I want to get some advice on this, and perform a "process of elimination" method of which synth they actually used for these sounds. So far, I have determined that they most likely didn't own two separate Yamaha FM synths. My breakdown so far is:

• They most likely didn't own a TX81Z, as this wouldn't run DX7 patches; and
• Didn't have a DX7 as this wouldn't have the Lately Bass patch on it

Were there any other Yamaha FM synths released prior to 1998-ish that had the capability of playing both TX81Z patches and DX7 patches, or is my theory of only owning one Yamaha FM synth flawed?

Thanks and let me know if you have any further questions!

First off - Happy new year gents! Second - Thank you so much for getting this implemented! This is absolutely incredible news to see that its finally up and running.

Ive gone ahead and added a bunch to the Daft Punk page, but I can't lie, now that Im actually filling it out, this is alot harder than I initally thought!! Noticed a few speculation additions on the Daft Punk page that had been marked as true (See entry for MS-20 for example)

Regardless, super fun to finally have this in place, and REALLY looking forward to the timeline feature.

One quick question - Regarding duplicate album pulls (I.E. Homework, and Homework 25th Anniversary Edition, and all the countless versions of RAM) is there any way to filter this down so that we dont see gear tagged with the same album twice (Or even three times!)?

Once I get back from work I could give you a more in-depth breakdown of what the dates from the 10 first items on the Daft Punk page would look like with reasoning behind it to see if everyone is in agreement with how some submissions could look like

Ok so:

• Alesis 3630 - Dec 1996 (Seen on Homework & Discovery) [Source: Daft Punk Unchained 1996 Live Footage]
• Juno-106 - Feb 1996 (Seen on Homework & Discovery) [Source: Photo from Daft Punk Live @ L'Espace (Leave Earth)]
• Mutronics Mutator - 2002 [Source: Official Mutronics site from 2002]
• Moog Minimoog Voyager - Apr 2006 (Seen on Alive 2007) [Source: Photos from Coachella 2006 live setup]
• E-mu SP-1200 - 1996 (Seen on Homework & Discovery) [Source: Can be heard on Homework. First seen Jan 1997 - Photos from End Club live set]
• TR-909 - Nov 1993 (Seen on Homework & Discovery) [Source: Can be clearly heard on The New Wave and Alive, which was recorded in 1993]
• Roland S-760 - Sep 1996 [Source: Photo from Daft Punk Live @ Le Zenith]
• Ableton Live - Apr 2006 (Seen on Alive 2007) [Source: Mixmag article from 2007]
• TR-808 - Sep 1995 (Seen on Homework, Discovery & Human After All) [Source: Photos from Daft Punk live @ Back 2 Basics]
• Boss MT-2 - Evidence is not solid enough to give an exact date + proof link is now dead

I love that we both used Prince as an example... "great minds..."

Are you working on any new music, Finley?

Exactly! 🤝

I am indeed, the grind never seems to end, I im hoping that I will have something to drop next year

Where can I hear your old music. I feel like I missed the boat somehow.

https://finleygomez.com/ - All my links should be there! Thanks for your interest! :)

Would the intent be to tag the earliest known date they used the item? The span of years? both?

I think span of years of gear owned would be a bit tricker to cover, especially if its something that gets dropped then picked back up again throughout the artists career (I.E. Artist uses a guitar from 1976-1981, then starts using it again in 2005-2010, as a hypothetical example) I think it could "muddy" the info a bit if submitters were to put the span as 1976 to 2010, as it wouldn't really be that accurate. I hope this makes sense!

@Finley: do you have a sense of how you would you want to list the date metadata for the first 10 or so items on Daft Punk's profile? Would it just be the year they were first known to use the item?

I would populate as follows:

• If its gear that they haven't been pictured with (Live photos, studio photos etc.) I would populate the 'First Known Use' as the date that they mentioned it (I.E. Date of interview, date of magazine article etc.)

• If its gear thet have been pictured with, It would be the date of the photo (If its a photo from one of their live shows) or guesstimate of the year of photo (If its a studio photo with no concrete date)

Once I get back from work I could give you a more in-depth breakdown of what the dates from the 10 first items on the Daft Punk page would look like with reasoning behind it to see if everyone is in agreement with how some submissions could look like

Re: Ablums

With albums/releases it seems pretty straightforward: Equipboard > Kurt Cobain profile > "Releases" section > filter by "Bleach"

Crazy ideas time: would an album ever be something one could search for on Equipboard? E.g. A user searches for "nevermind" and the first hit is the Nevermind album complete with album art? You click that album entry and you're taken to a page that shows you Butch Vig, Nirvana, and each member of Nirvana are associated with that album? Maybe the page even shows you the most popular gear tagged as being used on Nevermind? Do people think about albums/releases when they think about "how do I get that sound"?

Love this idea btw, I think having a specific 'Albums' page for big albums like Nevermind, Purple Rain, Dark Side of The Moon, Thriller, Hotel California, Brothers In Arms etc. etc. would be fantastic! I think it would also be a great source of traffic to the site too.

As per this idea I think the specific artist eras are hard to scale across artists (I mean, relatively few artists are iconic like Prince and have eras people talk about). But one thing we have thought about is pulling album data, and then you could select what albums the gear was relevant in.

Thoughts?

Great to have you on the thread, Giulio. Thanks for chiming in.

Using albums as a proxy for a date range makes a lot of sense to me. Even in that Prince example you linked, most of the eras are anchored to just 1-2 albums.

I mean, I can't tell ya exactly what date Jason Newsted joined Metallica off the top of my head, but I know ...And Justice for All is the start of the Newsted era. So the concept seems pretty intuitive.

Would adding an album/era/date-range tag to someone's already-approved submission trigger the need for a re-review? Or would we instead be adding gear submissions TO the album/era/date-range tags available for a given artist?

...orrrr could we just search EB for an album profile/entry, and then see what artists/musicians/producers/gear are associated with that album, as sort of a new nexus/search vector on the site?

If assistence is needed in populating historic / popular pages, more than happy to chime in on those pages that I have some knowledge on (Daft Punk, Jai Paul, Prince, Charlie Puth etc.) even if its just to test the functionality.

Let me know if this is something that is doable / desirable.

This is definitely doable, and it sounds like the community wants it, so we're all ears. The challenge is to standardize the data - as in like how we structure it on the backend - to where it's specific enough and useful for users, but also widely applicable to a lot of artist/gear submissions?

So, how should we standardize it? I'm leaning towards "Dates Owned/Used" since that can be a year, a decade, or a span (and it encompasses "first known use" right?).

So it could be 1978. Or 1970s. Or 1970-1978.

As per this idea I think the specific artist eras are hard to scale across artists (I mean, relatively few artists are iconic like Prince and have eras people talk about). But one thing we have thought about is pulling album data, and then you could select what albums the gear was relevant in.

Thoughts?

Fantastic! Im so glad that you are onboard!

Without being pedantic, I think that it would be beneficial to have both the year ('Date Owned' as a suggested heading) and album ('Albums Appeared On' as a suggested heading).

For example, with Daft Punk, there are bits of gear that we know they were using in 1998, but weren't known to be used on any of their released projects. As such, for something like that, just a 'Date Owned' would suffice.

Sticking with the Daft Punk example, for their SP-1200, that could have 'Date Owned' to indicate when they were first known to have obtained it (I think it was 95 off the top of my head), and the 'Albums Appeared On' would be - Homework & Discovery.

I don't know if this would cause confusion or issues when it comes to ordering, but let me know if this is doable!

Regardless, either one of the two fields would be incredible to see! Thanks

I love that we both used Prince as an example... "great minds..."

Are you working on any new music, Finley?

Exactly! 🤝

I am indeed, the grind never seems to end, I im hoping that I will have something to drop next year

Oh mad! I completely forgot I made this request already! Glad to see that the sentiment is still the same hahaha

One thing I would absolutely love to see implemented onto the site would be the ability to list the era in which artists were using their gear; for example, Prince has an insane amount of gear on his EB page, and trying to decipher when each bit of gear/ instrument was used is a nightmare! Having the ability to log "First known use" or "Date owned" on a piece of gear would be so helpful; that way, people who are using the site for research can sort by year or date and have a chronological list of when gear was used.

Let me know if this is something that is doable / desirable.

Hi there, hope all is well!

I was wondering if I could put in a feature request for implementing the option to sort gear by date the artist obtained it?

Im thinking in terms of the Prince page for example. We know that Prince's career spanned over 50 years, as such, I think it would be so handy to be able to sort the gear by chronological order so that gear he was using in 78 appears first, and not jumbled in with gear he was using in like 92.

Look forward to hearing what you guys think!

Thanks

Fin

I think more than anything I'd just like to see a proper implementation of Dark Mode, that's kinda what I want more than anything

I want dark mode also, we'll make it happen with the redesign. We're upgrading things under the hood, and the new tech we're using plus the new branding standards will make dark mode pretty easy to implement :)

You're a star @gchiaren! Thank you very much :)

I think more than anything I'd just like to see a proper implementation of Dark Mode, that's kinda what I want more than anything

Hi EB Forums,

Recently found this pic of Jai Paul's old studio from 2008!

Ive only been able to spot a couple of bits of gear:

• Boss TU-2 Chromatic Tuner
• Yamaha CS1X Synth

If any of you guys have an ID on what monitors and interface he is using, please let me know, would really appreciate that!

Cheers

Fin

Couldn't think of anywhere else to post this, but I really wanna try and get a comprehensive list of all the gear used by Charlie Puth in his various studios.

Currently trying to get an ID on what keyboard he is using at 0:24 in this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WE4AZl4xR8 Im tempted to say a Korg, but I really can't tell!!

If you spot anything else that isnt on his Equipboard please let me know below!

that IS an ATC, where they actually are I have no idea.... I like when they flash the cheeseburger

yeah, Swedish TV is pretty loose, apparently... at least in the '00s.

EDIT: I bet Finley has seen this video. I wonder if he has any insights on what the hell it actually is?

I have indeed seen this! And it is real, however, the title is very misleading, this isn't their studio, this is the Daft Arts/Daft Trax Office, where Busy P and Daft Punk's team spent most of their time. Here is a picture of Busy P in that exact office in 1999 and some video footage of the office can be seen in this music video from Cassius

I'm still stuck on the Mutronics Mutator. It's really bugging me that one of the supposed key components of Daft Punk's sound was apparently never in any of their live rigs and never mentioned in any interviews?

Even Softube's official marketing namechecks Daft Punk, but there's not a single source I can find.

A Highly Regarded but Short-Lived Analog Filter

Mutronics Mutator, based on technology developed for analog synthesis in the 60s, was the go-to stereo analog filter and envelope follower for many of the bands and musicians who shaped the 90s sound, including Radiohead, The Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk, Garbage, Beck, REM, Massive Attack, and Nine Inch Nails. Unfortunately, the Mutator abruptly disappeared from the market when a key component that gave it its unique sound was discontinuedand the designers couldn’t find a suitable alternative. After that, people could only find the Mutator on auction sites, often at highly inflated prices. But finally, a worthy alternative is here.

Why wouldn't they bring the Mutator with them on tour?

Sure it can be a bit unpredictable, but so can a MIDIMoog, a TB-303 and a lot of other stuff they lugged all over the world.

They probably ditched it in favour of a more simpler / easier to carry device? This video springs to mind where Thomas is using some sort of pedal to do all of the filtering https://youtu.be/hVN5dgIbZQY (Apologies about the obnoxious watermark haha)

I can't get over how many awesome discoveries you guys have made on this thread! I wish I could help you out by Identifying some more gear, but I'm terrible at it!

The only way I can help is by giving you guys this! - https://ibb.co/album/syJwSz

Its some pictures I have in my photo collection where you can kinda get a decent view of their gear, so hopefully this can help clear up any theories you guys have.

If you have seen them all, then hopefully there are some more HQ scans in here that can help!

Welcome to the thread, Mr. Gomez!

For anyone else reading along, Finley has been in my Spotify rotation for months. Zealousy slaps.

Me and some friends were recently actually talking about Daft Punk gear, and after seeing that DP used Logic during the recording of Discovery, we were theorizing that maybe they might have been early adopters of the Waves plugins (I.E. the C1, L1, Q10 etc etc) in addition to their other outboard gear?

For the recording of Discovery, I wouldn't doubt it. For Homework, it was Emagic MicroLogic, which was mostly likely still MIDI-only in that timeframe.

...which reminds me I need to add MicroLogic to the database so someone can add that to their profile.

You are too kind! I'm so glad you enjoyed my EP, this means alot!

Ill try and add that entry as soon as possible, but just out of interest, do we have a source as to whether or not they used MicroLogic 100% during the Homework era? Because I know I can provide a source for them using Logic for Discovery & Human After All

Interesting thread! Never actually knew that DP were using a Behringer compressor for their Pre-Daftendirektour shows, thats awesome!

Me and some friends were recently actually talking about Daft Punk gear, and after seeing that DP used Logic during the recording of Discovery, we were theorizing that maybe they might have been early adopters of the Waves plugins (I.E. the C1, L1, Q10 etc etc) in addition to their other outboard gear?

What do you guys think?