2600s!

https://youtu.be/yPA4JyxVV2I

https://youtu.be/UkhYuS6vxGU

I'll have to settle for the Behringer, I don't have a spare $4000 to spend on the beautiful korg limited edition reissue :-(

Hiya Jim, No, neither do I! Mind you, a) I'm still not sure how the Odyssey 'really' works (as in, I'm sure there's tonalities I've yet to discover, so maybe I should work all those out first before declaring that it's redundant) and b) Korg have made a point of calling this the 'full-sized' 2600, so maybe they're planning a smaller or a desktop version of it for the future? Sort of like what they did with the MS20, but the other way around?

Did you see the Reverb feature on it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaiMjwF0a64

yeah that looks intense ! im interested to see whats all going on there. keep me posted. Thats an extremely interesting set of modular keys!

Hiya Jim, No, neither do I! Mind you, a) I'm still not sure how the Odyssey 'really' works (as in, I'm sure there's tonalities I've yet to discover, so maybe I should work all those out first before declaring that it's redundant) and b) Korg have made a point of calling this the 'full-sized' 2600, so maybe they're planning a smaller or a desktop version of it for the future? Sort of like what they did with the MS20, but the other way around?

I feel like I've mined the Odyssey out. Its not even in my live rig anymore. I love it, instant John Foxx. But I really wanted a 2600 anyway. I've been lusting after one for decades.

good point on the full size versus pint size.... there are some supposedly leaked photos on the web of a less historically accurate korg reissue, but who knows? It could still be massively xpensive. I expect behringer's rack unit will clock in at a grand or less. Its Uli after all.

the intro with the history lesson is just great.... I really want to build a trautonium!

between these reissues and behringer's eurorack roland system 100 modulaes (didn't roland make a system 500 for eurorack a few years ago though?) you could get all the unobtainium analog depeche mode sounds if you were so inclined.... now if someone would just recreate the emualtor II with a USB or flash memory setup.....

As a kid at school I would be nerding out To Jean Michelle Jarre and Vangellis when all my cool classmates were into Ska and Two-Tone. This, to me, was the sound of the future; I imagined that such people were more scientist than musician, and occupied vast exclusive electronic laboratories like the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, all well beyond the means of us ordinary mortals. I was interested to read that Jarre still counts the ARP 2600 among his top ten favourite synths today.

Thanks for the history lesson - It's good to see at last what this miracle of sound actually looks like and how it came to be. A heavy dose of nostalgia there! it makes me feel so old to think what was so futuristic to me back then seems so quaint and retro today - still a great sound though!

Mind you - Nothing can sound more like science than a "Harrington 1200..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqkUISJej2o

I never realised the synth seen at the climax of Close Encounters was the real thing. Oh and look! now I can get an ARP 2500 of my own for just €100 that slips invisibly into this megacomputer parked on my lap - god I love living in the future!

Here's the real thing close up in all its operational glory...

https://youtu.be/TYMX5QuUaj4

it certianly is an arp 2500, the original matrix synth! rare as female unicorn semen

close encounters ranks in there with lade runner as one of those classic movies from my childhood that left me with just one thought: I want a synthesizer!

In avant-garde/academic circles, there's a composer called Eliane Radigue - she's an old lady now - who's used the ARP 2500 for most of her composing life. Her music is based on Tibetan Buddhism, so it's very meditative, but if you track down her albums on YouTube, it's instructive to hear what she's done with this huge old piece of lab equipment. It's electronic, but somehow quite organic as well...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwHIsZKrZhM

I lost interest after 3:03... that's the noise my studio makes when I'm not there

As a kid at school I would be nerding out To Jean Michelle Jarre and Vangellis when all my cool classmates were into Ska and Two-Tone.

I don't remember a timewhen ska was cool... th boostones seemed to break the mainstream in 98 or 99, but only for about a month and then everyoe moved on.... and for the record I like ska and two-tone

...that's the noise my studio makes when I'm not there

:-D It's actually quite a catchy tune sped up 1000% (...if you're a bat)

I'm relistening to this Podcast of Matt Berry interviewing Jean Michelle Jarre - Hearing it last year is what's renewed my interest in electronic music - Episode 2 is devoted to how he put together Oxygene (in his 'kitchen studio') and its a fascinating listen. He comes over really well actually - I had always perceived him as being somewhat up himself and very very French!

https://open.spotify.com/show/4AwYnNYRwelLvEUJ1tmlcP?si=atU3FILXSQmb8BbQJMY3hw

In avant-garde/academic circles, there's a composer called Eliane Radigue - she's an old lady now - who's used the ARP 2500 for most of her composing life. ...it's instructive to hear what she's done with this huge old piece of lab equipment. It's electronic, but somehow quite organic as well...

Bonkers I'd say! ;-)

I came across this short portrait of her after this thread lead me off on an evening of Youtube retro synth joy - I can't say my first impressions were favourable. She struck me as one of those bullshit artists with "all the gear but no idea" You know the sort; Has the resources to be an early adopter, cluelessly fannies about with it; get's attention shouting "I have the special stuff - My Art, my Art! - When she says "I always have the piece I am working on in my head" I'm like "No love, I get that too, it's called tinitus!"

But perhaps I'm being too harsh. I'll give her a listen... perhaps she'll grow on me.

https://youtu.be/lcy5fLcAsQQ

I don't remember a timewhen ska was cool... th boostones seemed to break the mainstream in 98 or 99, but only for about a month and then everyoe moved on.... and for the record I like ska and two-tone

I'd assume that's 'cos you grew up in the US? Here in the UK white urban youth embraced the music of their immigrant Jamaican neighbours, and mixed Ska and Two Tone bands like The Specials, The Selector and Madness crossed over to the mainstream. It was huge for a while. The late seventies/early eighties BK (Before Kylie) were a great time to grow up here musically. So much diversity: Ska, Reggae, Rock, Punk, New Romantics - radically different genre's. Popular music today seems so homogenous by comparison. Musical taste defined which playground 'Set' you belonged to. Ska and Two Tone fans were mostly the hard nuts. Jarre, Vangellis, Mike Oldfield fans? - We hid in the library and played D&D or chess, depending on where on the spectrum we lay. (Actually the chess players would've been into classical music of course! - not that I'm stereotyping or anything... just how I remember it)

its not like that in the USA, or wasn't in the 80s anyway... by the early 90s there started to be the hair metal camp (later to be the grunge and then pop punk camp) and the hiphop kids. Thatw as the only division I remember. By the time I wa sin highschool we started seeing all these extreme subcultures that weren't there. Hippy types, post-grunders with flannel shirts etc, the ahrdcore kids in trakc suits, goths, ravers ( we got the whole party thing late her ein the USA, you guys were done by then for the msot part but we sent you the music and you sent back thewhole baggy pants, day glow party culture 10 years later as if house music was born in Manchester LOL) and god knows what else.

It's good that we, the UK and US have each other. We're like backup storage for each other's culture. Blues music was on its way out before young white London lads like Mick, Keith, Rod and Eric embraced American race music from imported 78's and the American Forces Network radio.

We can blame the early Chicago Police Department for the survival of Irish diddly diddly music which was, by the 1950's, practically extinct in Ireland - a casualty of the craze for amplified accordion 'Polka bands' and cowboy film era Country and Western music and then Elvis! Cheif O'Neill of the CPD had a preference for hiring his own countrymen, especially if they also chanced to be Irish musicians and it became his life's work to collect and write down any tunes they had brought across the atlantic in their heads - O'Neill's Music of Ireland became known as the bible of irish music, preserving 1850 irish tunes that would otherwise have been lost; it's all the fault of those Chicago cops! The Punk rock approach started in the US but found fertile ground among London's disaffected youth - We're quite good at reconditioning your rejects and then selling it back to you but hey, it does go both ways.

Anyway... kinda lost the original point... Oh yeah Synths; ARP-2600 Niiiiiice! :-)

I got that OP-1 in the end! 😱 !!

very accurate musicology! yeah, even our contry music comes from scots traditional folk music infused with our race music.... and your celtic music adopted african isntruments like the banjo eventually too! you don't get our finest show tunes from folks like Cole Porter without the merging of gilbert and sullivan operata with jazz. Imagine how much poorer music would be if paiament had given us a few MPs in the late 1700s!

so what do you think of the op1? our own Xaqary swears by his. I kinda look at teenage engineering soemtimes and then chicken out. Theinterfaces are just so sleek and modern. I feel more confortable with giant stuff with full size knobs, tons of connectors and lots of 'em both. There's such a wealth of gear now its really overwhelming. And its ahrd not to bankrupt myself buying gear I might not use much. I've been trying to selll stuff off lately that hasn't been used in a while.

First bear in mind that I'm coming at it from the perspective of an 'analogue' country blues folkster whose grasp of music tech is pretty much pre-millennial! - (I've only recently got my head around my Zoom 9000 although to be fair it sat in a drawer for 20 years 'til I picked up the guitar again).

The OP-1 is the gateway drug into making music that I've always enjoyed but also resisted (I have enough tech in my life already). A lot of its reviews/forums say the OP-1's not for beginners, citing its 'limitations' and unconventional workflow. But then if it's too wierd for beginners and too limited for pros then who is it for and why does it have such a cult following?

Well, I can liken it to another fine piece of 90's tech, my old Psion Series3. This too had 'limited' functions but I had more fun exploring the the limits of its capabilities (slouched on my bed, half watching MTV Europe, on the bus, plane, lunchbreaks) than I ever would have made time for sat at a desk in front of a 12" CRT and Windows 3.1 (besides, that was DOOM! time!) Consequently I was able to create on that Psion what remain to this day some of my most sophisticated and complex spreadsheets ever; The Psion's limitations focussed ones attention into mastering the functions that really mattered most - plus I could do it whenever I liked and wherever I was most chilled out and relaxed!

This is what I feel the OP-1 gives me - This single tiny integrated unit delivers a physical (basic midi) keyboard, multiple synth engines, a drum machine, sequencer, sampler, 4 track recorder, and plenty enough filters and effects to keep ME happilly occupied. I don't have to waste months of my life GASsing over countless gear reviews, wondering which features might actually be useful to me and which are marketting hype. plus I don't have to fill a significant part of my home with a spaghetti of cables, keyboards and synth modules... At my 'music production' level this thing promises to be unbelievably liberating.

There's such a wealth of gear now its really overwhelming

Perversely, overwhelm is exactly what I've squandered(?) my wealth on the OP1 to avoid! - The OP cost twice as much £€$ as I reasonably could afford but half the current OP-1 retail price - I make music for fun not as a profession I and really can't be arsed with all the mainstram pro gear. If it's anything like the photo industry, much of the stuff is unneccessary, over-marketed peripheral faff anyway. In fact photo gear might be a good analogy - In synth terms the OP's perhaps like a rather good pocket camera as opposed to a camera bag full of pro-gear. When I take photos with my old Fuji x10 I feel like I'm 'off duty' and making chilled out relaxed pics for fun - I'm in a different headspace to when I'm 'working'.

The article linked below is what made me think that just maybe an OP-1 could just justify the expense. However it was only when I saw Jean Michelle Jarre list it in his top ten favourite synths that I actually felt compelled to dispense with prudence and buy into the Teenage Engineering cult... "It's Not A Toy" ; "It Goes Deep..." ; "Seller's regret; I bought it again!" - they're all mantras of the OP-1 way - Maybe it is best to steer clear...

https://audionewsroom.net/2015/06/rediscoveries-te-op-1-creative-block-limitations-other-stories.html

plus I don't have to fill a significant part of my home with a spaghetti of cables, keyboards and synth modules...

cable spaghetti is a dish best served cold