telantas's Electronic Synth Setup

A single preset guaranteed this synthsizer's place in history: C15 LatelyBass was the feature sound of many 1990s hits, most memorably "Saturday Night" by Whigfield. It would be easy to conclude that this is just one fortunate preset in what is otherwise just another of the many FM synths that Yamaha released in the 80s (a cut-down version of the TX7 with 4 operators instead of the 6 operators of the TX7 and the legendary DX7). In fact, the TX81Z (and its keyboard version, the DX11) marked a significant departure from the norm in FM synthesizers by including the possibility of using different waveforms - not just sine waves. This lends itself to generating more exotic sounds than were possible in other FM synthesizers where the emphasis was on reproducing the sonic characteristics of acoustic instruments such as bells, pianos, guitars, etc. Unfortunately most of the TX81Z's presets are similar to those on other Yamaha synthesizers so this ability to produce otherwoldly sounds does no sine through. This stemmed, I suspect, from a desire to stay true to the sonic palette artists and audiences expected at the time. But it is no coinvidence that C15, a bass sound which souns nothing like an acoustic bass, an electric bass guitar, or an anlogue synthesizer bass patch, was one of the presets making use of this ability to use non-sine waves. In addition, the TX81Z is an 8-part multitimbral synth and all performance and voice parameters can be edited onboard, although the editing interface is fairly limited (but there is an extensive MIDI implementation allowing control of all parameters via SysEx).