synthesizer

205 Articles

The Math Behind The Music Of The 80s

December 11, 2024 by 51 Comments

Although there might have been other music produced or recorded in the 1980s, we may never know of its existence due to the cacophony of all of the various keytars, drum machines, and other synthesized music playing nonstop throughout the decade. There was perhaps no more responsible synthesizer than the Yamaha DX7 either; it nearly single-handedly ushered in the synth pop era. There had been other ways of producing similar sounds before but none were as unique as this keyboard, and for ways beyond just its sound as [Kevin] describes in this write-up.

Part of the reason the DX7 was so revolutionary was that it was among the first accessible synthesizers that was fully digital, meaning could play more than one note at a time since expensive analog circuitry didn’t need to be replicated for multiple keys. But it also generated its tones by using frequency modulation of sine waves in a way that allowed many signals to be combined to form different sounds. While most popular musicians of the 80s used one of the preset sounds of the synthesizer, it could produce an incredible range of diverse sounds if the musician was willing to dig a bit into the programming of this unique instrument.

There were of course other reasons this synthesizer took off. It was incredibly robust, allowing a musician to reliably carry it from show to show without much worry, and it also stood on the shoulders of giants since musicians had been experimenting with various other types of synthesizers for the previous few decades. And perhaps it was at the right place and time for the culture as well. For a look at the goings on inside the chip that powered the device, [Ken Shirriff] did a deep dive into one a few years ago.

Linus Live-Codes Music On The Commodore 64

October 16, 2024 by 12 Comments

In this tremendously educational video, [Linus Åkesson] takes us through how he develops a synthesizer and a sequencer and editor for it on the Commodore 64, all in BASIC. While this sounds easy, [Linus] is doing this in hard mode: all of the audio is generated by POKE, and it gets crazier from there. If you’re one of those people out there who think that BASIC is a limited language, you need to watch this video.

[Linus] can do anything with POKE. On a simple computer like the C64, the sound chip, the screen chips, and even the interrupts that control program flow are all accessible simply by writing to the right part of memory. So the main loop here simply runs through a lot of data, POKEing it into memory and turning the sound chip on and off. There’s also a counter running inside the C64 that he uses to point into a pitch lookup table in the code.

But the inception part comes when he designs the sequencer and editor. Because C64 BASIC already has an interactive code editor, he hijacks this for his music editor. The final sequencer interface exists inside the program itself, and he writes music in the code, in real time, using things like LIST and editing. (Code is data, and data is code.) Add in a noise drum hack, and you’ve got some classic chiptuney sounds by the end.

We love [Linus]’s minimal C64 exercises, and this one gets maximal effect out of a running C64 BASIC environment. But that’s so much code in comparison to his 256-byte “A Mind is Born” demo. But to get that done, he had to use assembly.

Thanks [zogzog] for the great tip!

Continue reading “Linus Live-Codes Music On The Commodore 64” →

Solving A Retrocomputing Mystery With An Album Cover: Greengate DS:3

October 14, 2024 by 10 Comments

[Bea Thurman] had a retro music conundrum. She loved the classic Greengate DS:3 sampler, but couldn’t buy one, and couldn’t find enough information to build her own. [Bea’s] plea for help caught the attention of [Eric Schlaepfer], aka  [TubeTime]. The collaboration that followed ultimately solved a decades-old mystery. 

In the 1980s, there were two types of musicians: Those who could afford a Fairlight CMI and everyone else. If you were an Apple II owner, the solution was a Greengate DS:3. The DS:3 was a music keyboard and a sampler card for the Apple II+ (or better). The plug-in card was a bit mysterious, though. The cards were not very well documented, and only a few survive today. To make matters worse, some chips had part numbers sanded off. It was a bit of a mystery until [Bea and Tubetime] got involved. 

Continue reading “Solving A Retrocomputing Mystery With An Album Cover: Greengate DS:3” →

Digital Audio Workstation In A Box

September 23, 2024 by 4 Comments

Although it’s still possible to grab a couple of friends, guitars, and a set of drums and start making analog music like it’s 1992 and there are vacant garages everywhere yearning for the sounds of power chords, the music scene almost demands the use of a computer now. There are a lot of benefits, largely that it dramatically lowers the barrier to entry since it greatly reduces the need for expensive analog instruments. It’s possible to get by with an impressively small computer and only a handful of other components too, as [BAussems] demonstrates with this tiny digital audio workstation (DAW).

The DAW is housed inside a small wooden box and is centered around a Behringer JT-4000 which does most of the heavy lifting in this project. It’s a synthesizer designed to be as small as possible, but [BAussems] has a few other things to add to this build to round out its musical capabilities. A digital reverb effects pedal was disassembled to reduce size and added to the DAW beneath the synthesizer. At its most basic level this DAW can be used with nothing but these components and a pair of headphones, but it’s also possible to add a smartphone to act as a sequencer and a stereo as well.

For a portable on-the-go rig, this digital audio workstation checks a lot of the boxes needed including MIDI and integration with a computer. It’s excellent inspiration for anyone else who needs a setup like this but doesn’t have access, space, or funds for a more traditional laptop- or desktop-centered version. For some other small on-the-go musical instruments we recently saw a MIDI-enabled keyboard not much larger than a credit card.

Tulip Is A Micropython Synth Workstation, In An ESP32

August 8, 2024 by 6 Comments

We’re not sure exactly what Tulip is, because it’s so many things all at once. It’s a music-making environment that’s programmable in Python, runs on your big computer or on an ESP32-S3, and comes complete with some nice sounding synth engines, a sequencer, and a drum machine all built in. It’s like your dream late-1980s synthesizer workstation, but running on a dev board that you can get for a song.

And because Tulip is made of open-source software and hardware, you can extend the heck out of it. For instance, as demonstrated in this video by [Floyd Steinberg], you can turn it into a fully contained portable device by adding a touchscreen. That incarnation is available from Makerfabs, and it’s a bargain, especially considering that the developer [Brian Whitman] gets some of the proceeds. Or, because it’s written in portable Python, you can run it on your desktop computer for free.

The most interesting part of Tulip for us, as programmer-musicians, is that it boots up into a Micrypython REPL. This is a synth workstation with a command-line prompt as its primary interface. It has an always-running main loop, and you make music by writing functions that register as callbacks with the main loop. If you were fast, you could probably live-code up something pretty interesting. Or maybe it wants to be extended into a physical musical instrument by taking in triggers from the ESP32’s GPIOs? Oh, and did we mention it sends MIDI out just as happily as it takes it in? What can’t Tulip do?

We’ve seen some pretty neat minimalist music-making devices lately, but in a sense Tulip takes the cake: it’s essentially almost entirely software. The various hardware incarnations are just possibilities, and because it’s all open and extremely portable, you can freely choose among them. We really like the design and sound of the AMY software synthesizer engine that powers the Tulip, and we’re sure that more synthesizer models will be written for it. This is a music project that you want to keep your eyes on in the future.

The Last Instrument To Get Auto-Tuned

July 30, 2024 by 14 Comments

Various decades have their musical signature, like the excessive use of synthesizers and hairspray in the 1980s pop music scene. Likewise, the early 2010s was marked by a fairly extreme use of autotune, a technology that allows sounds, especially vocals, to be shifted to precise pitches regardless of the pitch of the original source. In this dark era, a wide swath of instruments and voices on the charts were auto-tuned at some point, although we don’t remember this iconic instrument ever being featured among the annals of pitch-shifted pop music.

The auto-tuned kazoo created by [Guy Dupont] does its pitch corrections on-the-fly thanks to a built-in ESP-32-S3 microcontroller which, through a microphone inside the kazoo, listens for note of the musician’s hum and corrects it to the closest correctly pitched note. Once it identifies the note it outputs a kazoo-like pitch-corrected note from a small speaker, also hidden inside the instrument. It does this fast enough for live performances using the YIN fundamental frequency estimation algorithm. Not only can the kazoo be played directly, but thanks to the implementation of MIDI it can be used to control other synthesizers or be played through other means as a stand-alone synthesizer.

Much like the 80s, where the use of synthesizers relaxed from excessive use on nearly every instrument on every track throughout the decade to a more restrained use as the decade faded, so has autotune been toned down in most music to be more subtly applied. But like our enjoyment of heavily synthesized tunes outside the 80s like those by Daft Punk or The Weeknd, we can also appreciate something heavily auto-tuned outside of the 2010s like a stylized kazoo or a T-Pain-style guitar effects pedal.

Continue reading “The Last Instrument To Get Auto-Tuned” →

MIDI Controller In A Cubic Inch

July 27, 2024 by 2 Comments

MIDI as a standard has opened up a huge world to any musician willing to use a computer to generate or enhance their playing and recording. Since the 80s, it has it has revolutionized the way music is produced and performed, allowing for seamless integration of digital instruments, automation of complex sequences, and unprecedented control over everything from production to editing. It has also resulted in a number of musical instruments that probably wouldn’t be possible without electronic help, like this MIDI instrument which might be the world’s smallest.

Fitting into a cubic inch of space, the tiny instrument’s volume is mostly taken up by the MIDI connector itself which was perhaps an acceptable size by 1980s standards but seems rather bulky today. A two-layer PCB split into three sections sandwiches the connector in place and boasts an ATtiny85 microcontroller and all the associated electronics needed to implement MIDI. Small threaded screws hold the platform together and provide each layer with a common ground. Four small pushbuttons at the top of the device act as the instrument’s keys.

The project’s creator (and Hackaday alum!) [Jeremy Cook] has it set up to play notes from a piano right now, but has also made the source code available so that any musical action can be programmed onto these buttons. Flexibility is perhaps MIDI’s greatest strength and why the standard has lasted for decades now, as it makes it fairly straightforward to build more comprehensive, easy-to-learn musical instruments or even musical instruments out of retro video game systems.

Continue reading “MIDI Controller In A Cubic Inch” →