Yamaha DX7 Frequency Modulation

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Category:

Music

Tags:

• Yamaha
• DX7
• FM
• Frequency
• Modulation

[caressxofxsteel]

at least this came out when patch memory was blowing up lol could you imagine if you couldnt save your sounds at all like on most if not all pre prophet 5 synths as i call em? that woulda been god awful with this synth and its a bear to program.....now thats not to say that this isnt an awesome synth. i love the dx7 i wish i owned one but id have to dedicate probably a whole week straight just to program it lol

[dvamateur]

@caressxofxsteel well, in my opinion a sine wave based synthesizer (such as DX7) is a perfect complement to a sawtooth/square wave synthesizer (most analogs). A subtractive analog synthesis lends itself to some nice filter sweeps and swooshes, but believe it or not, even this can get tiring after a while, and then the FM based twocks and twangs might be something refreshing to hear. You can have a knob based FM synth, but due to memory presence, people started to use synths as preset organs...

[dvamateur]

I found this helpful: article in Keyboard Mag, June 1985, about DX7 programming. I actually got that issue of Keyboard off eBay.  The entire issue is about synthesizer programming. You can get the PDF of that DX7 article here: w w w DOT abdn DOT ac DOT uk SLASH ~mth192 SLASH dx7 SLASH manuals SLASH prgrmdx7 DOT pdf

[dvamateur]

@PawzUK Because it was once fashionable to diss it as tiny sounding, etc. And even quite recently it was considered cool to chop the DX7 into pieces on a video. I personally don't consider such activity so cool. Come on, let's have some respect to fine Japanese craftsmanship.

[dvamateur]

@dncviorel thanks

[therealsweep]

@dvamateur Yes, it's certainly a bit strange at first if you're used to subtractive synthesis. I find it more practical than additive synthesis, though, from my limited experience of that. I had a Casio FZ-1 for a while (until it broke down). Maybe if you spend a lot of time building up collections of base waves it can be useful, but starting from scratch every time is a bit like building up a baby one cell at a time instead of having one in the more normal way.

[dvamateur]

@therealsweep Thank you for your consideration. Anyway, I think that FM is kind of a curious way of synthesis, I believe it's coming from the idea that any waveform can be obtained by a combination (addition, multiplication, etc.) of multiple sine waves (Fourier analysis). I believe that additive synthesis should be the subject of Synthesis 101 course, then one should go to subtractive, then maybe FM. I unfortunately never had a chance to do additive. Never had a Kawai K5 or Casio FZ-1

[therealsweep]

There's a helpful Yamaha forum I keep trying to link people to for questions they've asked, but YouTube seems to be disallowing links. It's w w w DOT y a m a h a f o r u m s DOT c o DOT u k SLASH f o r u m SLASH I hope that's acceptable to the YouTube censor.

[therealsweep]

@jeffknightrogen I don't have a DX100, but I can direct you to a forum where someone can help. I can't post the link as YouTube won't let me, so I'll try to email you. Also, I keep telling YouTube your post isn't spam, but it ignores that.

[therealsweep]

@dvamateur No problem. I can appreciate what you were saying and I certainly didn't think you were out of line.

[dvamateur]

@therealsweep Sorry, I get upset whenever anyone tells me to use softsynths in favor older instruments or computers which they say are obsolete. Basically, telling me to use Windows or Mas OS X works on me like a red sheet on a bull. Sorry, I behaved in an uncivilized manner replying to your comments previously. My apologies.

[therealsweep]

@dvamateur Sorry, Windows and Mac only. I can appreciate why you're avoiding them, though, from bitter experience. Regarding the latency problem, though, a lot depends on your computer and your soundcard. I get decent results from softsynths. It's just the unreliability of depending on Microsoft and Apple that's a problem. But original Yamaha FM stuff can be bought for pretty good prices, to hardware is a good option for FM synthesis.