History
My first job was at Taco Bell, in high school. I worked the whole summer in 1987 with one purpose in mind. I wanted to save up $1,450 to buy a Yamaha V50 Music Workstation. I am sure my parents thought I was nuts… most kids wanted to buy a car, or…or…whatever else it is I was supposed to be doing. Ha!
I achieved my goal – it was the strangest experience working so hard for so long, then going down to Synthony Music in Phoenix and buying that keyboard. The money was gone – I felt so weird saying, “Here is the first $1,450+tax i have ever made in my life…you can have it. All I want is that V50 over there…”
Today
My previous minidisc post is sort-of the precursor to this post… I wrote a lot of tracks (mostly unfinished ideas, but a few were as finished as they could get in electronica form). Those tracks were spread across many cassette tapes. Those tapes eventually got converted to minidisc… and now for the second time, I am converting them from minidisc to a computer-friendly format.
These are a few gems I found a week ago…
3D in \’93 – This was a track I used in Phoenix College as part of a design project. I just felt like adding music to the project.
MindMix – One of many started and unfinished ideas. What set this apart from many of my V50 tracks was that I was able to achieve some separation. The V50 was a challenge because it only had 4 operators and 16 timbres, so it was hard to craft a thick, rich sound, and keep things from becoming muddy.
PhreeGas – One of my last tracks produced on the V50 before I sold it. It again has some good separation and some fun syncopation.
Although fairly restrictive (because it was my only piece of gear, other than an Alesis Midiverb II which I loved for being $99, and hated for introducing a ton of noise into all my tracks), I think I was able to get that synth to produce richer sounds than 4-op FM Synthesis was supposed to 😉
I will release more of the tracks as I get them normalized and cleaned-up (I won’t say remastered, because I don’t consider myself a sound engineer).
Cheers.
Great to hear someone talking about the V50 again. It deserves more mention than it normally gets these days.
P.S. I like 3D in 93 in particular.
Yeah – squares are just…so punchy!!
Thanks for the tracks, good to hear what others have done with the V50.
Thanks! I still have a problem finishing what I start, but I wrote more tracks on that beast than on any other piece of gear 😉
Just came across my old comment….posted some of my old V50 and 4-op FM tracks since then… https://soundcloud.com/synthmans/sets/various-v50-tracks
nice! your audio is very clean – i feel like the sound is coming from the actual synth instead of a 4-track.