JAPANESE GENTLEMEN, STAND UP PLEASE [391]

The Japanese supergroup Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO), formed by Haruomi Hosono, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Yukihiro Takahashi, remains the biggest musical discovery I have made while writing here, quickly becoming a favourite band of mine once I discovered how of one of their songs, “Behind the Mask”, became a hit for Eric Clapton, by way of Michael Jackson [link].

 

With the passing of Takahashi on 11th January, and of Sakamoto on 28th March, I am continuing to learn that YMO is only the collective pinnacle for three accomplished musicians with long and varied careers, with each of their discographies their own rabbit hole waiting for me to dive in, and supporting the conclusion I have already made about YMO: they are as important to the history of electronic pop music as Kraftwerk, and that history cannot be properly understood without them.

 

YMO was Hosono’s initial idea of an instrumental disco band that could reach beyond Japan. Both Takahashi and Sakamoto worked with Hosono previously, and Takahashi already had some success in the UK as drummer for the Sadistic Mika Band, which had supported Roxy Music on tour, and had the ignominy of performing on TV under a banner reading “The Old Gley Whistle Test”. The self-titled album that released in 1978 was intended to be a one-off project, aiming to explore ideas of Asian-ness and Orientalism through both original compositions and interpretations of American easy-listening tunes, but a reworking of Martin Denny’s exotica tune “Firecracker” reached number 17 in the UK singles chart and number 60 on the Billboard Hot 100, later being sampled from Afrika Bambaataa and De La Soul to Mariah Carey and Jennifer Lopez. Suddenly, YMO became a proper band.

 

The follow-up album, 1979’s “Solid State Survivor”, contains “Behind the Mask” along with “Technopolis”, often credited with initiating the techno genre, and “Rydeen”, pushing their equipment to emulate animal sounds, but Western audiences initially found highlights from this album mixed into 1980’s “X∞Multiplies”, appearing alongside ska instrumentals and new wave songs in the space originally taken by comedy sketches. This culminated not only in a comedy cover of Archie Bell and the Drells’ “Tighten Up”, but in YMO’s performance of it on the US TV institution “Soul Train”. This all changes again with 1981’s “BGM”, short for “background music”, with a rockier edge, but also a more crystallised sound, with final track “Loom” featuring a simulation of dripping water as if in a cave, and a single glissando that lasts for a full two minutes.

 

YMO was a band that encompassed everything, not unlike the “city pop” genre that built in Japan from the ate 1970s, characterised as urban music for urbanites that took influences from funk, soul, jazz, Latin and middle-of-the-road pop. The recording of their performances also encompassed a great shift from analogue to digital recording; from buzzing subtractive synthesisers to glassy FM synths; the introduction of new equipment from the likes of Roland and Yamaha, YMO being the first band to use Roland’s famous TR-808 drum machine both recorded and live; and from performing live in smaller venues to huge stadiums – “After Service”, their last live album before breaking up in 1983, sounds like it was recorded in front of an audience of teenage girls, but their popularity in Japan was akin to The Beatles at the time. The band reformed for a further album in 1992, and for many further live performances, each sounding different from the last both through musical ability and changing technology.

 

If listening to YMO for the first time, start with “Firecracker” or “Behind the Mask”, and don’t stop. 

LIKE A DOG WITHOUT A BONE [370]

Rhodes MK8 with optional effects unit

It absolutely makes sense that I would covet an electric piano that costs from eight thousand pounds to buy. As much as the opening theme I composed for my YouTube channel, and my song “Nostalgia’s Gonna Get You” [link] both use synth chords recreating the “E Piano 1” sound of the Yamaha DX7, what that sound is itself recreating is a kind of electric instrument holy grail – and one that no longer has to be bought second-hand.

Ray Manzarek’s piano line on The Doors’ song “Riders on the Storm” proves that “Rhodes” is an electric piano brand that evokes a certain mellow tone, almost like an electrified glockenspiel, especially on higher notes. Like a standard piano, Rhodes pianos are mechanical, its keys connected to hammers that hit thin metal rods connected to tuning-fork-shaped bars, the vibrations feeding to electric pick-ups. Used by The Doors, Steely Dan, Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock among many others, the Rhodes sound is highly prized, but with the original Rhodes factory having closed in 1987, outside of a short-run production in 2007, the older units have been kept running continuously, meaning few have experienced hearing one that hasn’t been “broken in” through years of use.

This is until the British sound design company Loopmasters bought the rights to the name, producing a new Rhodes MK 8 piano, based on the Mark I stage model introduced in 1970. I have watched a good few videos featuring it being put through detailed musical tests by people who could afford to buy their own, one of which had to remind themselves its keys were firmer than on previous Rhodes pianos because they were brand new.

I am naturally jealous that some people can afford to drop eight thousand pounds on a musical instrument, which approaches ten thousand once you add the extra effects unit with more digital options to shape the analogue sound, and once you want it in a colour other than black. It all depends on what you want, but when a Yamaha baby grand piano – a standard one with strings, not a sample-based electric CLP model – approaches that figure, your only concerns are what sound you want, and how much weight is your floor able to take.

Arguably, I already have the Rhodes sound with my Yamaha reface DX synthesiser, which cost one thirtieth the price of a base Rhodes MK 8, and I am very happy with it, but I know it is a copy of a copy. The original Yamaha DX7 of 1983 was much lighter and more versatile than a Rhodes with the sounds it creates, entirely by digital means that the owner doesn’t have to think about - the rise of similar synthesisers at the time will have hastened the end of their production. 

I guess it may be that you develop a taste for certain sounds over time, and once you have heard one sound being approximated so many times, or reproduced on online plugins that recorded samples from a Rhodes, you want to experience the real thing directly, being in the presence of its particular tonal quality that cannot be emulated owing to its mix of mechanical and electronic machinery. 

I am sure there will be a Rhodes MK 9 by the time I can afford a MK 8, but when it comes, I will take one in pink, thank you.

MAKE A BIG NOISE PLAYING IN THE STREET [242]

The Commodore 64 is generally agreed to have the best sound of any 8-bit computer released in the 1980s, and its Sound Interface Device (SID) chip is one of the most distinctive sound chips made for any computer. This is borne out through games like “Last Ninja 2,” “Bubble Bobble” and Elite’s “Commando,” and through the sampling of speech found in games like the “Ghostbusters” and “Impossible Mission”: “Another visitor. Stay a while... stay forever!” 

The C64 is sought out as a music synthesiser in its own right, and the SID chip is default sound that an 8-bit computer makes – considering Commodore sold seventeen million of them before they went out of business in 1994, that isn’t much of a surprise. What makes that sound so distinctive, and the SID chip so versatile, tends not to be questioned as a result.

In its simplest form, an analogue synthesiser, made by companies like Moog, Yamaha and Korg, creates a sound using a wave generated by an oscillator, which is then filtered and shaped to create different effects. The sound chips found in most 8-bit computers do not contain oscillators, relying instead on having an oscillating signal fed into it from elsewhere. For this reason, while you can still create different sounds by programming the attack, decay, sustain and release of the sound – known as ADSR, or the sound envelope - the sound itself is a uniform pulse wave, known as a “square wave” because of how it looks on an oscilloscope. Square waves are responsible for the stereotypical “beep boop” sound of an old computer.

Most 8-bit computer companies used one of two off-the-shelf sound chips, making them all sound similar: one chip was the Texas Instruments SN76489, as used in their own TI-99/4A, the BBC Micro, Tandy 1000, the Sega Master System, Game Gear and Mega Drive; the other chip is the General Instrument AY-3-8910, as used in some Sinclair ZX Spectrum models, the Amstrad CPC range, the MSX computer standard, and the original 16-bit Atari ST. Both chips have four sound channels: one to generate white noise, which you could use for rhythm, and three square wave tone generators. 

Meanwhile, Commodore designed and made their own processor chips, including for sound. The SID chip’s designer, Robert Yannes, was a musical hobbyist who wanted to create a high-quality instrument within a computer. However, some of the most sought-after characteristics of the chip came as a result of meeting a deadline. 

The SID chip had its own oscillator, but not only could it create a square wave signal, but it also could produce sawtooth and triangle waves as well as white noise, putting the chip among proper analogue synthesisers. Originally, this oscillator would have served as many as thirty-two channels, but time constraints led the work completed on the first channel to be copied, for a total of three channels, each with its own oscillator. Each channel can therefore be programmed to produce their own sound, using different wave forms, or they can be locked together. Each channel also had its own ring modulator, to produce additional effects, and their own separate ADSR controls built into the hardware, instead of attempting to replicate it through programming. Settings could also be switched almost instantaneously through programming, making it sound like you had more than three channels to play with. The SID chip also had its own filter to add in further effects. In other words, this was uncharted territory.

The C64 went on sale in 1982 at a price of $595. At the same time, the electronics shop Radio Shack sold, for $499, the Realistic Concertmate MG-1, an analogue synthesiser keyboard made for them by Moog. The MG-1 can only play one note at a time, with polyphony available as an effects option. The oscillators in the MG-1 were less versatile, assigned to certain effects that could be completed by any of the SID chip’s oscillators. The MG-1 has one overall ADSR envelope, when the SID chip has one for each channel. Radio Shack catalogues in 1983 still sold the MG-1 for $499 – the C64 could be found for $199 by the end of that year.

Adventurous programming of the C64 led to the discovery that the SID chip could be made to reproduce samples, often used for recordings of speech. Exploiting imperfections in the manufacture of the chip, and a bias in the sound output, you could create an effect that could effectively be used as a fourth sound channel, although one that was used sparingly due to the intensive processing power required. This is why the original SID chip, code number 6581, is more highly-prized: when the cost-reduced Commodore 64C was released in 1986, the new SID chip (8580) had been refined, making the effect quieter. Modern recreations of C64 hardware usually have to accommodate for which version of the chip people wish to use.

I had originally looked at all of this when The C64, a full-sized emulator of the original 1982 machine, was released in 2019. When faced with the decision of learning Microsoft Basic 2.0 to program the virtual SID chip, or learning my scales, I opted for a Yamaha synthesiser instead. While you can replicate an 8-bit computer sound using an analogue synthesiser, or a digital recreation of one, there is a certain timbre to the sound of a SID chip that means you need to seek out the real thing – many people do, judging by the £40-50 price commanded on eBay for just the chip, let alone an entire C64.

After leaving Commodore, Robert Yannes set up his own keyboard company, Ensoniq – the digital oscillator chip from its Mirage sampling synthesiser, which contained the thirty-two sound channels Yannes originally wanted in the SID chip, made its way into the Apple IIGS computer, causing The Beatles’ record label Apple Corps to sue Apple Computer for breaking their legal agreement not to enter the music business.

TAKE ON ME, TAKE ME ON [216]

A question has been plaguing me for weeks: should I buy a Yamaha reface DX? 

One new year’s resolution for me is to make more music. I can read music, and play the piano a bit, but there Is much space for improvement. Music is just one of those things it feels like I should be able to do. But when a particular idea plants itself, one that will require a substantial commitment from me, in terms of time and financial outlay, in order to justify itself, it is a decision I could not take lightly – it has been in the back of my mind for months.

The Yamaha reface DX is one of a series of four music keyboards, released in 2015, that aims to replicate other keyboards in Yamaha’s history and, like the Sega Mega Drive Mini and Nintendo NES Classic Mini, give users the experience of using the original hardware, with authentic knobs, switches and sliders – the CP is an electric piano, the YC a combo organ, and the CS is a synthesiser representing the late 1970s / early 1980s period when sounds where carefully shaped through adjusting many different levels, meaning it is the only keyboard in the range with no sound presets.

The reface DX aims to capture a very specific period in pop music that was defined by the original Yamaha DX7, known as an “FM synth,” as Frequency Modulation Synthesis, in the most basic sense, involves using the frequency of a sound wave to alter the sound of another one. The programming of a DX7, which could use up to six operating frequencies at once, was notoriously difficult, meaning most musical artists and groups stuck to the original thirty-two preset “patches” it came with. Therefore, from the DX7’s release in 1983 to the end of 1980s, by which point keyboards became more sample-based, the carefully-shaped sounds of pianos, bass and tubular bells could be heard in songs by A-Ha, Kraftwerk, Talking Heads, Jan Hammer, Genesis, Supertramp, Steve Winwood, Vangelis, Toto, Elton John, Queen, Level 42, Beastie Boys, Stevie Wonder, U2, Donald Fagen, Yes, Jean-Michel Jarre and Dire Straits – the last one is mainly the opening bit to “Money for Nothing.” Brian Eno used the DX7 extensively, but unlike most people, he mastered the programming.

Why wouldn’t I like to join that list buy buying a reface DX? The nostalgia from that period in music is intoxicating, because it sounds unlike anything that came both before and after it, as sampling slowly returned a more natural sound into the 1990s. The FM Synth sound is something to which people keep returning, both because it evokes a particular setting, or time period, as much as being part of a musical palette. I would like to do something with that.

Justifying the cost is one thing when you both consider its deliberately smaller form figure, made to accompany bigger set-ups for performing artists, makes it look like a toy keyboard. Korg also make the Volca FM, one of their series of portable synthesisers, but it was too complex for me – the reface DX uses touch-sensitive sliders and USB downloading for programming its sounds, making them far easier to contemplate than the original DX7. Most of all, the ability to emulate any old sound using computer programs and apps make the idea of spending a single penny sound pointless.

What could I do? Over the last few months, I have read countless articles, and watched numerous videos, from people talking about the reface DX, going over every possible subject from what samples have been included – the link to more recent drum ‘n’ bass and EDM music has been made as much as 80s pop – to what happens If you run a factory reset. I know I will need to make space at home for the new keyboard, and I will make time every day to practice making music on it. Even as part of making a trip to London, I looked in at Yamaha’s showroom in Wardour Street to try playing one...

Yes, of course I bought one. As soon as I hit an “F” note using the Tubular Bell preset, that was it. I may have committed to this like I was owning a pet for the first time, but I know I am going to enjoy using it.