Making Wizard Music on my PSS 680
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- čas přidán 25. 06. 2024
- It's the Yamaha PSS-680, a 2 op FM synth
00:00 Intro
01:05 Built in Sounds Demo
04:34 Built in Patterns Intro
05:17 Built in Patterns Demo
07:41 FM Synthesis Demo
11:50 Spooky Laughs and Bong Noises
12:38 Genesis of Ooorb Music Video
17:40 Outro
Pondering My Orb by Magpie Pirates
• Pondering My Orb [Full...
magpiepirates.bandcamp.com/al... - Hudba
Nice to see this keyboard still lives. 👌First saw it in 1990 when our tutor came back with a brand new one from a trip from Japan, completely changed my view on digital keyboards (only had used casios at the time!!) . Really can't beat these "minikeys" for 1) amazing versatility :- not onyl the FM synth sounds, you can program things from custom drums, pads, chord progressions, etc and save all these onboard, ( or-midi dump to an external unit) 2) amazing MIDI functionality :-used routinely as a motherboard to run high-end modules, synths ,DAW soundcards etc), as well as on-the-fly DJ-style real-time mixing/rearrangement (-can do endless sequences; following singers ad hoc without any one stopping) and all while doing live performance!! 3) and certainly those PSS-only pre-set sounds like that iceblock @02:46 and bass @02:55 still quite usable 30 years on if you know how too (try the Piano or Sax with stereo chorus and vibrato!).
I've had all of these from the PSS480 to the PSS790/PSS51, with the PSS680/780 possibly the best of the lot. Truly "portable music stations" as says on the tin, a pity Yamaha never continued with these (Reface, maybe but not a true representation).
Really fun video to watch. You do a great job man.
I think people always get hung up on just specs with hardware synths and overlook the actual tonal character of them. The PSS-380, PSS-470 and PSR-36 are also 2-OP but they all sound different! It's as if each piece of gear is it's own unique color palette and to me is the fun and appeal of these home keyboards.
Heya, 👋 Thanks so much for watching 😃
I agree with you, whether it's the specific FM chip, the included presets, or whatever, these cheap keys are all their own unique little thing, and warrant investigating what they specifically sound like.
The Attack, Decay, and Frequency buttons can be pressed twice so you can control those settings on the second operator. In the video you were only controlling the first operator. The second operator is what gets sent to the speakers. The first operator modulates the sound of the second operator. You can control the attack, decay, and frequency of how the first operator modulates the second, which is what you were doing in the video. But you can also control the attack, decay, and frequency of the second operator by pressing the buttons twice.
Amazing tip
Nice job man. I just got a 570 the other day, gonna try and record an 8-bit style song for my game this week. Keep sharing these!
Yo, thanks for stopping by and watching my video!
I love my 680. The presets are pretty great. And the tweakability of the sounds is great. Two operator FM synthesis isn't that complicated. I think these two operator FM synths are a great intro to FM synthesis. I plan on getting a DX7 and DX21 so I can a two operator, a four operator, and a six operator synth. I plan on having them on a three tier keyboard stand. The DX21 will probably be my next FM synth; followed by the DX7. Although if a crazy good deal on a DX7 comes along; the DX7 may come first.
Yeah good points all around, I didn't mean to imply that FM synthesis was impossible to understand, merely that it's harder to comprehend than subtractive synthesis. I think my flailing demo is case in point 😆😅
@@SpennyDubz Absolutely! The complexities of FM synthesis is why so many musicians in the 80s used presets on the DX7.
HU HU HU HU HAAH! Awesome work!
Thanks friend 😃
Whenever someone asks about learning FM synthesis, I'm going to point them to this video and refer to it as an FM tutorial.
A tutorial in setting reasonable expectations 😂
So far, sounds super duper similar to my PSS 480. It seems waaaay less noisy though. Is that post processing or is the noise floor pretty low?
Certainly not surprising to hear the predecessor has similar sounds, like I say in the video, the approach to synthesizing traditional instruments achieves very samey samey results.
I had a lot of trouble recording the track, and that did need a lot of post processing. Eventually I found there was somewhat of a sweet spot on the volume slider, pretty high but not full blast.
I found mine at goodwill for $20 heck yeah. You have me laughing because I had the same reaction when messing with the parameters on mine. Like what the hell is it even doing. It goes from soft e piano to screeching robot hell noise as I increased the frequency. It’s very unintuitive and lots of fun. Cool jams!!
Haha, always glad to have another comment letting me know I'm not alone 😁
Is it important which voice you select before editing fm parameters ? I mean, could you get same sound if you start tweaking two complete different voices ?
Short answer is no.
The five programmable patches all have the same set of parameters, when I got this keyboard, the previous owner had already created some custom patches. I could in theory have gone through all the parameters and set them to zero to have the "init state", but as you saw in the video, it's easier for me to start with sound and see how the parameters effect it.
The other thing I think you might be asking, is if I had selected the built in flute patch, and changed those parameters around, would it be different than if I had selected the violin and changed those parameters. Unfortunately this isn't possible, you can't tweak the built in sounds, you can only tweak the 5 user patches.
@@SpennyDubz Thank you for answer !
The correct answer is yes. There are different init sounds that the instruments are based off of. They aren't all based on a simple sine wave. If you configure sound A to have the same settings (attack, decay, modulation, etc) as sound B they will sound different if sounds A and B are based on different initial sounds.
@@rth314 So the only difference between preset instruments is the waveform shape, correct? The rest is just tweaking. Do you know how many waveform there are and tell me one instrument of each?
@@kingkorg7583 To be clear, the answer to "is it important which voice you select" is "yes". The answer to "Could you get the same sound if you start tweaking two completely different voices" is "only if the two voices share the same waveforms" (although maybe you wouldn't consider them "completely different" if they did). Each of the two oscillators of a voice has a waveform. For each, the choices are "sine", "square sine", "sine half", and "square sine half". Since there are two oscillators and four waveform options for each, I suppose there are 16 different combinations that the voices could use. I don't readily know which voices use which waveforms. However, there are apps called "PSS Edit" and "PSS Wave Editor" that allow you to import and export voices, and you can modify the voices in the software. There is also an app called "Ctrlr" that has templates you can download for the PSS keyboards. The PSS-680 doesn't have controls to change the waveforms for a voice, but these apps do. If you're editing in the software, it doesn't matter which voice you start with since you can change the waveforms. There are other parameters that can be controlled in the software other than the waveforms that aren't available on the PSS-680. I recommend playing around with the software to get a better idea what you can control.