Synthesizer Notes: R-8M, TX81Z, VZ-1
2024-07-30
I have previously written about my creative process and in particular how I write music. I like to think of it as painting with sounds and in this post I want to reflect on how I find the "colors" I "paint" with.
Learning your instruments
In order to write I need sounds to play with. The sounds are hidden in machines with funny buttons and knobs and switches. I need to understand how the machines work and what I can do with them.
Many machines have sound memories ("presets") that let you recall saved sounds. The machines usually come with sounds from the factory. Besides the factory sounds you find sound files from people on the internet. This is all very useful but it is also limiting: you can get by without ever learning to use your instruments. What is bad about that is that you remain stuck in someone elses sonic imagination.
This is not to say that I look down on using presets. If a factory preset works in the song I'm writing I use it. But it's very frustrating to audition a hundred presets and find nothing I like, particularly when I have it in my head that a particular machine has a character that would go well with what I'm writing.
To fight this I have recently dedicated a corner of my studio as a "focus station" for a single instrument. I can pull an instrument out of my writing rig and put it on the focus station instead. That way I can spend time learning and exploring without the expectation of switching to writing.
This has turned out to be very fun and rewarding. By returning to the same instrument several days in a row I get to learn a lot more about it. To reinforce that learning I want to write some notes which brings us to the point of this post: I want to write my notes somewhere.
Roland R-8M
Image source: owner's manual
It has been nice to sit down with the R-8M drum module. It is well regarded and I never quite got why. It doesn't sound dated in a cool way like some older 80s drum machines but it also doesn't sound amazing as a non-retro device.
The user interface is terrible at first sight: it has a 2-line display and six buttons. That is it. When I first got this machine I thought it was a bad joke. Why do people like this thing if you have to customize its settings with such a spartan interface? It turns out that if you sit with it long enough the interface works fine and it's good enough.
The R-8M is not really a drum machine but rather a MIDI drum sound module. I remote-control such modules with a MIDI keyboard which is a funny way to play drums but it works. I'm more used to drum machines with pads that you can then also remote-trigger with MIDI. For example the HR-16 has 16 pads, with each pad responding to exactly one MIDI note number. It is not hard for me to learn which keys on the MIDI keyboard make which sounds because there are only a few of them.
The presets of the R-8M however give you over 50 different drum sounds spread over the whole keyboard. I will use less than 10 different sounds in my songs and I struggle to remember which of the 50 keys have the sounds I want to use in my song. I could solve this problem by making my own drumkit on the R-8M with just the 10 sounds I need for my current song but I was always put off from doing that because of the intimidating interface.
Because I now finally learned the 6-button dance I can make my own kits. I haven't used any of my new kits in a song yet but I can see why this is fun. Electronic music sometimes contains "ear candy" in the drums and percussion where sounds move around in the stereo spectrum or change pitch etc. I never knew how to incorporate this into my writing. If I start by programming "straight" sounds into a drum beat and I add embellishments later then the embellishments often don't gel with the beat. But if I make my own drumkit I can put the embellishments on the keyboard and play them while I write. For example I can put 5 different variations of the same hand clap sound on the keyboard with slightly different pitch and stereo positioning and then play that in a way that feels good.
It's such a simple idea (making my own kits with variations built in to the kit) but I never got to try this before. I'm excited to see if it will work out in a song.
Yamaha TX81Z
Image source: Yamaha Black Boxes
Like the R-8M, the TX81Z is another rack mount pizza box sound module with a spartan interface. This time it's an FM synthesizer. It is a second or third generation low-cost derivative of the DX7 that people seem to like. I already own a DX7 so I never thought I would get much out of the TX81Z but curiosity got the better of me.
As with the R-8M, unless you learn your way around the interface it is painful to work with. I have tried using a software editor but for some reason I dislike using software editors for synths. I find this surprising because it seems like such a good idea on paper to use the superior interface and information density of your computer instead of clicking buttons to change numbers on a tiny screen but I just enjoy myself more with a MIDI keyboard in front of me and the rack unit in easy reach, in spite of having to do all these stupid button presses.
I find the TX81Z interesting because Yamaha cut back a lot on the number of parameters and features compared with the DX7, yet it is still capable of good sounds. It can also do stuff the DX7 cannot such as creating pitched noise by using the "noise" waveform on the LFO at high speed. On the DX7 that still sounds like a rapidly modulated tone; on the TX81Z the modulation is so fast that the tone becomes noise.
I also find it interesting to see how the designers managed to retain timbral variety and sound design potential with fewer parameters. I imagine it's driven both by cost optimization and by a deeper understanding of what you really need. As a user I appreciate the reduced complexity.
Unlike with the R-8M I didn't really have a breakthrough insight with this synth other than realizing it is fun to program after all. My initial exploration with the computer editor, when I just got the TX81Z, left me somewhat underwhelmed and I am now more excited about the sound and potential of this instrument.
Casio VZ-1
Image source: owner's manual
The Casio VZ-1 is a 1988 keyboard synthesizer that Casio marketed as a successor to the successful CZ series. This is confusing because other than some Casio signature design quirks it has a completely different sound engine. There is not a lot of good information about the VZ-1 out there so this is an instrument that really requires you to do your homework. And it's less clear if doing your homework will pay off with cool sounds.
The user interface of this synth is again pretty bad. I can sort of forgive a 1U rack module for having a minimal interface because it has such a small front panel that the interface needs to fit onto. A keyboard synthesizer has a lot of space to do better. Sadly the VZ-1 requires a lot of the same tedious clicking as the rack boxes and what is worse the UI is slow. Imagine a slow computer with a tiny screen with deep menus that you have to move through with the arrow keys. You can't even push the "arrow keys" quickly because the UI is so slow it loses button presses if you click to fast.
One good thing that came out of focusing on this synth for a while is that I can use the UI fluently in spite of its crappiness. The next hurdle is understanding how the synthesis engine works. The manual tries to explain it but there is a lot of undocumented behavior and some of the capabilities of the synth are so different that it's hard to predict how things will sound based on experience with other synths.
An example of an unpredictable capability is the idea to phase-modulate an operator with the ring-modulated sound of two other operators. The outcome of phase modulation is hard to predict, the outcome of ring modulation is hard to predict, and now they let you feed ring modulation into phase modulation. The only thing I can imagine is that a lot of the resulting timbral space will be atonal noise. Is there anything good hiding in there?
The main area of undocumented behavior I'm running into is with phase modulation pitch ratios. The two fundamental parameters in Yamaha style phase modulation are pitch ratio and modulation index. The VZ makes it easy to do 2-operator phase modulation ("internal phase") but when you do that the pitch ratio is always 1. This is surprising and what is worse is that the user interface does not alert you to it. You can still edit the tuning settings for each operator but if you change the tuning of the carrier nothing happens and if you change the tuning of the modulator the carrier tuning moves with it in lockstep.
It gets weirder than this but I need to do more experiments with the machine to even be able to write down clearly what it does. It is quite baffling. I am still motivated to stick with this machine because it can at least produce nice messed up digital sounds.
Edit: it turns out the VZ-1 does not do phase modulation at all, it does wave shaping.
The following audio is a simple patch using "external phase" modulation on two operators. It is velocity-sensitive and at 0:17 I use the mod wheel on the keyboard to increase the modulation index. This does not sound like a DX7 to me so maybe the VZ-1 is interesting after all?
The way this patch came together highlights another lesson I have been learning. I am not an expert sound designer and I often feel like I am using only 1% of the instrument's potential in my sounds. This then means that my sound design is somehow "bad" and that the instrument is "wasted on me". I need to keep reminding me that it is OK not to be a master sound designer. That is not my ambition. I just want to play with nice sounds and make songs.