The Six-Trak was an analogue synthesizer manufactured by Sequential Circuits in San Jose, California and released in January 1984. It is notable for being one of the first multi-timbral synthesizers, equipped with MIDI and an on-board six-track digital sequencer, hence the name. It was designed as an inexpensive and easily portable 'scratch-pad' machine for trying out arrangements. You can latch the arpeggiator and play along with sequences in real time. Also available is a unison mode which renders the keyboard monophonic but allows for very rich sounding timbres.
San Jose, officially the City of San José, is an economic, cultural and political center of Silicon Valley, and the largest city in Northern California. With an estimated 2017 population of 1,035,317, it is the third-most populous city in California and the tenth-most populous in United States. Located in the center of the Santa Clara Valley, on the southern shore of San Francisco Bay, San Jose covers an area of 179.97 square miles (466.1 km2). San Jose is the county seat of Santa Clara County, the most affluent county in California and one of the most affluent counties in the United States. San Jose is the most populous city in both the San Francisco Bay Area and the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland Combined Statistical Area, which contain 7.7 million and 8.7 million people respectively.
MIDI is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and related audio devices for playing, editing and recording music. A single MIDI link through a MIDI cable can carry up to sixteen channels of information, each of which can be routed to a separate device or instrument. This could be sixteen different digital instruments, for example.
The Six-Trak is prominently featured and can be heard on the 1998 minimalist space music CD release The Dream Garden, by musician/composer Dane Rochelle. More recently it has been used by composer Christopher de Groot for the 2012 soundtrack to Australian feature film "Sororal".
Space music, also called spacemusic, is a subgenre of new-age music and is described as "tranquil, hypnotic and moving". It is derived from ambient music and is associated with lounge music, easy listening, and elevator music.
The Six-Trak's more famous sibling is the Prophet 5, widely used in much of the 1970s progressive rock. A number of other synthesizers made by Sequential Circuits used similar electronics, including the Multi-Trak, Max, and Split-8. the important parts on board of them was CEM3394 (a complete monophonic analog synth chip manufactured by Curtis Electromusic Specialties ). The Six-Trak used 6 chips for 6 voices of different timbre program.
Progressive rock is a broad genre of rock music that developed in the United Kingdom and United States throughout the mid to late 1960s. Initially termed "progressive pop", the style was an outgrowth of psychedelic bands who abandoned standard pop traditions in favour of instrumentation and compositional techniques more frequently associated with jazz, folk, or classical music. Additional elements contributed to its "progressive" label: lyrics were more poetic, technology was harnessed for new sounds, music approached the condition of "art", and the studio, rather than the stage, became the focus of musical activity, which often involved creating music for listening, not dancing.
The Split-8 is a polyphonic analogue keyboard synthesizer manufactured by Sequential Circuits. Built in Japan and going by the alternative name "Pro-8" in some markets, this was one of the last synthesizers produced by the company and was assigned model number 608. It was released in 1985 at a list price of $1,199. This and some other Sequential Circuits synthesizers were built around the Curtis Electronics CEM 3394 "synth-on-a-chip" integrated circuit, and used a Z80 as their central microprocessor.
Gui Boratto is a Brazilian electronic music producer. In the 1990s, he was a member of Sect.
Cirrus was an American big beat group formed in 1995 in Los Angeles, California. The group was composed of Aaron Carter and Stephen James Barry.
Helios Creed is an American guitarist, singer and bandleader. He first came to prominence in the mid-1970s with the San Francisco band Chrome. The band Chrome broke up in the mid-1980s when founding member Damon Edge moved to Paris. Helios then recruited some local hard rock musicians and launched a solo career.
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An electronic musical instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound using electronic circuitry. Such an instrument sounds by outputting an electrical, electronic or digital audio signal that ultimately is plugged into a power amplifier which drives a loudspeaker, creating the sound heard by the performer and listener.
A music workstation is an electronic musical instrument providing the facilities of:
Roland SH-101 is a synthesizer from the early 1980s, manufactured by Roland. It is a small, 32 key, monophonic analog synthesizer. It features one oscillator with 3 simultaneous waveforms: sawtooth, square/pwm, and an octave-divided square sub-oscillator. It has a low-pass filter/VCF capable of self oscillation. The self oscillation filter can be used to make bass drum sounds. The controls are simple to use as there is a slider or switch available for every single parameter, and there is an external trigger input to control the speed of the sequencer or the arpeggiator. Another unique feature is being able to select noise as a modulation source for both pitch and the filter, resulting in distortion-like effects. External control is achieved using CV/Gate. Delivering a truly analog experience, the SH-101 does not have patch memory and cannot be controlled by MIDI. MIDI implementation can be achieved by using a CV/gate MIDI Converter. The SH-101 was originally marketed as a monophonic synthesizer for people who are new to synthesizers. Its core attribute is simplicity. The SH-101 can also be battery powered.
The SH-101 was produced in three colors: gray, blue, and red. Contrary to legend, the SH-101 never came in white. A shoulder strap can be connected to it, and a small handgrip can be plugged into the side which contains a pitch bend wheel and a pitch modulation trigger. When slung over the shoulder it doubles as a "keytar".
The Roland MC-202 MicroComposer, a monophonic analog synthesizer/sequencer released by Roland in 1983 has an almost identical voice architecture to the Roland SH-101, other than the LFO which only features a triangle wave form, and also has a delay.
Ensoniq ESQ-1 is a 61-key, velocity sensitive, eight-note polyphonic and multitimbral synthesizer released by Ensoniq in 1985, marketed as a "digital wave synthesizer". Although its voice generation is typically subtractive in much the same fashion as most analog synthesizers that preceded it, its oscillators are neither voltage nor "digitally controlled", but provided by a custom Ensoniq wavetable chip. The signal path includes analog resonant low-pass filters and an analog amplifier.
The Yamaha AN1x, produced by Yamaha Corporation from 1997 to 1998, is a DSP-based Analog Modelling Synthesizer and was marketed as an "analog physical modelling control synthesizer".
Sequential is an American synthesizer company founded in 1974 as Sequential Circuits by Dave Smith. In 1978, Sequential released the Prophet-5, the first programmable polyphonic synthesizer, used by artists including Michael Jackson, Madonna, and John Carpenter. Sequential was also pivotal to the development of MIDI in 1982, which synchronizes electronic instruments by different manufacturers.
The Jupiter-8, or JP-8, is an eight-voice polyphonic analog subtractive synthesizer introduced by Roland Corporation in early 1981.
Monotimbral is usually used in reference to electronic synthesisers which can produce a single timbre at a given pitch when pressing one key or multiple keys.
The microKORG is a MIDI-capable virtual analog synthesizer/vocoder from Korg featuring DSP analog modelling. The synthesizer is built in such a way that it is essentially a Korg MS-2000 with programmable step arpeggiator, a less advanced vocoder, lack of motion sequencing, lack of an XLR microphone input, and in a smaller case with fewer real-time control knobs.
The Prophet-5 is an analog synthesizer manufactured by Sequential Circuits between 1978 and 1984. It was designed by Dave Smith and John Bowen. The Prophet-5 was the first fully programmable polyphonic synthesizer and the first musical instrument with an embedded microprocessor. About 6,000 units were produced across three revisions. The Prophet-5 is known for its use by progressive rock bands and film composers. It has been emulated in software synthesizers and analog hardware.
The Memorymoog is a polyphonic electronic music synthesizer manufactured by Moog Music from 1982–85, the last polyphonic synthesizer to be released by Moog Music before the company was sold to management and renamed Moog Electronics. While comparable to other polyphonic synthesizers of the time period, such as the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 and Oberheim OB-Xa, the Memorymoog distinguished itself with 3 audio oscillators per voice and greater preset storage capacity.
Polyphony is a property of musical instruments that means that they can play multiple independent melody lines simultaneously. Instruments featuring polyphony are said to be polyphonic. Instruments that are not capable of polyphony are monophonic or paraphonic.
The Korg Wavestation is a vector synthesis synthesizer first produced in the early 1990s and later re-released as a software synthesizer in 2004. Its primary innovation was Wave Sequencing, a method of multi-timbral sound generation in which different PCM waveform data are played successively, resulting in continuously evolving sounds. The Wavestation's "Advanced Vector Synthesis" sound architecture resembled early vector synths such as the Sequential Circuits Prophet VS.
The ARP Omni was a polyphonic analog synthesizer manufactured by ARP Instruments, Inc.
John Scott Bowen is an American sound designer known for his early work with synthesizers.
Automat is an album of instrumental electronic music composed by the Italian musicians Romano Musumarra and Claudio Gizzi. It was produced in 1977 and released in 1978 by EMI Italy, through its Harvest label.
The AX60 is a polyphonic analogue keyboard synthesizer manufactured by Akai Professional in the mid-1980s. It was Akai's answer to the popular Roland Juno series synthesizers. The AX60 uses voltage-controlled analogue oscillators and filter circuitry based on the Curtis Electronics CEM 3394 integrated circuit.
The history of home keyboards lies in mechanical musical instrument keyboards, electrified keyboards and 1960s and 1970s synthesizer technologies.
