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Oct 19, 2023
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A new series of zines is highlighting digital music’s most revered equipment.
The globe of synthesizers, drum machines and digital songs equipment is endlessly intriguing. Every single instrument has its have language, works by using and decades of lore, lending both equally a seductive mystique and obliqueness only compounded by many products’ substantial value tags and rarity.
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For these who really do not know their SP-12 from their TR-606 (and fanatics hunting for a visually satisfying refresher), Oli Freke has just the established of zines that could assistance. Constructing from Synthesizer Evolution: From Analogue to Electronic (and Back again), his 2021 listing of each individual major synth, drum device and sampler released in between the ’60s and 90s, Freke has unveiled a new sequence that focuses on a scaled-down number of equipment and aspects each and every one’s vital developments and influence on electronic tunes.
“Selections were being created on the basis of a device representing the introduction of a manufacturer new technological know-how – like the Fairlight bringing sampling to the (ultra-rich) masses or offered a stage alter in functionality – like the Prophet 5 introducing ‘affordable’ polyphonic analogue synthesis or in truth stimulated musicians to produce overall new musical genres, these kinds of as the Roland TB-303 and acid house,” Freke explains.
Every single device in the 1st two issues of the pocket-sized zine–Synthesizer Evolution: Classic Synths and Synthesizer Evolution: Drum Machines And Samplers–is accompanied by an illustration from Freke and a shorter synopsis. “I adore illustrating these machines by hand as I truly feel that as considerably as they are amazing musical devices they are also bodily objects with a visible excellent that demonstrates the goal they provide, the era they have been created in, and made with the technology accessible at the time,” Freke suggests.
The result is a astonishingly specific and useful whirlwind tour of the equipment that have formed so considerably of our listening practices and new music output to this day. “Ultimately, I hope these zines celebrate all of that and give new perception into the evolution of electronic songs and the instruments that created it over the last sixty years”.
Choose a look at some previews from the zine under and get a crash study course on powerhouse devices, which includes the MPC60, TR-808 and Korg Prophecy.
Excerpts taken from Synthesizer Evolution: Classic Synths and Synthesizer Evolution: Drum Machines And Samplers by Oli Freke. Out now by means of Velocity Press.