FIFTEEN YEARS AGO IN EM

Oct 1, 2001 12:00 PM, Steve Oppenheimer

           
 

If you were a synth junkie in the 1980s and enjoyed contemporary classical music, you probably were a Philip Glass fan. Combining synths and samplers with voices, reeds, brass, and more, Glass pioneered new musical directions and by the time of our interview had at last been accepted by the music establishment. In an interview with John Diliberto for our October 1986 issue, the great composer discussed his evolving compositional style and his use of MIDI and synthesizers.

The October issue also offered interesting stories about music education, career advice, and the Apple II computer. Jan Paul Moorhead kicked things off with advice on planning your educational direction, including goal setting and school selection. Composer and educator Neil Waltzer discussed the curriculum at New York's Center for the Media Arts; his six-step approach to teaching bass-line composition is still worth checking out.

On the career front, Rosanne Soifer interviewed music-business experts about what musicians and school music programs needed to do to improve their approach to the business of music. Peter Stapleton offered a story on career opportunities presented by the emerging use of synthesizers in church music.

By 1986 the Apple IIe and IIc had become popular among electronic musicians, and Alan Gary Campbell's “The Musical Apple II” was a welcome overview of music-related Apple II software and peripherals. Apple II — equipped musicians also appreciated Andrew Newell's memory-dump program, which enabled data transfers between the computer and MIDI-equipped synthesizers.

In 1986 digital recording was still an expensive proposition, as were professional-quality tape decks. Tim Fluharty offered an affordable, high-fidelity alternative using the Beta Hi-Fi (BHF) audio circuitry in Beta VCR decks. (Fluharty also discussed recording to VHS Hi-Fi.)

Our October issue also had the first part of Thomas Henry's two-part story about how to build a mini-controller for standalone CV-based analog sequencers. We learned how to build a noise source and a lag processor, which slows down and rounds off a waveform so that a square wave becomes closer to a triangle wave and a triangle wave becomes more like a sine wave. It was used for portamento effects.

Three reviews were of sequencers for the Apple II series, including Roland's Muse and Syntech's Studio II. Far more important was former Youngbloods keyboardist Lowell “Banana” Levinger's review of Passport's Master Tracks, which quickly became one of the leading music programs of its time.

We also reviewed Dynacord's CSL222, one of the first reasonably convincing rotating-speaker simulators. Its main shortcoming was that it did not distort the signal the way a Leslie does, but otherwise, it was definitely a winner.

To top it off, we took a look at Casio's unbelievably affordable SK-1 sampling keyboard. The idea of getting even a limited 8-bit sampler for $129.95 was exciting, even if it was sold as a toy and lacked MIDI.