FIFTEEN YEARS AGO IN EM

Aug 1, 2001 12:00 PM, Steve Oppenheimer

           
 

The August 1986 issue was not bad, but it wasn't one of my favorites, and I think it had less long-term value than most. Tony Thomas's cover interview with synthesist and film-scorer Alan Howarth was short and not particularly memorable. Thomas did offer one nice question and response about the film-scoring process. The rest of the story was pretty fluffy.

The August issue featured three computer-oriented stories. Craig Anderton gave a light overview of what you could do on the computer in 1986, which mostly meant MIDI sequencing. If you missed it, well, you didn't miss much. We also presented Tim Dowty's program-it-yourself MIDI echo/delay program for the Commodore 64. In those days, digital delays were expensive, and MIDI delay offered a cheap substitute. Today, the C64 is a doorstop, digital effects processors are commonplace, and MIDI delay can easily be created in a sequencer.

The best computer story was Thomas's in-depth tour of the Yamaha CX5M music computer, which was designed entirely for music production. The development of more powerful personal computers doomed the CX5M, but for awhile, it had its fans.

We presented five hardware DIY projects in the issue. Alan Gary Campbell's collection of modifications for the Casio CZ-101 and CZ-1000 synths stands the test of time best, because a lot of people still use CZ synths. Most of the other DIYs are less useful today, except for Jack Orman's tutorial on wiring a 3-conductor MIDI cable and a MIDI cable tester. Michael Dosa showed us how to add an external sound module for the long-dead MXR Drum Computer, and Mark Kovach explained how to interface a Roland SBX-80 synchronizer to an Oberheim DMX drum machine. Thomas Figueiredo designed a remote-control A-B switch box that let guitarists switch between amp or effects channels from multiple footswitches scattered around the stage.

The most unusual article in the issue was Terry Fryer's “An Acoustic Mixer.” You set up a pair of mics and one speaker and amp for each synth voice in a room selected for its sonic ambience. Then, play your tracks back in that ambient space, recording them to two tracks with the mics. I wouldn't use that approach for mixdown, but I like the idea of rerecording a single track or a 2-track mix in a nice ambient space.

We ran only three product reviews in August 1986. The Yamaha SPX 90 review was significant because the SPX 90 was one of the first affordable all-purpose multi-effects processors. Previously, most effects processors were dedicated to a single function. Kirk Austin nailed the unit's pluses and minuses: its versatility was unprecedented, the reverbs were decent but not very smooth, and the unit's 12 kHz bandwidth was fine for reverb and echo but not for compression and EQ.

Geary Yelton reviewed three sequencers for the Mac that are long gone now: Assimilation's MIDI Composer, Electronic Arts' Deluxe Music Construction Set, and Great Wave Software's Concertware+ MIDI. Finally, Jim Johnson evaluated Harmony Systems' SynHance M1X and M1X+ MIDI processor/mergers, which used a dedicated microprocessor to sort out and buffer the data from two MIDI sources before merging them, avoiding overloading the data stream.