Pssst, wanna know my studio's dirty little secret?

[mal7921]

Since having a studio based around an Atari ST, every set of MIDI equipment has harboured what many ‘Professionals’ at the time would consider a “Dirty little secret”. But before I go into details of what this is and why I always have one in reserve, I shall give a little background whimsical stuff.

In 1988 I bought my first synthesizer, a Yamaha DX100, which started an obsession with producing music with my ST. The DX was not capable of much on its own, so I was always looking for additional kit, but on an income of less than £30 a week, whatever it was would have to be cheap!

While working with a friend on a track at his house, I came across a keyboard he had leaning against the wall and was curious about it. “Don’t bother with that,” he said, “There’s not much you can do with it really. Drums are ok and it works over MIDI, but the sounds and sound editing is rubbish”. Things like that were music to my ears (No pun intended), so I asked to have a look at the manual, and while the main body of it proved what my friend was saying, the back pages showed something with real promise. The keyboard was a Yamaha PSS680, and I immediately said I would buy it from him, assuming he was willing to sell (Which he was).

For those who are unfamiliar with the PSS680, I shall give you a quick overview with what you get straight out of the box. It is a home keyboard with a 5 octave mini key keyboard, 8 drum pads (Each with 4 voices selected with 4 buttons to the right of the pads, 3 “Drum fill” pads and a start/stop pad along the bottom. There is a basic on-board sequencer with 5 recordable tracks, 5 pattern sequence tracks and on-board effects (Nothing major, reverb and stereo width are pretty good though, but they do not affect the drums). The synthesis engine is a 2 operator Frequency Modulation (F.M.) synthesizer, with the ability to edit the Attack and Release of the sound envelopes along with the frequency of each operator (Or oscillator in none F.M. speak). Feedback can also be edited, and there are 5 sound memories for your own sounds. MIDI was well catered for, with 12 note polyphony and 12 part multi-timbral. Combine that with 100 in-built voices it was a competent home keyboard, but quite frankly, not very exciting.

Well, not very exciting until you read the MIDI implementation in the back of the manual, then you can see the full potential, and with the aid of a program like PSSed on your Atari ST, you realise that you really own a synthesis monster in home keyboard clothing!

So what makes it so special? Well over MIDI the editing options become much greater than the rather simplistic front panel offerings. The envelope editing gives you access to a full Attack, Decay, Sustain. Release (A.D.S.R.) on each operator, along with different waveforms as well. The level of each operator can also be altered and so many variations can be created, that you suddenly realise that most of the on-board sounds are a very poor representation of what this unassuming little device can actually do.

Back in 1988, this keyboard cost £250 new, which for an F.M. synthesizer with this much editing potential was stupidly cheap, but because this monster was so well tamed and hidden behind a home friendly fascia, very few people knew just what it was, and so it was generally shunned by anyone other than a parent buying a keyboard for their child. I still remember carrying my second PSS680 into a studio for recording, only to have is sneered and laughed at. By the end of the recording, that had changed to “I can’t believe you got those sounds out of that! How do you do it?’ My reply was simple and stands to this day, “Know your equipment, learn it then push the limits of what it can do”.

A neat trick for an “Analogue” type sound, because the synthesis engine is not as speedy or tight as an expensive “Professional” system, if you play the same pattern with the same sound on 2 different tracks, you get a phasing within the sound, bringing a bit of unpredictability with it. This works best on arpeggiated patterns, but works well on bass lines and synthesizer pads as well.

Although the keyboard is not velocity sensitive, the keyboard will respond to the information, and a pitch bend wheel is also included and can be set between -12 and +12 notes (Though the on board wheel is a little “*” when used, it is very smooth when controlled from an external source).
While I have mentioned PSSed, there was at least one other PSS series editor on the ST (Though I never owned or used it, so can’t comment further). While PSSed mainly concentrated on the sound editing, the other editor also included a pattern editor for the drum machine.

The PSS680 was not the only device though, there was also the PSS480, which had the same sounds, the same editing options and MIDI, but lost an octave on the keyboard and had fewer drum sounds, though it was cheaper. In 1989 they were replaced with the PSS580 and PSS780, which were almost the same, but with more colours on them, and another important change for MIDI users.

The PSS580 and 780 had the same sounds as the previous generation, but re-ordered and put into groups. This was fine, however when selecting sounds over MIDI (With Program change controls from a sequencer), the MIDI sounds were still mapped to the same order as the older PSS480 and 680! This meant that with the older keyboards, sound 27 would be sound 27 on the front panel, but with the newer keyboards, sound 27 on the front panel could be sound 89 over MIDI (Or sound 34, or sound 56 or whatever!).
If you like guesswork, the PSS580 and 780 are great, but if you like to know what sound you’re selecting, go for the PSS480 or 680.

Either way though, with an editor on your ST, all of these keyboards are a powerful synthesizer, and as such are a brilliant dirty little secret for your studio.

Some examples of music with the PSS680

Mist

This track has a number of synths running, the PSS680 provides the low drone sound, the church bell (One of the pre-set sounds) the blowing sound in the second verse and several other sounds-

http://malcolmramage.com/Archives/Diffu ... ental).mp3

Intro

This is mostly PSS680 with only a DW-6000 in addition. The DW-6000 provides the searing sound and the Cheetach MS800 does the changing pad sound in the background, but everything else is PSS680.

http://malcolmramage.com/Archives/Diffu ... /Intro.mp3

Searching

Casio HZ-600 does some bits, as well as a Cheetah MS800. Drums were Akai XE8 and Roland TR626, but the rest is PSS680 (Except the singer, who is Paul Zarins).

http://malcolmramage.com/Archives/Diffu ... rching.mp3

Sadly I don't have an MP3 of the onboard demo song of the PSS680, but if you like the arcade game music of the time (Think Outrun), then you'll like the demo music (The 780 was not so good sadly)

[yerzmyey]

Impressive collection and also I love first 2 songs (well, it's because I'm an electronic music fan, so I dunno anything resonable about music presented in the third MP3 and I couldn't say anything wise in the subject-matter).
The interesting thing is - You like the same stuff like me: 16/32bit series + Yamaha PSS series + Casios. Hahah. Funny.

[Nativ]

MP3 links dead

Always wanted one of these keyboards !

[mal7921]

Ah, I had a redesign of the site and forgot about this...

I'll update the links tomorrow as I'm iPhone bound this evening


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[mal7921]

Links updated and working again

[NCGM]

I remember using my friend's PSS680 back in 1990 and it was a nifty, fun and powerful FM synth. That same year I purchased the sample based version, the PSS790 which lacked the funky rhythm jam section of the PSS680, where you could overlay more hits on each loop of the sequence. However the PSS790 was kind of a pre-cursor to the QS series of keyboards, albeit in a more cutdown and primitive way but it was a good workstation.


NCGM