A busy day, but a sad day too. Busy because I've finally finished recording my old SY-85 music from 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 or so. After 2002 I started to use my software NosieStation, which, at the time, I thought was better - it ultimately became so, but the music of the SY-85 was really good quality in tone. It was the lack of finesse, fine control, that made it less expressive when sequenced using MED, but still, the sound of this synthesizer was, at times, lovely.
Today I recorded the last 22 tracks. These all used a mix of samples and synth, so needed to be fed through a mixer. I put the Zoom H4 recorder on a camera tripod to make it hover, neatly, in space while the many cables gently plugged into it. The overall sound quality was exceptional. I started with Overlander, the theme to my PC game, which was only used on the Xing Interactive CD version of the game, a bonus game which was bundled with Trax and Roton. The two Roton themes were also recorded today. Everything went well except for a track called Bullet, which has a similar feeling to 'Refuge' from Synaesthesia. The synth file was corrupt, so I had to re-create the instruments. In the end, the result was very similar to my Minidisc reference copy - not all tracks were recorded to Minidisc, so I'm lucky to have that reference copy.
Now, all 51 tracks from those days are recorded in superb quality: 2 hours 49 mins of music. They include The Arcangel Soundtrack plus one or two extra tracks, similar in style or others which were written for the game but unused. They also include all of the first Synaesthesia album, including two alternative, early versions, of tracks. There are game themes here, and other pretty tunes in the style of Jean-Michel Jarre; and other 90s fare, like my club remix of the Mission Impossible theme.
I bought the Yamaha SY-85 new in 1998 and it became a music workhorse for a few years, driven by OctaMED on Amiga, then MED on PC too. I recorded those two full albums on it, and I've sampled just about every sound it has; and its sound has partly become my sound over the years. I'm sad that I've now recorded everything I made with it and, today, restored the Factory Set. It's taken a lot of work and money to fit a new drive and get it refurbished, make it as good as new; ready to sell.
I think it's fair to say that this instrument has changed my life, not necessarily transformed me as a musician; that was a very slow, very steady growth. Before I sat at a real piano in 2008 or 2009, I could barely play a note live, but the keyboard has given me so much of its sound and colour over the years, and even now, the bulk of the sounds I use originate with it. I've taken this keyboard to Macclesfield many times for the Mash art performance nights, to the ArtSwarm live events, and perhaps most memorably to the Electric Picture House to perform The Spiral Staircase live with it.
I need a new synthesizer and haven't room to keep a second of this size, and for live performance would prefer something longer, and lighter, and newer, so I'll soon say goodbye and thank you to this great electric friend, Serial No. LM01014. It seems that many of these were not looked after as well as mine, which remains almost as good as new after 23 years, and I've certainly proved that, even today, MED Soundstudio can still make use of it. I hope its new owner gets even a fragment of what it's given me over the years.
For reference, here are all of the tracks I've recorded:
Adagio, Archetypes Theme, Bort, Bort Extended, Bort Samples, Boulderdash, Bullet, Burnout, Burnout Extended, Castaway, Castles, Epitaph, Gabbro, Haunted, Helix, Helix Edit, Innerlimits, Inside Messiah, Interference, Islands Of Memory, Lepton, Lonely Infinity, Lost In Space, Lotus, Metropolis 1999, Mission Impossible, Mission Impossible Edit, Mnemonic, O5, Office Life, Opiad, Orchestral, Overlander, Overlander Ingame, Overlander Level Start, Pioneer, Popcorn, Refuge, Requiem For A Scorpoid, Resurrection, Roton Jungle, Safe House, Space Infinity, SPDF, Termination, The Abyssal Plain, The Abyssal Plain Edit, The Chase, The Runner, Vektor3, White Planet.
