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What do you think of the RD8? They only had the MS101 there (which is amazingly great like the original.)

It hasn't shown up yet, but from what I can tell watching videos it looks like the closest I'll get to the original. The Roland digital one sounded a bit too juiced for my taste, and really tough to look at!

I had no idea they were making the MS20 and Pro-1 until a couple days ago. They both look really cool! How dirty does the MS20 sound? I like the Korg plugin an awful lot.

I couldn’t get near the MS20 but I hear it’s pretty damn ballsy.

If it's at least in the ballpark, that looks like a no-brainer. Biggest selling point for me is that it's a desktop, which is pretty much all I'm interested in these days. Got enough keyboards!

MS-1 showed up! I'm a bit disappointed at the dark metallic blue color of the case, if I'd known it was going to be that instead of the candy blue I saw in the pictures I would've gone with the black. Still, it sounds amazing and I'm loving all the extra features they added. It's also surprisingly large! It's gotta be only a little bit smaller than an actual SH-101. Hoping the RD8 shows up later today, though I won't get to play with it until tomorrow.

SafeAsMilk wrote:MS-1 showed up! I'm a bit disappointed at the dark metallic blue color of the case, if I'd known it was going to be that instead of the candy blue I saw in the pictures I would've gone with the black. Still, it sounds amazing and I'm loving all the extra features they added. It's also surprisingly large! It's gotta be only a little bit smaller than an actual SH-101. Hoping the RD8 shows up later today, though I won't get to play with it until tomorrow.

Awesome! The footprint is smaller than an SH mostly because the jacks have been moved to the rear of the case and the panel is compressed slightly. OK by me. I loved the feel of the keyboard and having full sized sliders/pots is the only way to go (though I still love my JX boutique.)

What kind of music are you into SAM?

felltoearth wrote:

SafeAsMilk wrote:MS-1 showed up! I'm a bit disappointed at the dark metallic blue color of the case, if I'd known it was going to be that instead of the candy blue I saw in the pictures I would've gone with the black. Still, it sounds amazing and I'm loving all the extra features they added. It's also surprisingly large! It's gotta be only a little bit smaller than an actual SH-101. Hoping the RD8 shows up later today, though I won't get to play with it until tomorrow.

Awesome! The footprint is smaller than an SH mostly because the jacks have been moved to the rear of the case and the panel is compressed slightly. OK by me. I loved the feel of the keyboard and having full sized sliders/pots is the only way to go (though I still love my JX boutique.)

The keyboard does feel good and the whole thing does feel substantial, so can't really complain, was just surprised.

I thought the boutiques I heard sounded excellent, though I couldn't justify so few voices for a digital unit at that price. I kept hoping they'd be easy to find cheap eventually, but they seem to be holding their price.

felltoearth wrote:What kind of music are you into SAM?

That's a pretty broad question

If you're talking about electronic music, I like early quasi-synth stuff like Raymond Scott, Terry Riley and Silver Apples. All the krautrock guys like early modular Popol Vuh, Tangerine Dream, Harmonia, Cluster and Kraftwerk from Ralf And Florian to Computer World. I know Brian Eno's supposed to be in there, but I know more about his band records than the electronic ones. Mr. Fingers is my favorite Chicago guy, for Detroit it's Robert Hood, Jeff Mills and all things Drexciya (and Richie Hawtin if you give him dual status). Paul Oakenfold's goa mix. For more modern stuff I dig the Sandwell District label and Surgeon. Legowelt is one of my favorites. Feels like I'm forgetting a bunch of things, but last night was a doozie so my brain isn't working

How about you?

Well there’s my avatar...

Biggest interests are OMD Wire and Eno. Eno is huge to me. Love Cluster. Here’s me and Roedelius

Otherwise similarly broad, experimental to synthpop. I like some Jazz, some Classical, some funk rap and hip hop.

Well yes, Eno-era Bowie would be a given

Ah super cool! Roedelius seems like a total sweetheart, worked on some interviews and live sets that were recorded with him.

What's OMD Wire? Related to the weird punk band Wire?

I've become a big fan of hard bop lately, went through all the free jazz stuff years n' years ago. Classical I've recently been into keyboard sonatas, but over the years have been into Shostakovich (particularly the quartets), Prokofiev, Mahler and Janacek along with a bit of opera...mostly Wagner, though. I'm not sure what funk rap is! But I do like 90's hip hop, especially the more chill stuff.

I should have employed commas. Funk, rap. OMD, Wire. Sorry. And yeah, the couple of times I’ve caught Roedelius here and talked with him he was super nice.

Have you heard Keith Jarret’s Shostakovitch fugues?

Oh! Actually hadn't heard of OMD before, will have to check them out.

Not sure if I've heard Jarret's version, I have Tatiana Nikolaeva's version and I've heard one other, but can't remember who it was. I'm generally less into fugues than other forms, they tend to sound more like exercises than pieces to me for some reason. Even in Bach's WTC, I almost always prefer the preludes

RD-8 came in today, got to play with it a bit between taking care of the kiddo's cold. Like the MS-1 it's much larger than I expected, looks like it would be exactly the same size as the original though I don't have one sitting here. Which makes it nice to play, but space is at a premium these days. Makes it nice to play at any rate. Anyways it looks and sounds fantastic, the kick in particular is exactly what I want and the wave designer and filter are very useful additions. The only thing I noticed is that closed hat cuts off open hat decay -- does the original machine do this? Haven't tried programming anything more in-depth than single 16 step patterns, so no idea how easy all that is.

Been playing with MS-1 and RD-8 all morning. Aside from some minor quibbles, I couldn't be happier with this setup. Very easy to plug in and go, all the different things I've tried have been very easy to figure out either just from looking at the panel or the (admittedly spartan) manual.

It does seem that the pulse coming from the trigger out on the RD-8 is not long enough to trigger the MS-1 sequencer, which kinda sucks. If you have some kind of enveloper you can fix that, but I'll probably be sequencing from DAW anyway.

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, eh? They’re local to the Slothmeister, were very popular here in the 80s.






Possibly one of my first encounters with synthpopelectrowibble, along with Kraftwerk. Synthpopelectrowibble is a term of endearment, by the way. I have enjoyed it since I was in single figures.

Sorry for derail.

Thanks for posting that! Souvenir is a fav song and video – German technology cruising through a British Romantic landscape is a perfect analogy for OMD. Directed by Peter Saville.

I discovered this amazing music the other day. And look! A Korg Poly 800!

Ooh! Recently picked up an EX800 with the Hawk mod, which includes the resonating filter and filter FM mod. The oscillator chip is a total piece of shit, but still it's a great synth