Even though blogging is still fairly new to me, music writing isn't (not that you could tell). Back in the mid-90's I contributed to a small publication out of Portland, Oregon called Transoniq Hacker. The Hacker was an independent magazine by and for Ensoniq enthusiasts that ran since the late 80's right up until Ensoniq stopped releasing stuff for them to write about. Every issue had free patches, programming tutorials, third party product reviews, and even reviews of reader music. In fact, the Hacker was the first place my band ever got reviewed. (I'll have to see if I can dig it up... although the reviewer was kind, it was clear he didn't quite know what to make of it.)
If you own any Ensoniq gear you really owe it to yourself to try and track down some copies of this, as it really was an amazing resource and helped me get more mileage out of my gear than I ever would've on my own. A few archived issues and pages from issues are available at the links below. It's be really nice for all the old issues to get uploaded some day, but I realize late 80's / early 90's digital synths and samplers probably isn't the sexiest subject for a lot of people. Still, if there was a better user's magazine out there, I sure wasn't aware of it. Do we have any former Hacker writers as readers of Waveformless? Give us a shout out!
A short write-up on the demise of Transoniq Hacker
A couple dozen scanned issues from the late 80's
Some more...
Some scanned pages from various issues...
Posts
3 comments:
The wife still plays our SD-1 in the band and it sounds fabulous! The synth patches sound so much fatter than comparable stuff out of her Motif. Don't know why, but it does.
Indeed. I have always thought Ensoniq stuff was extremely underrated, but I guess some people see that it's digital and don't give it a chance...
Yep, fond memories... used to have a subscription in the late 80's. Lost any old issues I had though through the years.
Post a Comment