Tuesday, October 11, 2011

EP Made Entirely with Korg Poly-800

Dkon - 800 EP by Dkon / Deceptikon

As you may have heard me mention here before, the Korg Poly-800 was my first synth ever.  It was by no means a great synth - it certainly has its quirks - but I think most of us wax a bit nostalgic when it comes to our first (still talking about synths here, although I guess the same could go for girlfriends).

DKON took this level of nostalgia and took it up a notch using the Poly-800 as the sole synth on his appropriately-titled 800 EP.  I always find it interesting when artists restrict themselves to a single synth, as it gives you a good feel for the sound of the synth (although the lovely strings that are probably the only thing the 800 really excels at, in my opinion, are absent here...).  Have a listen!  Have you ever tried creating music using only a single synth? (This actually wasn't such an uncommon thing in the day before softsynths...)

[via CreateDigitalMusic]

4 comments:

fractured said...

Tom,

It sounds like I need to send you a link to a track I did with EX 800 for bass. It isn't huge, but it sounds great! Sure, the 800s do great strings and pads, but they handle some decent lows, too.

Meta Sektion said...

There's a recurring complaint these days among artists that there is too much choice when it comes to virtual instruments, and it's difficult to stay focussed on completing a project with the sheer volume of options available for tweaking or otherwise enhancing a mix. That, of course, speaks volumes about the level of self-discipline required to make it to the end of a song, given the considerable potential for distraction.

Early on, I set the limit at less then 10 VSTIs for any track, taking inspiration from comments I'd read from David Sylvian and Richard Barbieri about how long it takes to really understand and use a synth (at the time they were, from memory, referring to the years that they'd invested in learning how to program the Prophet 5). These days, I have two workhorse synths that typically supply about 80% of the patches I use in songs. I evaluate a handful of new instruments each year. If a new release instrument is too similar to one I'm already familiar with, I'd rather try and emulate it with my existing gear. I've developed some patches on Synth 1 that almost recreate the sound of one of GTG's softsynths. That's a good way to extend one's skills, by taking on the challenge of making one piece of equipment sound like another, and relying on sound design to bridge the gap.

Joel R. Bisson said...

I have a lot of songs with one synth but VSTi synth that is, my SoundCloud account is here at http://soundcloud.com/jrmbisson

there are only one or three synths at the most and its usually IMAGELINE SYTRUS VSTi on them and 3xOSC right out of FL Studio 10..........I only use Sytrus for almost everything, SuperwaveP8 for everything and ImageLine 3xOSC and maybe ReFX VANGUARD.

Joel R. Bisson said...

for those who use FL Studio...I am making tutorials on the software since I've been using it since 2004. I made the first post on FL Studio's Hybridize Preset Function where it allows you to merge two presets and make them into one sound. Thanks Tom for the Preset hosting of my CS80V Presets, I got more presets I made over 100 Megabytes of presets, 2 Gigabytes of samples I took myself.