WELCOME
Yet another snyth-patch website?
Aren’t there already enough on the web you may ask?
The main purpose here is to share my passion for synth-programming (although I’m only starting out), sound creation in general and the challenge to learn wordpress to finally setting up a little website.
So here is a little rundown about my journey:
My fascination for synthesizers emerged in the late 80ies, while listening to the masterful ‘Synthesizers Greatest’ albums that came out during that time. The digital revolution of digital synth/gear was in full bloom and new musical genres like house, techno and trance arose.
Not only did I fell for that music during my college years in the 90ies, I also developed interest in the gear used for production.
Reading countless magazines regarding synths and checking them out at music stores, I finally decided to buy my first ever synthesizer in 1997. The Yamaha CS1x.
Yamaha CS1x
While not a synthesizer per se, it offered a wide range of tweakable temporary sound patches (performances), GM sounds and a 12-part multitimbrality plus an additional performance part. All for a reasonable price tag at that time. In conjunction with Steinberg Cubasis 3,
I created short tracks solely to learn the synth and music production in general. But there was something missing.
Although the synthesizer market was heavely leaning towards digital music generators, my demand for an analog synth slowly grew.
I can’t remember exactly – it must have been around the end of the 90ies – when I came across an advertisement I saw in a magazine selling second hand items. They were selling a Roland Juno-106 in supreme conditions. I bought it right away for a great deal, compared to nowaday prices of about $1800 and above (2025).
Roland Juno-106
It was really fun to tweak all those sliders and creating sounds from scratch, and to learn how subtractive synthesis works.
In combination with a simple effects-processor the Juno-106 sounds just phenomenal.
Nontheless there was a point – I bet many of you were there too – when you feel the gear you have just isn’t enough…
Virtual Analog was and still is a thing today. The hands on user interface experience from early analog devices paired with modern technology like plenty of integrated FX, Vocoders, Arpeggiators, Mod Sources, huge preset banks and user storage, combined with more of this and more of that, in a compact device with low maintenance. For me it had to be the Novation K-Station.
Novation K-Station
Although my small home studio grew little by little, less time I could bring up using & playing the gear, let alone making music.
And before I really could get started to create ‘real’ music – instead of just tinkering around – I took the opportunity to start my own business in the archviz industry in 2007. From there on I had no time to invest in making music anymore. The gear gathered dust and became more of a burden than something to enjoy – and wasting valuable space, too. As a consequence I sold all my gear; of course regretting having sold some of them today.
16 years down the road – late 2023 to be exact – the enthusiasm for electronically created music arose again, after listening to contemporary electro and synthwave. After watching tons of youtube videos, I could get a good glimpse of what current tools and gear was being used and began investing in a small setup of which included a NI Maschine MK3 25th Anniversary Edition in Ultraviolet.
Native Instruments Maschine MK3 Ultraviolet
This controller is really fun to use. Pushing the large pads let’s you trigger samples or play softsynths, the touch sensitive knobs let you assign any parameter you wish in a DAW. For greater playability though or even playing melodies on the fly, a keyboard is a better input device for me and the NI Maschine features – besides an audio interface – also ports for old midi gear. But which one to chose?
And we’re at that point again: Why not buying a synth; this time used & cheap, that can act as a masterkeyboard? After an intensive online research, I came across the Roland D-50.
Roland D-50