15 Years down the line – Robert Fox looks back at looking back! (Part 2)

So, an inquiring mind was fired by what was available, technically as well as financially.

Such possibilities just weren’t available a few years before! Amusingly, my ears seemed to adapt to the new-found creativity somewhat better than the hands. Roland Jupiter, Korg Poly….good grief, all sorts of things were happening with this. So, what if you do this and add a bit of that and record it all to four track cassette tape? Even louder wows!  And from there mix it down, or how about bounce it down and make it six tracks? And then mix down to bog standard hi-fi cassette tape what have you got?

Answer….your own music!

And so, from the hands on exploration of the Casio CZ1000 (which wasn’t mine and l was upset when I had to give it back), to the even more wiz. The Casio CZ5000 – more notes on the keyboard, programmable and what’s more it could remember, too. Now. this wasn’t mine either, but at least I had unlimited access to it. The school I was working in at the time bought it. It was, at least in theory, a joint Drama / Music department machine in which the two departments had equal share, hence, usage. But in reality the trick was to take it home and take it back later, a term or so!

This was all well and good but there was something missing and the missing bit was simple. I need one of these synth things of my own! I could just about afford one if the overdraft would stretch to it. So, what will it be? Remember ‘Home and Studio Recording’ magazine? Well, so do I and a great deal of time was now spent thumbing through pages of ads and reviews of all the, then, (mostly unaffordable) ‘latest gear’. So much so that the first purchase was very nearly a major disaster in that the Ensoniq Mirage sampler and I didn’t get on. I blame an over enthusiastic salesman! Said salesman and company went bust a couple of years later and I must admit that I wasn’t too upset about that.

But…all’s well that ends well. I didn’t want a sampler, I wanted a synth. And what’s this Roland D50 thing everyone is raving about in Frankfurt?

More tomorrow…

Written by David Wright