Vintage Digital Synthesizer 1977

Vintage Digital Synthesizer - 1977

[@MultiPetercool]

I am in awe of how stupid some of the comments are here. This is probably the single biggest innovation after Bob Moog invented voltage control. The Star Wars demo is absolutely epic! I can’t think of any other instrument that would allow you to record three tracks completely digitally and play them back in 1977. I’m lucky enough to have actually played that instrument. Roger Powell is an old friend of mine this is a historic video!

[@diegoderokha6799]

Mr. Powell is a kind of unsung hero. I don't know so much from his works, but I admire him a lot. Greetings from Chile.

[@MultiPetercool]

@@diegoderokha6799 I could not agree more. When I retire I would like to write a masters thesis on Roger’s contributions to electronic music. I’m one of the editors on his Wikipedia page. Roger is one of those unique people who understands technology as well as music. I put him in the same league with Raymond Scott. Both are unsung heroes. Scott to a lesser degree. There’s a mistaken idea that it started with Moog. Many great minds have contributed to the current state of the art.

[@diegoderokha6799]

@@MultiPetercool Well, since he is an old friend of yours, can I ask something from a strictly musical point of view? Why he never released a track named "The Glowing Far Horizon"?. A lot of people around the world has been looking for it (myself included). If a small 30-second excerpt from it could captivate us all, I couldn't imagine the whole track.

[@MultiPetercool]

@@diegoderokha6799 You might be able to ask him himself because he does have a presence on Facebook I believe. If I had to guess, that track was probably part of the unreleased “Architecture” album. It was to be released on Larry Fast’s very short-lived Audion label. Unfortunately a distribution deal never happened.

[@inthefade]

@@MultiPetercool Comparing Roger to R. Scott has me interested. I'll go read the wiki! I am insanely impressed by this machine in 77. IIRC that is one year before Roger Nicols built the first digital drum machine, and it could only play back and sequence a single sound at a time.

[@josephmeo261]

I was a newly minted electrical engineer working at Bell Labs Holmdel from 1976 to 1980 and I remember seeing this presentation. It blew my head of then and it still does.

[@morbidmanmusic]

now it's all in a tiny pedal.

[@jessihawkins9116]

shouldn’t have. back then they had the dx7 and d50

[@Kkidzz]

@@jessihawkins9116 No they did’nt…. DX7 came out in ‘83 and D50 in ‘87. Next time do some research before you spew forth. 🙄

[@jessihawkins9116]

@@Kkidzz what about the m1? they had that

[@Kkidzz]

@@jessihawkins9116 My dude/dudette….M1 ‘88. Thx for playing……😉😂

[@mattalles6333]

Thanks for posting, what a find! Hal is my uncle, easily the smartest person I’ve ever met.

[@MultiPetercool]

Your uncle was always very kind to me. I was lucky enough to play with his creation when I was only 17. Walter Brown sponsored a Boy Scout Explorer post in Murray Hill. Kids from local high schools were allowed to come in to the labs after hours and play with UNIX systems. Greg Sims would tutor me in C Programming and let me tickle the keys on that wonderful beast!

[@crnkmnky]

@@MultiPetercool 😯😯😯 Lucky Scouts 💚

[@devondetroit2529]

@@crnkmnky The way he worded it makes like sound like a lawsuit is needed.. "He let me tickle the keys on his wonderful beast..." "I was only 17.."

[@crnkmnky]

@@devondetroit2529 It was New Jersey. If you're old enough to operate a skateboard there, you're enough to tickle the dreaded Beast of Keys.

[@ilovecops5499]

Yiuy ar emy gread grandfathers!

[@wildzeromusic]

the two tone tinted sunglasses worn indoors, man, that does it for me

[@tschak909]

This synthesizer was designed under the direction of Hal Alles (the first speaker), at Bell Labs. The TTL logic here would be further refined into a single board design, with a focus on additive synthesis, and become the Crumar GDS. The board from the Crumar GDS would be embedded into the DK Synergy, and the lessons learned from the GDS and the Synergy would be taken to Atari, where the single board design was shrunk into a VLSI chip called "Amy" which never actually saw the light of day, for way too many reasons.

[@Ramsaaaa]

Very cool history! Thank you for sharing. Love how they went with additive out of the gate. Phenomenal proof-of-concept. 32 oscillators in 1979... that's wild!!

[@ilovecops5499]

That is a total conspiracy theory. It was infendt by YAMAHA DX1 SYNTHEZER, FM MUDUILATION I SNOPT DIGITAL!

[@tschak909]

@@ilovecops5499 Bath salts are a hell of a drug.

[@Ramsaaaa]

@@ilovecops5499 DX1 went into production in 1983, a full four years after the Crumar GDS.

[@ilovecops5499]

@@tschak909 thanks youe mine ghood frendes! one day I wmust try them. 329 am monday may 1 2020, I have to go bacl to sl;eep., thabnsk yiou, thub uppsah!

[@chetsinger7230]

In the early 80s I read a technical paper Dr. Alles wrote about this. It was a work of genius, built using the highest-speed electronics available, and it inspired my interest in synthesizers which I've enjoyed for decades. Thank you so much for finding and posting this video. All this time I had no idea such a demonstration of it existed.

[@dmmartindale]

He mentioned that the "processor" was executing 200 million arithmetic operations per second. That probably includes all of the voices, implemented digitally in a DSP, but it's still impressive compared to the state of general-purpose computers. The Cray-1 appeared in 1976 and could achieve 160 MFLOPS. So this synthesizer had Cray-1 like arithmetic throughput, though probably fixed-point instead of floating-point. That's quite impressive. For a more familiar reference, the VAX-11/780 appeared in 1977 and was generally regarded as executing 1 million operations per second (and not all of those were arithmetic ops).

[@thesoundsmith]

I attended a seminar on this machine I was attempting to build a 16-voice digital oscillator to create a cheap Fairlight. Didn't have the hardware engineering chops. but got a single voice program running on an OSI Superboard, even used it on a couple gigs, wires dangling from a Protoboard oscillator... Fun stuff.

[@standardnerd9840]

I was 5 when this was recorded and I'm in awe of this. This was so advanced for the time. I used to program a Yamaha DX7 in the mid 80s for a musician friend of my father's. I had a lot of fun making different weird instruments for him.

[@rnb250]

As a drummer in the 80's the DX7 bell sound drove me crazy! 🤣

[@RadicalCaveman]

Advanced technically, but existing analog synths of the time sounded vastly better. It's true that they couldn't do everything digital did. The same situation, with more nuance, is still true today.

[@SullenMorbius]

Laurie Speigal and Susan Ciani give fine demos from back in this day as well. I still listen to their amazing compositions.

[@1oolabob]

1977: We can use a machine to let humans talk with machines. 2020: We've been trying to reach you regarding your car's extended warranty.

[@DROPTHEGRID]

😄

[@tubularap]

1968: HAL 9000 opens the pod-bay door for you, if you ask it nicely. Why did David not have a button to do it himself ? 2023: AI-chatbots will tell you anything with confidence, even if it's bullshit. We all have a brain. Why did we get so lazy ?

[@synth1002]

electric car is a toy, not an vehicle

[@meercreate]

@@synth1002 Electric car is a vehicle, by definition. However, the current generation are merely smartphones with wheels

[@Chipmunkboy]

@@synth1002 why are you bringing this up here???

[@SRDhain]

This sounds far more advanced than anything else available at the time. Yet in just over a few years, The Synclavier & The Fairlight could do what this did and at a reduced cost. They themselves weren't cheap at the time, and converting for inflation would be astronomical in today's money. Nonetheless, this is a landmark instrument, and I wouldn't have been aware of it if it hadn't come up by chance on KZbin. Thank you so much for sharing this 👌

[@flamencoprof]

Agreed! I have a YT playlist entitled The Awesome Historic Fairlight CMI, but I have made an exception and added this vid to it. At the time I was close to qualifying as a Telecommunications Technician, in Switching. I had learned the principles of the Moog, and had fantasies of what could be done with an analogue synth with computer-controlled interconnections instead of patch cords, and disks to save the patches. Then the Fairlight came out and I threw up my hands. 🙂

[@GeorgesChannel]

Absolutly stunning for 1977!

[@nathankirklambo1986]

This was a huge deal. Seems silly now, but wow, what an achievement! I would kill to have one of these to explore.

[@Ponlets]

the end with the spacious sounds was amazing wish there was more of it

[@ExpressoMechanicTV]

Never seen this one before. Incredible, for 1977. I bet it cost a fortune to build.

[@harmonicres]

Roger Powell was a genius on that synth. The swirly ambient stuff was amazing. Too bad he never released anything like this performance to the public.

[@TonyMontana-fm5ek]

Este video es super interezante y didactico a la vez, como este sujeto explica de una manera muy prolija sobre el uso de este teclado de esa epoca junto a una pc y su funcionalidad y combinacion entre ambas. La forma de grabar las voces y demostrar su combinacion multiple. Es absolutamente sorprendente. Me encanta allar este tipo de cosas que a uno mismo lo asombran aunque sean casi analogicas de donde se lo mire. Respeto mucho este tipo de videos tutoriales. Me costo entender por momentos. Pero eso no fue un impedimento. Si tuve que verlo mas de 5 veces lo hise y lo volveria hacer. Porque de esa manera lo pude comprender mejor.

[@luismartinez6408]

my friend made the proccessor for this syntheisizer. it was made in japan and he programmed it. he has this machine and the cpus all over his garage along with other synths...

[@BenKirb]

WOW!!!!

[@navizhunastye3756]

Ну тогда он станет очень богатым, если предоставит миру хоть один рабочий аппарат😉

[@flamencoprof]

If a channel with no content is to be believed, the garage is not the place for that stuff. Please advise him to donate/sell to a responsible museum/collector who can preserve such a historic thing.

[@luismartinez6408]

@@flamencoprof Hes Japanese and hes not intrested in selling. He has thousands of dollars worth of retro gear.

[@flamencoprof]

@@luismartinez6408 Good to know, thanks. I just hope it's a good garage :-)

[@mickeythompson9537]

This is Hal Alles , and the machine is the predecessor of the GDS and the Synergy. Bell Labs - public service and not-for-profit.

[@myleftnutts]

@mickey thompson. True Dat mick the GDS and the Synergy were the 2 BEST digitial synthesizers EVER MADE!!!. it's too bad that they DID NOT have the support system like "Nikkon Gakki" aka Yamaha!!!.

[@10hz]

"public service and not-for-profit" aka not for the public.

[@bandfromtheband9445]

mickey thompson I had no idea that this thing preceded the GDS and the Synergy. Wendy Carlos was one of the first proponents of the Synergy and interestingly, Donald Fagen used one on some of Steely Dan's songs.

[@yes_head]

Wow. Pretty far ahead of its time for 1977, although analog keyboards were producing some of these features within a year or two. But this is more of a predecessor to the Synclavier or the Fairlight.

[@gsprings43]

I think farlight or new england digital had some digital synth called the quasar in 77

[@gsprings43]

The synclavier started development in 74 or 75 if i am not mistaken,,,the fairlight in 77 i think

[@videosuperhighway7655]

That synthesized voice is cool as heck.

[@bodavis99]

Roger Powell was the synthesizer player in Todd Rundgren's Utopia.

[@bandfromtheband9445]

Roger Powell was a master Synthesist. That is, he surely knew his way around digital synthesizers and used them extensively throughout his career.

[@MultiPetercool]

BandfromtheBand I think Roger is still alive and well and living in California

[@MultiPetercool]

Dan Roger actually built his own digital synthesizer. It was called Databoy. look it up. Roger certainly knows his way around digital sound and computers. What if I told you he also wrote the first PC Midi sequencer? It was called Texture. He was always on the cutting edge.

[@GuitarZombie]

"This is an electrified fairy tale"

[@rharms_]

i thought he was the singer of mama's boys .... maybe they are the same

[@GoEvan101New]

This is probably one of the coolest videos I have come across about old synthesizers I would love to own one of these

[@speakertx]

The computer related aspects of this thing are really a prototype of what we now call a DAW.

[@irife2771]

Not exactly. DAWs have been around longer than you might think. Look up Soundstream.

[@subs4794]

No. It's a type of digital synthesis. If anything, there are plugins using the same synthesis technology that are used in DAWs.

[@wepsar]

@@subs4794 well it can edit each note from its memory so I'd say it's a digital audio workstation.

[@stevehoge]

Wow, I remember reading the original article about this in Computer Music Journal in 1977 but I certainly never actually saw or heard it being played!

[@Realmasterorder]

This is Awesome ! Just imagine how COOL this was Back then ! Heck its still Uber Cool now when we just watching this.

[@gyrogearjammed]

This video was made in 1977 - midi was first released in 1983.

[@michaelbauers8800]

That synth is more flexible than I realized.

[@navizhunastye3756]

О, дааа!!! Великие композиторы уже использовали их тогда и в фильмах, и мультфильмах!!! Великие - это Алексей Рыбников, Эдуард Артемьев, Владимир Мартынов!!!!! Владимир Мартынов сделал на "EMS Sinti 100" мультфильм ""На задней парте" в 1978 году😉

[@XanAxDdu]

hi i only know artemyev maybe for tarkovsky movies, so maybe not so much electronics in them, if not for the wonderful movie stalker, considering all tarkovsky movies being wonderful or more than brilliant, he was an existentialist poet about inner time sculpture, using pictures and frames and scenes duration. anyway the point is all arts and science made in the soviet republics was and still is out of normal market distribution, so it is not inside experience of all the people of the world. i mean several movies from east asia are well known, and something from africa or south america, also from Iran egypt turk and saudi but generally nothing or very very few de can say never something from east european countries of not titles coming from festivals as cannes venice berlin. so if there were authors in music using electronics they were from pop culture, not from just conservatoires

[@adastra123]

This is fascinating 👏 to say the least. It was videos like this got me interested in electronics and synthesizers.

[@TheWorld_2099]

I’m absolutely floored by this instrument, in every single way. This would be like the combined power and technology of a Fairlight CMI and Synclavier… Why was this never released commercially?

[@PutItAway101]

If it's true that it was doing 200 MIPS, that's more powerful than a Cray supercomputer of the time that cost $8 million in 1977 dollars, so the cost of this thing would've been in that ballpark, and the chance of selling one commercially would be close to zero.

[@TheWorld_2099]

@@PutItAway101 sounds like that statistic is off. That’s just one small computer cabinet, not a wall of processors.

[@Jason-cm6uh]

Very cool! Thanks for uploading

[@manuelgonzales6483]

STUNNING AND BRAVE 😳🙀

[@murraybartley4467]

What a dream machine for the time....in fact everything demonstrated was at your finger tips and virtually immediate...that still makes it more accessible than today's synths and workstations. Today that would still make a great soundscaping tool and much more.

[@BdotSteel_onthebeat]

You can do the dial tone, busy signal & dial out tone with a basic sine wave. Each one is two notes played at once. I found these by accident lol

[@michaelbauers8800]

I think that might be correct. I know the touch tone system was DTFM, in which DT meant dual tone

[@antronargaiv3283]

"Notes on the Network", my man. All is made clear. The phreaks figured all this out many, many years ago. Alas, the network is now TCP/IP, so none of that applies any more. I often wonder when they'll start selling the contents of the switching offices for scrap (if they haven't already). Oh, and DTMF is Dual Tome Multi Frequency. Sort of redundant, but that's what it means.

[@ShallRemainUnknown]

@@antronargaiv3283 Sounds like A LOT of reading involved... 😁

[@navizhunastye3756]

Умничка😚

[@radenthefridge]

"In the future we expect human beings and machine will be able to talk over the telephone." You called it buddy! "Your call is important to us..."

[@minisynthmaniac]

Still sounds better than most of digital synths today.

[@AMPProf]

Beep Beep Beep 🤖

[@fuckcensorship69]

lol. you're talking about the CHEAP shit

[@aliensporebomb]

The Alles machine! You can hear it on the Synergy "Games" record. Larry Fast worked with the late Greg Sims for one of the tracks on that CD.

[@videosuperhighway7655]

Behringer is coming out with a version for 299 dollars.

[@johnmccartney3819]

2 tracks actually, the best on the album. Too bad the Computer Experiments album wasn't more like them.

[@aliensporebomb]

@@johnmccartney3819 Yes that long Delta piece with multiple parts had it in there!

[@utkarshdas5467]

This brings tears In my eyes cause this was a 💥💥💯💯 and even now this revolutionary

[@MediaWest]

this is a freakin gem! this was the first real digital sampler!

[@MultiPetercool]

No it was not a sampler, it was a bank of digital oscillators with programmable wave forms that could be used either as audio signals or control voltages so to speak… It used John Chowning‘s frequency modulation (FM) method which is very difficult to perform in the analog domain due to the infamous temperature instability of analog circuits. It could process audio in real time to some degree, but it was not a “sampler” by any definition. FM synthesis involves modulating a signal with signal of higher frequency than a typical LFO and closer to the fundamental frequency. Envelope generators can be employed as well, but no filters! Digital filters are computationally very expensive. The bottom line is that memory and micro processor capabilities/speeds at the time weren’t able to do real digital sampling and modeling. I was lucky enough to actually play that beast!

[@barnumeffekt]

it was an FM synth, not a sampler

[@navizhunastye3756]

Ну я тоже подумал, что это первый сэмплер в мире, но как, чёрт возьми, тогда прописывались высоты нот на память, всё равно же нужно какое-то запоминающее устройство!??

[@digitaldesigner5284]

Fantastic instrument.

[@thesvalker3720]

Сейчас половина этого есть в GdrageBand А все вместе тонком синтезаторе с жк экраном Но на этом старом интереснее играть особенно что то из тех 80 ых годов

[@solarveterok]

Совершенно верно.

[@fvcktv2933]

"in the future we expect to human beings and machines will be able to talk to each other over the telephone"

[@chriskaprys]

Still waiting for that future to arrive, as I scream at a gate-check phone robot in 2023 that can’t understand the difference between “yes” and “no” 🤦

[@bandfromtheband9445]

8:48 sounds like I'm hearing some FM squelch so common on the DX synths from Yamaha that wouldn't come out for another 4 years.

[@chrisb.1214]

Apparently this machine had a mix of additive and FM synthesis.

[@mjsschad3776]

Amazing. The early workstation!

[@johnsaunders6510]

That was incredible. Loved the Star Wars theme. Like an early Synclavier.

[@TronBonneVonne]

Truly groundbreaking, the grand daddy of our modern gear....

[@MrJpbmusic2005]

4:10.."In the future computers & Humans will talk to each other!!!!YOU GOT THAT DAM RIGHT!!!!! Haven't been able to speak to a "Human" at my Internet provider's customer service for years ,to sort out my dam broadband issues

[@soloharmonicsrobj8246]

Some of the instrumentation sounds quite a bit like Tangerine Dream and Brian Eno. It's a really cool instrument for that time period. Excellent orchestration demo as well. I do recall Roger Powell in my vintage synthesizer book titled "Art Of Electronic Music"👌

[@SilkyBadger]

Thank you KZbin recommendations :) and thank you gyrogearjammed.

[@ryanreedgibson]

I was negative five when this was made. It blows my mind. I had no idea this technology existed in the 70s.

[@ОстинБроуэлл]

Наивно и трогательно. Вот что значит прогресс. Сейчас любая китайская игрушка эти звуки создаст.

[@wetfishtail6]

It must have been mind blowing to see this in 1977. In fact, I'm surprised how little has changed in how we approach electronic music other than the fact that we have affordable stuff now. The guys in the video here were definitely in the vanguard. Bell labs proves that innovation comes from the public sphere, not the narrow profit driven private.

[@Teddyrobinson]

Cant wait til it comes out

[@avalanche9026]

Man we have come a loooooong way. Hmm thanks to guys like him. Actually created something

[@DrMikeMetlay]

This synthesizer was at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music when I was a student there in the early 1980s. At the time, it had been partly disassembled and was non-operational; I missed being able to work with it by a couple of years in either direction. Sigh.

[@DrMikeMetlay]

Soon after that, Larry Fast got to use it for the Synergy album GAMES.

[@GSPrasanthKumar]

I think what we do in music production today was established in 1970s itself it seems. This is a wonder to the music industry and contemporary time. 💜🦋

[@toi_techno]

Lol, "at his pleasure, later this afternoon". Cool video

[@JohnnyMcMenamin]

Epicness begins @ 7:43

[@johnmccartney3819]

I lol'd.

[@odom2142]

What a fantastic presentation!

[@SuperChaoticus]

Roger Powell's demonstration was interesting. Some of the synth parts reminded my of his work with Todd Rundgren and Utopia.

[@tonysharp1615]

Magnificent. ❤️👍🏻👍🏻

[@DennyGenoveseExoticMusicEnsemb]

Don Slepian was Artist in Residence at Bell Labs in the early 80's. His job was to create music with it. His product was the album: COMPUTER, DON'T BREAK DOWN.

[@DennyGenoveseExoticMusicEnsemb]

Oops! I was wrong about the time (It was quite a while ago). Here's what Don says about it: @DonSlepian 7 years ago How remarkable to see this again after all these years! I released this record of my music from the '70's in February 1980. Yes, the album cover is crude. The instrument is the Bell Labs Digital Synthesizer, the Alles Machine, which was my every day machine for the last two years of it's life in its original form. I suppose I do have "a curious sense of humor". There more free music on my KZbin channel, about 40 music videos. Glad you still have this vinyl and are enjoying it.

[@EBMZEQUENZER]

I am very very impressed !

[@mortarmopp3919]

I guess you could say that was the first DAW.

[@michaelbauers8800]

Hard to say, I think the RCA synthesizer system, at least one of them, had some DAW capabilities. This was back in the late 1950s. I am pretty sure it's going to come down to definitions. Not sure the RCA system had much of a computer. I think it was tape controlled. I don't know that it was driven by anything we could call software. Maybe we would not say that the RCA was a DAW, but simply a sequencer capable system.

[@bandfromtheband9445]

More or less, albeit a very stripped down DAW by today's standards.

[@jessihawkins9116]

no you could not call this a daw. the computer used is unremarkable compared to today’s standards

[@aaronjennings8385]

This is so awesome.

[@gregmiller7123]

Maybe I’m missing something but by ‘77 famous musicians like Keith Emerson and Rick Wakefield had been playing synthesizers since at least 1970 and the Beatles had a very early version Moog in 1968. Not sure what was so special about this model but so much of the disco music was all synthesizer programmed sounds. Being “older” does bring back recollections! In fact, I was a sales rep for a diskette manufacturer…talk about a job with no future! 🤪

[@PedroPetracco]

Wow, it can make a BUSY TONE?!? Amazing. I'll take two

[@jazzrockvstu]

as usual we - today - are dwarfs riding on giants... having the as usual undeserved privilege to enjoy the actual view of possibilities... in this case the actual synths, virtual or hardware... all these VST and VSTi plugins with their vast sounds and possibilities right on our fingers. We need to remeber humidity how this started in past, how much work and life the pioneers invested... and thank them!

[@RaquelFoster]

It's cool seeing difference between the eras of - research samplers == this thing at Bell Labs (7-bit 250 Hz samples) - bespoke professional samplers for the price of a big house == Synclavier (1977) / Fairlight CMI (1979) - commercially available samplers for the price of a nice car == Emulator (1981) / Emulator II (1984) - $2,000-ish rack samplers with SCSI CD-ROMs == lots of Akai/Roland stuff in the early '90s There's a whole other story of the availability of sample libraries for these things, starting with Synclaviers that were only available to Michael Jackson and movie producers, and ending up with the '90s boom of sample CDs which created entire genres. Trip hop, D&B, and a lot of pop electronic stuff like Moby and Fatboy Slim wouldn't exist without those Zero G / Distorted Reality / X-Static Goldmine sample CDs.

[@kneel1]

man Bell Labs mustve been amazing to work at back then

[@MultiPetercool]

Yup. My Dad worked there and built the radiation detectors for Telstar. His boss was Walter Brown who sponsored a Boy Scout Explorer Post in Murray Hill. On Monday nights kids from local High Schools could get to see and use UNIX systems in particular. I was one of them. Greg Sims would tutor us on C programming and let us play with that wonderful beast!

[@blastfromthepast8344]

Incredible machine. 45 years ago... well ahead of its time. I didn't think these things appeared until the 80s. I assumed the Fairlight CMI was the first.

[@presidentevil9951]

what exactly can the fairlight CMI do that this one can't?

[@ciolamorta]

Fairlight was designed for music, had a different programming approach thought especially for musicians. This beast would probably cost ten times being basically more complex and, probably, without a set of inputs and controls but surely this is a great ancestor.

[@evil1st]

Holy shit. Speaking to machines over the phone? We actually do that now with automated phone AI. This is cool!

[@ordinaryk]

This was the Fairlight before the Fairlight.

[@monodux]

It must have been a great thing to be a skilled pianist when all the synths started coming out.

[@rycat5ESS]

Leave it to Bell Labs to create a machine that can do voice processing, generate call progress tones, generate and recognize DTMF, generate speech, and is also a musical instrument : )

[@markvickroy6725]

I love how he's copping Star wars there that's good stuff

[@davidmazylewski368]

I can understand the importance of this because I grew up listening to Wendy Carlos and also Tomita.

[@mathieufoley2339]

this is sooooo cool!

[@enoz.j3506]

Fairloght springs to mind.

[@AZTEC-VAMPIRE-GOD1997]

I need one of these for the studio , heading to guitar center as we speak

[@VickersDoorter]

08:31 Distinctly similar sequence to what he played on Todd Rundgren's Utopia Theme from the his 1974 live album, Utopia.

[@friendsofvaliumforest]

"I'm happy to be here...on this occasion" ha. nice.

[@djcooler76]

Unbelieveable

[@esoteric6178]

so this was more than s synth really it was the first midi keyboard with velocity control and apparently the first DAW.

[@orbithesun1]

MIDI protocol was in introduced by Dave Smith and Chet Wood of Sequential Circuits in October, 1981 at the Audio Engineering Society conference in New York City. At that time it was called Universal Synthesizer Interface.

[@MultiPetercool]

Roger is a dear friend of mine. I was with him when he got his copy of the MIDI spec from Dave Smith at his post office box when Roger lived In Rhinebeck NY.

[@MultiPetercool]

Roger’s first project was to equip an Apple II with a 16 channel 8-bit D/A converter to provide standard Control voltages and triggers to a bunch of analog modules. He basically reconstructed Max Mathews GROOVE system. The man is a genius!

[@genefogarty5395]

Roger's glasses were in essence, the '70s. Much more so than the synth, lol.

[@davebellamy4867]

🤣😅😂 The shirt too. I mean this is pushing technology so far. It's amazing. Then the Fairlight and the Prophet-5 were imminent.

[@JAAmongo]

4:10 siri prediction

[@mohinderkaur6671]

very impressive!

[@NiranjanSpirit]

Just go to 8:15

[@Guidotoons101]

WOW! How great!

[@colorazor]

у нас до сих пор все такое

[@DougMcDave]

A few years ago, my nephew said something like, "Awakska, pway Bosth Baby." Alexa answered, "Sorry, I do not understand you." Then my aunt with a thick Southern accent had a similar problem, heh.

[@ivanchi37]

Amazing 😲

[@vimfuego8827]

WOW, Roger Powell (Todd Rundgren/Utopia/Powell Probe) Genius.

[@wafty34]

Way ahead of it's time 👍🏻

[@michelzenitud5524]

J'adore l'analogie son je suis fan de Suzanne ciani, de pierre henry , depuis toujours ! 1968 :::::::::2018 encore fan Michel 04 Alpes France

[@bloodyhell6378]

So is this basically a prototype of the Fairlight CMI?

[@mspysu79]

Done anyone known what happened to the 2" or possibly 1" videotape masters and the 3/4" dubs of this?

[@gyrogearjammed]

I have a 3/4" tape - an original. A also have a 16 mm sound film made form the orginal. I do not think a larger format copy exists.

[@mspysu79]

Is this sourced form that 3/4" tape? If it is not and you would like the tape digitized, please let me know.

[@gyrogearjammed]

The posted video was made from a CD copied from a VHS tape copied from a16mm film copied from the original tape. I am intetested in a direct digital copy from the 3/4" tape. Please send me a private message.

[@videosuperhighway7655]

urcich is this Umatic format?

[@sebastianpioreckimamtalent]

amazing

[@MsLeguman]

Why did they remove the eyes of the speakers ?