Yamaha SY-22 "Vector Synthesis" advertisement, Keyboard 1990

Yamaha SY-22 "Vector Synthesis" advertisement from page 39 in the September 1990 issue of Keyboard Magazine. 

In a crowded world of 90s synths, the SY-22 vector synthesizer dared to be different. With FM, sample playback and joy-stick driven sound design, its still loved by a small group of fanatics. I've never owned one... and I still consider myself one of those fanatics. 

According to the InterWebz, after Sequential Circuits, responsible for the Prophet VS (Vector Synthesis) was bought by Yamaha, Dave Smith "served as the President of the DSD group at Yamaha, producing a mini VS in the Yamaha SY22, but when ownership of Sequential was passed to their newly-acquired Korg, Dave oversaw that as the Korg R&D group in California, who designed the very successful Wavestation." 

Interesting. Explains why the Wavestation and SY-22 both came out so soon after each other. 

Looking at the SY-22 itself...  first, lets get this out of the way. No low-pass filter. Ugh. Okay, we can move on, because what it does have is AWM synthesis, 2-operator FM synthesis, and vector synthesis via a joystick. And now lets throw in stereo onboard effects, as well as velocity keys with aftertouch. SAAAAAAY-WHAAAAAAT? 

All for under $1100. 

So its not an SY-77. Too bad...  The SY-22 has vector synthesis. 

So its not an SY-55. Too bad...  The SY-22 has vector synthesis. 

I think you can see where I'm going with this. Its got vector synthesis. Like I said above - I've never owned one. I don't think I've even heard one on purpose. But in my head, its just got to be cool sounding. 

And Jim Aikin, managing editor and Keyboard reviewer back in 1990 agrees. Kinda. 

See... he was going on vacation the day the Korg Wavestation arrived for review. So he didn't get to review it. And instead, he came back from vacation with the Yamaha SY-22 waiting for review. so he switched it on and was 'pleasantly surprised'. 

Why do I know this?!?! Because the same issue of Keyboard that includes this advertisement, also includes Jim's full-length review of the SY-22. 

According to the review, each patch on the SY-22 "can be programmed with its own vector. Once you've found a set of waveforms that you like, you can go to the "record level vector" page and use the joystick to do a real-time recording of a sequence of up to 50 vector positions." FIFTY positions. Then you can edit each position, loop the entire thing, etc. Smashing!

One thing he does note that is a real downer is that the joystick doesn't send or receive midi data. Yup. You heard that right... there's no way to record the movements into your favourite sequencer. Jim acknowledges that Yamaha needed to keep the cost down somehow. 

Jim goes on to review the sounds ("usual mixed bag"), patch programming ("fairly predictable"), effects ("short, but no big around"), and multitimbral operation ("fairly standard"). Still, in the end, Jim explains that vector synthesis "gives the SY22 a sound that's unique in its price range", and even calls the real time recording of vector movements "the most significant innovation in synthesizer design that we've seen in the last couple of years". 

Nice. Jim done good.

The Yamaha SY-22 may not have achieved mass-market fame, but its combo of vector synthesis, FM synthesis, and sample-based warmth makes it a hidden treasure for all you creative musicians.

Alesis HR-16:B "Killer B" advertisement, Keyboard 1990

Alesis HR-16:B "Killer B" advertisement from page 102 in the September 1990 issue of Keyboard Magazine. 

Before software ruled the studio, drum machines like the Alesis HR-16B offered an affordable and surprisingly powerful way to get your industrial tracks bangin'. Released in the early 1990s as an update to the original HR-16, the HR-16B isn't as well-known as the TR-808 or have the power of modern groove boxes, but it carved out its own corner of electronic music history—and for one.... very... good... reason.

From the ad: "47 samples, pre-produced with reverb and processing for a killer rhythm assault right out of the box." 

That's it. Right there. Those sounds. Right when industrial music was seeping into the mainstream. Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Front 242.... goth clubs were also banging. 

The ad tries to promote its high sample rate16-bit samples, but compared to today's standards, that limited gritty aesthetic, along with a fairly intuitive interface, is what makes this drum machine sought after today. Its no surprise that I'm blogging about it so close to the Kawai R-100/R50 drum machines... another industrial fav. 

And don't get me started on the glitching... I'll just leave this video right here. 

The ad itself stands out when you are flipping through the magazine. Arriving on page 102 would usually be a checkmark against it, but it comes just pages after the wonderfully HUGE Public Enemy article... so I won't hold it's placement against it. 

A giant title "Killer B" quickly grabs your attention. And then we get sparse content that is easy to read. And then, of course, is that gothy-black machine sitting atop a giant foam B. 

As good and attention-grabbing as the ad is - and very ON-BRAND for Alesis - I can't help thinking the design doesn't cater to its audience. Those black-clothed, industrial leather jacket wearing Nitzer Ebb loving fans that would want to put down their hard-earned cash. AKA Me! 

I don't know what the answer is... but the designer could surely have put a little bit more time and effort into solving the problem and getting a bit more grit into the design of the ad. 

Steinberg Cubit "Visual Song Processing" advertisement, Keyboard 1989 / Cubase "Buy it! Boot it! Love it! " advertisement, Electronic Musician 1990

Steinberg Cubit "Visual Song Processing"full page colour ad from page 65 in the May 1989 issue of Keyboard Magazine and Steinberg Cubase "Buy it! Boot it! Love it! Or your money back!" half page black and white ad from page 112 in the March 1990 issue of Electronic Musician Magazine.

I don't do it often, but today I have two scans. And for good reason!

I had actually scanned each one separately a while back and written little bits to form into future blog posts, but then this morning I noticed a tweet from Steinberg announcing it was Cubase's 30th anniversary. And I thought... heck - that's a bandwagon worth jumping on! So I went back, checked, and sure enough... this Cubit advertisement first showed up in the May 1989 issue of Keyboard Magazine

(Aside: That May 1989 issue of Keyboard Magazine isn't just exciting because of this initial Cubit ad. Its also the now-legendary CYBERPUNK issue.)

It wasn't just on this side of the pond that Stenberg was rolling out its successor to Twenty Four  III (aka PRO24) sequencing software - Cubit was being rolled out in Europe in magazines such as Music Technology  and Micro Music with large three page advertisements as well. Check out Mu:zines for those ads!

But the Cubit advertisements lasted for only a few months before Steinberg shut them down. The reason? According to Cubase's Wikipedia page, a trademark issue was forcing Steinberg to change the name.

And better for it too!

Well, it didn't take long for that name change to happen. How do I know? Well, for one, the Cubase ad includes quotes from three different 1989 magazine reviews - and those aren't the only reviews that came out soon after the Cubase name change. 

Music Technology magazine out of the UK was one of the first with their review. It was actually a two-part review that ran in the August and September 1989 issues running in at over 8000 words. And the reviewer Nigel Lord still didn't manage to cover all of Cubase's features.

In his verdict, he writes: 

"Quite honestly, this is the most impressive piece of music software I have yet encountered for the ST. And I certainly cannot conceive of it being possible to develop a more sophisticated sequencing package for that machine. As with most genuinely worthwhile designs, the transition from well-crafted tool to creative instrument is quite seamless - the features which give it a claim to both these titles being universally well thought-out and meticulously presented. Not only that, but it's a delight to use and one of that increasingly rare breed of technologically advanced designs which positively encourage the user to experiment and get to grips with it."

Not bad. Not bad at all. 

Sound on Sound's review also came out in their August 1989 issue. And I gotta say after reading David Hughes' verdict, we are starting to see a pattern...

"I like this program a lot. Cubase is a natural successor to Pro24 and I would strongly recommend Cubase to any existing Pro24 owners, who should remember that they can save quite a substantial amount of money if they take part in the part-exchange scheme that Steinberg are offering. I would also recommend this program to those musicians looking for a fully professional system with the potential for expansion. Cubase has this in abundance. I've used the review package for over a month now and Steinberg will find it difficult to prise it out of my hands. I feel that I've written some of my best music with Cubase, and consequently don't want to lose a single note of it. I enjoyed the sheer depth of this product. You simply won't exhaust the possibilities in a single night. It will take a great deal longer than that, I promise you."

Keyboard Magazine's October 1989 review by Jim Aikin was a little more low-key, but still very positive. In addition to the quote used in the Cubase ad I scanned, we get a little bit of software sequencer history along with Jim's conclusion:

"The impact made last year by C-Lab's Notator has forced other Atari sequencer developers to put some muscle in their hustle. With Cubase, Steinberg proves that they're up to the challenge; it's fully competitive with anything that Notator has to offer, except in the area of notation printout - and let's face it, that's not Notator's strong point either (me: Ouch!). Dr. T's KCS Level II still leads the pack in terms of sheer editing power, but its user interface is starting to look a bit long in the tooth, though there have been some strong enhancements in version 2.1..."

Interestingly, the ads for Cubase took a while to get into magazines. I'm not sure if this is because Steinberg had spent their 1989 marketing budgets on the earlier advertisements, or maybe they were just waiting for the Mac version slated to come out in early 1990 to be closer to production? 

No matter, because according to Steinberg's earlier Twenty Four software advertisement, there was already a base of 30,000 users. And many of those 30,000 users would have read those early positive reviews or started to see the software pop up in music shops.  

And the proof is in the pudding - or whatever that saying is.  30 years later Cubase is still going strong. 

Roland JD-800 "1991 Roland New Product News" brochure, 1990

Roland JD-800 "1991 Roland New Product News" four page black and white brochure from December 1990.

Let me start this blog post by saying I'm extremely biased. How biased? I'm gonna lay it out on the table - I like my Roland JD-800 more than my Juno-106. I find it more fun to play. More fun to program. There. I said it.

Everything you read about this synthesizer is true. It's big. It's heavy. It's gorgeous. And it sounds absolutely fabulous. When you sit down in front of the JD-800, you are drawn to those sliders and you can't help but start to experiment with it's sound. I liked mine so much that I spent a good part of the next two or three years searching high and low for the JD-990. And when I finally found one used in my local music store, I was lucky enough to have found one with the vintage expansion, FTW!

This was one of the earliest, if not the earliest, JD-800 brochure. It was actually more of a sell sheet, put out at the end of 1990 to announce the beast. The actual brochure would be printed later in 1991 (next post!). It actually contains a fair bit of info. Definitely worth the read.

The best thing about the JD-800, and this sell sheet in particular, is how Roland was selling knobs and sliders again. "A radical departure from conventional digital synths". It's fun to see Roland, one of the major companies responsible for the removal of all those knobs and sliders from the front panels of synths in the first place, was now pooping all over those synths. Including their own JX, Alpha and D series synths. But, Roland does deserve some credit, because even during those awful years of trying to program a Alpha Juno 2 or JX8P through a small LCD and a few buttons, at least Roland usually built a programmer module to go along with most of their hard-to-program synths. So, they didn't so much get rid of the sliders, more that they just put the sliders and knobs in a separate box and make you pay extra for the privaledge. A great marketing strategy for sure.

But launching a synthesizer with all those sliders and knobs added back into it was an even better marketing strategy. And helped keep Roland front of mind during a period in synthesizer history that had also recently seen the launch of competitors products such as Korg's innovative Wavestation, Waldorf's angry-sounding analog Microwave, and Yamaha's kick-ass sample+FM synthesis SY-77 monster.

I'll take a look through old Keyboard mags to see if this thing showed up at NAMM before being released, but as far as I can remember, this thing came out of nowhere, ready to satisfy all of those frustrated Roland synthesizer programmers that had been sulking ever since the company dropped their last easily programmable synth from their roster back in the mid-80s - the Jupiter-6 I think?!?!. So, when the JD-800 showed up in magazine ads and in music stores, everyone looked at it in awe and shock. We all drooled over the thing.

I was jealous as heck when a friend picked up one of the few that ever made it into my city.

But  I was all smiles when he finally sold it to me more than 15 years later. Have had it ever since.  :)

Korg Wavestation "Make Waves' ad, Keyboard/Electronic Musician 1990

Korg Wavestation "Make Waves" 1-page advertisement from inside front cover of Keyboard Magazine and Electronic Musician Magazine September 1990.

Well, we are already into the second month of 2012 and I have yet to circle back to the Korg Wavestation family of ads - an obsession that started at a much younger age, but was again re-ignited late last year when I posted the 2-page "Make waves" introductory ad. And what I later referred to my resulting behavior as "page-flipping/ebay-buying/scanning marathon sessions that could well provide blogging fodder well into mid-February".

This second advertisement, a direct descendant of the first, had began to appear in Keyboard Magazine immediately following the two-month run of the Wavestation intro ad in the September 1990 issue. Yup - the issue that had Public Enemy on the cover! The ad continued to run constantly between September 1990 and March 1991 in the coveted front inside cover page of the mag, usually next to an ad for the Korg S3 drum machine or a T-series ad.

And you have to remember - this is the 90s. There was another musician's magazine out there catering to the synth crowd - Electronic Musician. And Korg made sure they gave them some Wavestation ad-revenue-love as well. The same two-page intro ad appeared on similar real-estate in that magazine on the front-inside cover, and this one-page version of the ad carried on the tradition appearing on the inside front cover as well. Nice.

With such a long ad-run, Korg was wise to modify the advertisement during the second-half as more and more accolades for the Wavestation started to roll in. It was always a small change, but I think enough to keep the ad from becoming invisible to readers.

The first change in the ad appeared in January 1991 when the very top of the ad was sacrificed for a call-out box that included positive comments from Keyboard and Electronic Musician magazine.

I can't explain it, but I always feel uncomfortable whenever I see another magazine's name in Keyboard. Or Keyboard's name in another music magazine for that matter. I don't know why - it just feels dirty or something. Is this just me? Anyways - more on those reviews in a later blog post.

In that same January 1991 issue, it was announced that the Korg Wavestation had won the "Hardware Innovation of the Year award", as determined in the 15th annual Keyboard Magazine readers poll.

This nod to the Wavestation's beautiful internal and external design was immediately put to good use by Korg in the second modification to this advertisement that appeared in February and March 1991.  Again, bragging rights were added as a top of the page cut-a-way.

 The ballots appeared in the October 1990 issue of Keyboard, under the "Hardware Innovation" category (explained under the question: "Which hardware product set the standard this year against which others are judged?"). The Wavestation had some stiff competition, including the Alesis 1622 mixer, Buchla Thunder, Kat Drumkat, Lone Wolf Miditap, MOTU MIDI time piece, and Yamaha SY77. Readers also could write in their own piece of kit if they so chose.

And, on a similar note - guess who appeared under the "New Talent" category? Trent Reznor!

We know the results of the Hardware category, but how about new talent? Drum roll please.... Jane Child. Wait... what? She beat out Reznor by a fairly large margin apparently. And at a distant third was Oleta Adams, the "lounge gig refugee" discovered by Tears for Fears. Not sure how I feel about that. Grrr.

It is hard to believe, but by the time this ad ended its run in the March 1991 issue of of Keyboard, it had actually already been a year since the Wavestation first appeared in front of reader's eyes.

"What?" - I can hear you say it now. Okay, I can't really hear you, because that would be weird.

But yeah - a year! The ads may have only started running in July 1990, but readers got a preview much earlier.

More on that in my next blog post.

Korg Wavestation brochure, 1990

Korg Wavestation 6-page horizontal brochure from 1990.

And here you have it.

Instead of walking out of my local synth store with an actual Wavestation one sad day in 1990, I walked out holding this six-page brochure in my hand, my head held low. With probably only $100 to my name, there was just no way that keyboard was leaving with me. I was an angry elf that day. But yet strangely satisfied that I managed to actually get a live demo of the machine.

Well... to tell you the truth, this isn't the *exact* brochure. My original brochure, which I still have, is all tattered and torn - much like my heart that day. This second scanned copy is one that recently appeared in my mail box.

And what a great little brochure it is. Sure, the font is a little small and the copy can get lost against that speckled background - but it includes some great info, not to mention a print date. I like that.  The diagrams and charts are clean and are not only informational, but great eye-candy.

It would be a long time before this poor grad student would finally scrap together enough coin to get my hands on a used Wavestation A/D. And even after I did, much like my grandmother who would instinctively pocket buttons whenever she came across them even though she had a collection of thousands and couldn't possibly need any more, that feeling of 'want' is still so powerful in me today that every time I see a used one in a music store or online I instinctively want to purchase it. Like a squirrel collecting acorns before hibernating. 

Anyways, after the relatively good response to my last blog post (one retweet and two emails - LOL!), I knew the Korg Wavestation had an equally large influence on others. As with most marketing and communications professionals, I calculate that every tweet or email is equal to three billion actual responses.  :D

And if my rule-of-thumb calculation of nine billion responses doesn't convince you this thing is awesome, you can find other references to the Wavestation's immense greatness online. For example, In 2009, Music Radar listed the Wavestation as #7 in it's "10 greatest synthesizers of all time" article. Bam!

Also - according to the Wavestation's rather well-written Wikipedia page, "Keyboard Magazine readers gave the Wavestation its "Hardware Innovation of the Year" award, and in 1995 Keyboard listed it as one of the "20 Instruments that Shook the World". Pow!

The Wikipage includes some great history, including Dave Smith's involvement in the Wavestation's development:

"The Wavestation was designed by a team which included Dave Smith, who designed the Prophet-5 and, along with Roland, helped to invent the MIDI protocol in the early 1980s. His synthesizer company, Sequential Circuits, was purchased by Yamaha in 1988. The division was renamed DSD (intended by Yamaha to stand for Dave Smith Designs). The team, ex-SCI engineers Dave Smith, John Bowen, Scott Peterson, and Stanley Jungleib, then went on to Korg in May 1989 and designed the Wavestation, refining many Prophet VS concepts."

Makes me happy that other SCI engineers got creds too.

Well - I think you'll find my write-ups get smaller through the holiday break. Just too much work to do, and then time for a break. But I have a few more to go before Xmas.

Korg Wavestation Introductory Advertisement, Keyboard 1990

Korg Wavestation introductory 2-page advertisement from the inside front cover and page two of Keyboard Magazine, July 1990.

Okay. I know what you are thinking. Wavestation? Vintage ad? But I just had to scan and post it.

You see, my buddy had just popped into town. During our early years we were in an electronic band together and we were both greatly influenced by early Keyboard, Electronic Musician, and other music magazines. Until the Internet, those magazines were where we got 99% of our info from. What synths our favorite bands were using, what news synths were coming out. You know what I'm talkin' about.

Anways, it never fails that while maintaining our 20+ year tradition of gear-store/movies/pizza habit, our conversation eventually turns to the topic of synthesizers. But this visit, the conversation mostly revolved around iPad apps.

Aside: He's always wanted a Fairlight, and discovered the Fairlight app while in town. It wasn't long before sounds from Art of Noise's Moments in Love was making a come-back in my living room)

But in between spurts of iPadding and Netflixing (did I just use Netflix as a verb?), we also talked about my recent Korg infatuation. I was talking about Korg's evolving ads and it soon became apparent that it wasn't a 70's or even 80's Korg ad that had one of the biggest effects on me. It was this two-pager for the Korg Wavestation.

I can't remember half of my good friends' names, but I can clearly remember looking at this two-pager, as well as other Wavestation ads, thoughout the second half of 1990 and beyond. And I can remember walking into my favorite local gear store and the keyboard guy pressing his index finger on a single key and hearing the enormous and complex sound that emerged. I even remember that guy's crazy hair. But most of all I remember having to walk out empty-handed. Well - I did take the six-page brochure. Still have it. Can you guess what my next post is?  :)

The thing that stood out most for me was that the Wavestation wasn't a workstation. I disliked workstations at the time. Still do for the most part. Especially that miserable M1 - 80% because I knee-jerk to most really great mass-appeal ideas (not really a "plus" for someone in my occupation), 10% because it didn't have a resonant filter and 10% because of all those patches that became go-to signature TV commercial sounds (yes, I realize the hypocrisy of that last statement - I'm aware that Wavestation sounds became TV and movie soundtrack staples as well as the Apple Mac start-up sound).

But the ex-Sequential Circuits crew that designed the Wavestation had the balls to make this thing pure synth. Sure, they used the internal architecture from Korg's M- and T-series, but as far as I'm concerned, they gave that system new life. And they had the balls to not even include drum sounds in the original keyboard. I never missed drums, and tend to not touch the drums too often when programming on my Wavestation A/D.

In my opinion, the timing was perfect for bringing wave sequencing to the masses. What the Wavestation did for Korg at the time, is like what punk did for rock music.

Heck - Dave Smith was, and still is, punk with a capital P-U-N-K.

He took Korg technology and made it his bitch. He turned it upside down. He, along with Bob Moog and a few others, brought hardware back when few others would dare.

A "P," thats "PUH" and a "U"-"N"-"K", "UNK". Put those guys together and you got PUNK.

But I'm getting away from my point. Errr... what was my point? Oh yeah.

I *had* to post this two-pager introductory ad that appeared on the inside cover and page two of Keyboard magazine (a page position that Korg held for quite some time). I had to post it so you could see a great example of how Korg ads had evolved from the 70s and the 80s.

Sure, that second page has yellowed a bit compared to the heavier-duty magazine inside cover page. But even today I still get all gushy looking at it. It was perfect then and it is perfect now. Enough info to start me drooling. Enough info to make me hang around home as much as possible until the next issue of Keyboard came in the mail so I could check for a Keyboard review of the beast. Enough info to make me go back to my gear store every weekend so that I could hassle them into keeping one from walking out the door until after I could check it out.

And can you guess what the first thing that workstation-loving keyboard guy with the crazy hair said to me: "Doesn't have drums... or a proper sequencer".

Nice sell job. And I honestly thought he knew me better than that.  :)