(no subject)
The shitty thing about getting into music production is that you as you learn more about production techniques, listening to music for pleasure becomes harder and harder, since you're always thinking like "oh I know what they instrument used on this track..." and then you start overanalying it, thinking "oh I know that preset" and that kind of thing...kind of sucks the fun out of it.
The most recent example is that new kylie song "I Beleive in You", It has the Native Instruments softsynth Pro-53 all over it. The Pro-53 is a sofware recreation of the Sequential Circuits Prohpet 5 synthesizer. The Prophet 5 was pretty much the most used synth of the first part of the 80's (Yamaha's DX7 kind of took over in the latter part...) If you watch videos of the time, you're most likely to see it somewhere in there. When people usually talk about mainstream synthpop, that synth is THE sound they're thinking of. It was analog, but unlike say, a minimoog, it was polyphonic (more than one note playable at a time) and it had a very warm chorus-y sound. One of it's main desireabilty points was that it was programmable, which means you can save the sounds you create into it and easily call them up for say, a gig or something.
The Prophet 5
The Prophet was used by all types of people, from mainstream rock like Pat Benetar and Nena to more leftfeild (for synthpop) stuff like New Order and Section 25. It fell out of favour with people who even used synths in the 90's because it was cumbersome, didn't stay in tune (like all analog synths), and it was still pretty expensive. Mostly though, it is so identified with the 80's that you can't use it without being labled as trying to go for that sound.
The prophet recreated in software, NI's Pro 53
Since the Pro-53 came out, you can start to hear it all over the place, from underground stuff like lowfish and GD Luxxe to Kylie and Fefe Dobson...
Native Instruments: www.nativeinstruments.com
The Prophet 5: http://www.vintagesynth.org
The most recent example is that new kylie song "I Beleive in You", It has the Native Instruments softsynth Pro-53 all over it. The Pro-53 is a sofware recreation of the Sequential Circuits Prohpet 5 synthesizer. The Prophet 5 was pretty much the most used synth of the first part of the 80's (Yamaha's DX7 kind of took over in the latter part...) If you watch videos of the time, you're most likely to see it somewhere in there. When people usually talk about mainstream synthpop, that synth is THE sound they're thinking of. It was analog, but unlike say, a minimoog, it was polyphonic (more than one note playable at a time) and it had a very warm chorus-y sound. One of it's main desireabilty points was that it was programmable, which means you can save the sounds you create into it and easily call them up for say, a gig or something.
The Prophet 5
The Prophet was used by all types of people, from mainstream rock like Pat Benetar and Nena to more leftfeild (for synthpop) stuff like New Order and Section 25. It fell out of favour with people who even used synths in the 90's because it was cumbersome, didn't stay in tune (like all analog synths), and it was still pretty expensive. Mostly though, it is so identified with the 80's that you can't use it without being labled as trying to go for that sound.
The prophet recreated in software, NI's Pro 53
Since the Pro-53 came out, you can start to hear it all over the place, from underground stuff like lowfish and GD Luxxe to Kylie and Fefe Dobson...
Native Instruments: www.nativeinstruments.com
The Prophet 5: http://www.vintagesynth.org