My World

My First Music Rig

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by
bigtree
, 01-18-2011 at 04:47 PM (1386 Views)
Greatly inspired by Emerson Lake & Palmer and Pink Floyd (Dark Side of the Moon) my love of analog synths became my (guitar being first) second instrument. In 1977 I bought the original Arp Avatar from the Music Box in Regina and started touring with Gene Dloughy (bass), his brother Reg (Sax), Alex Cleland (drums), Eddie Bach (trumpet) and myself (guitar).
Gene was a well know 50's rock and roll musician from Southern Saskatchewan, he toured with Roy Orbison during his day and was the guy that gave me my break and the rest is history.
What a great guy and mentor he was. I was very lucky to learn the ropes from a passionate and experienced traveling musician.

The Avatar seemed so cool, it definitely made me the talk of the town that day I bought it. I was one in only a few guitarist in Canada who had entered the world of guitar synths and was crazy enough to drop $3000.00 for it. That would be like 10 to 12 thousand now. I was a serious musician that wanted no boundries. I wanted to be able to do screaming and haunting leads I heard in those old recordings from the 70's.

ArpAvatarSM.jpg


Around 1980 I left the band to start my own Rock duo.

I bought an Arp Quadra, Roland TR 808 and 303 bass line and began my independence.

arp-quadra.jpg

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First song I programmed was Joe Jackson's Stepping Out. Joe Jackson - Steppin' Out - YouTube

This is where it all started to get fun.

I had two of these and used a tape to back up the data. Each one would hold about 20 mins worth of data. I needed two to complete a set. Every break I had to spend about 10 mins loading in the next set. I think the first song I programmed was Don't You Worry Baby by Human League
msq700.jpg

Then this beast came along and the world changed forever!
the LM2 Linn Drum Wow!

linndrum.jpg

Then here: The MPC60 changed my life. This is the greatest midi sequencer ever made. WOW.

mpc601.jpg

Then I added a 2 of these JX 8P: Fat and lush

roland_jx8p.jpg

And a Juno 106 that was awesome!

juno106.jpg

And this beast



emu_emulator2.jpg

Sold the Emulator II and bought a few Emax's which sounded like grain. Hated them. The big draw on those was memory and the ability to load discs/HD banks on the fly.

emaxhd.jpg

Dumped the Exam's and got this and life got better again. The M1 was a great keyboard.

korgm1.jpg

and now have this hybrid that I truly love because its like the old Arp 2600 but has stable VCA and is polyphonic.

nord2.jpg

And an additional controller

UF80.jpg

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Updated 01-18-2011 at 05:19 PM by bigtree

Categories
Recording Gear , Live

Comments

  1. alkooloid's Avatar
    That's awesome!
    I just purchased an i2M guitar interface and a Little Phatty Moog. Now I'm only 30 years behind you!

    I heard that the Avatar was one of the things that sunk Alan R. Pearlman and crew.
  2. hueseph's Avatar
    Cool. Nice to get some history on you. Do you still have that gear? I bet people would pay a pretty penny for that ARP still. Maybe not as much as when it was brand new but analogue synths are hard to come by these days. At least, I would think.
  3. lambchop's Avatar
    Wow Chris! You were really into ARP. I loved the ARP Odyssey that I owned back around 1974. I remember that it was a fairly fragile machine and had to have it serviced a couple of times, but it was sure fun to play.
  4. bigtree's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by alkooloid
    That's awesome!
    I just purchased an i2M guitar interface and a Little Phatty Moog. Now I'm only 30 years behind you!

    I heard that the Avatar was one of the things that sunk Alan R. Pearlman and crew.
    The Avatar sounded great but had serious trouble with its tracking. It tought me to play really precise. I fought with the company and the music store for a full refund, which they came close after a years time. Because I put a claim in shortly after buying it, they made good on it.

    I still have the stand but that Avatar in somewhere I have no idea. The HEX Fuzz was pretty cool but I bought it for the sound of ARP/
  5. bigtree's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by lambchop
    Wow Chris! You were really into ARP. I loved the ARP Odyssey that I owned back around 1974. I remember that it was a fairly fragile machine and had to have it serviced a couple of times, but it was sure fun to play.
    Ah ya! And still do today.
  6. bigtree's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by hueseph
    Cool. Nice to get some history on you. Do you still have that gear? I bet people would pay a pretty penny for that ARP still. Maybe not as much as when it was brand new but analogue synths are hard to come by these days. At least, I would think.
    Sold it all with regret. I replaced my keyboards with digital crap which I`ll talk about soon.
  7. tunes's Avatar
    I have been wanting to get a synth interface or a guitar with an interface because it's just easier for me to do parts on my guitar. There doesn't seem to be many sites on the web that covers this.

    We are definitely living in some interesting times. Fairlight was showing a synth on the iPad and guys were ooooh-ing and Awww-ing it at the NAMM show.

    That new board Presonus has is pretty sweet. I am considering going that route to gain inputs for tracking a rhythm section. A friend was telling me that during sound checks he was using it to record rehearsals during the sound check and play back to the guys on stage. I really think they hit the nail on the head with the Master channel design the came up with. it's almost impossible to get lost on that board.

    For just a little more money one can get 24 channels instead of the 8 channels on the True Systems Precision 8, and compressors, eq and effects to boot. Or spend relatively the same amount of money and get just 16 channels, still 8 channels more then the Precision 8.

    Such great times we are living eh?
  8. JohnTodd's Avatar
    Funny thing about age and perspective.

    When I was a kid in the 70's, my parents took me around to try out pianos, organs, and those new "synthesizer keyboards". I liked pianos and pipe organs, but I hated the sounds those analog synths made. Instead, my ear gravitated toward the new digital stuff when it came out a few years later. Yamaha DX7 and all that.

    But nowadays I much prefer those fat juicy analog sounds over synthetic twinkles any day. Maybe that's the way the kids are today, with their autotune and their slammin' beat loops. I dunno. My Pro-53 VST is one of my favorites.
  9. bigtree's Avatar
    I sold all my fat analog keyboards for the digital crap. The DX7 was one of those. It was the clarity that impressed us all. Much like how Digital recording has done the same. But if you listen back to those analog synths , the ones that where just before the digital age, they were fat and awesome.
    I have some old recording that I did with them , no eq into a Tascam 144 porta studio and to this day I can't believe I sold them. The digital "stuff" yup, its clean but its missing the round corners with tails and space.

    My biggest regret was investing $12,500 on the Emulator 11, 8 voice, 8 bit sampling marvel that was like razor blades but did it smell great!



    I don't regret buying it as much as i regret loosing $8000 12 months later when I new I better sell it fast or I wouldn't get a dime for it. I replaced it with an Emax

    This was really the beginning to the modern DAW. This thing earned me a lot of money and taught me the roots of what I know today.

  10. tunes's Avatar
    I am kicking myself now for selling all my old guitar effects pedals. We were thinking "new and modern" but it was going in a "classic and vintage" direction. I found some cards for a JV-880 that I had. I felt a pang of sorrow because it reminded me of earlier and tougher times as I had to sell the JV to cover bills. I also sold a Gibson ES-325. It had gone a long way with me and it was the toughest thing for me to sell. Now I am like a junkyard dog scavenging the web for inexpensive classic gear. Maybe it wasn't so bad to "liquidate while there was still time?" :-)

    I still wonder if they will ever burst the hi-fi bubble of clarity with the round warmth of analogue. I saw a 2" machine for sale for "Parts". What was once a state-of-the-art recorder now being sacrificed for salvaged parts. If someone ever comes up with a way to get the digital clarity while maintaining the analogue warmth, we'll all be selling our digital boxes for "Parts".