A trip to “L.A.”

One day in 1987, “Mannequin” was playing in theaters around town, featuring Starship’s hit song “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” …

Yeah! That’s what power ballads sounded like back then! 😎

But on that day, I didn’t go to the movies; instead, I went to my favorite music store in my hometown.

I didn’t really have the money to buy anything, but it was always worth it just to see what was new.

Just imagine, back in the ’80s, a whole bunch of new gear hit the market every single year.

Unlike today, it was truly innovative stuff. Everything seemed possible, and there was no end in sight.

Today, a “new” plug-in for a vintage synthesizer from the ’80s (which other companies released long ago) comes out every three months, but never mind.

Alongside the ever-booming samplers, which were becoming more affordable (okay, still too expensive for me back then), Yamaha’s DX7 was still very popular.

It had just been introduced in updated versions as the DX7IID and DX7IIFD (with a built-in floppy disk drive).

Cool, but… not really anything new.

Its sounds – digital, clear, and crisp, with a hint of acoustic instruments – were fascinating and perfectly in tune with the spirit of the times.

Plus, it was the perfect complement to what analog synthesizers couldn’t do and didn’t have.

With everything together – a analog synthesizer, the DX7, and a sampler – you were perfectly equipped to write the next hit : )

So I walked into the store, greeted my trusted salesperson (😅) who was sitting behind the counter, when the apprentice rushed over towards me to tell me about a new synthesizer that I absolutely had to try out.

There it was, the Roland D-50. And it was another one of those “WOOOOOW moments” ! 

The sounds were more realistic than any synthesizer I’d ever heard before (almost like from a sampler) warm, rich sounds like those of an analog synthesizer, and clear, digital sounds reminiscent of the DX7 and sounds that combined these characteristics.

The sounds were so inspiring that ideas for new songs came to mind immediately. Everything sounded so “production-ready” !

Of course, that was also because Roland had cleverly integrated several digital effects right into the unit – just as one would normally do with external effects units in music production. Chorus, delay, reverb, EQ. 

So, okay, looking back, I can say that the “analog” sounds don’t sound 100% like those from a good analog synthesizer, and those “sooo” realistic sounds aren’t realistic at all from today’s perspective 😅 .

The DX7 sounds more powerful and much more dynamic than the D-50’s digital sounds….

BUT this mix of everything, combined with its own unmistakable character, is what still makes the D-50 exciting to me today and is the reason why I still use it.

Annnnd what does all this have to do with LA? : )

Well, Roland called the synthesis method they’d come up with : “Linear Arithmetic” , or better said:

LA synthesis.

Okay, so what was so special about that? I’ll tell you…

You have to know that memory (RAM and ROM) was very expensive back then.

PCs had RAM capacities ranging from 512 kilobytes to 2 megabytes.

That was also one reason why samplers were so expensive and why you could often only load one or two sounds at a time.

If you wanted a different sound, you had to reload it first. This was, of course, very difficult, especially when playing live.

The sound of acoustic instruments is strongly characterized by the so-called attack phase – that is, the first milliseconds or seconds of the sound’s onset.

This is how we humans recognize whether it’s a voice, a string, a metal plate, a wooden plate (e.g., a xylophone), the initial breath on a wind instrument, etc.

So the engineers at Roland took advantage of this and recorded only very short samples (PCM) of these attack phases, which naturally requires much less memory than the entire sound.

But since it would obviously be odd if the sound suddenly cut off, they also implemented and integrated subtractive synthesis – similar to that of an analog synthesizer – at the digital level. 

(In a sense, the D-50 was thus also the first virtual analog synthesizer)

So: first comes the short recording (sample/PCM), then – for the rest of the sound – subtractive synthesis kicks in.

Of course, it doesn’t sound *that* real, but for its time: awesome!!

So that’s it striped down about the D-50. There’s more, but I’ll leave it at that for today : )

In summary, we can say: One synthesizer, countless sound possibilities. Well done Roland!

Eric Persing certainly played a major role in the success of the D-50 as chief sound designer at Roland Corporation© at the time.

Today, he runs his own company, Spectrasonics, and creates fantastic software synthesizers. By the way, he was one of the first to do so.

Of course, we must never forget that without the many other brilliant minds at Roland, this project would never have been possible.

This article on the 30th anniversary of the D-50 is also very interesting:

https://tr.roland.com/promos/d-50_30th_anniversary

I think that’s enough for this post, right? 😂

Have fun making music! 

Cheers

Carsten

AKA: Synth Freak (Lovingly nicknamed by Patty 🤣)

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