I’ve been trudging through the wilds this week hunting for sound.
There’s no shortage of sample packs full of thousands of wav files. But everyone has those right? And anyway, as an artist, what connection do you have to a jumble box of random noises?

No my friends. I’m looking for a special sound. One that takes you back even if you don’t know why.

That’s why I’ve pulled down my Yamaha PSR-21 keyboard. Let me tell you about this keyboard.
It contains the same sound chip as the Sound Blaster cards. Many of the sounds it makes are recognizable from the games that we played in the 90s. But sound chips are special in general.

Sound chips come from a time when computers didn’t have enough memory and storage to hold sound samples.
Instead, the computer would tell the chip to play a note with a certain instrument and the chip did its best.

All of these chips have odd quirks and unexpected behaviors that give character and life to the audio that they produce.

That’s why I’ve been sampling sounds from my PSR-21 keyboard and making patches for decent sampler.
This keyboard was built to be a Christmas gift in 1986 so it doesn’t contain bells and whistles like midi capability. By capturing it in software we can bring in midi and a whole host of other effects and make something really special.

I just created a preset for a sound that I call cyber brass and it is amazing. I already have a song rattling around in my head.

Enjoy your weekend because I’m gonna.