Leave it to the DIYer. Alex Pleninger’s name isn’t just marketing. This is one monster of a synth creation, looking and sounding like it was ripped, circuits still humming, from a wrecked UFO.
Retro trackball, keyboard? Check. In-built computer display? Check. Makes … a mind-boggling array of sounds? Oh, yes. It’s retro-future goodness, powered by the legendary SID, Robert “Bob” Yannes’ synth-on-a-chip that powered the Commodore 64. (In fact, get Bob and Wolfgang together, and you have a fair amount of digital synthesis history – with Ensoniq and PPG represented. See today’s other story.) Thanks to Marc Resibois for the tip.
Skip through the demo above for some different sounds, then head on to other demos that Alex describes as “more pop-oriented” (might depend on your star system), and, in the third installment, a studio-style setup. In that third episode, you see “a bit more complicated setup – Lemur on iPad being used to control pitches of the SID and some other internal stuff. No external FX were used.”
Watch: