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Johnny Morgan Synth Dreams
Canada
Приєднався 1 кві 2020
Welcome to my channel. I've been a music and video game audio creator for over 25 years, and have been lucky to have toured the world with music, and work on some of the biggest AAA video games. My passion is synths and this channel will be a mix of studio jams, mini-docs on synthesizer history, and just general studio-related shorts. Hope you enjoy!
The Story of the TR-909
A mini-doc detailing the history of the development and rise in popularity of one of the most famous drum machines in electronic music.
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Відео
10K Subscribers Thank You & Roland HD5-IF SCSI Interface
Переглядів 4596 місяців тому
I quick thank you to my subscribers and the announcement of my project completion of the Roland HD5-IF SCSI board recreation.
Exploring the Oberheim Matrix-6
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A short look at one of Oberheim's popular late 80's synthesizers - the Matrix-6.
Roland S-50 Output Relay Replacement
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This video shows how to perform the relay replacement on the Roland S-50 Sampler from 1986. Roland engineers unfortunately used an un-sealed relay on the output signals of the instrument, and over time this relay oxidized, causing the sampler to have a distorted output. Most S-50's still functioning today will likely have this distortion issue unless the relay is replaced. 0:00 Intro 1:13 Remov...
Digital Brothers - The Story of the Korg DW-8000 and DSS-1
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Two 80's synthesizers developed by Korg that helped define what the future of synthesis would be in the coming years.
Saving DW
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Fixing a broken DW-8000 synthesizer. An 80's classic, and this one has fallen under some hard times. Watch as I bring it back to life. 0:00 Intro 0:44 Open DW 2:43 Replace Battery 3:53 Fix Power Supply, Replace Caps and Regulators 6:23 Power On Test 8:00 Replace Volume Slider 9:04 Change System ROM 10:00 Replace Button Switches 11:00 Reassemble 11:53 Final Test
Johnny Morgan Music Mix
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A mix of selected music written for my UA-cam channel - Johnny Morgan Synth Dreams. Thanks to all of you who have supported my channel and have asked for these songs! 0:00 Laserbeams 8:11 Fancy Lights 12:43 Synth Dreams Theme 15:14 Phiber Optik - Rainy Days 23:16 Synthland 25:04 Exploration Part 1 27:11 Grey Skies 36:38 Exploration Part 2 38:52 The Prophet Song 40:51 Ode to Dave Smith 42:59 Syn...
The Story of the Elka Synthex
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A mini-doc about the inception of the Elka Synthex. A legendary 1980's synthesizer designed by Italian synth pioneer Mario Maggi. Note - 4:08sec this should be "Digitally Controlled Oscillators" not "Digital Oscillators" - sorry for this error.
Saving Alpha Juno
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A short video detailing the repair of an Alpha Juno 2 synthesizer. One of the classic Roland synths from the 80s. 0:00 Intro 1:32 Marking dead keys 2:06 Disassembly 2:53 A look inside 3:56 Power supply and main board removal 5:28 Battery replacement 6:10 Recapping power supply 6:54 Keyboard repair 9:54 Replace power connector 10:35 Installing new OLED display 11:52 Replacing ROM 13:57 Final test
Donner B1 Firmware 1.1 Update
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In this video I showcase some of the live performance features of the Donner B1 Bass Sequencer and then show the new Song Mode in firmware version 1.1 along with the Random Pattern generator. Here's a purchase link for the Donner B1 amzn.to/3QHXU8X Here's the link to Donner's B1 firmware update page: www.donnermusic.com/support/downloads/detail?first=SYNTHESIZERS&second=SYNTHESIZERS 00:00 B1 Fi...
The Story of SSM and Curtis Electromusic. The soul within the sound of the 80s
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A mini-doc on two companies that changed the way synthesizers were designed in the 80s. Both had a incredible impact on the electronic music industry and the sound of music created during that time.
The Kawai K3 - A story of a very 80's Synthesizer
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A min-doc detailing the release of Kawai's unique K3 Synthesizer in 1986.
The Korg M1 - Putting it all Together
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A mini-doc about Korg's famous workstation synthesizer - the M1.
Inception - The Birth of the Roland TR-808
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A mini-doc exploring the history leading up to the inception of the one of the greatest drum machines created, the Roland TR-808
Roland S-550 Sampler scsi2sd Install and Multi-Drive Setup
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How to install an internal scsi2sd interface and configure a scsi card with 4 80MB hard drives full of Roland library sounds. 0:00 Into 1:17 Hardware Install 6:25 Scsi2sd setup 11:16 Partitioning SD card 17:03 Formating Drives 20:07 Loading Libraries 25:05 Testing in S-550
A Brief Story of The Sequential Prophet 5
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A Brief Story of The Sequential Prophet 5
The Story of the Roland Jupiter-8 Synthesizer
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The Story of the Roland Jupiter-8 Synthesizer
A Brief Story of the Roland TB -303 Bassline Synthesizer
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A Brief Story of the Roland TB -303 Bassline Synthesizer
The Roland D-50 - A Late 80's Love Story
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The Roland D-50 - A Late 80's Love Story
The Story of the Roland Juno - Rise of the DCO
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The Story of the Roland Juno - Rise of the DCO
Soma Labs Lyra-8 with Strymon Night Sky
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Soma Labs Lyra-8 with Strymon Night Sky
Retro-Brighting a Vintage Macintosh Plus
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Retro-Brighting a Vintage Macintosh Plus
Moog Subharmonicon with Strymon Night Sky
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Moog Subharmonicon with Strymon Night Sky
A Sampler In Time - The Roland S-50 Digital Sampler
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A Sampler In Time - The Roland S-50 Digital Sampler
Super nice one, wow. the nightsky makes a good job there.
Magical moments💯
Congrats for great demo. One question: where I can find good samples for S-50,like M1, DX7 and other stuff?
0:39 The Jupiter 4 is not a "4 oscillator synthesizer". The convention is: Count the oscillator per voice.The Jupiter 4 has one oscillator per voice (+ a sub oscillator, which is not an independent oscillator). It is four voice polyphonic. But you do not count these as four oscillators (per voice). The Minimoog for example on the other hand is a 3 oscillator synth but it is monophonic.
I have a number of ppg samples in my wave 2, couldn't live without them. Great video, thank you.
Brilliant ❤
and now.........Behringer Wave 2
One of the best pad/bass synth ever . some pads and basses from my juno 6 and 106 are impossible to create as rich on my OBXa and moog model D…….!
interesting , I owe many of these vintage synths. (background music is too loud for the voice level)
Great documentary! But I’m surprised that you haven’t mentioned the eurodance genre at all! That was the biggest commercial use of use of the 909 in the 90s, a whole generation grew up on the sound of the 909 because of it! (including me)
I see in the specs that it has Motorola 6809 and 68000 processors built in. I wonder what programming language was used in PPG
Had the opportunity to play a ob-x and a ob-xa . Beautiful works of art. They sounded amazing.
I see Rupert Greenal (The Fixx) was featured. I met him once in 2010 at a Fixx concert meet and greet. We discussed the PPG Wave synthesizer. The PPG definitely is a classic with its unique sound bending capabilities.
...fast forward to 2024, and to the delight of some and the dismay to others, PPG Wave clone was born under German flag again: Behringer Wave for the masses.
Vorsprung Durch Wavenik!
The 808 and 909 have my favorite drum sounds of all time, hands down.
The Roland Sound Canvas music box sounds are based on samples from that music box sound ( based on samples from an actual music box! ). And also many of the Roland JV bell type waveforms are based on samples from Metal and glass FX.
Hey!! @johnnymorgansynthdreams to get that pal display do you happen to have a link to some information on that or will this synth give the same information to a computer if you plug it into it and if so how might one be able to see all of that. Being able to see the waveform would be so huge for sample editing and creating synth patches.
The Z80 was also found in the Sega Master System as the main CPU, and as the sound driver on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, which also had the fortunate effect of allowing the Genesis/MD to be backwards compatible with the Master System library
Great 303 overview video😃♥️🙏🙏🙏
I remember when the DW 8000 came out as I was practically lusting for it. My band had the DW 6000 which was our main keyboard (1985-86) and that workhorse endured a 16 month tour and never gave a single problem ever. It had been in direct sun, rain, freeze and dropped a couple times and always worked and sounded great. We used the arpeggiator live without sync because our drummer refused to play to a click (good for him) so I had to retrigger it on every other beat. (....2.....4.....2.....4) Worked flawlessly
Tr77 looks like a printer!!
✌🏻🥸🇲🇽
I felt that the JX-8P was lacking something sonically, and the Super JX was literally the result of Roland doubling down on the 8P platform, a stopgap synth at a pro price point. The JX-10 today is coolest as a museum piece, representing a snapshot of the industry in the late 1980s. It looks cool and has a lovely keybed. But nowadays I would rather have any two “normal” MIDI analog polysynths. Great video!
I recently got back into my JX-10 and I'm finding it to be pretty awesome. You absolutely need a controller, but it has a sound that makes it easy to get something usable - especially with short chord stabs. Not that you couldn't get sounds like this today, but it's got a lack of sparkle and is a bit dark in tone that I really like.
The mood you create in your videos is just something else.
Glad you could take a bit of time from KillCure to give us another one of these, Johnny. ☺️ Can’t wait to hear it.
Thanks - yes for sure - a lot of balls in motion this fall but it's been awesome to finish our album. I'm pretty excited about it's release on Dec 6th.
@@johnnymorgansynthdreams it will be bittersweet. Tod’s final performances, but it’s great that it’s happening. I heard Kerry doing the second vocals on Glammhammer on Hiwatt’s channel, and it was an awesome teaser.
I'm glad you included a clip of Skinny Puppy. I love my ESQ-1. I picked up for $40 because it didn't have sound, it was a broken volume slider, $4 repair.
Puppy were such a big influence for me
@johnnymorgansynthdreams oh, I realized that when you started plucking out Testure. 😉
Been wishing for a Johnny doc!
@johny morgan: the demo with four channels - is this yours? loooove it!!
Thanks! Yes - I put that together for the video - I love Staccato Heaven!
@ any chance to place it at soundcloud or spotify? Would love to listen to it 🙏🙏🙏
Thank you for that really passionate and perfectly navigated research - historical - love letter/anecdotal account on this amazing synthesizer. I played your movie in the background as I was going to pick up the D50 from a seller. I played one in the middle of a trip with my family my parents when I was a kid… And the experience only being a matter of …well it actually probably was about an hour never left me. I would go on to never owning one being distracted by other releases until now in 2024… I had a D70 that was the closest D I ever had. The way that you know it has any sort of “analog-ity “ is if you take that synth and when you play it, it makes you want to play it and keep playing it. The D50 does that. The RS 505 does that. Certain boards place you into a meditative state. The guy that sold it to me, just said yeah you know you can play it for a while, and then sell it again they always go for a good resell value… And all I could think was, this almost was the one that got away. Welcome home.
Thank you for the kind words. The D-50 really takes me back to such a fond time, and it really does have that special something. It came out at a time in my life where being able to play the sounds it made would influence me forever.
Great Doc, great synth, great music! ( 3.10 up to 5.27) what is it?
Great video, as always. Annoyingly I passed up the opportunity to buy a second hand 909 in a music store in 1987 because I wanted a brand new TR-505 for the same price, instead 😖. Doh!!!
Oh man - yeah! That was the time to buy a 909 for sure
Another great video.
I never got around using flams. Any tip how/where to use them?
This is a great tutorial on it. ua-cam.com/video/aXajgr6Q2to/v-deo.html
@johnnymorgansynthdreams Thanks!!!
Very enjoyable. Cheers Johnny.
Thanks Alex!
Back then, I compared the 909 & 707 side by side looking for a machine to replace the studio’s 808… The 909 sounded rlly poor against the 707 I bought the 707..
The 707 is actually pretty decent. In 1986-1987 it was the early sound for Acid House. I still really love the sound of the 707 - it's different, but still works well. Just wish the build quality was a bit better - it feels so cheap.
Nice video. That song at the end is cool.
Thanks - it's all Prophet 5 with the 909
Great video - good job! One thing though - Mantronix use of the 909 came before (at least by a year or so) the house/Techno explosion in the later 80's. There's a record cover for a release of Just-Ice (Back to The Old School), that features a cartoon version of Curtis Mantronik holding a TR-909 circa 1985. The way that he programmed the 909 (and the tape/sample edits too), were hugely influential in terms of what came after (for everybody from Aphex Twin, to House & Techno, etc). Curtis Mantronik was our (my) Gen X drum machine/sampler Hendrix. There were also many seminal hip-hop tracks that used the 909 between 85-90 (Jazzy Jeff & Fresh Prince being the most obvious top 40 rap group to do so). The 909 also became THE sound of '89 once Soul 2 Soul had their huge hit with "Keep on Moving" (ua-cam.com/video/1iQl46-zIcM/v-deo.html), & that same 909 beat backed a plethora of early 90's "chill-out" tracks.
Hey Sam - thanks for that detailed info. So much 909 history from '85 that was start of the ground swell - even Phil Collins in Take Me Home. During that time the 707 was equally as popular in early Acid tracks / Chicago house as well. Mantronik was a pioneer of the 909 for sure though. I mean there is sooo much 909 history it's probably a 2 hour deep dive easily.
@@johnnymorgansynthdreams Definitely! I had a 707 in 1985, and I loved it! But even back then it never had quite the "cred" of the 808/909 - it WAS considerably cheaper than either one (used prices back in the day). Even after the 808/909 were discontinued it's not quite true that those machines were affordable for most people (maybe, if you were lucky at a pawn shop than had no idea?). I think this idea of "cheap 808/909" may be part of Detroit techno lore, or "maybe" in Detroit you could buy those at less cost? Definitely in California, where i was, both of those devises, even in the 80's after they were discontinued, were too expensive for most of us. In any case, (in the mid to late 80's) a lot of us settled for buying a Roland R-8 (or samplers, which had become affordable). The R8 was a great (digital) drum machine that had 808 & 909 ROM cards, but yeah, it wasn't the real thing. I guess my point is that the 808/909, although commercial failures for mainstream pop/rock applications in the early 80's, were always in demand for a lot of producers making dance & hip-hop in the mid 80's, and those machines were never considered "obsolete" or even affordable for most people. I would have had an 808 in 1988 if it was something affordable. LOL!
@@SamUrtonDesign So true - I remember looking forever for a 909 - they were still very much in demand all through the late 80s and 90s. They were able to be found though - we combed pawn shops and buy-sells and eventually got multiple 303's, an 808 and 909 for all very low / cheap prices.
I love these vids so much man thank you for the blessing that is this channel
I want to see in next video History of Roland TR 707, also in next videos History of Linn Drums and Drumlator models includinf SP12
1:03 TR-66* one minor correction. Great video though Johnny! I agree about Madonnas vouge song as well.
Another great video & music JMO!
Thanks AWM!
Great job Johnny, its a difficult subject because everyones had a crack at it. That was fresh and entertaining. I expect nothing less from you. Sooo many sad stories below about sellers regret. My first drum machine was a dr660 dont reckon they will hit the "endangered species" list anytime soon. 🤣 Cheers for your help the other week about the scsi for the eps16+. All sorted. Zulu drive.👍
Awesome - yes it's like a 2 hour Doc if you wanted to cover it all.. Just shows how epic the Tr-909 really has been. And yes - ZuluSCSI is the way to go!
if the person who played and sampled the original Open Hat was paid 1 dollar for each song released using that sound it would be a multimillionaire
Lol totally.
It's a guy from Roland. He still uses the actual hi-hat that was sampled in a jazz band!
@@wjec1970 Atsushi Hoshiai
@@wjec1970 Here's a video of those cymbals being used in his jazz band ua-cam.com/video/igfX3uFZluY/v-deo.html
I really love your channel! cEvin Key goes into his use of the TR-909 on his Patreon. You left Skinny Puppy out of the end credits
I'll have to check that out. Damn - I'll see if I can edit those credits. They're one of my all-time favorite bands and I actually knew Dwayne a little bit back in the early 90s. I love how they totally mangled the snare sound in the reverb chamber at Mushroom studios.
Sometimes Key takes suggestions on who to invite for his Sunday live chats. It would be so great to see you two together! I didn't think the credits omission was intended at all, especially given that you can easily tell your appreciation for them!
I think the Juno series proved that the single osc configuration with sub effectively is main thrill of synths. 2 oscs is not necessarily needed. The warm complete sound architecture is it's key proving that quality is worth more than quantity. Also 2 envelopes is not vital. Synths have only ever become cheap with behringer not Roland.
For sure - something about that simple single OSC sound and those Roland filters.
To everyone reading this: if you haven't listened to Skinny Puppy yet then you need to, right now
Hell ya!
Pro tip: put on the album Too Dark Park after some square paper in the mouth
@@rdubb77 that album is twisted - just listened to the b-side today actually. What craziness.
Got mine for 150 at Trowbridge in 1991 sold it for 760 in 1997 noW I just use a TR 09 and trig out into the sh101 for the memories :)
Incredible video! God damn that snare is perfect
It's the sound.. right. Great to hear from you!
Yes. the 909 Is Electronic kommercial top. Also House Hitparade. But the 808 is a masterpiece.