Music
Get the lowdown on how to get the sounds you want out of synths like the Roland TR-808, Minimoog and ARP Odyssey with a series of video tutorials from former Korg engineer Tatsuya Takahashi.
Vintage synthesizers and drum machines are going through something of a renaissance, with synth nerds and newcomers alike lusting after the analog and early digital synths that've helped create so much vital electronic music over the past 45-plus years.
Getting hold of these vintage machines is difficult enough, with originals of Roland's acid house machine, the TB-303, selling for £2,000/ €2,220/ $2,576 and beyond. But even after one of these machines has been improbably obtained, the next challenge is to make the sort of music that inspired its purchase in the first place.
Fortunately, expert help is at hand from Tatsuya Takahashi, former head engineer at Korg and studio engineer at this year's Red Bull Music Academy in Berlin, Germany from September 8 to 12 October.
In Red Bull Music Academy's new First Patch series, Takahashi, who created Korg's Volca synth and recently collaborated with artist and synth-noise musician Ryoji Ikeda on his sine-wave synth installation A [for 100 cars], presents 19 short video tutorials on how to make sweet sounds on synths and drum machines by Moog, Roland, Korg, ARP, Sequential Circuits, EMS, Yamaha, Oberheim and LinnDrum.
For tips on how to evolve those funny bleeps and blurps into something approaching the sounds made by Autechre, Juan Atkins, Kraftwerk, Aphex Twin, Herbie Hancock, Kanye West and many others, heed Takahashi's advice in the first five episodes below. The following 14 tutorials will be released daily on Red Bull Music Academy YouTube until August 17.
