The Yamaha DX7 Demo – WC Olo Garb

When Charity Queen weighs in with music discoveries it’s always worth examining. Pretty spot-on with this one too, featuring one of the most popular synths of the ’80s, which also happens to be one of the most notoriously difficult to program. The Yamaha DX7 introduced frequency modulation synthesis to the market, provided the sounds of the generation and was essentially mastered by the chap in this video, WC Olo Garb.

This isn’t the first insane demo from Garb, who’s better known as Jexus. His synthesiser reviews are revered throughout Vintage Synth, Gearslutz and the like. Man knows his stuff, and it’s certainly worth having a browse his online home of Syntezatory, over at http://jexus.id.uw.edu.pl/syntezatory_prv_pl

Almost as interesting as the DX 7demo itself is the archive footage that this video is occasionally spliced with, which seems to be taken from a nature documentary that may or may not have featured ant-eaters. Check it out below, Luke Wyatt would be proud.

via Charity Queen

Got a bit excited about this. The DX7 is THE synth responsible for all the shiny twinkly synthpop noises that dominated the 80s but this guy makes everything that comes out of it sound like pure concentrated evil. It’s an insanely difficult machine to program too. FM synthesis is hard enough with all the controls in front of you let alone looking at it through a few numbers on an LED screen.