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Synthful things

efinq
Jul 9, 2016
4 min read

As some of you might have noticed from my Instagram account, I became an owner of two orphaned keyboards, which I found odd in the sense that earlier this week I blogged about a recent synthesizer purchase .

Anyway, I found a package from my door when coming home from work along with a piece of cardboard with the recipient's (=mine) and the sender's name, whom I refer to as mr. H for anonymity.

First and foremost I'd like to thank mr. H for sending me these pieces of equipment. Don't worry, I'll take good care of them.

In this blog post I'll focus on the Yamaha PSR-2, the other one gets a review later.

So, after dusting off the keyboards and their cases I examined the units and they were both seemingly in near-pristine condition although the white keys have gotten a bit yellowish (either a studio tan from smoke/dirty hands/lots of use or a genuine one from being exposed to sunlight). Servicing and refurbishing these things isn't exactly my area of expertise, although I've once fixed the power supply of a vintage Walton organ and opened up my Roland because some of the keys and the MIDI didn't work (I even asked the guys at Synthtopia for help with no response whatsoever; I couldn't get the MIDI working though)

I also did some quick research on the internet although there was very little information other than manuals on either unit. They didn't come with power adapters so I had to dig out a controllable wall wart (which actually belongs to a friend of mine with whom I used to play in a band and hang around in his home studio in high school; he left it in my studio after a session years ago, along with his DIY-guitar amplifier) to power them up.

The PSR-2 back panel states that the unit operates at 9-12VDC. At first try for safety reasons I decided to set the voltage at 9V, and to my surprise after powering it up the keyboards internal speaker made a familiar sounding yet quiet switch-on thud.

Interesting thing about the keyboards of this era and design is that they all (well, the ones that I've seen at least) feature a normal and a "fingered/single-fingered" mode which I'll cover later in this post. Another fascinating thing to someone like me who is accustomed to synthesizers, is the lack of pitch and mod wheels, and the presence of internal speakers which makes these things ideal for arrangement and composition as well as for training and education.

EDIT : I like to make a distinction between a synthesizer and a keyboard in the sense that a synthesizer allows you to tweak sounds whereas a keyboard usually doesn't..

The sound engine itself is labeled as PCM (which stands for pulse-code modulation), in other words, sampling. There are 100 voices to choose from and 22 rhythms and accompaniments which some, to my surprise, sounded similar to those found in late 80's to early 90's video games. I was especially partial to the almost lifelike organ sounds which completely overrule the ones patched to my trusty old JX8-P (one of the advantages of PCM/sample-based keyboards, I presume)

Another interesting thing was the numerical system for dialing the correct preset (or set of sounds) from the voice bank, which responds to a press of a button with a closed hi-hat sound. I sampled that for later use due to it's minimal nature (another trivia, I've actually recorded the power-off sound from my JX8-P at an extremely high volume and used that in my productions) The voice bank itself is divided into four categories; single voice, ensemble voice, dual voice and split voice, boasting a wide range of various sounds from different instruments and their combinations (those in dual/split voice categories).

And finally, it seems that I've rediscovered the joy of playing actual melodies (other than the ones in Michael Aaron's Piano Course or familiar sheet music that pops in my head from time to time) along to a rhythm after I switched on the "fingered" mode. Instead of endless tweaking and sound designing/composing using a mouse or an interface (since none of my current keyboards/synthesizers have an accompaniment feature and I don't compose or record with MIDI probably as often as I should) I was delighted to listen to some of the inbuilt preset songs (it's even got Jingle Bells in it) and actually play along with the rhythm patterns such as rock, disco and 16-beat. Sound-wise, some of the backing tracks somehow reminded me of the video game Monkey Island . (EDIT : and now that I think of it, Clonk Planet too, to some extent)

Oh, then there's a button labeled "ad-lib" which randomly plays a preset sequence. I'd suspect that it's meant for training purposes where you must mimic and play the same notes in the same order.

Once again thanks to mr. H, I have no clue of the background of these units but I'm sure they'll be put to good use (well at least they're now externally serviced, and I was already thinking of a track to fit the extremely dry-sounding hi-hat into)

-ef

P.S : It's the annual book fair in my hometown and I consider this by far my longest blog post ever. I've lost my sharpest teeth when it comes to humour though... perhaps I should buy a jokebook or spend some time with real people instead. The only downside to this turn of events is that I have to clear some space for the keyboards and buy or make a new keyboard stand..

EDIT 2.0 : The other keyboard is defunct.. I'll see if I can get it working in the near future.

EDIT 3.0 : Correction : at least the Yamaha drums are PCM.. dunno about the rest of the sound engine though.