I'm a synthesizer player & programmer who began as a combo organist in garage bands. My favorite instrument is the Ensoniq SQ-80 from around 1990. I also live on the other side of Denver from Broomfield who has a lot of airplane accidents. RU-vid is telling me that I've only used 309 characters out of 1000.
Is thete a way to have a copy of all of these butchey net has many of them but not the complete collection nice to have if I were to get an sq80 impressive to see in 1987 with floppy disk and sequencer
All new SQ-80s came with one of these disks, some used ones also do. I just kept looking until I found a guy selling this whole set on eBay. I'm not sure who has the license on these at the moment, I'm sure that just copying and distributing them is still illegal.
Dateline: June 17, 2024 JEFFERSON COUNTY, Colo. (KKTV) - A driver plowed through a metal fence at a small airport Monday morning, hitting two planes before coming to a stop against a guardrail. The crash was reported at 9:39 a.m. at the Rocky Mountain Metro Airport in Broomfield. Photos from the scene show the fence bent out of shape and debris strewn across the airport apron. The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office said both planes were empty when they were hit. It’s unclear what led up to the driver crashing. The incident remains under investigation.
Dateline May 22, 2022 BROOMFIELD, Colo. (CBS4) - A new report from the National Transportation Safety Board states a single engine plane crashed just 3,000 feet after taking off from the Erie Municipal Airport. The plane crashed in Broomfield in May. Two men on board, both pilots, did not survive the crash.
Love how you got the transistor organ patch at 2:11 to sound like both a Vox and a Lowery by playing “The Genetic Method” into “Chest Fever”. It would be neat if #GarthHudson caught wind of this demo, even if he’s never played an Ensoniq synthesizer or sampler.
I love your moving wave video. The only other way the sounds you presented there could have been created was with wavetable scanning. I wonder if to engineers at Ensoniq knew what they created.
In 1985 there weren't a lot of digital waveform synthesizers with the sync feature, so you might have a point about what was known at that time. Even now there's a lot more to be explored...
I had a sq-80, and the battery would get very warm when playing it and it had midi problems. and eventually, it froze, and you couldn't restart it. The sq-80 turned on but when i pressed a button, it would show this ???? Or random stuff.
Brilliant work, as always. You are truly the preeminent sound designer for the Ensoniq ESQ/SQ-80 architecture. If any potential customers are on the fence, JUST BUY THESE SOUNDS. your ESQ can sound as good or better than any digital or analog synth available. Love the buttery authentic sound you are able to coax out of this synth (and your "Pink Floyd" imagery). You are a sonic magician, Mr. Slinkard.
SCIENCE! Love all of it! We still need to finish that ESQ-1 Cartridge project, now that the threats of COVID are a thing of the past I can focus on fun.
Sure. It was really just an experiment to see if it would end up anything like I expected. The numbers in the first Allen digital format are 63,63,32,32,32,32,0,0,32,32,0,0,0,0,-32,-32. Any chance for a video?
Regarding the sounds from 8:11 - 12:00, Kirk, here’s a question that’s probably been asked before. Can the SQ-80 be made to emulate the CS-80 (beyond the Paul McCartney riff you played)? Sure, the CS-80 is all analog, whereas the SQ-80 is digital with analog filters, but is it doable?
OK, you got me thinking. The CS-80 has two VCOs with independent PWM, but then if you layer an SQ-80 patch you can have that. The CS-80's ring modulator is used just like the SQ-80's AM function. The CS-80 is famous for its key aftertouch, but then so is the SQ-80. The CS-80 has a ribbon, but I use the SQ-80 MODWHEEL to do the same things. ALTHOUGH - the CS-80 is always played through a lush reverb effect and I have yet to do that with my SQ-80. So I'm pretty certain you could faithfully duplicate virtually any CS-80 sound on the SQ-80 through the same reverb.
No. Haven't other players done that, at least to some degree? It took me a while to figure out that mechanism that senses velocity and pressure, might well make a cool tech segment in a future video showing the SQ-80 through different amps and effects. But I'd have to learn the opening theme from Blade Runner.
Hooray! A new patch set from the preeminent sound designer for the Ensoniq SQ-80. An instant must- purrchase for any self respecting musician or producer. And this bank is highly experimental yet eminently musically useful? I'm sold, brother! This belongs in every smart producer's toolkit.
I just finished a patch set two days ago where a couple of them use illegal oscillator tuning. That opens up a few possibilities including way different multisample placement for alternate tones from standard waveforms, and oscillators can be used as LFOs. One of the patches has maxed out velocity and attack time even though they're all set to zero. Not much practical use for that, but fun. Another one them is so zonked out that it makes weird background noises that have no explanation - not only useless but dangerous. Might need to do a full reset after playing it. Now that's fun.
I have this synth but i always liked the prophet vector vs because its wavetable makes dark sounds. Would be cool if the sq-80 could sample c64 sid chip. The only downside to wavetable synthesis is the aliasing.
Coincidentally, I'm finishing up a new patch set where one proof of concept patch was directly inspired by the Prophet VS but uses the modwheel + modpedal to vector between 4 sounds in one patch. The SQ-80 can be challenging in regards to aliasing in the higher notes and in certain moving waves. But I'm finding that it varies by waveform. What do you think of as dark sounds? Judging by your icon it's probably similar to what I think.
The prophet vs has a dark ahh sound like a robotic format voice. And I love saw tooth waves I always seem to use them it can sound bright an haunting at the same time. Like this ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-BgYmj40ocow.htmlsi=6vifTW-vi83nFkXD
Generally speaking, no. There are only a few that are compatible. Plus these are only available on floppy disk to preserve the illegal parameter values used in some sounds. One of my goals is to get ESQ-1 users to switch over to SQ-80.
The SQ-80 would be more appealing to me than the ESQ-1, not only for its more advanced engine but also as a remote controller with the polyphonic aftertouch.
I actually have a couple of reasons not to divulge my methods on that. But "the sungod RA" posted this on another site: "Check out my free SQ80 bank. I found a way to use sysex to turn on filter self-oscillation. www.presetpatch.com/synth/ensoniq-sq-80 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-VufvU8aPOPQ.html"
I refer to my Sq80 as my 'Gellotron'... what is the VCF behind the sound of these synths. It's got to be something unusual, & not commonly found used in other synth developments???
www.buchty.net/ensoniq/files/cem3379.pdf It's the famous Curtis Electromusic Specialties (CEM) analog filter. Here it's included in a multi-function chip along with a VCA (DCA4) and a VC panner. It gave a great sound to many of the iconic analog synthesizers of the 80s and 90s.
what's with the barely audible distorted voices constantly playing in the background? it's very distracting. maybe just radio interference? it's weird.
Yes, it's a radio station about half mile away. It's worst on laptop or smart phone speakers, and no picnic through headphones. Some of my previous videos had the same problem, and it's one of the most popular subjects of comments below. But fortunately I figured out how to fix it and it's not in my more recent vids. Never again!
I live a few miles from a powerful AM radio transmitter. It’s not far from DC, but can be picked up in Florida at night. Every guitarist in the area has picked up WTOP on their amps, from time to time.
was the Wavesequence example made of a single waveform or are you actually doing some magic to sequence ensoniq waveforms? I've done similar with VFX but that's a very different synth
Yeah, I used to have a VFX-SD and it's one of the synths that challenged to me to do some out-of-the-box stuff on my SQ-80. This particular patch is a layer so it has 6 waveforms to start out with. Then I used some sync tricks to change a couple of them into several different sounds. There's no actual sequencer involved, it's all done with LFOs and envelopes. I didn't even use any illegal parameter values. Not so magical after all.
