Table of Contents
Published on
October 19, 2023
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Features
A new collection of zines is highlighting digital music’s most revered devices.
The environment of synthesizers, drum devices and electronic songs equipment is endlessly intriguing. Each and every instrument has its very own language, makes use of and a long time of lore, lending both a seductive mystique and obliqueness only compounded by many products’ high selling price tags and rarity.
Read through much more: The Minimoog Design D returns
For all those who really do not know their SP-12 from their TR-606 (and fanatics looking for a visually pleasing refresher), Oli Freke has just the established of zines that may support. Building from Synthesizer Evolution: From Analogue to Electronic (and Back again), his 2021 listing of each and every main synth, drum machine and sampler introduced involving the ’60s and 90s, Freke has unveiled a new series that focuses on a lesser amount of machines and details each one’s critical developments and impact on digital tunes.
“Selections were being designed on the basis of a equipment representing the introduction of a model new technology – like the Fairlight bringing sampling to the (extremely-rich) masses or provided a action transform in performance – like the Prophet 5 introducing ‘affordable’ polyphonic analogue synthesis or in fact stimulated musicians to create full new musical genres, this sort of as the Roland TB-303 and acid home,” Freke describes.
Each and every equipment in the 1st two challenges of the pocket-sized zine–Synthesizer Evolution: Vintage Synths and Synthesizer Evolution: Drum Machines And Samplers–is accompanied by an illustration from Freke and a shorter synopsis. “I like illustrating these equipment by hand as I really feel that as significantly as they are superb musical instruments they are also bodily objects with a visible high quality that reflects the intent they provide, the era they ended up developed in, and designed with the technological innovation obtainable at the time,” Freke suggests.
The result is a amazingly thorough and useful whirlwind tour of the equipment that have formed so significantly of our listening routines and music output to this working day. “Ultimately, I hope these zines rejoice all of that and give new insight into the evolution of digital songs and the instruments that designed it over the very last sixty years”.
Choose a appear at some previews from the zine below and get a crash course on powerhouse devices, including the MPC60, TR-808 and Korg Prophecy.




Excerpts taken from Synthesizer Evolution: Vintage Synths and Synthesizer Evolution: Drum Equipment And Samplers by Oli Freke. Out now by means of Velocity Push.
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