Are you bragging?

Samples? We don't need no stinking samples.

Yeah, this is straight synth. Don't go calling a synth a sample 'round no synth nerds, unless you're looking to start a bar fight.

(for anypony who has better things to do than know the distinction already: generally speaking, a "sample" is a prerecorded soundclip, like a little cassette tape that starts playing whenever you hit a key. A "synth" is a virtual instrument whose basic waveform has been created by the machine.

Samples typically sound a lot more like the instrument they're trying to emulate, but they're more taxing on hardware and have a tendency to sound a bit plonky. It's very easy to land yourself in the Uncanny Valley with samples. Synths usually sound like they're being made by a machine, but often have richer, fuller tones. They're also easier to make, so most old school keyboards you find will use synthesized sounds instead of sampled.

There are also some pretty thorny distinctions between digital and analog synths; woe betide he who confuses the two, especially around an analog fan.)

And let's not even get into the nebulous, mostly ideological distinction between a synth and an electric organ.

I've always found them pretty easy to use, myself. Much easier than most early to mid 90s stuff, for sure, provided you understand the basic concpet behind FM. Otherwise yeah, it would be kind of a mindfuck at first.

These things can sound completely fresh and modern even today, but none of the presets even begin to show that side of things. I can't pretend to be very good at FM programming myself, but it's great stuff.

So insisted my very derelict friend who got quite good at making those patches and programming peoples synths. Hard not to hear the thing and think 80's tho...

No, that was the rack system (I forget the model number of it) that was used for a lot of film scoring, where there were something like 12 modules you could install in a rack and each one was a full DX7 with no onboard programming capability, so you had to write your patches on the DX7 (or a computer based editor when those showed up) and upload them via sysex or something, but you could fit a dozen DX7's into a small rack and sequence huge FM orchestras.

I was like 4 years old when those came out, I probably shouldn't know as much about them as I do (which isn't all that much).

Anyway, the DX7 you can edit everything from the front panel; the DX-1 is the one that has dedicated controls for most f the parameters but there were only like 200 of those made and they cost as much as a car.

Ah, knobs are always more fun than plugging in values (unless you actually know what you are doing). Maybe some day I'll take out a mortgage on the house and find a DX1.