Doepfer GMX-1

In 1992 Doepfer released their version of a General MIDI (GM)-compatible MIDI Expander, the GMX-1.
It was Doepfer's attempt to offer a fairly cheap alternative to the popular Soundblasters, LAPC's and cheap GM-compatible modules like the Roland SC-7.
The GMX-1 was (based on) a Dream mainboard - you will also find this module as Dream GMX-1 mentioned in old magazines - Future Music rated it 86/100 in issue 4, page 41 )

It was a simple grey box, with only an on/off switch, a volume slider, a mini-jack headphone output and an LED that visualized incoming MIDI signals on the front.
On the back it had 3 MIDI connectors (In, Out and Thru), stereo audio-outputs (cinch) and a 9 Volts adapter input.
Beside that, it also had a nine-pin RS-232-C port that enabled the unit to be connected to a serial port without the need for a MIDI expansion on your computer.
With this port you could hook it up to almost any PC, Commodore Amiga or Apple Macintosh, and it even came with MS Windows drivers and 2 MS-DOS programs that could play back MIDI-files.

The sounds (158 instruments, 47 Sound-effects and 92 percussive sounds) were based on PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) and Algorithmic Synthesis, sampled at 16-bit / 44.1 kHz , and could not be altered.
You could control a few things like volume, pan, velocity, after-touch, modulation and pitch-bend, but no chorus, reverb or other effects.
The Doepfer GMX-1 only had 20-voice polyphony, so it did not fully match the (24-voice) GM standard, but beyond that it was completely GM-compatible.
Besides General MIDI the module also offered an MT-32-mode, that could emulate the (classic 1987) Roland MT-32 module settings.

It sounded decent, but not too impressive, but what would you expect for the price...
Reports say it didn't sound awful and that it actually had some good sounds too, like the pizzicato strings and percussive sounds like vibraphone, marimba, music box and harmonica...
But if you'd put your GMX-1 audio through one of your own FX processors it already sounded a lot better.

Price at the time was 649 DM > around 330 Euro's
Only 250 units were sold through Doepfer, but Zone Distribution in Britain has probably distributed at least a same amount through England and perhaps even more worldwide.

Video: Charlie Chaplin Through a Doepfer Vocoder

As one of my earliest Quick Tips i suggested to test your Vocoder with recorded spoken word.
In that way you don't have to hold a microphone or constantly keep an eye your audio-levels.
The audio-example that went with that post wasn't that special, but here's another short but nice demonstration, uploaded by YouTube user WorksLimited.

Video: Charlie Chaplin through a Doepfer modular A-100 Vocoder

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH1NlbDhPRQ
"Charlie Chaplin speech from The Great Dictator, slowed down about 10% and run through a Doepfer Vocoder. The results compare very favorably to units like the Synton and Sennheiser (in my humble opinion)."

Uploaded by WorksLimited

DD-System StringPhaser

Look what popped up on eBay this week, a very rare StringPhaser module by a company named 'dd system' ?

This module was one of Doepfer's earliest synthesizer modules, made for the German Formant modular synthesizer, more than 30 years ago according to Dieter.

There were some expansion modules for the Formant available (only as kits) from Doepfer's early company and they were labelled "dd -system".

In the late 70s / early 80s Doepfer made several modules , among them were the System Timer with a master clock and different clock dividing factors, clock/reset polarities and clock/reset levels,
an External Input/Envelope Follower similar to A-119, a Frequency Divider similar to A-115, a Graphic VCO with high speed VCO, a VCLFO, a 12dB VCF with VC Resonance, a VU module (with LED bar), VC phasing I (with FETs), VC phasing II (with LDRs and lamp, similar to the compact phasing), Analog Sequencer 2x16 steps, Polyphonic CV/Gate keyboard, 4-Fold Band Pass with LDRs, and a Digital Sequencer with external RAM cards for 1024 or 2048 note memory (each of the 2102 RAM circuits had 1 kbit at that time!).

From eBay:
" It uses a 3 phase LFO which drives 3 separate phase shift cards (see pictures).
The module has separate 'fb.' and 'mod' controls and 'control' and 'ext. ust' sockets for each of the 3 phasers, and has controls for 'f1', 'f2', 'mixt' and 'ampl'. There are also 5 LEDs and sockets for output and input signals.
Finally there are two switches which are labelled 'ser.' and 'parallel'.

This is a vintage item and has some marks and scratches on the front panel.
The module is believed to be complete, but I've never tested or used the unit.
The previous owner indicated that the unit worked, but that the LFO rate was rather high however I have not confirmed this."

Doepfer replied that he still has a scan of the old StringPhaser document available.
The words are only in German (written by typewriter), the schematics still as a pencil drawing.

More pictures at:
http://m.matrixsynth.com/2010/03/rare-doepfer-stringphaser-module.html,
Thanks for the tip @ZoeBlade

CEM chips in Doepfer Modules

After the announcement of the discontinuation of the Dark Energy due to a lack of CEM3394 chips I started  making a basic inventory on what CEM chips were used in which Doepfer Module.

The A-111 VCO2 (discontinued) used one CEM3340

The list is still far from complete, also because there are still many Doepfer modules that i don't own, but i am hoping to be able to crowd-source the rest this way.

Feel free to help me complete the list by posting your findings in the comments or by mailing me your additional info, thank you all in advance.

A-121 Multi Mode Filter / A-122 Low Pass Filter:     CEM3320

 A123 High Pass Filter / A-179 Light Controlled Voltage Source:     CEM3320

A-111-1 High End VCO:     CEM3340

A-132-3 DVCA Dual Linear/Exponential VCA:     CEM3360

A-107 Morph. Filter:     CEM3379

A-124 Wasp Filter / A-106-6 XP Filter:     CEM3379

A-109 VC Signal Processor:     CEM3379
*Newer versions of the A-122 Low Pass Filter VCF3:     CEM3379

A-130 VCA (linear) / A-131 VCA (exp.) / A-134 VC Panning:     CEM3381

A-126 Frequency Shifter:     CEM3382

A-111-5 Mini Synthesizer Voice:     CEM3394

Dark Energy , Monophonic Synthesizer:     CEM3394

Sources and more info on what chip is inside your synthesizer:
http://curtiselectromusic.com/,
http://synthtech.com/cems.html and http://www.synthtech.com/cem/cemdata.html
http://sequencer.de/synth/index.php/Chips_in_Synthesizers

Note: Not only CEM chips are used in Doepfer modules, i am also working on a full inventory including Texas Instruments chips and as many others as possible. Feel free to contribute...
Thanks to contributors: George P. Macklin, Jakobsweb...

Random Videos: HOX808

I really like the recent uploads from YouTube user HOX808 from Berlin, Germany.

Focussing on modular analog synths and with their minimalistic approach these video's are simply amazing.

I posted 2 video's below, but be sure to also check out the older uploads by this user.

The first video is a minimal drum sequence, made with only the Doepfer A-160 and 2 A-161 Sequencer/Dividers, TipTop 808 Bassdrum, Snare and Hats drum modules, a touch of (TB-)303, a few samples and some kind of delay.

Quite impressive with these minimum resources.

This does bring back an old wish of me for Doepfer to produce some drum-modules that sound (at least) as good as this though...

Video 1: The Thin Rebirth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XivBQxgERPg
-no description available

The second video also mainly seems to be about drums, but if you look a bit further, you notice that these are not drum-modules, but six (!) Doepfer A-112 8-Bit samplers in a row, and it looks/ sounds like the same TipTop drum-module were used.
Very original again, but what happened with the knobs?

Video 2: 6 x Doepfer A-112 8 Bit Sampler

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJErS9T04HQ
" 6 x Doepfer A-112 8 Bit Sampler and Tiptop Audio BD SD,Flame Echometer, MFB STEP 64."

Uploaded by HOX808

CD-Tip VII : Lixiviation - Suzanne Ciani

My latest album-tip is a very recent one, released a little over a week ago.
This album, a compilation of older works from multiple grammy-winning composer/synthplayer and pioneer Suzanne Ciani gives us a nice overview of her electronic works from the years 1969-1985.

From the Finders Keepers Records blog:
" With a sonic portfolio that boasts commissions for the Xenon classic pinball machine, the sounds for the Meco Star Wars theme, the Atari TV commercials and the electronic sound effects in the original Stepford Wives film (amongst many others) the mutant electronic music CV of Suzanne Ciani is proof that in a 1970s commercial world of boys toys, monopolised by a male dominated media industry, a woman’s touch was the essential secret ingredient to successful sonic seduction. 
A classically trained musician with an MA in music composition this American Italian pianist was first introduced to the synthesizer via her connections in the art world when abstract Sculptor and collaborator Harold Paris introduced Suzanne to synthesizer designer Don Buchla who created the instrument that would come to define Ciani's synthetic sound (The Buchla Synthesiser). 
Cutting her teeth providing self-initiated electronic music projects for art galleries, experimental film directors, pop record producers and proto-video nasties Suzanne soon located to New York where she quickly became the first point of call for electronic music services in both the underground experimental fields and the commercial advertising worlds alike...

...Lixiviation complies and recontextualises both secret music and commercial experiments of Suzanne Ciani made for micro-cosmic time slots and never previously documented on vinyl or CD. 
This is the first sneak peek of the early Ciani metal music and non-pop that later went on see her nominated for multiple Grammy awards for her later achievements which brought synthesiser music to the new age movement."

The album contains 16 tracks, but only five of them are longer than 2 minutes, up to a track that lasts a little over 9 minutes.
Besides those nice longer tracks it includes some of her work for TV-spots like the famous Coca Cola 'Pop-and-Pour', music from a few Atari-spots and previously unreleased live bits like the wonderful 1975 Buchla live concert-track.
The longer tracks remind me of her 1982 'Seventh Wave' album that is still my favorite Ciani album.
The CD includes a booklet with an introduction by Andy Votel and track notes by Suzanne Ciani.
Overall it is a very nice compilation from this ' Diva of the Diode', a must-have for the collectors.

Check out an extensive CD-review at Pitchfork.

Here's a preview, a track from the CD called 'Liberator', that she made for an Atari TV spot.
  SUZANNE CIANI - LIBERATOR by Finders Keepers Records

Pubished by Finders Keepers Records. More info HERE
Catalog nr. FKR053CD/LP - total playing time: a little over 34 minutes (!)

Suzanne also recently (re)launched her Twitter account, follow her at @sevwave
or check her out on Facebook (with some awesome classic gear-pictures) or read her blog HERE

Florian Schneider - Electronic Poem

Here's another classic from the web that caught my attention last month, and it has an interesting story behind it too...

The (audio-) recording in the video below originally comes from a KEYS-Magazine demo CD, Issue 04 / 1996.
This issue of the magazine had an extensive A-100 test (page 44-50) in it, with statements from Kraftwerk's Florian Schneider (and O. Lieb).
Kraftwerk had worked intensively with Doepfer in the mid- nineties, for example on the Doepfer Mogli 'Midi Output GLove Interface', the MAQ 16/3 sequencer, the Doepfer A-129 Vocoder and some other (custom and modification) -projects. (more on this next month)

Florian Schneider (from Kraftwerk) spoke this poem on the answering machine of Florian Anwander, who wrote for the German KEYS magazine at the time.
Anwander played the cassette of the answering machine back in a Fostex 280 multitrack deck and did the vocoder recording with a straight saw wave from a Roland JX3P synthesizer as a carrier-signal.
No voiced/unvoiced detector was used; instead of that he took the high frequencies of the original signal, that were later added to the output-signal.

A Yamaha 2020 compressor and a noise-gate from Ashley were also used in this audiorecording.

Florian Schneider (Kraftwerk)
and Dieter Doepfer *

" Analogsynthese mit system 

klanglich, optish angenehm

technisch, logisch, funktionell

prototypisch und speziell

modular und variabel

leicht, kompakt und transportabel

für ein musikabenteuer

A-100, nicht zu teuer

midi-kontrolle vom computer

A-100 to the future! "

-translated into English:
Analog synthesis system / sonically and optically pleasing / technical, logical, functional / prototypical and special / modular and variable / Light, compact and portable / for a musical adventure / A-100, not too expensive / midi control from the computer / A-100 to the Future!

Video: Enigmidia / Florian Schneider - Electronic Poem
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-gp5x1ujME
" Doepfer Vocoder, Digital ComputerArt by Paulo R. C. Barros
Florian Schneider, from Kraftwerk, perform a recorded test-drive of a vocoder to the Doepfer electronic instruments."

Florian Schneider seemed to be very pleased with the A-100, on page 45 of the KEYS-issue he writes:
" Up to now, I only had the chance to play around for one day with the A-100, but I can already say that Doepfer has built something really special.
The system does sound very good and does offer everything I do expect from a modular system - and that at a really reasonable price.
For me it is also a plus that it has turned out smaller than other systems, like some may point out.
But the adjustors on a mixing desk are even closer together, and you can also take it with you easily and leave the expensive rarities at home.
The vocoder has turned out really nice; it does really sound good in comparison to other vocoders.
After building a multi-channel filter (a very important module, by the way), it was only a small step for Dieter Doepfer to combine this with VCA's and Envelope-followers. "

He also shared a tip;
" On a modular synth, you really learn how the sounds are made.
I can advise anyone to buy a simple oscilloscope with the modular system.
This was also my start, I was fascinated to see; "this is how the sound looks here and after the filter it looks like that...".
You can really see principles here which you can also find in the whole world. "

* The opening voice is Gia Stemmer, who did the moderation of the KEYS demo-CD.
More info on the Doepfer vocoder system HERE

* Picture from Doepfer.de