Skip to main content

Looks Matter

Shibuya, the center of shopping for young people in Japan, is also a major hub for musical instrument shops in Tokyo. My favorite shop for new gear, Music Land Key, is there, so if there’s something new I need, I know they’ll have it for a good price. I’d been wanting an Arturia Beatstep Pro for awhile. Although I have a Korg SQ-1, I liked the idea of having two lanes of sequencing, plus its MIDI to CV functionality was intriguing. And with all the hardware I seem to be amassing, I figured it was time to wean myself off the DAW a little as well.

I put on a pair of pants and rode the trains across town. It’s not far in Tokyo terms. I live on the northwestern edge of the metropolitan center, outside of the Yamanote line that defines central Tokyo, but not so far removed either. But considering how big Tokyo is, my fairly short trip still took an hour each way. I rode the elevator to the fifth floor, made a beeline for the Beatstep Pro, saw that it was still white, and turned right around and went home.

I just couldn’t buy it. It’s white. White is for kitchen appliances.

Yes, industrial design is important to me. Here was a product that I wanted (I won’t say needed) and would have used often. And yet I couldn’t get past its horrid color scheme. White? Nothing else in my studio is white, except me. Why does it insist on standing out so much? I won’t ever be able to not see it in my studio. It would drive me bonkers.

Basically, the only acceptable colors for music gear are black and gray or silver. I’m willing to consider a red or blue if it’s really cool, like the SH-101. The MicroBrute Red looks like a Jolly Rancher that’s been sucked on for awhile. So no thank you. The blue SE looks like a buttermint from my grandmothers’ candy tin. Basically candy colors are not acceptable anywhere except in my mouth. How about the red or blue Monologues? The red one isn’t bad but the blue one looks like a sweater with LEDs. Sorry, Korg.

But what about the black edition of the Beatstep Pro, I hear you sputter incredulously. Yes, it’s ok, but it still has those horrid accent colors like teal and lilac. Lilac! What am I supposed to do with that?

No, if you want an example of a gorgeous synth that does accents right, look no further than the Roland JX-3P. With its rainbow of green, blue and red preset labeling, it’s the perfect meeting of 80s frivolity and cool synth design. Other synths that get the accent thumbs up from me are the Juno-106 and Jupiter-8. Largely gray but with just enough color to be exciting, yet still restrained enough to never annoy you, they’re gorgeous examples of synthesizer design.

One of my favorite synths in terms of panel design is the EMS Polysynthi. With its great red, blue and yellow blocks, and mismatching colored knobs, it looks more like a 1970s public television children’s program credit sequence than a musical instrument. Actually, this is probably the reason I like it so much, as those are exactly the kinds of shows I grew up watching.

I also like the look of the Yamaha DX7. Despite its pastel flair, it just works for me. Perhaps it reminds me of a certain time in my childhood. The Korg Poly-800, which shares a similar color scheme, isn’t as pretty as the DX7 but I don’t actively dislike it, probably because it was my first synth. I much prefer Korg’s Poly-61, with its light blue graph paper grid and green and red LCD displays.

I’m a big fan of the Moog Opus-3 as well. From a distance it looks like any other Moog from the same time period, but a closer look reveals a number of brightly colored accents and knobs. Hey, I can hear you getting flustered again, isn’t that basically the same color scheme of the Beatstep Pro that you hate? Yes, it is. All I can say to that is I’m a complex man.

But I’d much rather own a Beatstep Pro (even the white one) than have to be around gear from the '90s. There’s a reason I went entirely in the box around 2002. I mean, was I really expected to try to work with a Roland groovebox, with their cluttered panels and terrible color schemes? I can’t believe they expected me to pay to look at those things. Waldorf is another big '90s offender. Their digital synths may sound amazing but they look like something a child scrawled on the wall with Magic Markers.

Yes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I fully comprehend that not everyone is as finicky as I am about these things, and that I’m probably contradicting myself in this piece. But if Behringer thinks the Neutron will be on my Christmas list this year, they’re sadly mistaken.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Roland HS-80 SynthPlus 80 (Alpha Juno 2)

Although I listened to industrial music all through high school, and loved groups like Front 242 and Skinny Puppy, my interest in electronic music really exploded when I discovered techno and rave in 1991. I loved the energy of it but mostly I loved the sounds. It was unabashedly synthy, and each song was seemingly built around one or two incredible sounds that just repeated. It was glorious. I loved all the hoovers, but especially the Dominator, so if you had put money down with a bookie in 1991 that I’d someday be the proud owner of an Alpha Juno synth then you’d be a winner today. Well, almost. Instead of buying a reasonably sized Alpha Juno or Alpha Juno 2, I had to go and get the HS-80 SynthPlus 80, the rather unwieldy and, it has to be said, ugly home version. Introduced in 1987, a year later than the original Alphas, this behemoth widened the case to include an amp and two speakers. Gone are the fetching membrane buttons, replaced with D-50-style black push-button jobbi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Korg Poly-800 (Moog Slayer Filter And Battery Mod)

I’m trying to improve my electronics skills. I thought modding might be the logical next step from changing internal batteries and swapping out tactile switches. I’d like to add MIDI to my Korg Poly-61 and maybe improve the MIDI on my Roland JX-3P. These mods require skills above and beyond what I have now, and I certainly don’t want to wreck them in the process, so when a cheap Poly-800 became available on Yahoo Auctions, I snapped it up in the hopes of trying the Moog Slayer Filter Mod. As anyone who’s looked at a Poly-800 knows, there are no knobs on the front panel, just a few buttons and a lot of teal. I couldn’t do much about the teal but I could add two knobs to bring direct control of the filter and cutoff parameters to the fore. Seeing as it’s a Poly-800, and they sell for around $100 in Japan, I wouldn’t be too disappointed if I killed it. I could always sell it for parts and get my money back anyway. Cosmetically, my new Poly-800 wasn’t in terrible shape. There was so...
Post a Comment
Read more

Yamaha PortaSound PSS-480

As I’ve said before , I’m not the biggest fan of FM synthesis. It’s not that I dislike it. I believe it has its uses, and there are some sounds it does better than anything else. But I never went through an FM phase like a lot of other people seem to have. I grew up in the ‘70s and ‘80s so I love analog synthesis. I consider a two-oscillator monosynth solo with plenty of portamento to be one of the finer things in life. Recently, I have come to appreciate what FM synthesis can do. And while I’m still not a huge fan of six-operator synths like the DX7, take me down to four and watch me come alive. My TX81Z can do things no analog synth can do, and while I didn’t have it for very long, the DX100 was more than capable when it came to bass. Solid, even. If four operators are better than six, imagine how good two operators must be. Sadly, this is not the case but two-op machines are capable of some pretty incredible sounds. From bells to falling cooking pan-like noise, it’s hard to b...
Post a Comment
Read more