14 thoughts on “Jon Appleton Demos The Synclavier II

  1. Synth Porn
    Mr. Zappa composed on one Jazz From Hell 1987 ( Grammy) said his cost 100 thousand/ 50 G per year software licence per year. He hired a guy to "type all those little notes in". I think they were made by New England Digital. Too bad they went under. Guess they tried to market them to Film Composers. Michael Jackson had one. Thought
    i heard a little Thriller motif in there.
    I really enjoyed the post and learned a little as well . Mr. Z, played one on his last tour ' 88. See Stairway To Heaven on YouTube . PS. The guy finally taught FZ how to program it he love that thing. "it doesn't make mistakes like musicians do, and it plays at very fast tempos" Is their an app for that? Maybe someday ? Thanks again

  2. Heheh, Prof. Appleton and the Synclavier both rule.

    Wow, you're totally right – that Synclavier FM sound is absolutely the opening from "Beat It!"

    I have to say, 1980s samplers like the Synclavier and Fairlight really did sound great. The Synclavier was also a pretty neat performance instrument as well as a "workstation."

  3. as someone who was working in famous LA studios at that time, i can tel you the synclav was the biggest pain ever. first it took days just to load the 5″ diskettes into ram, the machine had to stay up or it would dump the data. programmig was extremely slow. guys would spend 200k for their machines only to have them sitting in the lobby as a flower table.
    the sounds were ok, but 12bit only goes so far, listen to the soundtrack on roger rabbit, all synclav, and sounds cheezy…. sorry kiddies, your ipad rocks and is way more powerful than this museum piece. but i still have use for my 59 B3, 74 clavinet, 68 wurly, and even my 74 mini moog!…. but you all can have my 18 dx7’s or the 3 d50’s still in storage…. i love how you all covet the junk we didnt like in 82, like the korg/ roland/ yamaha stuff….. hell, roland gave us the new 303’s and bassline, and no one liked it, now its on every one chord tune on the radio today. even the old jupiter8 and my old prophet, sound like cheeze….. but when i turn on omnisphere magic happens………… i do miss my 3 old memorymoogs, that fell apart, and had serious firmware issues….

    1. Omnisphere > Prophet? Good to know. 😉

      I have to say that the hard disk version of the Synclavier II worked great and sounded beautiful: 16 bit/100 KHz /etc..

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