News on the first Optigon disc made in over 30 years:

Over the years, I’ve had lots of folks propose various schemes for making new Optigan discs using computer software. Finally, someone has come through with a workable system! Robert Becker is the engineering wizard that made this technological advance possible! And what kind of sounds do I give him to make the first test disc with? Crappy-ass cheesy 80s synth pop!!

OK, this is just a quickie demo, and actually the sound quality on this video isn’t that great but trust me, the disc sounds fantastically lo-fi and sounds just like an Optigan disc except with brand new sounds!

We screwed up a few of the chord button assignments, but that’s an easy fix. The drum sounds are from an Oberheim DMX. The chord patterns are sounds from Native Instruments Reaktor, sequenced in Cubase. And the scale tones are also from Reaktor.

We’re working on developing a scheme for making more discs and making them available. All I can say right now is that generating a master is very expensive, and additional copies are also quite expensive. So unfortunately we won’t be able to just do whatever the hell we want. But soon I’ll post a survey of some sort at optigan.com so y’all can weigh in on what kinds of discs you’d put down some cash for!

Oh, and yes- we’ll be able to make new Orchestron discs too! (In theory we could make new Talentmaker discs, but the demand for those probably would not justify the expense.)