Sunday Synth Jam: This video, Paolo Di Nicolantonio of SynthMania takes a look at how to make old school techno, using a Roland W-30 keyboard.
In the following video, Nicolantonio offers a little background on how he got into techno, and getting his W-30:
Nice job showing how to kick out the jams with basic technology!
I was a kid playing with Cakewalk and a Casio CZ230S when this came out in 89/90. Wanted a W-30 so bad but would have had to mow hundreds of lawns to get one. Great times to visit music stores though. M1’s, Wavestations, D-50’s, W-30’s, Emulators, drum machines.. it was an exciting and inspiring time for synthesizers, even if they were slightly unattainable. W-30 really felt revolutionary at the time as a sampling workstation. Liam Howlett (Prodigy) had real affection for it and used a W-30 as his master keyboard until 2008 or so.
This guy wanted me to give him my synthomania domain name lol!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt3Oj-Dq-MM
All this W30 crap is how all the worst most annoying techno and rave was made. Which was most of it. Completely glad I was on the grunge side of the nineties.
This is not a statement on the style of music, it’s all about the technique. Most of these skills can be applied to other genres with your own modifications to add variety to your compositions.