[vcf-midatlantic] passing of MIDI developer

[Ethan O'Toole]

I meant to reply to it, but ended up doing travel.

Dave Smith in recent times had started a company called Dave Smith 
Instruments (known as DSI in the music world) that made some killer newer 
instruments, and then I think switched back to the Sequential brand. They 
are raellllllyy nice modern synths that seem kinda similar to the old ones 
but usually have like an OLED screen or something. They are nice, but they 
are serious coming in at like $2000 - 3000 I think. High quality stuff.

Also Dave Smith teamed up with the Oberheim guy (Tom I think) to release a 
newer Oberheim synth that is awesome as well! OB-6 I think is the model, 
not to be confused with the Matrix 6 from Oberheim. It is sexy.

I actually post "Wanted to buy broken synths" hoping to land a Prophet or 
Oberheim DMX drum machine, or LinnDrum or.... it works a little. Currently 
rebuilding a Roland Juno 106 and an Ensoniq TS-12. No leads on Sequential 
stuff yet. A sort of lead on a LinnDrum but a late model, not the type 
Prince used.

Arcade games used digital sound chips but AFAIK they weren't really a midi 
interface between the board and chips. But might be simialr chip that is 
in the midi synth modules in a few cases. Yamaha chips often. Not sure if 
the arcade game development tools use midi -- I wouldn't be surprised if 
they did (Stuff like Cakewalk?) But... I happen to own a pretty rare, not 
well liked arcade machine known as Keyboard Mania. Keyboard Mania was made 
by Konami / Bemani in partenrship with Yamaha, and it has two 24 key midi 
keyboards under 29" CRTs sideways. There are lines that come down and you 
have to hit the keyboard keys in time with the line on the right note 
(like all the music games.) But the crazy thing is -- it has a real Yamaha 
Midi synth module board in it and the computer crate (It's a 603e PPC 
IIRC) lets the note data pass through to the real midi synth. It plays the 
background music from a CD-ROM CDDA audio I think, and yuo are playing 
over it. Midi cables go from each keyboard into the crate, and the 
crate has midi out to the synth module. Not common, but also not very 
liked of a game. But interesting. And heavy as hell.

If I wasn't doing other duties at VCFe, I would do a table featuring the 
two 80s MIDI portables. The Yamaha C1 and the ATari STacy! Recent 
rebuilds.

             - Ethan