Welcome! In today's episode, uh I wanted to show you a little piece of history where computers and music sort of overlap.
Now, anybody who use computers back in the 1980s and 1990s should be familiar with something called an Ad-Lib card or SoundBlaster Card.
These were the most common sound cards used in PC's.
Whenever you went to install a game, you would have to actually select what type of sound card you were using.
The Ad-Lib card came out first in 1987. but at its core was really the Yamaha YM3812 FM synthesis chip.
Now, the Sound Blaster came out next in 1989, which also featured the same Yamaha YM3812 chip.
Pretty much every subsequent sound card either included this chip or internally emulated this chip for backwards compatibility.
In fact, it is possible the computer you are using right now, still emulates that chip either deep down in software or hardware,
Just like a modern video card still emulates old CGA and EGA graphics modes of the 1980's just for backwards compatibility.
This chip had nine voices and they can be programmed independently to create whatever kind of sound you wanted.
This old Casio keyboard from 1984 only has a single voice.
We call that monophonic.
No matter what I do, I can't play more than one note at a time.
So the Ad-Lib card would play nine voices at same time and you could modify things like waveform, modulation, attack, decay, for individual voices.
It also had an interesting mode called percussion mode,
Where you could sacrifice 3 voices and gain 5 unique drum sounds.
Alright, so here's something you might not know. This keyboard here came out around 1986.
And, it's just a kid's keyboard and you would probably have seen this keyboard
for sale in places like Toys R Us, Target, K-mart, Wal-Mart, etc.
But what's really interesting is what's inside. Notice that it's built around the same YM3812 chip that
was used in the Ad-Lib and Sound Blaster cards.
So imagine for a moment, if you could take a Sound Blaster card and somehow attach a keyboard to it and some speakers,
so that you could play it like an instrument. And that's pretty much exactly what this is:
It's a Sound Blaster with keys! And what's really cool about it, its got these little sliders here,
which allow you to adjust the spectrum, waveform, modulation, attack, decay, stuff like that, manually.
So you can directly control the chip and create whatever kind of sound that you want.
And here's a little sample for you. It's an old tune from an MS-DOS game, Ultima VI.
Now, watch me re-create the same sound right here on this keyboard.
OK, I think I have matched the sound let's add a little sustain to it and see what we have.
I also wanna show you that it definitely has nine voices.
It's actually kind of hard to do, but I'll hold down nine keys, You will see that it will play anything else.
Also, if you put it into percussion mode, you have these five unique percussion sounds here on the last 5 keys.
They don't sound all that great, but they are what they are.
But notice that while this mode is enabled, I now only have six voices for playing melody.
This shouldn't be any surprise as it is identical behavior to the Ad-lib and Sound Blaster cards.
So, Yamaha produced hundreds a different keyboards. and I spent the last month or so,
Digging through information and trying to figure out exactly which ones used the YM3812 synthesis chip.
Now, I have found at least eight models that were all produced between 1986 and 1990 that use this chip.
And I put the information down in the description field below this videos,
so that you can look and see which models they are in case you're interested in obtaining one of these for yourself.
Now, a lot of these keyboards are really similar to each other.
I narrowed it down to three different families of keyboards and bought one of each family from ebay so I could show you.
The first one you've already seen its the PSS-470, which was made in 1987.
These are actually still holding their value on ebay. I had to pay $60 for this plus another $20 for shipping.
Okay, so what makes this particular model so collectible currently is not because everybody knows it has the Ad-Lib/Soundblaster chip in it,
but actually because it's got the little manual controls for the synthesizer on it,
which are actually kind of hard to find. This keyword is also very popular with the circuit
bending crowd. Yeah, because it's got such small keys, it's taken me a little bit of
time to get used to playing it because I'm used to playing with keywords with larger
keys. But, I've gotten used to it I can actually play some pretty interesting things on it.
Still, it does have a line level output but no professional features like a sustain pedal,
MIDI interface for velocity detection.
But, now as far as the actual sounds go, Well, it sounds like a SoundBlaster!
So the next step up was the Yamaha PSR-12, also made in 1987.
I only paid $19 dollars for this on ebay plus $20 shipping.
This has the same number of keys as the previous one, but they're full size keys and thus, much more natural for
somebody like me to play. Now back in the day this keyboard would have probably sold
for a little more money than the last one, it still has 49 keys on it but it's still
not really a professional keyboard because it lacks a sustain pedal or MIDI interfaces
or You know, velocity on the keys or anything like that.
Believe it or not, I still only paid twenty dollars for this on you ebay, plus another twenty dollars for shipping.
Now, it does not have the synthesizer controls like the previous one I've showed you,
but it does have around 32 built-in presets sounds that you can use,
And they also I'm pretty similar to all the other keywords in this family.
There isn't any point in comparing the sound quality since inside has the exact same Yamaha YM3812 synthesizer chip.
For example, here's a some piano music with it.
But, it does have some really nice bell sounds.
And, the last family a keyboards I'm going to show is the PSR-32, also from 1987.
Now this one is big! This thing is more along the lines of a professional keyboard. It has 61 keys, which I consider to be professional size.
And, believe it or not I still only paid $20 for this monster, on ebay, plus another $20 for shipping.
In fact, I think they may have lost money on shipping as this thing is kind of heavy.
Again, it has the exact same synthesizer chip and the exact same sound as the other two keyboards I showed you.
But, this one is a bit more professional and I can actually see this perhaps being played on stage.
It still lacks the ability to have a sustain pedal or velocity on the keys or any kind of MIDI interface.
But, who who knows? maybe Van Halen used something like this.
The keyboard does have one standout difference from the other two though. Notice that it says PCM rhythm on it.
It actually has a separate sound chip for the percussion sounds.
Notice it has a lot more drum sounds available.
PCM basically means they're digital samples of real drums, so they sound a little bit more realistic than the Ad-Lib and Sound Blaster drum.
And, since the drum sounds come from a different chip,
that means you can have all nine melody voices even when you have the drums Playing.
I'll take a brief moment to also mention the Yamaha YM2413 chip.
it's basically the same chip is the YM3812, but its cost reduced.
Remember how I said the nine voices could be independently programmed?
Well, in this YM2413 they designed it so that you can only program one sound and all nine voices have to play the same sound.
There's several very low cost keyboards that were made in the early 1990's that use this chip,
And some of them can be obtained on ebay for as little as $10. Now then they don't have
the exact same chip as the SoundBlaster, but they do still have the same characteristic sound, if that's what you're looking for.
Okay, I have two more things to tell you.
The first thing I want to tell you is that some of this information using is going to be recycled in another upcoming video. And,
I've actually been working on this upcoming video for quite a while,
it's on the history of computer sound and music.
And, as I may be showing some the same stuff but I want an opportunity to show you these three keywords up close,
and give you a bit more detail about it because I think these are actually going to be collectible in the future.
And some of them already are now.
Okay, and the second thing I want to tell you is that I am starting up yet another channel.
Now I know, I already have some other channels but this is really been the only channel I have been active on for at least the last couple years.
And, this new one is going to be focusing on music.
and, one of things we're going to be doing is... me and some of my friends, we're going
to be taking these older, obsolete keyboards and especially like kid's keyboards and stuff,
and now we're going to be putting... using several of them together to create some really
neat sounding music. And, if you think about it, it's actually kind of along the same lines
as this channel because one of the things I do in this channel is you'll see me
often take an obsolete piece of equipment, whether it's a you know iPhone, iPad, or an
old iBook and you know... I'll rather than focusing on what it can't do, because everybody knows
what they can't do, I focus on what you can do with it. You know, so what are its strengths.
and so that's the kind of what we're going to do with the music. We're going to show
these older keyboards and say well we we know what they can't do, but what cool things can
you do with them? And I think people are going to be surprised. And, of course I'll put a
link down in the description field linked to that new channel, if you're interested in that sort of thing.