The third machine

At the start of 2025 I began to look for a new addition to my home studio setup. This tells part of the story.

As an older, hobbyist musician there's not a lot of pressure on me to make changes to my instrument setup. I'm not driven to keep up with the latest new devices, there are no classic synths that I still yearn for, and I find the prospect of a vast array of machines more daunting than inspiring. My comfortable level of disposable income (for now - more on that later) means that cost is rarely a limiting factor in and of itself but I have a deep & often overriding fear of becoming a hoarding collector and unused instruments will usually end up being sold or given away fairly promptly. My ideal is a small group of familiar machines that provide a wide sonic palette and I've become pretty good at setting that up for myself.

That's not to say there hasn't been a small but ongoing level of 'churn' over the years. A new synth will usually push me into new areas, offering new sounds, features, & mechanisms or subtly guiding me with differences in interface & controls. One of my guidelines has been to aim for a setup of three machines - one that is my 'workhorse', one that does something different, and one that does something quirky. And maybe a drum machine too, but we'll get to that. This is not a hard & fast rule but more a way of looking at my studio setup or potential acquisitions and attempting to get a wider perspective on what exactly it is I'm going for.

In recent years I've felt very happy with the first two elements. My Waldorf Iridium has an enormous range of sounds with an interface that feels (mostly) intuitive to me, I can smoothly reach the tone I'm going for while still having a host of extra options at my fingertips. The Modal Argon 8 fills the 'something different' slot with its wonderful set of wavetables and modifiers, not to mention its excellent keyboard. Between them these two provide me with an enormous selection of tones & possibilities and have been the source of most of the music I've created over the past couple of years.

The old setup, with Anyma Phi & Hydrasynth

The 'quirky' option has seen more turnover. The Arturia Microfreak was a delightfully eccentric instrument but its shortcomings eventually got too much for me. The Aodyo Anyma Phi was a fascinating implementation of physical modelling synthesis (where the real world behaviour of strings, pipes, & blocks is replicated in software) but in practice this turned out to be too much of a programming exercise to enjoy as a hobby. And the ASM Hydrasynth, although featuring one of the best control layouts I've come across, was a bit too similar to the wavetables of the Iridium & Argon 8. With each of these synthesizers I managed to produce an album's worth of tunes but somehow they didn't tempt me on to further steps.

When I sold the Hydrasynth it provided the funds to consider a replacement. As mentioned above money is not normally a (major) restriction on buying new gear but my musical Imposter Syndrome kicks in at the thought of having a pile of dusty, unused instruments and using the sale of one unit as the prerequisite for buying another helps me keep things emotionally manageable. I often buy synths secondhand and can usually sell them on for not much less than I paid for them which helps too.

This time around there's another financial element involved - I'm a couple of months away from retiring from work which will see my nice, regular salary dry up. Weirdly this feels like a deadline for buying new equipment, as if I'm allowed to spend money on stuff while there's a pay packet coming in but the shutters will come down once it's just pension & savings. This has no basis in any of my fiscal calculations but is probably (mostly) down to fears about having to act like a grown up and manage my resources, not something my inner adolescent ever thought he'd have to face.

Another aspect of my imminent retirement is the prospect of having (much) more time to spend on music and wanting to set myself up with good tools to do so. Every synth has its foibles but it's often the case that cutting corners & making do can result in an unsatisfying experience and a reluctance to sit down & play. Better to spend a bit more time (and, if necessary, money) to find something that invites & inspires.

On top of this my musical output had been very erratic over the past few years, not exactly writer's block but a sense of inspiration or enthusiasm drying up for months on end between productive periods. My life had been more dramatic than usual in recent years so this was not exactly inexplicable but I'd had barren periods before and a new synth often managed to get the creative juices flowing again. My creative process usually involves a large element of 'exploration' where I let the process of crafting a sound lead me on into unanticipated areas rather than having a specific goal in mind and a new device can guide (trick?) me into new avenues & destinations.

So, I had the incentive & the wherewithal to go shopping. What would make a good third machine?

My broad target was a polyphonic, probably monotimbral synth, ideally a desktop module with no keyboard. I didn't need another wavetable synth and I wasn't tempted by the classic analog machines or their modern descendants (even the digital ones). This conveniently eliminated the majority of currently available synthesizers so what was left?

My first impulse was to have another go at physical modelling. Despite having all sorts of issues with the Anyma Phi the songs that I created with it were definitely outside my usual style and I did enjoy the subtleties of its tones. The company had been running a Kickstarter campaign to produce a larger, more fully featured machine but when I checked back not only had I missed the chance to participate but they'd since gone bankrupt and entered liquidation.

Another possibility was the Erica Steampipe, a recently released synth that had garnered some very positive reviews for its 'hands on' interface and wild array of sonic possibilities. This sounded very promising and the demos had some great sounds but it came with a steep price tag (£1K) which encouraged me to dig a little deeper before committing. As user reviews started to come in they were less enthusiastic with several commenting that the range of sounds wasn't quite as wide as it first appeared. I decided to see what other options I could find.

Browsing synthesiser discussion sites and asking friends brought in a few more suggestion but these were generally either very expensive or involved a steep learning curve (or, naturally, both). For all of the pride I have in my music it does remain a hobby and I'm reluctant to splash out on big, pricy machines - it took months of hesitant dithering before I bought the Iridium and that was much more of a known quantity as an upgrade from my trusty & familiar Blofeld. And the prospect of learning a whole new synthesis method to make use of a novel new machine felt a bit too much like hard work for something that was meant to be fun. I put a couple of these suggestions on my 'keep an eye out for a bargain' list but otherwise let them slide.

While looking at melodic instruments I'd started noticing drum machines again. I've never been much of a drum programmer, I used a Volca Sample for fairly simple, repetitive rhythms on early Renmei albums and had tried (& failed) to get to grips with a Volca Drum but found it too fiddly to get on with. Perhaps something a little more upmarket might suit me better? After wading through the online demos, reviews, & presentations I found myself drawn to the drum synth (rather than pure sample playback) machines with the leading contenders being the Roland TR-8S (did I need a huge machine with eleven channels?), the TR-6S (would it be too small & fiddly?), and the Erica LXR-02 (also potentially fiddly). With no clear preference emerging I put the idea on the back burner.

My eye was finally caught by the Korg Opsix. This used a version of FM synthesis - where a group of (relatively) simple oscillators modulate each other - but with a novel control layout to make the process much more immediate & (relatively) clear. FM synths can produce some wonderful tones but are notoriously difficult to program, I'd tried a couple in the past (and the Iridium has a 'kernel' mode that is essentially the same thing) but found that I couldn't make a connection between the changes I made and the resulting sounds. Wading through the demo, review, & tutorial videos for the Opsix I began to see that connection and hear how the various links & interactions mutated the tones, these were clearly at the simpler end of the spectrum but it was the first time that my grasp of FM had gone beyond the purely theoretical. It helped that the synth popped up in a lot of 'favourite' lists from YouTubers I respected, clearly this machine had a lot going for it.

The new threesome (plus drum machine)

It felt like I'd found a good addition to my setup. Having another go at FM seemed like a manageable challenge and I'd always liked the complex, edgy tones it was capable of. A good interface has become a major factor in my choice of synths and this one looked good - and there was an editor app that gave a wider view for getting deeper into patches (something that had helped a lot with the Anyma Phi). It came in a (relatively) compact module form and had recently had a software update that added some new features (and probably fixed some bugs). My inner arbiter gave the nod and I began to look for one.

The gods gave their blessing when I found a secondhand unit for sale on Reverb (the eBay for musicians) at about 2/3 of the list price and almost exactly the amount I'd sold the Hydrasynth for. After all my hesitation & deliberation this was an easy decision to make and my new machine is now on its way to my door.

Having made the synth choice I found that the question of a drum machine continued to percolate in my mind. I don't know (but suspect) that making one decision opens the door for further choices to come more easily and as I reviewed the main candidates I realised that there was one clear winner - the Roland TR-6S. This had all the synthesis features of the larger TR-8S with the only real loss being six voices rather than eleven (something I was willing to live with) and a much smaller set of controls that were shared between the various elements. This potentially placed it dangerously close to the 'fiddly' end of the interface spectrum but, as with the Opsix (and the Argon 8), there was an editor/librarian app that would let me do my patching on the big screen of my laptop. Perhaps I could add this to my setup too?

Naturally my inner gatekeeper stepped in to curb this wanton splurge of self-indulgence. There's an outside chance that I'll receive a bonus in this month's pay packet and, for now, that money is earmarked for the TR-6S. If the bonus doesn't arrive I may end up buying it anyway but I'll have to argue that through with the gatekeeper as a separate exercise. The contest between my delight in new Shiny Things and my dread of being swamped in an avalanche of stuff is a fascinating thing to observe but can get very convoluted at times.

My music setup has gone through (and is still going through) a gradual but extensive transformation over the past few years with three synths going out, one (plus a drum machine?) coming in, and my ongoing sequencer switchover from the KeyStep Pro to the OXI One continuing. There's always a balance to be struck between maintaining my toolkit of instruments and actually using them to make music but, for now, it feels like things are going in the right direction.

February 2025