Fusion FM pianos vs. SY77

[Jokeyman123]

After just spending a huge amount of hours archiving and reviewing my old SY77 and the many compositions I created for it back in the 90's (1990'S, NOT 1890'S!) and doing the same with my Fusion 8HD's, I decided that no-one has truly done justice to the ep's the Fusion is capable of, as comparing the breadth and depth of eps I have archived for the SY77, there are very few on the Fusion that can measure up to the clarity and variety of the the SY77-and neither can my Korg M3. I know there is specific information about how to program FM with the Fusion, and since I have a large database of professional and user-created FM pianos in the SY77, I am going to do some work in this area. If I come up with anything worthwhile, it will be here.

I have managed to "Fusion create" the famous and unique "Crystal" ep I have in the SY77. But since there are ep's in the SY77 I have not heard anywhere else-maybe the Montage can do this, maybe not-I think it will be worth the effort. I understand the theory and structure of Fm pretty well with the SY-77, not so much with the Fusion and as these are fairly different architectures, will probably take some work. I am little disappointed too, that the Fusion ep's don't sound to me at least, like what the Fusion is really capable of even after all these years-and of course I don't have any of KPR's specific banks for FM pianos.. Jesse, Parametric if you can point me to some of the posts about FM programming with the Fusion it will help, but i don't think there is too much info even here about that. I have every doc that Jesse has so thouroughly saved for fusion propeller-heads like me. I think Maestropiero (LIPI) was pretty up on this, and Psionic, I will look for their posts. I also have a new larger presence on Soundcloud-starting with several of my ancient compositions I created specifically and exclusively using the SY77 for anyone interested, and I used these FM pianos quite a bit if you want to hear what I'm referring to. I am using Jokeyman there, and my actual name. Soundcloud I discovered, copyright protects any works posted there, so I'm happy.

https://soundcloud.com/discover

[Jesse]

Sounds like a really nice adventure ... I was disappointed with the fact that Alesis ( when it was a really good company) never implemented the Vocoder and the Air Synth into the FUSION! and the air instruments SAX, Flute, etc. were never fully implemented
Looking forward to your adventures, although Alesis has currently done some remarkable things with their top end drum kits that I really cant afford

Take care and thanks for your time and ventures into the never ending possibilities with the Alesis Fusion

You should contact psionic you would enjoy chatting with him

Us old farts have to milk everything we can out of our remaining year's and I don't know of a better way to do it:)

[Jokeyman123]

Yes, kicking the old donkey out of bed in the morning is getting a little tougher!

One concept I've quickly realized in my first FM experiments with the Fusion-programming a few variations on the factory sounds-it is nowhere like the SY77. Without programmable algorithms as in the SY77, this is a different beast.

I have discovered that programming the pitch for different oscillators can create a variation pretty easily, but still not very "intuitive," as shifting the pitch with even one oscillator can create unexpected results. Still working at random, just to hear results. I was able to bring out high frequencies on a few of the duller sounding FM pianos which is good, but trying to get the characteristic strong attacks imitating a few of the best SY77 DX pianos, I'm still not there, and I don't think its just a matter of adjusting envelopes. Studying the structure in the SY77 helps-I compare how those oscillators interact with each other-then I can see a similar function in the Fusion. Unfortunately, some of the better ep's use 2 AFM elements in SY77 speak, and some use one AFM and one AWM (sample) element, so this is going to take time. It didn't help when I found one of KPR's older posts about not wanting to deal with this at all! If he thought it was tough, oh boy! Sure I can just play these on the SY, but this is part of the fun and challenge. One thing I hate about the M3 Korg-the Karma and other automatic functions stifle creativity, rather than inspire. A trained monkey could get the M3 to make some kind of arrangement, even blindfolded, not my cup of tea or whisky. The most compelling aspect of the SY7 was its unique soundset-which fired me up in the first place all those years ago. Then I power on the fusion.....whew

I will look through Psionic's post-the one where you assembled all of his (or her?) research into one file, very helpful. I've already gotten an offer to promote my work I've posted on Soundcloud-passing on it for now. Still haven't gotten around to posting some of my Fusion work, which has been pretty extensive and I will, but needing alot of editing with several tracks. Guess you can call me a "gearhead" or even "propellerhead". I have no shame. My father was trying to teach me calculus in grade school. I never did get the hang of it. It did make figuring out these keyboards alot easier-just took another 60 years!!!!

PS-Jesse and Chris re our posts on older equipment.....Having had a technician restore my venerable TEAC 3340 this year, one of the few techs in US still willing to do this..I am very pleased at the quality of its sound recording capabilities. It is limited to imperfections in the tape-I no longer have any brand new reel-to-reel tapes, but do have tapes I originally matched for the TEAC internal bias settings which makes a difference. Comparing recordings to my digital decks, and computer recording-with the exception (possibly) as even that is hard to determine without a 'scope, a little reduction in high end frequencies, the quality is quite close. After all, many of the best pressings were later rendered to CD, and then rendered to computer or the other way around. So the original quality always determined the 2nd and 3rd generation CD pressings-and these in turn if not direct to an original vinyl pressing (our band had this done in 1968 at Echo Sound Studios in Long Island), went direct to tape anyway.