We've all heard songs with the typical bells, pads, and basses from the DX7, but have there been any bands that had programmed and recorded the DX7 in more unconventional ways? The best example I have found is the demo made by Jexus. Other than that almost every other demo I've seen has been uninspiring and boring.

Yamaha DX7 - demo by syntezatory.net.pl - YouTube

It does quite nice percussion due to it's pitch envelope and overtone opportunities, really crunchy tambourines and thwompy kicks.

My favourite sound from Dem Jamz 4 was a Tom Tom kinda sound, used as the percussion in "hurt" down low it was like an epic movie trailer drum, up high like a bashed up tambourine, and highly responsive to velocity, I love it. That same sound dirty's up well with external distortion.

I can point you to a demo I've made not very long ago using the TX802 (sort of a DX7II in a rack). The sounds I'm using are not the usual EPs etc. Maybe you'll get an idea...

I really liked that Woof Some really haunting sounds in there!

I really liked the long evolving pad you pitch bent up halfway through.

Everybody needs an FM synth, it adds a bit of colour

Well done! It's very modern sounding compared many of the other demos out there. I own a TX802 as well and my favorite thing about the the DX/TX is the more aliased algorithms. It's the most pleasing sounding aliasing I've ever heard on any digital synth.

I like making the whole thing distort on itself



The drum sound i was talking about, by the way, is at 13:25 on this video.

It certainly doesn't need any other distortion devices added to it.

I dunno, it takes on this whole other crazy edge when i add distortion, but yeah, the sounds are full of character as they are.

There aren't any examples of these on youtube, but the noise album "Bad Eye Engine" by Ulf Bilting & Zbigniew Karkowski is mostly TX816.

And Koji Ueno used some uniquely weird sounds on "Ballet Mecanique" from his Music for Silent Movies album.

Salvatore Martirano also used the DX7 on some stuff, but I think it's kinda awful.

It's easier to find examples of weird FM programming that aren't the DX7...

I'm lazy and don't want to learn FM. But I wanted FM sounds that weren't the same old same old. I got a korg 707. With it's real time modulation sliders you can easily get good novel FM sounds with much more movement and expression than the mod wheel on the DX7 gives you. A very under-rated synth.

That was very impressive.

How about posting some weird DX7 banks/patches, peoples?

I have downloaded the thousands of web patches and am slooowly sifting through them to compile banks of interesting sounds. Half of the patches out there seem to be electric piano 2. Lots of overlap, lots of 80s sitcom tender moments...

There are some great percussive, ambient, soundtrack, effect, ringmod, and modular-sounding patches mixed in there, too. Alien stuff, nasty stuff, trippy stuff. Lots of digging required.

I will be happy to post some .syx banks up here as I compile the good weird sounds. If anybody has already put similar banks together, why not .zip and post them?

I'm surprised how rarely you see people sharing patches on GS.

In the meantime, You can get interesting sounds by starting with a crap preset, cranking the feedback, setting op levels at or near max, switching through algorithms randomly, and tuning the ops. Switching to mono w/ porta does good things sometimes.

Also, I recommend using a knobby midi controller to get the most out of this amazing instrument. I posted templates for the Novation Remote in another thread. Knob/slider/button control over every parameter on the DX7? It's worth the hundred bucks or so for a used Remote.

I forgot I'd even recorded these, as they're from 2000 or 2001. The first file is about the nastiest sound I could manage to program on a TX7. The second is mashing keys to demonstrate a pretty good "sound effect" type patch bank that I found somewhere. Of course I don't remember the name of it now, or where it came from...

His demo is the best I've seen on the DX7. Just saying.

I feel it's possible to get almost any sound from a DX7 but i don't have the time to learn FM synthesis from scratch.Even the days i decide to i end up frustrated.I know about Complete DX7 etc but a more hands-on approach would be nice.Are there any patches in text mode that you can dial in manually?I think even dialing someone else's sounds yourself will help understand a little what's going on.

I used to program some unusual sounds when I had my DX7, like this blaster beam emulation:

Here are 4 banks of patches I sifted out of the thousands you can find. I found some folders that basically had a ton of patches in alphabetical order, and I'm slowly panning for gold. I focused on grabbing anything percussive, Autechre-ish, Eno-ish, or Detroit-ish. There are a few oh-so-80s patches and New Age nuggets that were too cute to resist.
I'll keep adding banks as I get through the heaps.
Sorry I'm too busy digging to demo them. There are some choice ones in there, and some just a few tweaks away from fm weirdness.

Can those DX7 patches be loaded into FM7 or whatever the new NI equivalent is?

They can but they don't sound the same.

I think I read somewhere that Autechre's LP5 is mostly FM, although not necessarily DX7. Ae use plenty of Yamaha FM though. I think for example the sound that comes in at 4:30 on their track "Djarum" is pretty obviously DX (or sounds like it), but that's hardly a strange sound I guess. Plaid use a lot of FM too, for example the bassline on Ladyburst (I could replicate it on my DX21, algorithm 5, two operators make the lower-pitched sound and two the distorted saw-ish sound) which isn't a typical patch at all.

Nice video. I've seen some other video of that guy before and it's very good and creative. The DX7 is an underestimated synth due to not very any use other sound than the factory patches or the patches spread on the Internet

Thanks downloaded :D

interesting - why do you think that is?

I have just finished this track. It is the first track I have used my new DX7IIFD on. I would say that none of the DX sounds are particularly conventional...

THere are six DX parts all in all. This is really nostalgic for me actually; it is the first time I have made a track predominantly with a Yamaha FM synth since the 1980s

I actually enjoy programming FM synths, so all of the sounds are my own.



D.

A lot of tracks outside of the US at the time used unusual patches, for example Hetty Koes Endang: Demi Cinta Nih Ye... uses the oboe patch and her song Biro Jodoh uses the harpsichord and flute sounds. Also they use Piano 2 or 3 for chords.

Thanks alot for sharing, some really unique sounds in there!