In our first Friday Forum Live of the year, we are celebrating the release of Arturia’s new DX7 plugin, based on the classic Yahama FM synth of the same name. It’s definitely the truest representation of the original unit available and, as we see in the video, it’s full of gloriously retro presets. Ski Oakenfull is the man in the hotseat, and if you follow our channels you will know that he is our lead course developer and resident deconstruction whizz. If you fancy learning how to make music with a course developed by Ski and a host of our expert instructors, then check out our production courses in London and online.
Yamaha’s famous frequency modulation synthesiser, the DX7, is the source of many classic sounds used in house music, foremost among them is the ‘lately bass’. As such we decided the best way to demonstrate Arturia’s new DX7 plugin would be to deconstruct a track that makes use of this sound, not mention many other seminal presents the unit came with. The track is called ‘Twilight’ by Maze ft. Frankie Beverly. But before Ski gets into the deconstruction he gives a brief theory lesson on FM synthesis and also pulls out his copy of ‘Textures’ by Brian Eno: an extremely rare sound-library CD (upwards of £500 on discogs!). The album is indicative of a period in Eno’s career when he was using the DX7 frequently.
When we do eventually get down to the deconstruction, Ski does what he does best and recreates the track layer by layer. Some of the sounds are just delightful, none more so than the woodblock sound that drives the wandering melody, and the cheeky guitar lick that tops everything off. In all honesty, you should stop reading this now and get stuck in to the video above. For reference, below is the original track. How do you think Ski did in his deconstruction?
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