I discovered some real mean and gritty bass tones and some dark pad sounds that I really liked.
So I came back to it in about 2011 with fresh insight and started to experiment and do real sound design with it.
So it sat idly by for some time while I used software to make music.Īfter using different software environments for years, and learning more about subtractive synthesis, I had a better grasp of what the program parameters on the Poly-800 actually meant. Eventually we used a few sounds from it when Andy got a better soundcard with MIDI I/O, but it was still fiddly. But I couldn’t effectively integrate it into my main sound setup, which was on my friend Andy’s computer–a combination of FruityLoops and Reaktor. It has a built in sequencer, so I could throw a short sequence on it and “perform” with it in my dorm, which I did a number of times. I didn’t really know any synthesizer nomenclature, but even then, the layout was simple enough that I could hunt and peck for parameters and see how each one affected the sound. I’ve always thought this adds character to it, so I had no desire to remove the stickers. When I first got it, it was covered in stickers, which it still is. Now, in 2018, it’s 34 years old, which means I’ve had it for as long as I didn’t have it (with some exceptions). In fact, when I obtained it in 2001, it was potentially 17 years old, as it had probably been made in 1984. He would take $100 for his Korg Poly-800. I sent out a message asking if anyone wanted to sell a synth, and someone from the Chicago area got back to me.
I look back on those days with nothing but fondness. I had been active for some time on the Flaming Fish Mailing List, an email mailing list (remember those?) for fans of the Christian Industrial music label, Flaming Fish. I had been using a pirated copy of FruityLoops 2.0 with my friend Dan to make some rhythmic mayhem, but it was pretty wanting in terms of synth sounds (and FruityLoops was not the fully fledged DAW studio environment it eventually became…and I did eventually go legal and purchase it), so I thought it would be a good idea to buy an actual synthesizer. Near the end of my Freshman year in college, in 2001, I purchased my first hardware synthesizer. Of all my synths and drum machines, this one has the longest story, and it also the dearest to me.