Does anyone remember the Yamaha PSS-170 keyboard? I got mine when I was in the eighth grade in the late ‘80s, and I’ve had it ever since. Mostly, it’s sat in storage, though Jen and I did dust if off to sample the intro for our tune Permanent Address.
Anyway, the thing is cheesy to the extreme. It’s hard to imagine it being useful for much, but I’ve held a special place for it in my heart because it was the first thing I ever used to play music.
So, we decided to use the PSS-170, and ONLY the PSS-170, to compose the music for our latest song, Playing With Mercury. I sampled the keyboard’s drum noises and re-sequenced them in iDrum to make the beat, and every other sound is direct from the keyboard with nothing but some reverb and the occasional delay.
It was fun to break from our normal process. Really fun! We’re very happy with the final result, and hope you dig it.
Happy holidays!
Matt and Jen
Bouncy! Me like.
Oh man, that was so cool. It was like riding a crystalline wave of retro-sound.
that keyboard has a cool sound, almost 8-bit.
thanks, guys!
Yeah, Aaron, it does almost sound 8-bit! Which, from my perspective, is really cool because I’ve wanted to do a chiptune-sounding song for a while now. I’m definitely not done recording with that crazy little keyboard, that’s for sure.