If all you're looking for is a controller keyboard with no sound all you need is a MIDI out.

It's an RMI Harmonic Synthesizer. Jean-Michel Jarre's RMI Harmonic Synthesizer to be exact, the pic lifted from the 2008 Sound on Sound interview, with the Michel Geiss designed Digisequencer on top.
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb08/a ... mjarre.htm

Ryuichi Sakamoto seemed to be for a while. He used a PPC equipped Oddysey live on Yellow Magic Orchestra's 1979 tour for leads.

Give people a digital synth with lots of menus, they won't program it, or will try and give up, or do very little programming. Give people an analog synth or a modular and they are likely to use it/play it/make new sounds with it. Perhaps with an analog synth without presets, where the user has no ...

The guitars for the Roland guitar synth systems were made by Fujigen(sometimes rendered Fuji Gen) Gakki, a Japanese maker who has made instruments for many labels including Ibanez, Greco, and Fender Japan. The G303 and G808 guitars were identical to instruments from Greco's GO series other than the ...

Apparently the marketing folks at various companies have determined there's not enough people interested in a digital output to make it worth the X per unit it would cost to offer one.

Fripp continued to use his GR300 after adopting his New Standard Tuning CGDAEG, so it seems that it may work with alternate tunings as well. For that matter Adrian Belew would sometimes tune his G string to A while he was still using the '300.

More like a case of there simply being more Americans with cool equipment they're clueless about because there are more Americans.

You might be able to find some info by cruising around Chris Carter's official website. http://www.chriscarter.co.uk/

Anyone know of any musicians of note who used one? The only example I know of is Robert Fripp, who used one on the first tour or two of the 1980s King Crimson lineup, and I suspect it might be the organ Fripp is listed as playing on KC's 1982 album Beat. It may possibly have turned up on his 1982 co...

What's the UK street price on those instruments? Perhaps if you go strictly on price they could be considered alternatives to each other. Reminds me of places like the IMDB and Amazon that give you "if you like this, you'll like" recommendations that are often ridiculous.

Here's a demo of an XL by some Japanese bloke with a fondness for lime green.

"Urgent" was recorded in 1981, which predates Dolby owning a CMI. Could be a Jupiter 8, which Dolby used a lot in those days. Somehow I doubt he hauled his early PPG 340/380 along, assuming he even owned it yet at the time of the session.

According to the Korg UK site link there will be a downloadable software editor for it, so perhaps you'll only be able to do full editing via computer, which will piss off skilled users but probably won't matter to a lot of the buyers. I suspect Korg's marketing folks have probably found the origina...

I remember there being at least a couple of synths that allowed for selective pitch bending so you could bend a single note in a chord to mimic pedal steel. For some reason I think one was the Chroma Polaris.