Synths used on early NYC electro, 1982-83

[Thousand Ways]

Dear all

I'm trying to find out which synths were used on early NYC electro and electrofunk tracks circa 1982–83. I don't know whether most of those records relied on a single synth. Someone mentioned to me the Roland Juno-6, which was released around the right time, but I don't know whether this featured on many electro tracks of that time. To give some examples of the kind of pads I'm referring to:

Pretty much all of the synth sounds on Tyrone Brunson's 'The Smurf', particularly those with the bent notes:


Throughout Man Parrish's 'Boogie down (Bronx)':


Entering at around 0:37 on 'Hip hop be bop (don't stop)':


The high string pad from around 1:01 on Hashim's 'Al naafiysh':


Of course, these sounds might all be from different synthesizers. Can anyone identify the synths used here? I've tried recreating similar sounds using soft synths, to little avail as yet.

Any suggestions appreciated.

[Z]

All those sounds sound pretty generic and could be made by any polysynth at that time: Oberheim OB series, Roland Jupiter & Juno series and SCI Prophet series.

The American synths (Oberheim & SCI) seem to be popular with R&B artists during that time.

[Thousand Ways]

Thanks, Z. I'm sure that the sounds do come across as generic, but I'm not very good at programming synths, so have struggled to approximate them.

I hadn't considered that Sequential Circuits synths might have been used on these records, but maybe that's true. I associate, say, the Prophet-5 more with things like the second Soft Cell album, The art of falling apart.

[madtheory]

If you can get your hands on a book called "A synthesist's guide to acoustic instruments" and a standard subtractive synth (hardware or plugin) you can start to learn how to get these sounds. Alternatively, the Sound On Sound's series "Synth Secrets" is very good, although a beginner would need to go through it non-chronologically to learn from it. Quick tip- skip the additive and FM synthesis parts, stick to the subtractive synthesis info.

You'll probably find that a lot of these sounds are presets.The first video sounds to me like OBXa presets, mostly. Did you try Google? I found this link:
http://www.discogs.com/Tyrone-Brunson-S ... ease/67188
Which shows the credits on the record, a P5 was used.

The bass on the last two sounds like that Roland single osc plus sub osc thing, which a Juno 6 or SH-101 can do. The lead a poly sounds are mostly Juno-6ish as well.

[Thousand Ways]

Fantastic, thank you. I hadn't heard of A synthesist's guide … before, nor had I seen the SOS series. I mainly use Reason, which has a Subtractor synth, so will try with that.

[madtheory]

You're welcome Here's a plugin model of a Juno 6:
http://tal-software.com/products/tal-u-no-62

[Thousand Ways]

Blimey. Thanks a lot.

[minime123]

wow, love that first track, thanks!
mini