Some music made on desk tops
- "ambient house / YAMAHA QY70", hi-channel!
Man, the QY70 is a beast! This is the 1997 music workstation/PDA/ur-groovebox I've linked works on before, used to make polished downtempo house music (bordering on hip hop beats to study to). The groove is super compelling and suggests a whole studio of gear.
This piece has kind of three movements, and I really like the first & third but find the second a bit cheesy. Maybe that's your thing tho.
- "Lithium Drift", Eric Archer
This is synth designer Eric Archer, doing a product demonstration of his new (as of 2019 when the piece was recorded) modular unit the Rare Waves Hydronium. He uses four of these configured for different musical roles plus one distortion pedal and some minimal drums to make a downtempo acid journey that's a really compelling piece of music entirely apart from whether you're buying the synth. Feels crisp and clear.
- "Sequencing with Pamela's New Workout and a Precision Adder", Electrum Modular
What's coolest to me about modular synths is when you use waveform generators not just as sounds but also to generate pitch control voltages. This peppy techno track does that by "adding" voltages of two slow waves, one for root note and the other for variation. The video shows an explosion of spaghetti wires then walks you (in detailed text captions) through each strand of spaghetti in the chain.
- "Yuki Satellites", Radix
This is a classic tracker tune made in (apparently— the YouTube poster is the original composer) FastTracker II for DOS. One of my favorite pieces of tracker music— lots of vocal samples and cool-sounding crunchy beats, just really fun.
Made in 1999 (post-BBS era) this track was actually originally distributed as mp3, not as tracker files— the .XM only got released when tracker tech got a revival in the late 00s.
A quirky, funky techno jam with a really distinctive fresh feeling. (Lovely sampled 808 drums.) Has really strange sound design that it kind of slips past you, it took until my second listen to notice how weird the drum patterns and 0-coast sounds are. Second half kicks up the energy level in a nice way. The soundtrack to a space program based entirely on astral projection
⬇️ Click below for two more tabletop IDM jams ⬇️
- "1976", Nicholas Lem
Some dark, murky IDM funk. Gummy organ and bass noises, makes me think of pre-Warp Autechre (like, Lego Feet/Incunabula era). Lots of sounds you are like "ah yes, I know what instrument this is" and then you listen a little more carefully and realize you have no idea. I don't know if you could dance to this but I think you could film yourself dancing and then slow down the tape, and it would match.
- "dawless jam at balcony. BalcoWave", epow6oow
In this video this person makes a fun, confident vaporwave jam on their back porch surrounded by laundry paraphernalia. An unusual collection of equipment; the Pocket Operator they're using for the drums is, if you look carefully, "Street Fighter" branded, and the innocuous pocket calculator looking thing (the RK-008— it's a full MIDI workstation) is, I think, actually driving the entire thing.