| The sounds were editable
using the sliders on the top panel. For the strings section, you
had control over level, brilliance, attack and sustain. For the
poly sounds, you had control over level and brilliance only but
for the mono section, you had many more possibilities with control
over oscillator waveform, portamento, LFO, VCF and ADSR envelope.
Of course, given the era (late '70s / early '80s), there was no
provision for storing your edits.
It was also possible to set up key splits and with separate
outputs for the mono and poly sections, these could be individually
mixed and processed on an external mixer.
Unusually for the time, the keyboard had touch sensitivity
but this was only a crude aftertouch. Farfisa called it "Brass
BRILL" and was only active for the brass poly sound.
The Soundmaker wasn't a huge success! Hardly surprising
considering it was stacked up against the Prophet 5, the Oberheim
OBs and, of course, other string synth hybrids such as the ARP Omni.
Farfisa also lacked the clout to promote the product aggressively
in a highly competitive market.
Nostalgia contains some sounds donated by Italian musician
Aphrologique of Club Silencio who has carefully multi-sampled his
own Soundmaker.
The Soundmaker certainly isn't a 'classic' but it's nice
to feature a rare and obscure synth like this to offer some sounds
that are a bit different from the norm. I am extremely grateful
to Aphrologique for this interesting donation. |
