More Horsepower

Dance music truly exploded in the early 90’s and I felt I was in the midst of a musical phenomenon. Illegal raves were still being organised, pirate radio stations seemed to spring up every week and if you went to the right record shops, you could find treasure. 

One day a friend of mine played me a recording of a pirate radio station broadcasting in my home city. Through the hiss of the cassette and the FM broadcast, the magnificent sound of ‘Horsepower’ by Ravesignal III assaulted my eardrums. It was a truly glorious moment. Once I tracked down the CD I noticed it was released by a label called R&S. I began to buy most things released by R&S for a few years including the original “Analogue Bubblebath” by Aphex Twin, Human Resource’s “Dominator” and Jam & Spoon “Tales from a Danceographic Ocean” all of which are worth a few pounds now. 

Yet it is CJ Bolland’s Ravesignal III project that I treasure above them all. Thus, imagine my excitement when whilst playing my new Microwave XTk synthesizer I found the preset Bolland used for the intro to ‘Horsepower’. The patch has been modified slightly but certainly comes from the Microwave. For many years I wondered which synths were used on this track. The drums are obviously TR-909 and TR-808 but everything else remained a mystery. So I am about to get my flange effects up and running and try to recreate the majesty of Horsepower. I wish it was 1991 again.

Integration of the MicroWave XTk

Buying new gear can be full of disappointments and pitfalls. For an initial period the frustrations of a new synth not being fully integrated into my studio far out-weighs the excitement. The recent acquisition of my MicroWave XTk has proven this true, but also added the stress of potentially ruining my new toy.

You see I like to do a number of things when I buy second hand gear. The first is to clean it and the second reset it to ‘factory’ standards. Inevitably, old synths are full of sounds created by their previous owners and before I create my own, I like to start afresh. Once I had located the latest factory presets, I also purchased a librarian/editor to make programming easier from my PC. Then I created a MIDI patch script for use in Cubase, as there did not seem to be one readily available on the net. Creating patch scripts is a laborious and maddening process that took me a whole evening. In the meantime, my new toy sits untouched, I really had no time to play the thing.

With modern digital synthesizers, there is also the daunting and potentially ruinous process of updating the Operating System (OS). Having checked my synth, it appeared to be running on version 2.29 of the OS. I then trawled through various web sites and found that the latest OS is 2.33 dating from 2000. A quick visit to the newly reinstated Waldorf website (the company went out of business in 2004 and have only resurfaced at the end of 2007) gave me the latest OS.

The one thing about updating the OS of a synthesizer is that if it goes wrong, the synth could end up irrevocably damaged. If the part of the OS that tells the synthesizer how to ‘boot up’ is damaged it will never work again. Scary when you have just paid a substantial sum. With fingers crossed I loaded the OS into Cubase and played the file to the XTk. The display read ‘Receiving System 2.33…” and all looked great until an error message appeared. Now I was really worried. Having read the manual again I realised Cubase was sending MIDI clock data to the XTk and once I turned this off the system updated without problem (running at about 90bpm it took just a couple of minutes).

Now everything is set I can actually use the machine to create sonic mayhem. And boy does it create mayhem. The bass from this synth is truly astounding and its ability to create a sheer wall of noise is unrivalled. The MicroWave is a truly iconic instrument. Just one look of the red alpha dial and you know what is in front of you. Just one press on the keys and you could pierce you eardrums.

Microwave XTK has arrived

I have no idea what to do with this thing yet. I'm lost. I thought the Korg Triton was difficult to master. After half an hour with this thing I am no closer to getting it to do anything I want it to. Complex. A challenge. I like it aldreay.

But it does look fantastic. And I have been chasing one for a few years, so to actually own one finally is a great feeling.