The joke is: Yamaha copyrighted ‘FM Synthesis’, knowing they owned a new sound that was going to leave the others in the dust – and it did. Starting in 1983, DX7 sales eventually reached an estimated 180,000 units when the Jupiter-8 managed about 3,300 all up. Subtractive synthesis suddenly seemed soggy and smelly. Which frankly it often is.
But the DX7 actually uses phase synthesis, not frequency. That’s what they licensed from Chowning – a simplified method to produce the same result. Read this – I’m not going to do the maths here.
CASIO figured out a much easier way for the Average User to get ‘FM like’ sounds using ‘Phase Distortion’. Because Yamaha had been sloppy with their nomenclature they no had cause to stop this other synthesis technique from appearing on the low cost CZ101 in 1985. A small keyboard and having only 16 patch memories (!) are all part of that ‘low cost’, but even so it was a gift to the aspiring synthesist at a time when a sampler cost a house.
The CZ101 is particularly good at enveloped FM sounds (ping, plonk, bonk). The novice DX7 user starts off making the same sounds but eventually finds subtlety in a wider range of rich textures. And that is the difference – the CZ just doesn’t have the same range. The DX7 might be a pain in the arse to program but you will be rewarded for that pain.
When Roland released the D50 in 1987 they managed to get that ‘rich texture’ thing going in a more professional instrument that (to a certain extent) uses familiar subtractive methods. Importantly the keyboard has effects on board which wowed the Average User, along with a ship load of presets. That sold more than 100,000 units.
Crunch
I bought a second hand CZ101 late in the piece. Having owned a DX7 (big), and then a SY77 (bigger) I needed something small to take to gigs in the 90’s. These gigs started reasonably well, but after some time I found myself performing at a pub where the smell of cigarette carpet was the main feature. The audience was bored, I was bored, and realising there was no point continuing I threw the CZ101 off the stage and jumped expertly onto it, squashing it into a heap of calculator bits. It didn’t deserve that, but then again it didn’t plead very strongly for its life. The audience were all in favour.
These days Arturia have a virtual one, which sounds better than the real one. I haven’t used it on anything. Bad sign.