First of all – have a look at my post on the Yamaha TG77/SY77. Read about weight, about large slabs of metal and the gymnastics involved: I had an SY77, it was like a large metal dog that wouldn’t get off the couch. My more recent TG77 has aspirations to that – but being smaller it concentrates heft into a tighter space. I once made an album called CUISINE which was based on the SY77 and an Amiga running Bars And Pipes if that gives you the time frame. That album has just been re-issued. In 2026. Bloody hell. I had better dust off the Realtime Convolution and Modulation Synthesis manual…
I’ve long been waiting for a virtual SY77. But Yamaha are more interested in moving the line along with Montages and the like. Fair enough. The technology has moved on. And I have a fully software relative of that.
So along comes Swayed – that’s apparently a joke on S-Y that I don’t get. The FM part of it is relatively easy, there’s been FM here there and everywhere. The main issue is in the samples – firstly they are Yamaha’s samples, and that means a license. Not particularly wonderful, good enough decades ago – these days you could improve them BUT they have to act as complex oscillators in that good old Realtime Convolution and Modulation Synthesis. If you update them 1990s patches won’t work. Including mine.
So the software author had the problem of not breaking copyright while coming up with a near exact sound alike. I’d cheat if it were me. That’s why I don’t make software. Has he succeeded? It’s been a long time since I had to get a .syx file out of a hardware synthesiser – completely forgot that sort of thing. A bit of to and fro with MIDIox and … for me it’s pretty good. One particular sound is not quite right, others are probably perfect.
Software cares
The 1989 hardware SY77 was a complete pain the arse to program. Swayed is a far kinder interface – and can also program the hardware (it says – I haven’t gone that far). The interface is as you would expect in 2026 – graphs and knobs all over. The odd bits acknowledge the unusual nature of the original. With this interface I can now unpack how I made sounds back in the day – at the time having near no idea what the hell was going on.
Why should you choose Swayed? It made sense for me to buy it just in case we have to perform some oldies. I can’t see that this particular use of FM will appeal to modern users. For most people there’s much better FM synthesisers now – some with more samples as well. In the 90s this was the forefront of synthesis but I’d be straight onto some other tool if I was young now. The online community is all whining about the samples, authenticity and other refuges of the musical scoundrel.
Later on Yamaha did the SY99 – and then canned the whole idea. Let me at least link you to a sensible account of Realtime Convolution and Modulation Synthesis – https://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/sy77-the-power-behind-the-buttons/5757