The first NEW Optigan disc since 1974!
Posted by peahix on October 9, 2008
Over the years, I’ve had lots of folks propose various schemes
for making new Optigan discs using computer software. Finally, someone
has come through with a workable system! Robert Becker is the
engineering wizard that made this technological advance possible! And
what kind of sounds do I give him to make the first test disc with?
Crappy-ass cheesy 80s synth pop!!
OK, this is just a quickie demo, and actually the sound quality on this video isn’t that great but
trust me, the disc sounds fantastically lo-fi and sounds just like an
Optigan disc except with brand new sounds!
We screwed up a few of the chord button assignments, but that’s an easy fix. The drum
sounds are from an Oberheim DMX. The chord patterns are sounds from
Native Instruments Reaktor, sequenced in Cubase. And the scale tones
are also from Reaktor.
We’re working on developing a scheme for making more discs and making them available. All I can say right now is that generating a master is very expensive, and additional copies are
also quite expensive. So unfortunately we won’t be able to just do
whatever the hell we want. But soon I’ll post a survey of some sort at
optigan.com so y’all can weigh in on what kinds of discs you’d put down
some cash for!
Oh, and yes- we’ll be able to make new Orchestron
discs too! (In theory we could make new Talentmaker discs, but the
demand for those probably would not justify the expense.)
Here’s a sneak peak print-out of the disc with the label design:
kevin coral said
very cool! been waiting for his for a looong time, as i’m sure were other optigan owners.
i would say, as far as sounds go, analog keyboards of the 70’s/80’s might be good place to start. please, nothing from computers however!
i also would vote for a voice thing too. not a choir but more harmony stuff like the ’singing rhythm’ disc was…
but anyway, congrats!
BirdFLU said
Sooo many questions here:
How did you do it? You could probably reveal what you did with no worries of people making their own I’m guessing because of the equipment involved.
On the original disks, it’s not the exact same loop of music on each chord button, there are variations for some. Did you, will you, follow that same formula?
Suggestions, although I know you already thought of a bunch yourself:
Reggae disk. A stripped down, roots style 70’s sound would go perfectly with the optigan sound quality. Bubbly organ tone for the organ keys side of the things. Also, if you got too stoned to play anything on your optigan you could just veg out with chord buttons.
Funk disk. Again an early 70’s James Brown kind of funk sound would sound good on the Optigan. James could tear it up on the organ so the keys side could be a nice lead organ tone.
Ska disk. Early 60’s Jamaican ska could only be better with an Optigan helping out. Sound quality matches up. Keys could be some warbly trumpet.
Those are the big three that I’ve always dreamed of. I can think of a million, but I think those three are natural pairings with the optigan.
kevin coral said
oh, and how ’bout the orchestron sounds made into optigan disc form? would that be worth it?
Araybee said
Hey BirdFLU,
Without going into excessive detail on the fabrication process, what we’ve done is taken 57 wavefiles and converted them over to a format that can be read by a super hi-res photo-plotter (8000 dpi). Additionally we’ve ported over the logo and the other graphics. It takes about 4 hours for the plotter to crunch the numbers and 8 minutes to plot. There’s some secret sauce involved, but it’s not really rocket science. We can make contact prints of the photo-plotted master for the production discs. It’s an expensive procedure and it involves a proprietary optical process to accurately punch the center hole. We are researching ways to bring the cost down.
As far as the sample loops, each track is separate so you can do as you say with variations on each chord button. The first disc was just a quick test so Pea didn’t obsess with fancy samples.
The next step in my research is to make a test disc with special tones and waveforms so I can characterize the Optigan’s performance. It would be nice to measure the frequency response and distortion across the tracks. I also have pie-in-the-sky plans for a portable MIDI version of the Optigan, but that part of the research will have to wait.
By the way, I just cringe when I see myself in the video. I didn’t know what to say when Pea pointed the camera at me. Next time I’ll try to be more prepared.
Thanks for your disc ideas!
-RAB-
peahix said
as for making optigan disc versions of the orchestron sounds, this is also possible, and vice-versa. it all depends on whether or not enough folks would be interested in buying a copy to justify the production expenses for any given disc.
one thing i’d like to do is make brand new versions of all the orchestron discs, going back to the original master tapes. but again- it depends on the demand. one thing i can say is that there are VERY few orchestron owners out there! so we’ll just have to play it by ear unless we magically discover a far cheaper way of producing discs.
BirdFLU said
Araybee,
Is getting the loop waveforms into a circle difficult? I always figured that would be the tough thing to do.
You really want to measure the Optigan’s frequency response and distortion? Isn’t that like asking a magician to reveal how the trick is done? That takes all the fun out of it. More scientifically, wouldn’t your measurements not matter so much because each Optigan is different and applies it’s own shortcomings to the sound? (It doesn’t come across in print, but I’m trying to be funny here).
HAHA MIDI Optigan HAHAHA! I did it too though! I used a pitch to MIDI converter and made the Optigan the master keyboard. The inaccurate pitch converter and the constantly varying pitch of the Optigan combined to produce results that made me laugh for about 15 seconds. Then I realized only another Optigan owner would get the joke.
Congratulations though on making a new Optigan disk. I think that is really cool and full of fun possibilities.
peahix said
hi birdflu-
i’ll let robert respond to the measurement disc stuff, but just wanted to mention that i actually do have a true midified optigan! or, more accurately, an optigan that’s been chopped down and converted to a midi controller. it no longer functions as an optigan (doesn’t play discs), but rather it’s for controlling the optigan emulation software that’s being developed. funny to see an optigan with a usb port in the back!
i’ll make a blog post about the midigan soon!
pea
wildfreshness » Beaten to the Punch said
[...] more technical expertise have managed to do what I never was — create a new Optigan disc. Go here to see a demo. I’m super excited about this development and I’m eagerly awaiting the [...]
The Optigan Project » Beaten to the Punch said
[...] have managed to do what I never was — create a brand new Optigan disc. Go to Pea Hick’s blog to see a demo and hear about the technical details. I’m super excited about this development [...]
araybee said
Hi BirdFLU,
Getting the waveforms in the circle wasn’t that hard; just a rectangular to polar translation. The hard part was recreating the disc specs, which required a lot of precise measurements. Once I had the specs, it was straightforward.
There are three reasons for me wanting to know freq resp and distortion:
1) We want to take excess cost out of the discs since they are expensive to make, and by decreasing the resolution we can lower costs significantly. I want do a comparison between resolutions using professional audio test gear, so that’s why I need numbers. We’ll also have several people listen and let us know if they can tell the difference.
2) Someday if we ever make a new portable Optigan, I’ll need such test discs to tweak the circuits.
3) I’m an engineer and I’m just curious about it.
To me the magic and wonder is in seeing how another engineer went about addressing a difficult challenge. I know much has been said about the limitations of the Optigan and what a shlock engineering job it was, but after tearing one apart my impression is that they did the most with the limited resources they had.
You and Pea are talking about MIDI controllers, but I want to build a new box that plays the discs without a keyboard attached. I don’t want to chop an Optigan; I have ideas for features that the originals never had.
Pea points out that the Optigan controller is nice because of the chord buttons since it’s hard to select chords and effects using a conventional keyboard. Although some home organs used conventional keys for chords, buttons are much nicer.
Thanks for the all the questions!
-RAB-
BirdFLU said
“You and Pea are talking about MIDI controllers, but I want to build a new box that plays the discs without a keyboard attached. I don’t want to chop an Optigan; I have ideas for features that the originals never had.”
Now there is another great idea! Your reasons for wanting to test the Optigan make perfect sense, I guess that’s why you’re engineer.
Peahix and I (Robert Schmeltzer) sort of know each other from way back at the start of the web; I had the first Optigan site up in May 1995. Although my site was decades ahead of its time, Pea decided he could do better and then did it. And Pea even sent me a beautiful cast silver Optigan pin which I still have. I live in Portland , OR now. Portland and San Diego are two cities where Optigans abound. I don’t know why, Pea probably does though.
Yeah, I’ve got a lot of questions. My wife has a question too, “Robert, why do you need TWO Optigans?”
peahix said
hey robert s, speaking of your optigan site, does it exist online anywhere anymore? the link i have for it is outdated… lemmeno and i’ll put a link here!
oh, and btw- that optigan pin isn’t real silver!
pea
kevin coral said
@peahix
i for one would LOVE it if you went back and made new orchestron discs from the master tapes and i (probably) would pay a lot for them!
it seems to me that getting things like that from the optigan’s “decedents,” if you will, would be something most optigan owners would go crazy for. i mean, even before making any “new” sounds. getting the sounds the of the orchestron and maybe even a few of the talentmaker sounds, redone from the master tapes, would be just heaven, to my way of thinking.
peahix said
well, as for the talentmaker sounds, i don’t have those master tapes, and they likely don’t exist anymore, so there’s no way to make remastered optigan discs of those sounds. i have all the master tapes for the optigan and orchestron, and can work with those sounds, but given the expensive nature of the project, we’ll have to find out just what sort of demand there is for specific things before we sink money into it. i think it’s safe to say that the more common optigan discs are very low on the priority list for remastering. heck, originals of the most common discs can hardly fetch $10-$15, let alone what our new discs will cost.
as for porting orchestron sounds to the optigan, out of the 8 orchestron sounds, only 4 of them never appeared on optigan discs: flute, cello, violins & french horn. of course, the sound everyone wants is the choir, and even though that’s available on the optigan vox humana disc, that disc is of course extremely rare, and only a handful of optigoners have a copy of that. so yeah, that’s definitely worth making an optigan disc of- possibly as part of a “kraftwerk” themed optigan disc.
believe me, i’d love for this to be a cheap enough process that we could just go ahead and do everything we want without worrying too much about sales, but at this point that’s not the case.
kevin coral said
@peahix
i understand the costs concerns completely and maybe a “kraftwerk” themed disc is the way to go. i just think that having the sounds direct cousin(decendents was maybe the wrong word to use?) of the optigan, the orchestron, for the optigan (esp. form the master tapes) just makes a lot of sense. maybe it’s too “purist?”
and not to be contrarian or anything but the orchestron choir is not the sound i would most want for the optigan, actually. the strings and french horn and organ are all more interesting to me, esp as there are no real optigan discs that cover those sounds. and to me having the ability to essentially turn an opitgan into a orchestron, considering their rareness, is just too good an opportunity to pass up…
peahix said
hi kevin, there’s no question that certain ideas seem to make sense, but the more pressing issue is whether or not there’s enough people that want to *pay* for those things. that’s the bottom line. if it seems like it’s a popular idea, then we’ll go for it. otherwise we have to follow what folks tell us they’ll actually buy.
btw, both of the orchestron organ sounds already exist on optigan discs, and the orch french horn is really nothing to write home about at all- it’s a very bland sound, even though it is an actual french horn. without the attack and overtones, it’s pretty boring.
kevin coral said
oh, i thought the orchestron organ was a different hammond organ. anyway, maybe this points *more* towards a “kraftwerk” disc featuring the 4 orchestron sounds you mentioned as a possibility before? that *seems* like something that would be popular, i guess.
i must admit, i have little to no idea what other opitgan owners want!
peahix said
well, that’s why we’re doing the survey! well anyway, i think it’s safe to say that a kraftwerk themed disc, with the choir scale and some sort of minimal “radioactivity” era kraftwerk-esque bass/chords/drums would be a big seller…
G said
Hey Pea,
Can you make me a special connector for the keyboard so you rearrange the wires so I can play my orchestron discs on my optigan, then i can disconnect the optigan keyboard connector, when i want to play orchestron discs, and reattach it when i want to play optigan discs?
I dont know which keys are what maybe you do, it would be a matter of getting an optigan extra ribbon and soddering it correctly for me and others that are interested.
peahix said
g, it’s not that simple. the orchestron discs would mostly map to the chord buttons on the optigan, requiring a more complex re-wiring job than what you’re suggesting. i’m not the person for this. you might want to try yourself.
Dan said
Kudos gentlemen! Job well done. If I had a vote on a disc I would like to see, it would have to be a punk rock disc ala the Ramones. Man, would I have fun with that!
I cannot wait to see what happens next with this project.
Dan
ray haze said
wow..i’ve been trying to figure out a method of making discs since i got mine a few months back and alternate ‘image’ patters for experiment’s sake..like, you know those moving picture books that have a scattered image with which you move a transparent striped sheet over to make an image of a spinning cube or something? i was thinking of making something like that with a floating disc of radial lines on top of a spinning disc of some type of animated image..just to try and generate a generic spectrographic type effect on a waveform image i guess..probably a misguided idea, but…