Evolution of Tone Generator Systems & Approaches to Music Production
Part 2/2
The quest for new tone-generation techniques
As digital synthesizers moved from FM to sample-based tone generation, synths from all makers evolved at a rapid pace. The decreasing price of memory brought with it increases in the number of voice presets available to the player, and in the size of the wave ROMs used to store sampling waveforms, as well as a reduction in the overall price of the instruments themselves, and the advantages that each maker was able to offer dwindled.
Under these circumstances, the Yamaha synthesizer development team was faced with the problem of finding a new tone generation system to replace PCM. Their task was not easy; they had to find something altogether different from analog, PCM, and FM, the three systems that even today remain the mainstay of tone generation. In their search they found a system called "Physical Modeling," which appeared to show promise.
Physical Modeling is an approach to tone generation where the physical actions that actually occur when producing the sound are expressed in the form of mathematical equations, which are then used to model the overall process. If, for example, producing the sound of a saxophone, this type of tone generator would mathematically model the musician blowing air into the instrument, the blown air causing the reed to vibrate, and the sound of the vibration being amplified due to sympathetic resonance inside the body of the sax.
As with FM synthesis, this method is based on a theoretical approach developed at Stanford University, with fundamental research having started back in the 80s. However, it was not until the following decade—when the development of new tone-generation systems became an urgent matter—that the Yamaha synthesizer development team of the time decided to begin R&D with the aim of converting it into a practical technology for use in synths.
It took all of the team's resources to do so, but their dedication ultimately paid dividends in the Virtual Acoustic (VA) tone generator—the first in the world to use physical modeling. We proudly unveiled this tone generator to the world in 1993 as the heart of the VL1 synthesizer.
With just 2-note polyphony, this unconventional synth contrasted starkly with the SY Series and other similar instruments from the heyday of the synthesizer, which possessed a much higher level of polyphony and were capable of simultaneously producing the sounds of multiple different instruments. Yet the VL1 stole the show with its ability to reproduce—with remarkable levels of realism—the sounds of wind instruments such as the saxophone and trumpet, as well as the violin and other string instruments.
Yamaha VL1 v2 & VP1
In order to do so, a signal from a sound generator known as an instrument was processed and sculpted by a modifier, which controls the sound of the instrument model. In the case of a wind instrument, for example, an instrument corresponding to the mouth piece or reed would be combined with a modifier defining the physical material or shape of whatever was being modeled.
A range of parameters unique to the VL1 could be assigned to the instrument and modifier in order to modulate their behavior, but the real driver of this synth's realistic sound was the high degree of freedom with which it could be played. Unlike the synthesizers of the past, notes were not produced just by playing the keyboard: if modeling a wind instrument, for example, the VL1 could be set to produce sounds using its breath controller—a device that changes MIDI parameters based on how hard you blow onto it.
With the VL1, the musician would blow onto the breath controller exactly as if he or she was blowing into the instrument being modeled, while at the same time pressing the keys on the keyboard. While any MIDI-compatible synth of the day would have been able to control volume using a breath controller, what made the VL1 special was the way in which it faithfully modeled instruments such as sax and trumpet to the extent that even subtle changes in tone and pitch could be produced based on how hard one blew onto the controller, all of which made for dramatically more realistic sounding performances.
In fact, the wind instrument sounds produced by this synthesizer could easily be mistaken for the real thing, and its release attracted massive interest from all over the world. Subsequent models included the VL1-m, which had the VL1 as its tone generator module, and the low-cost VL70-m. Even today, these instruments are still regularly used by wind synthesizer musicians.
In addition to the Self Oscillation type VA (S/VA) tone generator used in the VL1, Yamaha also developed a Free Oscillation type—the F/VA—and the VP1 virtual analog synthesizer released the following year was driven by this engine. The F/VA tone generator could model many different variations in the striking, plucking, and bowing of percussion and string instruments, but rather than being limited to simulating existing sounds, it could also model instruments that had never even been conceived of.
Although the VL1 and the VP1 synthesizers were very technologically advanced and expressive, a number of different controllers, such as the breath controller, had to be played at the same time in order to perform on them, and this meant that their musicians needed to become highly skilled. For this reason, they did not become particularly popular with conventional keyboard players and remained a niche instrument.
At the mercy of the 90s' economy
In the 80s Yamaha established itself as a leader in the development of digital synthesizers with the groundbreaking DX Series. With the arrival of the PCM synth era in the latter half of that decade, we successfully developed the AWM2 tone generator, before moving on to the powerful SY Series. Yet all was not smooth sailing for this synth maker.
One of the biggest factors affecting our business was exchange rate fluctuation. When the DX7 was released in 1983, one US dollar was roughly equivalent to 240 Japanese yen; however, this dropped markedly to 145 yen by the time of the SY77 release in 1989. The dollar had fallen even further when we introduced the SY99 at the end of 1991, dipping below the 130 yen mark.
From then until the arrival of the VP1 in 1994, the yen strengthened even further, ultimately forcing the dollar below 100 yen in value. Back in the DX7 era, we proudly delivered high-performance synthesizers at reasonable prices to customers all over the world, but the rapid appreciation of the yen in the 90s severely eroded the price competitiveness of our products.
In particular, the synthesizers that Yamaha had developed as entry level models now found themselves in the mid to high price brackets in overseas markets, putting them beyond the budget of the users for whom they were intended. The collapse of the Japanese economic bubble brought further grief.
The period from 1991 onward was marked by rapid economic decline in Japan, and sales of relatively expensive electronic instruments suffered greatly. Other Japanese manufacturers endured similar hardship and faced these difficult times by streamlining their product range, sharing functionality between multiple models, and reconfiguring their lineups with less expensive products.
Although the synthesizer had been born of a desire to grant the musician the same level of expressivity as afforded by acoustic instruments, advances in sampling technologies had now made it possible to produce exactly the same sounds as these instruments with ease. As a result, more importance came to be placed on the synthesizer as an alternative to acoustic instruments than on the functionality that it provided for creative sound design.
Furthermore, a number of other developments had also made it easier to compare the sounds of synths from different manufacturers using the same performance data. For example, the General MIDI (GM) standard was published in 1991 for synthesizers that produce sounds in response to MIDI messages, and the Standard MIDI File (SMF) was developed as a common format for exchanging MIDI performance data.
Consequently, synth buyers focused more on differences in the sounds produced and suitability to music production than on synthesizer-specific functions and playability. Taking their lead from this, other synth makers scaled back the resources committed to the development of hardware and functionality, instead channeling their effort into the quality and diversity of the waveforms at the heart of their PCM synthesizers.
That is to say, they strove to compete and differentiate themselves on the basis of digital content, and this produced steady growth in customers. In reaction to this trend of the times, Yamaha sought to get back on track via technological innovation. At the opposite end of the spectrum from the performance-oriented VL and VP models, we worked to enhance the music production functionality of our workstations.
And for the more cost-conscious customers, we released our W Series in 1994, followed a year later by the QS300 synthesizer—a model that supported the XG MIDI standard. The W Series synths were particularly well suited to high-quality music production with their 8MB of wave memory (the most available at the time), 6 independent effect processors, 16-part multitimbrality in all situations, and GM support. Unlike the instruments of the SY Series, however, they did not find favor with a great many pro keyboard players.
Numerous different ideas such as the development of new tone generators, adding innovative functionality, and further enhancing our PCM tone generators were proposed in order to escape this rut, and we also planned and released a great many new products. Unfortunately, however, Yamaha was unable to keep up with rapid change in the synthesizer market and the general business environment, and we also failed to release any products that fully satisfied the needs of users.
Needless to say, this exacerbated an already precarious situation for the Yamaha synth. In the first half of the 90s alone we released or upgraded around 30 different products, including the SY/TG Series, the EOS B Series, the P Series, the VL/VP Series, the W Series, the QS300, and the A7000, and it is evident that period was one of trial and error. As we urgently searched for a way to overcome these difficulties, Yamaha's synthesizer business remained stuck in a real quagmire.
