As the 80s drifted from mostly analogue to largely digital, would the 90s be the decade when the synth scene settled? Not really…

The 90s: rave culture, Britpop and a cultural move from the right to the left, all of which had an effect on the music industry at large. But as we cast our minds all the way back to 1990, the decade began with a period that felt like something of a wilderness for synthesisers. The late 1980s’ dominance of the Yamaha DX series of synthesisers created a desire for ever cleaner and more digital sounds. Manufacturers, including Yamaha, were scrambling to find the next big thing.

One of the earliest of the new breed was released in 1990 from Korg. The Wavestation synth was a five-octave keyboard-based synth. Apart from an expanded polyphony of 32 notes, it also provided 16-part multitimbrility, making it an ideal companion for your software-based computer sequencer. Moreover, it featured some very interesting synthesis elements. It employed vector synthesis, which allowed the loading of ROMbased samples in four locations, with the ability to seamlessly move from one sound to another, a little like a four-way mixer. It also featured some incredibly hypnotic sounds, in the shape of Wave Sequences. These machine-like and rhythmic sounds were loop-like, and liberally sprinkled throughout many chart hits from this era.