08-07-2018, 10:48 PM
OK, first impressions. I haven't made any music with it yet, I've just been browsing presets and trying to get my head around how it works. It's very straightforward overall, but a few things are unintuitive or maybe just badly explained in the manual.
I honestly wasn't expecting much from the TG100 but I wanted something fun to play around with and it was cheap. But during the weeks I was waiting for the guy to get back to me, I listened to a lot of tracks made with the thing and I found myself really liking the sound of it. Sure, it's not the best choice for DOS games and GM playback and it's somewhat maligned in retrogaming circles for this reason -- unfairly so, I think. The original compositions made with the TG100 are actually impressive for such a basic little rompler. Some people nowadays complain about it only having 12 bit samples instead of 16 bit but I don't really have a problem with that. I mean, if you want pristine sound quality why are you messing around with 27 year old hardware? The early nineties lo-fi cheese factor is a big part of its appeal IMO and if you're going to dismiss it because "there are things that sound better" you're missing the point. It is what it is: an early and failed attempt by Yamaha to cash in on the GM game music trend. But it was also made for the burgeoning bedroom musician crowd of the time, and in that regard it's a really cool little unit. Dated, of course, but it has plenty of patches that made me go "nice, I want to use this for something!".
It's easy becoming jaded about technology. Sometimes it's justified -- some things just simply become obsolete -- and sometimes it's not. In the case of music equipment I would say that there is very little that doesn't offer at least something cool, unusual and useable, especially when it comes to synths/romplers. If I try to imagine what 1991 me would have thought of this thing... at the time I was 17, still living with my parents, and the the only thing resembling synth gear I had was a Casio VL-1 (!). That, along with a guitar, a preamp/fx unit, a cheap amp, a 1970's tape deck and a boom box, was the extent of my home studio back then. A computer with a sequencer and a TG100 would have blown my mind! So I think it's good to stay humble about these things and keep an open mind. That way you're less likely to miss out on things that actually have musical value even to this day.
I honestly wasn't expecting much from the TG100 but I wanted something fun to play around with and it was cheap. But during the weeks I was waiting for the guy to get back to me, I listened to a lot of tracks made with the thing and I found myself really liking the sound of it. Sure, it's not the best choice for DOS games and GM playback and it's somewhat maligned in retrogaming circles for this reason -- unfairly so, I think. The original compositions made with the TG100 are actually impressive for such a basic little rompler. Some people nowadays complain about it only having 12 bit samples instead of 16 bit but I don't really have a problem with that. I mean, if you want pristine sound quality why are you messing around with 27 year old hardware? The early nineties lo-fi cheese factor is a big part of its appeal IMO and if you're going to dismiss it because "there are things that sound better" you're missing the point. It is what it is: an early and failed attempt by Yamaha to cash in on the GM game music trend. But it was also made for the burgeoning bedroom musician crowd of the time, and in that regard it's a really cool little unit. Dated, of course, but it has plenty of patches that made me go "nice, I want to use this for something!".
It's easy becoming jaded about technology. Sometimes it's justified -- some things just simply become obsolete -- and sometimes it's not. In the case of music equipment I would say that there is very little that doesn't offer at least something cool, unusual and useable, especially when it comes to synths/romplers. If I try to imagine what 1991 me would have thought of this thing... at the time I was 17, still living with my parents, and the the only thing resembling synth gear I had was a Casio VL-1 (!). That, along with a guitar, a preamp/fx unit, a cheap amp, a 1970's tape deck and a boom box, was the extent of my home studio back then. A computer with a sequencer and a TG100 would have blown my mind! So I think it's good to stay humble about these things and keep an open mind. That way you're less likely to miss out on things that actually have musical value even to this day.
