Seiko DS-250 Additive Synth - "Falling Hours"

YouTube Uploaded by synthspotter on Feb 18, 2012

"I created this song entirely with the Seiko DS-250 synthesizer. After noticing how few videos of the synth are available, I decided to compose a short piece demonstrating some of its sounds. I used about eight total. The only external effects are reverb and delay.

The DS-250 is one of two or three additive synthesis keyboards manufactured in the early to mid 1980s by Seiko, an electronics company better known for watch making. As synthesizers go, the DS-250 is extremely limited. It has just 16 basic preset sounds, with no edit function to speak of. It has two sound banks (Sound 1 and Sound 2), but each shares the same 16 presets. You can select different sounds for each bank, then stack or split them across the keyboard. Each bank has its own individual audio output, selectable MIDI channel, and controls for volume, decay (three settings) and vibrato (with selectable delay). Sound 1 can be tuned +14 cents, and Sound 2 can be tuned a 3rd, 5th, 7th or octave above Sound 1. There is also a pitch wheel, a chorus switch with three settings (including off), and a transpose button that can shift the pitch up to any key as well as up or down an entire octave.

While the pair of built-in speakers suggests that Seiko was aiming for the home-keyboard market, the DS-250 could also be paired up with the DS-310 module, which gave the user a fairly deep level of editing capability. On its own, however, the DS-250 wasn't much. Some nice sounds, though.

For more information about Seiko DS synths, search matrixsynth's excellent blog, matrixsynth.blogspot.com, or watch his video here: youtu.be/wr1gFuRNjMk [posted here]. Also check out onephatcat's video here: youtu.be/GCd3fmjcyAI [posted here]

'Falling Hours' and this video are © 2012 by Christopher Scapelliti"