Depeche Mode - NEW LIFE - Played on Realistic Moog MG-1 Synth

Published on Jan 10, 2019 peahix

Peahix is one of my synth heroes. His creations never cease to amaze me. He also runs optigan.com.

"I resurrected an old Cubase file I created originally to record a version of this track for my Yamaha CS01II synth, in order to test out this Moog MG-1 I picked up for $100 at a garage sale. All the sounds (drums too) were generated by the MG-1. I didn't spend alot of time dialing in the patches or the mix for this one, just sort of got it ball-parky. I did a bit of a better job overall w/ the CS01II version, which you can hear and read about here: [below]

Anyway, the Moog was MIDI'd up to Cubase via a Kenton Pro-Solo, and it seemed to work nicely with that. Neat little synth!"

Yamaha CS01II plays NEW LIFE by Depeche Mode

Published on May 9, 2011 peahix

"Download this with better sound quality here: http://snd.sc/iD5jmD

The Yamaha CS01II is the first real synthesizer I ever owned. I got it when I was about 14 years old, back in 1985 or so. I noticed that I could get reasonable approximations of most of the sounds from Depeche Mode's "Speak & Spell" album with it, but at the time I didn't have the means to make decent multi-track cover versions, even after I got a 4-track.

Recently I was studying the Depeche Mode 5.1 surround mixes, and realized that I could clearly hear all the distinct parts of alot of the songs, including "New Life." I also realized that most of the sounds in "New Life," which heavily featured the ARP 2600, were fairly simple. So I decided to throw together a version of it using just my trusty old Yamaha CS01II as the sole sound source (including the drums), just to see how close I could get to the original.

This version has no vocals at all, but otherwise it comes pretty close to the original. The actual musical arrangement is 100% accurate. The sounds themselves are of course only approximations, and most of them don't have the same level of timbral detail as the ARP originals. I sequenced the whole thing in Cubase via a Kenton Pro Solo going into the custom CV/Gate inputs on my CS01II, recording each monophonic line in one at a time (20 tracks in all). Cubase provided the reverb and EQ, otherwise it's all CS01II."