KURZWEIL K250 first workstation 1984

synthlegends

"The Kurzweil K250 by Ray Kurzweil, manufactured by Kurzweil Music Systems was developed 1983 together with Stevie Wonder, Robert Moog and Alan Pearlman and introduced 1984. It was the first Workstation ever made, the first ROM-Player with sampled sounds compressed in ROM, maybe with one of the first inbuilt sequencer and one of the first Samplers. It had 12 voices and also 12 separate Digital Audio converters and analog envelopes. The later K1200 and K1000 series didn't have this technology. Later in 1990 the K2000 used a new technology, the VAST Synthesis.

The price of the original K250 was around 14.000 British Pound. The K250 had fantastic nature sounds, which were not heard anyware in a keyboard before. All such orchestral, piano, drum and other sampled sounds were the fist time found in an electronic instrument. Besides the ROM with around 80 sounds, there were 4 Soundblocks established which are all built in in mine.

I play here a very little palette of some sounds of the factory ROM and 4 Soundblocks in this demo. Everything is played life into the audio interface without midi and without any effects. The frist example is adopted by SAGA the Song Images (LP Images at twilight from 1979). Take care and thanks for watching this video. Rüdiger"