Analog Synths sound dated?

When I was listening to National Health with my dad on the car, he was annoyed with the extensive use of synths, I was surprised since he likes some Prog,  especially Yes with Wakeman. But with my brother we said to ourselves, "oh that's odd".

Edited by The Quiet One - February 01 2011 at 16:19

Analog synths are nowhere near as dated as the digital synths that were popular in the 1980s.

'Dated sound' is a very blurry term. One sound can drop out of favour, but when 'comeback' strikes, the sound is not dated any more. Everything is back in fashion, every retro sound has it own, retro niche: from analog synth of the 70's, analog 80's polysynths, early digital synths, old drum machines or Commodore 64 SIM chip sounds.

Here's a band from the 2000's - but there's not a single sound that couldn't be heard in the middle 80's.

In a way, they do, in that it is a very 70s sound, and the only bands that use it these days are ones that sound as though they would be right at home in the 70s. This doesn't necessarily mean that it sounds bad.

Some synths produce sounds that we can associate with certain eras because of the prominence of them in that era, but "dated" is a weird way to say that, in my opinion. Most sounds have their place, and just because they way they were used in the pasts evokes different feelings in people, doesn't mean that should be thought of negatively. I always think back to Steve Roach's Structures from Silence (1984). I don't know his exact synth list for that album, but there is likely a mix of digital and analog synthesizers, with more digital on Dreamtime Return (1988). Both are ambient classics, and Structures, in particularly, is one of the most comforting, velvety, dare I say "warm" albums I know. And what would it take for a band not to sound dated? Even if you had supersaws everywhere it could be traced to the mid 90s trance movement. Dated? Or is this an acceptable form of dated (sarcasm)? 

They can't help it.  They were made that way.  If they do sound dated, that's just part of the charm. That and all the patch cords they have.


Edited by Slartibartfast - February 01 2011 at 19:27

As a keyboard player, this topic actually strikes pretty close to home.  I always wondered, why can the guitar player get away with owning/playing a Les Paul or Strat for years, but I'm always just behind the curve of what keyboard is hip?  It gets expensive.

Other than the piano, the keyboard world has always been a latest, greatest free-for-all, which in general has meant only successfully working musicians or trust-fund babies can afford them.

Keyboards do uniquely sync to a place and time and style of music, which I'd say generally is not typical of other instruments (other than the Telecaster sound being associated with country music, the Les Paul being associated with blues, etc.).  The only exception I suppose are the original Hammond organs (L100, M3, B3) which seem to have found a niche.  Too bad they haven't been made for decades.

But think about it.  Other than pianos or Hammonds, what are the keyboards?

British bands (c. 1965 etc....Dave Clark Five, Animals):  Vox Continental, which gives those bands a dated sound.

Garage bands (c. 1966-67...? and the Mysterians):  Farfisa, later resurrected by Steve Nieve (Elvis Costello) for retro reasons, on say This Year's Girl.

Wurilitzer electric piano (c. 1970)...listen to a little Spirit and countless others.

Fender Rhodes (c. 1969-75).  Keyboard of choice for the early fusion bands. 

Hohner Clavinet (70's).  Think Stevie Wonder and pretty much every funk band on the planet.

Moog Synthesizers.  70's.  You know the names.  Emerson, primarily.

ARP Synthesizers.  70's.  Again, you know the names.  Wakeman, Townsend, Hancock, Zawinul.

Mellotron.  70's.  What?!  Mellotron dated.  Never.  You know the bands.

Yamaha DX-7.  The standard synth for any 80's pop song and immediately recognizable.

There were a slew of other synths in the 80's (Prophet V, Oberheim, etc.). 

Now what all these have in common is that they no longer exist.  Oh, there's a few here and there, but really any decent workstation (Yamaha, Korg, Roland) or soft synth can now more or less approximate the sound, which in this day and age is apparently good enough, at least compared to the relative expense of maintaining a real B3, a real Mellotron, a real Moog or ARP. 

So yes the sound of any of these I suppose is dated.  Doesn't mean it's bad.  Just means they are generally associated with a particular time and place.

Slartibartfast wrote: Unless I'm mistaken, the DX-7 is not analog.

Sorry, I got on a roll there.  It is distinctive and forever associated with a time and sound.  Now I'm doubting whether the Prophet was a true analog synth and am to lazy to research right now.  Actually, the Vox and Farfisa probably were not strictly analog either in terms of synthesis.  In fact the Mellotron was not really analog.  Hey, it was a nice succinct little history  

The main reason I feel analog synths (at least monophonic ones) sound dated in 70's prog is because there is an undeniable warmth to their sound. This is due to the fact that they were recorded strictly on tape and processed thru old school pre-amps and compressors. But another major factor is that analog synth filters (the parameter that controls cut-off frequency and resonance of an oscillators signal) are not made the way they were in the 70's. The filter has a big effect on the overall timbre of a synth and I guarantee if you compare an original Mini-Moog's filter to one of the new Voyager's filter, you would notice a distinct difference. 

This reminds me of something that I find very ironic and inconsistent among prog fans. A lot of prog fans seem to hate neo prog because it sounds regressive and not progressive(in the literal sense)and yet many of these bands use digital keyboards. Meanwhile many of these same prog fans prefer analog keyboards in their prog(which were used in the seventies). I'm sorry but you can't have it both ways. You criticize neo for being retro and yet the so called real prog bands you like use analog keyboards. That doesn't make sense to me.

To answer the original posters question though, I would have to say it depends on the context of the music. Some of it does sound dated. To me that's not necessarily a bad thing though.