The Museum for Electronic Music and Culture

Drum Machine of the Week. Yamaha DX200

This is very odd machine. 1 synth track and 3 rhythm tracks. The rhythm tracks are usual Yamaha thing. You can chose drum sound for each steps and each one can be different and you have three tracks to do for whole rhythm tracks complete. You usually need at least 8 tracks for rhythm section but this way (you can change sound of each steps). On the other hand, FM synthesis is not easy to edit but Yamaha managed to every one can find sounds you like and easy to tweak with limited number of the knobs (controls). Just try something then you can find different sound still this is not easy as subtractive synthesis. You always lost what you doing in the FM sound design. Let's see. You have total of 6 operators and 32 pattern of the algorithm to chose from.