Deep Signal Studios

21/08/2026

Check out Mike Tsouris’s story about finally mixing his band Defunct’s last album that he had abandoned when his band broke up nearly 25 years ago. We are glad we were able to help by transferring his ADAT tapes. https://youtu.be/6XBzFL4OHc0

In 2001, my band Defunct recorded an eight-song nu-metal album onto...

15/06/2026

Check out our new interactive MIDI setup educational tool!
https://www.deepsignalstudios.com/midi/interactive-midi-lesson

17/02/2026

Here is our setup from Vintage Computer Fest SoCal 2026. We demonstrated playing a small selection of YM2151 arcade music (Double Dragon 1 and 2, Rastan, Strider, and Golden Axe) from standard midi files on the TX81Z, including sysex patch dumps at the head of each SMF. We also played Streets of Rage 2 level 1 song by Yuzo Koshiro on the Sega Genesis through little-scale's the GenMDM. I also showed of my custom GenMDM web midi editor based on 2xAA's code. It includes arpeggiator, chord mode, midi echo and poly spillover for the PSG section (which was set up with the keyboard most of the time). Also notable is the built in patch library based on game titles and level/song names.

12/02/2026

Here is the companion blog post for our presentation this weekend at the Vintage Computer Fest SoCal.

The Discovery of FM In 1967, John Chowning was experimenting with vibrato in the MUSIC V programming environment at Stanford University. He pushed the vibrato rate above 20 Hz, past the point where the ear perceives individual pitch fluctuations, and into the range where the modulation itself begins...

09/02/2026

Did you know the same synthesizer technology was in arcade cabinets AND professional keyboards at the same time?

In the late 1980s, Yamaha put their FM synthesis chips in everything. The DX7 and TX81Z keyboards used by pop and house musicians, while in the arcade it running the music to Double Dragon, Rastan, Strider and Shinobi, and the Sega Genesis in your living room. Same 4-operator FM engine across all of them!

John Chowning invented FM synthesis at Stanford in 1967. Yamaha licensed it and deployed it from concert stages to arcades to living rooms. He just received a Technical Grammy for it two weeks ago.

At Vintage Computer Fest SoCal (Feb 14-15, Hotel Fera, Orange CA), I'm demonstrating this connection live. I extract the original sound patches from arcade game recordings using MAME and vampirefrog's vgm2x tool, then convert them to TX81Z format. Early versions of the pipeline used Martin Tarenskeen's txconvert (DXconvert), which handles conversions between dozens of FM synth patch formats. We eventually wrote a custom direct converter in python to get closer to the original arcade sound with scripts assemble everything into a single MIDI file. The result is a self-contained Standard MIDI File with all the Yamaha TX81Z voice data embedded as sysex -- just hit play and the TX81Z loads its own patches and plays the song. No manual programming required.

For the Genesis side, we'll be using little-scale's GenMDM MIDI cartridge to drive real Sega hardware with the original YM2612 patches and midi notes extracted from VGZ game files.

Games music will include Rastan, Double Dragon, Shinobi, Golden Axe, Strider, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Streets of Rage 1 and 2. No emulation -- real FM chips playing real game patches!

Sequences will be driven by a Pocket 386 with a Roland MPU-IPC-T MIDI interface and a Macintosh SE with EZVision MIDI Translator II.

https://www.deepsignalstudios.com/fm-synthesis-history
https://www.vcfsocal.com/exhibitors

26/10/2025

Great to see and speak and meet artists and label today at the event today, and see the pressing machine and the pretty colorful vinyl.

24/02/2025

It was great to meet Chris Pickles at Vintage Computer Festival SoCal last weekend and glad to inspire him to use MIDI for song composition and recording. He too has a Roland Juno 106 and Moog Rogue but up until this point has only played them through the keyboard in his various band projects. We recommended using any modern DAW, a USB MIDI interface and the Kenton Pro Solo MK II for controlling the Rogue through MIDI. From there a pair of special 1/8 inch to TSR 1/4 inch cables need to be made to make the connection between the Rogue and Pro Solo, as well as setting the gate to S-Trig on the Pro Solo. But he as opted for the Doepfer Dark Time to start playing with analog sequencing.

16/02/2025

A few pics from our booth today by Everyone was telling us our booth was the best at maybe because it is the most interactive, teaching people how to make music with vintage computer sequencers and synths.

29/01/2025

Make music on vintage computer MIDI sequencers.
February 15th and 16th, Saturday & Sunday
Hotel Fera Event Center, Orange, Ca
https://www.vcfsocal.com/

11/12/2024

We are participating once again at Vintage Computer Festival SoCal https://www.vcfsocal.com/ on February 15-16, 2025 at Hotel Fera DoubleTree by Hilton at 100 The City Drive S in the city of Orange, California. We will have two computer based vintage MIDI sequencing stations set up for you to play with.

While the average PC user might remember MIDI as a technology adopted by the game industry for music or as a way to play renditions of pop songs which might later go on to be consider chiptunes, at the same time, both professional and ameture musicians were making real music. We'll have A MacSE FDHD with 4MB of RAM and a Pocket 386 running MS-DOS with Deftaudio's MIDI RS232 Interface. Compose electronic music the way it was done circa 1987~1991. Each station will be set up with synthesizers, drum machines and samplers, mixers and effects from the era. We will give you a crash course on the earlier form of computer-based midi sequencing. Or just hang out and chat about MIDI, synths, an old computers. On the Mac we will have Opcode EZ Vision, Vision, Steinberg Cubase, MOTU Performer and on the PC we will have Texture, Voyetra Sequencer Gold Plus, Voyetra Digital Orchestrator Pro and Cubase. After you complete your song we will record to two track, mixing it "dub style" which was how much of the underground electronic music of the time was recorded, not being mulitracked to tape. We can email you an mp3. We'll feature all of the tracks on our Soundcloud, maybe burn some CDs.

Day passes to the event are available for $25 per day, $40 for a weekend pass and $100 for a deluxe weekend pass bundle. Get tickets and read more about the packages at the VCF website. Once you are in the event, participation at our booth is free.