Mastodawn

Okay, here's a long shot for the #Fedi hive mind. If you are in the intersection of "#musician or musician-adjacent in the 1980s" and "keyboard / #synthesizer aficionado", this one is for you.

In the mid- to late-80s, I used to spend a lot of time in music / #instrument stores (not selling CDs, selling guitars and amps and drums and whatnot). Synthesizer tech was advancing rapidly at this point, with digital starting to overtake analog by leaps and bounds.

At some point, one of the stores got a new #keyboard model in. I can't swear to it, but I think it was either a #Roland or a #Korg. This one had a floppy drive built in, on the side of the #synth. And they had a demo on a floppy disk that was incredible at the time.

It wasn't an official #demo disk. It was a normal consumer floppy, presumably copied far and wide. Hand-Sharpied on it was the name/title "Amin Phone". It was a musical, bright and upbeat piece, rock/pop, maybe 30s long, and included digital samples of a person's voice.

The entire thing was a ridiculous #answering machine outgoing #message. I think there was even a sampled voice at the end taken from someone leaving a message, commenting on it being over-the-top or something.

"Amin phone" is unsearchable on the 'net. Everyone has a phone, and there are millions of people named Amin or el-Amin.

Anyone else remember this? Anyone actually able to point to a recording of it?

#KeyboardDemo #SynthDemo #AminPhone #Amin #AnsweringMachine #FloppyDisk

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Andy 1d ago

@cazabon don't hate me be here are the results from an AI search - The phrase "synthesizer floppy amin phone" most likely refers to the Amin Phone, a specific preset sound often found on vintage synthesizers
The "Amin Phone" (or "Amin-Phone") is a well-known sample or preset that typically combines a synthesized choir or vocal pad (the "Amin" part, often referencing an "Aah" or "Mmm" vocal sound) with a percussive, bell-like, or electronic telephone-style tone (the "Phone" part).

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Andy 1d ago

@cazabon
* Origin: It is often associated with early digital workstations and samplers like the Ensoniq SD-1 or VFX series
* Sound Profile: It generally has a "digital undertone," characteristic of late 80s and early 90s synthesis.

* Sample Libraries: You can download "vintage synth" or "lo-fi" sample packs containing "Amin Phone" style sounds from sites like [Samplefocus](https://samplefocus.com/tag/synth) [https://www.sampleso.com](https://www.sampleso.com/shop/floppytron)

Free Synth Samples, Sounds, and Loops

Download FREE Synth sounds - royalty-free! Find the Synth sound you are looking for in seconds.

Sample Focus

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C.1d ago

@aczuppa

I dunno. "AI" / LLMs tend to feed you back whatever you had in the question, so I don't put much stock in their output.

I found *one* possibility online for a connection to this demo. I'll update if I hear back from that person.

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C.19h ago

So, my one possible lead I found led me to what I now think is the answer. I'm about 80% sure I've got the right person, but he is big and famous enough that I think the chances of hearing back from him to confirm this are slight, so I'm going to go ahead and lay it out here.

Amin Bhatia.

Why?

He's Canadian; family came to Canada in the 1970s.
Did a lot of early work with synthesizers, attending Bob Moog's school (I think).
Released a big synth album, The Interstellar Suite (1987).
Wrote a retrospective about synthesizers "Requests from the Vault".

But perhaps most importantly, he won the Roland International Synthesizer Competition (in Tokyo) in both 1981 and 1982.

I can absolutely see a demo by this guy getting copied floppy disk to floppy disk across Canadian music stores in the 1980s.

He's gone on to a big career scoring films and television, winning Gemini and Canadian Screen awards and an Emmy nomination.

And he's got personal endorsements from both Steve Porcaro (Toto, session guy) and Oscar Peterson, which is a hell of a thing.

I haven't been able to find anything from those competitions online yet - too old to have been documented at the time. I'll keep looking.

#AminBhatia #FilmScore #MovieScore #soundtrack #composer #SynthDemo #SynthesizerDemo

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Update: I'm now as certain as I can be that I have the right fellow. You can hear it below.

It's called "The Answering Machine Song", and he did it in 1988. Apparently a radio station in Calgary (where I believe he was living) played it and told folks they could hear it on Amin's answering machine - and broadcast his home phone number 😆

The full version is on his album "Requests from the Vault". That's on Bandcamp here:

https://aminbhatia.bandcamp.com/album/requests-from-the-vault-96k-24bit

I believe the demo I heard was a much shorter version that he did actually use as his outgoing message. I haven't found that version anywhere.

He talks about it in an interview here:
https://www.synthtopia.com/content/2012/10/08/revisiting-the-future-amin-bhatia-the-interstellar-suite/

It's in the liner notes for the album here, as track #4:
https://aminbhatia.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Requests-from-the-Vault-by-Amin-Bhatia.pdf

A 40-year-old mystery, solved. It was fun.

Requests from the Vault 96k 24bit, by Amin Bhatia

12 track album

Amin Bhatia