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Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.
If you want to understand the history of
a company, it makes sense to start with
their most successful and significant
inventions. But if
you want to understand the story of a
company, you should also look at their
failures and the things that they
abandoned altogether. This is the Corg
Music unit 5000. It was sent to me by my
friend Ricardo at the Museo del Synth
Marisano in Italy with the chalange of
finding out what it was and what it was
supposed to do. First things first, I
asked Ricardo what he knew about it.
spoke to Corg Japan, Ishikawa San at the
Musea Corg, sent some photos of the
circuit board to Danny at Hideway
Studios and scoured Tintinet and what
did we find out? Well, quite a lot. It
was the year of our lord 19 archet and
Corg announced a music computer system.
There was a computer, the MC4000 with
MF1000 floppy disc running the MSA 1101
software and then the MU5000 sound
module, which they called the sound
source unit. Corg stated that this
system would meet the everadvancing
possibilities of music creation. Thank
you to Adam Douglas for the
translations. The same year, Corg turned
up at the Frankfurt Messa Al Deutseland.
They brought this very computer system
and this was covered in electronics and
music maker which is archived on the
brilliant musines. You can see the whole
system together with additional Corg
branded speakers. The article tells us
that the computer is a collaboration
with Epson and sure enough the Corg MC
4000 computer is a customized Epson PX4
that was released the same year. We also
learned that the MU5000 is 16 part
multi-tambal with an additional rhythm
section and that it shares technology
with the DW6000 that came out in 1984.
It also tells us that the available
software provided rather cheesy
accompiments in the style of cheap home
keyboards and that they were hoping for
something more interesting to be
released. On the circuit side, Danny at
Hideway had a look at my photos and
identified that it is based around a duo
of mysterious
MS6236 chips. each paired with a DAC IC
as well as a less mysterious
MS6235 PCM drum chip. More on that
later. There is also a simple BBD based
chorus generator. There's no filtering
and it doesn't seem to be the same as
the DW6000 as the article implied,
although it's perhaps something of a
similar concept in terms of basic
waveform generation.
So the MU5000 responds to MIDI note on
off messages, program change messages,
and some very basic things like
portimento on off. But I fired a load of
MIDI messages into it and nothing has
any effect. So whether it only responds
to system exclusive messages or whether
you have to use the computer port to
edit it, I don't know. But it is 16part
multitam. And on each channel, you can
choose a program. And program zero is
this. The worst drums you've ever heard.
And that's saying something because Corg
put out the super drums. Um, so you
know, I'm I'm being a bit facicious
here. So, u, these are what play from
the 6235 chip and they're very low
fidelity samples for a reason to keep
the cost down. The super drums is
something like 8 bit at 15 kHz. Some of
the lowest fidelity samples I know about
from a drum machine. And
these sound like that. They've got a
crunchy charm and they
are stereo if you listen to those
toms. Um, and it's got a stereo out so
they've obviously panned them as well.
So that's program zero, the drums.
Skipping over to program two. This is
what plays from the 6236 chips.
So, it sounds very 80s. It It I I don't
know if these are digital sample.
Presumably, they are very lowfidelity
digital
samples. Uh they're quite crusty and
noisy. Um they sound like they've been
taken from FM synths. Probably that's
the kind of tonal quality we're getting.
Let's listen to some
more you hear at the end of the samples
that of the the kind of dirt in the
samples. It's must be the low sample
rates.
Heat. Heat.
So, you're hardly listening to this
thinking, "Wow, these are the greatest
sounds I've ever heard.
heard. Um, they are kind of terrible,
but they're they're of the time. That's
that's unfair to say they're terrible.
They are kind of typical of the time.
And it gives us a glimpse into where
things were when they were attempting,
you know, multi-tamal desktop sound
modules in the mid80s.
Heat. Heat.
So why did Corg abandon their computer
system and why did this wind up in Italy
of all places? Well, there are people at
Corg who worked on this uh at the time,
but Corg told me that due to
non-disclosure agreements from the time
that are still enforceable, they can't
tell me why it was abandoned, which is
rather curious. So, we're left guessing.
And my best guess is that it has
something to do with the relationship
between Corg and Epson for that custom
computer and something about the
logistics of that, but I don't really
know. But for whatever reason, they
didn't see it through. they announced
it, brought it to a trade show, and then
it disappeared. Um, and that might have
been fateful because competitors like
Roland carried on with the desktop sound
module thing, and their MT and CM series
became the kind of de facto sound
modules for PC gaming. So, had Corg
followed through on this, we might have
a little bit of a different history in
that regard. So, why did it wind up in
Italy? Well, Corg have a research and
production facility in Italy and
historically they would send things
there to get them voiced and have
presets made so that they had a European
western ear involved in the development
of their products cuz of course they're
selling to the world. So that is the
most likely explanation as to why it
wound up there. Then the project was
abandoned. So it got put on a shelf for
40 years and it has been found although
the rest of the computer system is
missing. Because this is so rare I've
made a big sample pack of it which is
available on the top tier on my Patreon.
And thank you to my patrons for their
ongoing support. Thank you to Ricardo
for the loan of this. Thank you to Corg
and the various other people who helped.
And of course, thank you to you for
watching.
Heat. Heat.
N. Heat. Heat.
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