Check out the CS40M The wood-sided CS “M” series appeared in 1979. The CS40M sat in the middle of the lineup, with the monophonic CS20M below and the six-voice CS70M above. Get ready for some synth jargon!
The duophonic CS40 featured two voltage controlled oscillators (VCO), a voltage controlled filter (VCF) with selectable low, high and bandpass filter types, voltage controlled amplifier (VCA), low frequency oscillator (LFO), and attack/decay/sustain/release (ADSR) envelope generators (EG) for VCF and VCA. The EGs featured a 5x switch to increase the envelope time. For real time control there are 36 knobs, 11 faders, pitch bend and mod wheels with selectable destinations and lots of switches. Once you created your sound, you could save it to one of 20 memory locations. If you needed to store more sounds, you could save them to a cassette tape!
Dom Sigalas spent some time with the CS40M at the Berlin Synth Space. Check out his take on the 44-note powerhouse used by bands like Ultravox, Duran Duran and Front 242.
Yamaha Synthesizer Product Specialist Blake Angelos has over thirty years of experience with music hardware and software. An expert in music technology, Blake has conducted numerous clinics, master classes and presentations throughout the United States, Europe and Canada. In his role as Product Specialist for the Synthesizer Department Blake appears in many product videos and artist interviews, writes many articles for YamahaSynth.com and co-hosts a regular Podcast called “Behind the Synth”.
Before his work with Yamaha, he taught music theory and jazz studies courses at Arizona State University; managed a technology-focused music store in Seattle and was a production supervisor at Microsoft, where he led a team that developed groundbreaking interactive music content for the Microsoft Network. Blake holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Northern Colorado and a Master of Music degree from Arizona State University. Blake currently resides in Bellingham, Washington with his family, and between his travels around the world for Yamaha, he performs as much as possible with several jazz and creative music groups in Bellingham, Seattle and other places in the Pacific Northwest.
