#xp80

About 2 weeks ago, I ordered a floppy drive emulator for my XP-80 Workstation Keyboard. I’ve had this keyboard for a solid 20 years now, and it was the main tool for much of my earlier music, including a majority of the music on my first album (The Sound: Vol.1) and the development of the later albums in the series. The original floppy drive died, and just recently, I went on a crusade to replace it. Instead of relying upon the ancient floppy technology, I decided to investigate the USB/SD card drive upgrade.

I ordered this emulator drive online after some cool correspondence by the company that sells these units. It came in the mail last week, but I didn’t have time to install it until a few days ago.

Upon installation, I was excited to hear some of my ideas that were trapped in a time capsule of sorts. I had to do a test with a floppy disk to transfer the files to the SD card, via a USB floppy drive. Once I did that, I loaded up a few tunes on the XP-80, and heard some ideas that are more than 10 years old, but deserve to be out in the streets.

It’s a beautiful thing when you can revisit some of the ideas from your younger self, and get that unique energy that can only be captured in the music.

Needless to say, I will be releasing some of this music, and I’m very excited to get things cracking again on the recording tip. I’ve been pretty dormant with my recording disciplines lately, but this new hard drive has inspired me to further engage the momentum of my enthusiasm. 

It’s not often an artist can listen to their own music and feel the elation they had when it was created, but it’s serious. I will also be tracking some new material using the XP-80 once again, now that I have my major arrangement tool back in full stride.