Digital Dreams - The PPG Wave Story

A documentary short on the history behind the legendary PPG Wave synthesizers from the 80's.

[TryptychUK]

Cool stuff. I briefly worked for PPG and knew Palm and Duren.
The Wave is unique and distinctive, but a bugger to program.

[aardvarkmindshank]

I still remember as a young lad going down to London with a buddy to visit the UK dealer. We were avid synth fanatics with of course no money whatsoever. There was a demo room still being constructed and decorated all in white paint I recall. And resplendent in the middle was the 2.3 and waveterm. They had the good grace to provide a short demonstration and we went away suitably impressed.

[totalrobot]

I loved the throbbing basslines the PPG Wave supplied for Missing Persons in the early 80's. Spring Session M album is a great example of this beautiful synth.

[squishmallowfan]

You're knocking these retrospectives out of the park. This all seems overpriced and antiquated now but the 1980s were a fantastic period for innovation and laying the groundwork for what we have now.

[reinermunch]

What a surprise! I am the second person on the right in the group photo.... Memories. Thanks for the vid

[johnnymorgansynthdreams]

Note - There is an error in the at 0:48. The PPG 1002 has an analogue VCO, where the later 1020 synth incorporated the DCO. My apologies for the confusion here.

[analogpro]

A fantastic documentary on ppg. Thank you so much for the internal look at the CEM and SSM usage.
Also great seeing Rush and The Fixx in this. Thanks!

[carriersignal]

This is such a great video. I have always loved PPG products and the sound those machines produced. Information such as this should be curated for posterity. The fact that people are starting to think of this as such a long time ago kind of drives it home that it has been such a long time ago. Another 40 years and many of the subtle details may be confused or lost forever. That would be a shame. The amount of information that we generate everyday as humans is astounding. Most of it could stand to be flushed, but some things should be preserved.

[daz]

The Eurogliders are from my home town and in the 80s, it was mecca for 'pub rock' i.e., heavy guitar, heavy bass, heavy drums and a macho image... barely a synth in sight so as a keyboard player, that left me pretty cold ... I was completely blown away when the Eurogliders came along and what's more, the keyboard player Amanda Vincent was playing a PPG!!! It was as if she had come from outer space... I didn't even know PPGs existed in Australia... I would wait to see the video to "Heaven Must be There' just to watch her play that synth 8-)

[jeffcappelletti]

The P.P.G. was used by Tangerine Dream both live and in the studio. The album Exit has the P.P.G. all over the album. Thomas Dolby's P.P.G. was actually used to run Tangerine Dream's lights in the late 70's

[FortyThievesSF]

Thanks for this video. I love hearing the history and specs of these iconic beasts and the way you present it. Keep ‘em coming!

[kaiherrmann]

It is hard to decribe that straight directness you’ve got playing an 360A. I owned one mid80s. Won‘t forget it. But, at least, the Instrument had been sold behause of its limitations.. — some bonus-funfacts: I had a quite rare Sequencer 350, too, but the internal connectivity ppg vs ppg had been stuck as a somewhat work in progress (which was never finished). Even Palm himself claimed the sequencer‘s strange embedded Interface-plug a undocumented dead end. But he was kind enough to put copies of seven rough schematic drawings in my hands. His „that‘s all I have to offer“ didn‘t much help, but yeah, I met the maestro in person!
And he really took care and brought personal notes to music fair ffm to satisfy a nerdy musician. Amazing customer relation:)

[davebellamy]

2:52 Improved by adding Curtis filters and girl leaning suggestively on the synth!😅😂🤣

[ShawnMcClureModeler]

Great video. The sounds on the PPG are some of my favorite.

[funnzie]

Thank you, your video filled a curiosity hole in my brain since the introduction of the 3rdWave and Behringer's Wave. I just began designing with wavetables this year, after 57 years of playing organ, piano and sound designing on FM and subtractive synths. I like wavetables. Now I have a face and a name to thank for this wonderful music technology.

[harmonicres]

Excellent and well composed video Johnny. Another user was Patrick O'Hearn ex Missing Persons he used the PPG extensively on his Private Music releases like Ancient Dreams and Between Two Worlds. Both prime examples how wonderfully lush and diverse the palette of sound these synths where capable of.

[brianbergmusic]

I love this documentary. We (kinda) take such technology for granted today, but back then this was revolutionary! Wavetables make me think of a cosmic organ with scintillating; pure overtones that are difficult to conjure in FM synthesis, and nigh impossible in old-school subtractive (and I'm not talking about aliasing).

[geoffk]

Very interesting documentary. As some have noted, PPG wavetables are still in many of Waldorf's products, including the Microwave, Blofeld and Quantum. Waldoff also sells a very accurate PPG VST emulation.

One minor error--you say that a Waveterm has 8" "Winchester" drives. But these are clearly 8" floppy disks. A "Winchester" was an early hard drive (typically 5 to 20 Mb) and non-removable. They were quite expensive too.

[IanFarquharson]

Thanks for that. The Rush P/G sound stood out so well I spent most of the ‘00s thinking I should pick up a 2.3 just for the nostalgia. Would have been a good investment with hindsight.

[synchro]

Outstanding. So nice to hear the back story on this seemingly mysterious synth. The virtual instrument version I tried years ago was awesome. Even in virtual form, it stood out as unique and very useful.