Join us for our traditional look back at the news and features that floated your boat this year.

Best of 2024: "This song almost didn't happen," reflected Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers guitarist, songwriter and all-round rock hero Mike Campbell two years ago. It's incredible just how many famous songs nearly didn't take flight, or were recorded by artists they were never intended for. Pharrell Williams' Happy was rejected by CeeLo Green's label, Britney Spears' management turned down Umbrella. Simple Minds even turned down Keith Forsey's Don't You (Forget About Me) six times.

Jim Kerr and Co wisely relented on that one, but some songs just need their time, place and the right artist to achieve any of the potential they might hold. Or luck. Some are just not suitable for their intended muse at the time. Which is what happened with Campbell's demo that would become the 1984 Don Henley hit Boys Of Summer. Well, it's some of what happened with it – the rest was less straightforward.

"Back in the day, thanks to my wife, I had a Teac four-track tape machine," Campbell explained in the video (via YouTuber Ken Power) you'll find down below, filmed a couple of years ago. "And I had a friend named Roger Linn who used to work over at Leon Russell's house. Tom [Petty] and I would go over there and Roger would always be in the back room and we said, 'What's he doing back there?' They said, 'He's building a drum machine.'

Neither Campbell nor Petty had heard of such a concept before – and no wonder. Linn was breaking fresh ground that would open up into a world of creative possibilities in the near future. This was early days for the LinnDrum but it would find its way onto hits around the world in the '80s, including A-ha's Take On Me. Campbell was certainly intrigued and inspired.

"The first one he built was called LinnDrum," continues Campbell [it was actually the second after the LM-1 released in 1980]. "It had a bunch of live sounds that you could mix together like a drum machine and make your own patterns – it was pretty revolutionary at the time."

Campbell was convinced enough to buy one at "FOR" - Friend Of Roger price. He installed it into a streamlined home studio in his spare bedroom, alongside the aforementioned four-track. But Campbell wasn't done with branching out into new electronic territory.

"I had borrowed an Oberheim OB-X synthesiser and I was playing around with the drum machine one night," Campbell remembers. "I stayed up all night, just typing in tambourines and claps and hands and drums and snares. I got a little pattern going."

An infectious ear-worm synth hook followed, followed by some overdubbed guitars. Campbell had something but "didn't think much about it".

"A week later Tom Petty and [producer] Jimmy Iovine were over at my house and I played them my demo and they said, 'I think that's a little jazzy for what we're doing right now' and I agreed with them. I put it aside and this song almost didn't happen – it could have ended up on the shelf still collecting dust."

Campbell later admitted he was pretty dejected by the response, but the idea just wasn't deemed suitable for the album they were working towards at the time, 1985's Southern Accents. It also had a different chord change for the chorus that had been the part Iovine had deemed "jazzy".

The decision was something Petty would later regret as we'll find out. But Iovine saw enough potential to later recommend Campbell take it to another high-profile artist.

"He called me a week later and told me Don Henley was looking for some music for his first solo record, and I remembered that track and he did too," remembered Campbell.

He went back to work on the idea, before tracking it to cassette and passing it on to Henley in person – a musician he'd never met before.

As Henley's former Eagles bandmate ('mate' is probably an optimistic word here) Don Felder once noted to MusicRadar, "The one thing about Don Henley is, he's a great singer, great lyricist and a great songwriter, but he doesn't play anything. He plays drums. He can't pick up a guitar and write chord progressions; he can't sit at a piano and write music underneath him."

Maybe so, but like Hotel California proved before, he was exactly the musician that a demo idea needed to become a timeless song that's still a drivetime classic. Except Campbell initially thought the notoriously tough cookie Henley was going to reject his idea outright.

"He sat at the end of a long table and he had a cassette player, he put a cassette on and he just did this [motions with arms folded and head down]," Campbell recalled. "He didn't tap a foot or move his head or anything. He listened to it all the way through and I thought he hated it."

Even when the song finished the reaction from Henley was somewhat muted, though the Eagle told Campbell he'd work on it. But the creative wheels were soon turning fast; Campbell got a phone call.

"It was Don, he said, 'I've written the best song I've written in ten years' and I said, 'Ok let's go and make the record.'"

Henley's inspiration had come fast; he seemed to be wistfully looking back on lost love with his lyrics, but the former English and philosophy student at North Texas University was also able to inject some deeper symbolism about biting contemporary observation.

The title itself alludes to the Dylan Thomas poem I See The Boys Of Summer but it's indirect – it's actually from Roger Kahn's 1972 book about the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team which was inspired by the late Welsh poet's title. Henley is a baseball fan but the inspiration stopped there. "It's not about baseball really, it's about life – looking back," Henley told Howard Stern in 2015. "I have a thing about looking back."

Elsewhere, Henley was more specific when drawn on a line from one of the verses in particular.

"I was driving down the San Diego Freeway and got passed by a $21,000 Cadillac Seville," Henley told the NME in 1985 regarding the 'Deadhead sticker in a Cadillac line' in Boys Of Summer. "The status symbol of the right-wing upper-middle-class American bourgeoisie – all the guys with the blue blazers with the crests and the grey pants – and there was this Grateful Dead 'Deadhead bumper sticker on it!"

But the lyrics weren't a problem – there would be unforeseen challenges that emerged for Campbell in the studio. Starting with the LinnDrum.

"This is where this song almost didn't happen," recalls Campbell in the video about the song below. "The LinnDrum, back then you would save your patterns onto a cassette. So you'd stick the cassette in and you'd call up the pattern you had, which was Boys Of Summer, you'd push 'save' and it saves some kind of digital thing onto the cassette. Then when you want to put song back in, you put the cassette back in, press load and voila your song comes in.

"So I went down to the studio with my little LinnDrum, sat out in the room. They said, 'Ok go put on your drum machine and we'll record it onto the analogue tape.' And I sat on the floor out there and I pushed play and it just said 'error'.

Cue mild panic as Campbell tried loading his cassette again five or six times. "Every time I would push 'load' it would say 'error'", he remembered. The studio staff were now waiting and the situation was edging towards desperate as Campbell's music depended on the LinnDrum part: "My song's gone, I'm gonna look like a fool, they're thinking I'm an idiot – the thing didn't work." Campbell tried one more time.

"Boom! It loaded up by some miracle – thank you god. The studio tracked Campbell's programmed LinnDrum part to tape. Disaster avoided and plain sailing from here on. Not quite…

"We went in and copied my demo, which was really hard because I had just done it off the top of my head," Campbell explained about recording the song with Henley. "All those guitar licks, I had to count them and put them in the right place because Don wanted it just like the demo. So we spent a week or more on the thing – overdubs, harmonies, synthesisers, guitars everything on there. And then Don comes in one day and says, 'I want to change the key.'

Campbell laughs at the memory, but his teeth are slightly gritted. It would take another week to track everything again in the new key of F♯ major. But, as with a lot of decisions in his musical career, Henley would be proved right.

"He, in his singing genius, had realised that if it was higher he could push it and get certain things out of it," noted Campbell. "And he was right. The Heartbreakers never did that – if we brought a song that was in A, it goes in A; sing it, make it work. We never thought to change the key for the voice but Don did."

Even after the song was mixed, the challenges continued. "We took the mix to the record company at 6 o'clock – ran over to the mastering and we were mastering it, and we put the tape up and as it was rolling by, I looked over and I saw the back of the analogue tape peeling off onto the floor in a pile," Campbell remembered. Everything stopped, and a staff member then surgically glued the backing onto the tape again. Phew.

Boys Of Summer launched Henley's solo career ahead of debut album Building The Perfect Beat and became a huge hit in 1984, winning Henley a GRAMMY Award in 1986 for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance.

For Campbell the success of the song addressed pressing concerns; it paid for a family home he was about to lose in a foreclosure. He considers it a stroke of luck, considering the obstacles Boys Of Summer had to overcome.

Meanwhile, Tom Petty would regret his decision in passing on Campbell's demo, though the record needs to be set straight on that.

Southern Accents was a notoriously difficult album to make for Petty and the Heartbreakers, and there's a story that the singer punched a studio wall during the 1984 sessions and broke five bones in his hand when he heard Boys Of Summer being played all over the radio. Only the first part is true. "

There wasn't a particular reason why I turned around and punched the wall… I was just frustrated," Petty revealed in the clip above about the incident during the 1984 sessions. Ear fatigue had set in as he listened back to mix after mix. "I thought the ends were going to be easier to tie up than they were," Petty said.

The injuries nearly ended Petty's career as a guitarist, but thankfully he would go on to recover. But the late legend did regret passing up Campbell's musical idea.

"'Years later Tom and I were mixing Don't Come Around Here No More in the studio and we go out to the car and listen to the mix on cassette like we used to do back in the day," he recalled on Brian Koppleman's The Moment Podcast in 2020.

"The two of us were sitting in the car and we turn on the radio and there's Boys Of Summer. I go, 'Oh!' and I change the channel. There it is again before I can even turn the cassette on. And he looks at me and goes, 'Boy, you know, you were really lucky with that. I wish I would have had the presence of mind to not let that get away.' That was a real brother moment we had."

But it's impossible to imagine the song now without Henley's vocals, melody and lyrics. It framed Campbell's music in a cinematic way that continues to attract listeners.

"The lesson there for you songwriter producers is when you hit a stumbling block, you've got to keep going – don't give up", reflected Campbell. "Keep pushing, pushing and working until you get it right. And eventually, all the elements will come together if you're blessed, and you'll have a hit record."

• A-ha interview: "We were convinced that the record company would drop us and everything was over before it began" – the story of Take On Me and their debut album Hunting High And Low

Oberheim TEO-5: What is it?

The problem with writing about Oberheim’s new TEO-5 is trying to hold back on the inevitable comparisons with other synths it is – or is not – based on. It has the sound of many a classic Oberheim synth packed into its solid and compact body so could be seen as a cut-down OB-X8, although one that is not so cut down in features as it is in physical size and polyphony. (TEO-5 has five notes compared to OB-X8’s eight.) 

There again, we could see it as Oberheim’s ‘take’ on the Sequential Take 5, a compact version of the classic Prophet-5. It is the same weight as Take 5 (down to the gram), has exactly the same dimensions, and shares lots of similar features.

But rather than just fill out the rest of this review with how these various synths stack up against one another, it’s probably easier to treat it as a new synth in its own right, or we’ll end up going comparison crazy. The bottom line, though, is that TEO-5 is a lot of synth for the cash, as we’ll reveal… 

Oberheim TEO-5: Performance and verdict

Having spent a while with the synth now, we can pretty much sum up that it is one of those great synths that lets you do a lot of stuff with hands-on ease, but lets you go deeper if you wish. There’s a lot of simple envelope and LFO modulation to hand, loads of other controls to change oscillator shapes, sync and modulation options, plus a lovely state variable filter. So there is loads to swoosh up and gnarl your sound in an instant, but a lot more options are there too, and just a few button pushes away. 

And we do mean a lot. The Program section is just one where you find all the parameters that don’t have individual hands-on controls on TEO-5’s front panel – the kind of stuff you don’t need to access all the time. There’s a lot to discover here, although some might argue that some of the oscillator parameters, in particular, deserved their own rotaries, and a mixer section with faders would have been good too. 

On this latter point, there are simple buttons for switching oscillators, noise, and the sub on and off, but it’s also possible to adjust levels via a long button press, and use the neat OLED screen to tweak them up or down. When you’re designing a synth of this size though, we would guess that something does have to give and these physical dial omissions are hardly deal breakers. 

At the core of the synth, the sound generators are two VCOs, a sub, and a noise generator. The VCOs have any combination of three waveforms to hand (or just use one with simple button presses). The Pulse Width knob actually affects both oscillators at the same time, but you can focus on a certain oscillator by holding its button down and changing its pulse width that way. An actual pulse width modulation option is not available as a physical dial but very easy to set up via TEO-5’s excellent modulation setup, which we discuss below. 

It gets very interesting with the Osc Mod section which is next to the oscillator block. Here you get X-Mod and Sync dials, the former being a beefed-up way to make Osc 2 modulate the frequency of Osc 1 with its triangle waveform. X-Mod sets the level of the modulation but uses ‘through zero FM’ which differs from standard FM as the frequency of the carrier can go ‘through zero’ (ie negative) and gives richer, more varied results than the sometimes clangy ‘standard’ FM. That said, we found a little experimentation with it certainly resulted in unusual but useable results, especially by combining the Osc 1 waveshapes being modulated, and altering their frequencies. Do take care here though as it’s easy to go completely off-road sonically.

The TEO-5 filter is a 12dB 2-pole SEM which doesn’t self-oscillate, but is state variable so can move between high band and low-pass for some real sonic character. This is one of the standout hands-on features to experiment with on TEO-5, and already you can see we’ve used the words ‘hands-on’ way too many times as there are so many dials to get your sound moving. And that’s even before we hit the effects section.

Effects and sounds

TEO’s dual effects sections and dedicated Overdrive control all seem to be lifted from Take-5 with the two effects blocks, at the top right, and the (great and powerful) Overdrive effect on the left. You get a dedicated reverb and a multi-effects block to choose from delays, chorus, distortion, and more. These are big and bold effects that might be too much for some, and their digital nature might have analogue purists running to the hills. We don’t buy that train of thought, however, and have always liked this blend of analogue signal path and digital effects that we first came across on the Prophet-6 and OB6 – two other great machines. 

And so to the sounds that all these features add up to, and there’s a good spread of cheesy rock, luscious atmosphere, big beefy pads, and equally meaty bass among the 256 factory sounds (with a further 256 locations to save to). There are also genuine moments of wonder. One preset is called Pressure Pluck, an arpeggiated sound that we used for our filtering and X-Mod experiments and – pure chance we have to say – turned a decent arpeggiated bassline into one with beats that blended in. This is not a bi-timbral synth, so all of the beats and bass were coming from the one sound. Which, we’d hasten to add, we could now argue we programmed ourselves. Thanks very much. Many of these moving sounds take advantage of all of those controls to tweak and you most certainly will. 

It’s not all great presets-wise though, which we have to mention just for balance. Oberheim sold a lot of keyboards to proper rock players and while that sound doesn’t float our boat, one or two (too many) sounds are dedicated to those and the music they made. Can you resist playing the intro to Jump? We certainly can. But at least Oberheim recognises its legacy and doesn’t take itself too seriously with names like Rock Cliché. And besides, just in case we haven’t made it totally clear yet: this is a programmer’s synth and you will be hitting the ‘Write’ button a lot!

More modulation fun

One of TEO-5’s highlights is its modulation power, delivered in a very slick, tactile route with two LFOs and two envelopes. However, you also get a more in-depth way that opens a lot more modulation doors by way of a 19-slot modulation matrix, with 19 different sources and 65 destinations. 

The LFOs are single (per voice) or Global (applies to all five) so you can apply a more consistent modulation to chords or a more dynamic one as you play individual notes. It’s easy to apply LFOs to anything: just hold their Dest buttons down and choose a destination onscreen. Or, there’s a shortcut section where you hold the Source button down, move what you want as your source (LFOs, mod wheel etc), then hold the main Destination button and choose one. Simple stuff! You can also enter the matrix and assign what you like across multiple slots. 

Conclusion

There is more packed into this synth than either its size or price suggests. On top of what we’ve covered, there’s a simple sequencer and arpeggiator (both decent and easy to use). There’s a Unison mode for delivering that huge, fat trance sound by effectively turning your synth into a mono, but firing all five voices at the one note, detuning them and getting all 1997 again. 

And within Unison mode there’s a Chord Memory mode where you play a chord and TEO-5 stores the notes so you can then transpose that chord up and down the keyboard by playing a single key. Finally, there is the genuinely great Low Split keyboard option that lets you extend the keyboard downwards by a couple of octaves – not physically, obviously, you lose your existing octaves and they just play lower, but it’s great for players who want that wider range. 

TEO-5 is a very clever performance and sound design synth created for a small footprint and low price. Some will feel limited by the polyphony and there are many other great synth options out there for similar money or even less. However there is enough personality here to set TEO-5 apart from all the synths we were trying to align it with at the top of this review, and we think you’ll be playing all of the easy modulation and SEM filter variations, and creating new sounds with reckless abandon with it in no time. Just don’t go using it to play Jump anywhere that we can hear you, please.

MusicRadar verdict: Comparisons aside, TEO-5 does deliver enough of its own character to make it one of the best mid-priced polys around.

Oberheim TEO-5: The web says

"Far from being a cut‑down version of one of its bigger siblings, the TEO‑5 is a brand new Oberheim synth with a personality of its own."
Sound On Sound

Oberheim TEO-5: Hands-on demos

Oberheim Official

sonicstate

loopop

Andertons Synths, Keys and Tech

Oberheim TEO-5: Specifications

• KEY FEATURES: 5-voice analogue polysynth; 44-note semi-weighted Fatar keyboard with velocity and aftertouch; two VCOs, a sub oscillator plus noise; SEM state variable filter; two LFOs; two DADSR envelopes; extensive modulation; 64-step polyphonic sequencer; multimode arpeggiator; two effects generators (dedicated reverb + multi-effects) plus overdrive.
• CONTACT: Oberheim

Earlier this week, Behringer made a number of statements on Facebook concerning its UB-Xa synth, an instrument that takes inspiration from the Oberheim OB-X. 

Under a post celebrating the news that the UB-Xa is now the "best-selling synthesizer" according to sales stats from German retailer Thomann, Behringer claimed in a now-deleted comment that it "discussed the UB-Xa with Tom Oberheim and got his consent" in developing the instrument.

This morning, Tom Oberheim, founder of Oberheim Electronics and designer of the OB-X, clearly keen to distinguish his firm's product from Behringer's offerings, shared a statement appearing to refute Behringer's claim. 

"You may have seen the recent stories online where Behringer is claiming that they have my ‘consent’ to make UB-XA, and that I ‘know their plans’", Oberheim wrote.

"There is, of course, no collaboration between us and no discussions of their plans for synths or anything else.

"They do have limited rights to use the name UB-XA," he continued, "but not the Oberheim name. So they have permission under certain conditions to release a product using the UB-XA name, but that’s all. 

"I hope this doesn’t cause any confusion about the real Oberheim products like OB-X8 and TEO-5 and the others we plan to release!"

• Read more: "This isn't just a synth, it's Tom Oberheim's dream, realized": The TEO-5 gives you the classic Oberheim sound at an affordable price point

It took a while, but it seems that the time Behringer spent developing its UB-Xa synth was worth it, because it’s now “officially the best-selling synthesizer”.

The company appears to be basing its claim on sales stats from German mega-retailer Thomann, which currently has the UB-Xa at the top of its synth chart. 

Celebrating the milestone on Facebook, Behringer said: “It is the world's first and only analogue synthesizer with 16 voices, polyphonic aftertouch, and eight atrophy modes, all for a revolutionary price. 

“Our product development team has spent six years working on delivering this legendary and revolutionary analogue synth.

“Thank you for all your patience and we hope it was worth the wait.”

Further down the thread - and in response to a post praising Tom Oberheim, designer to the OB-Xa synth that the UB-Xa takes inspiration from - Behringer posited that “certainly he designed a fantastic product. However our UB-Xa is no copy but took inspiration from the original synth and brought it to a complete new level.”

Interestingly, the company also added that “we discussed the UB-Xa with Tom Oberheim and got his consent.”

Apropos of nothing, Behringer also took aim at those who question its policy of emulating synth classics from the past. “How many other products such as VSTs take inspiration from legacy products?” it asked. “Why is it OK for others but not for us?”

In a separate post, Behringer highlighted what it views as the high quality of the UB-Xa’s proprietary polyphonic aftertouch keybed, which was entirely designed in house.

“It undergoes a highly automated and precise calibration test to ensure uniform sensitivity across every key,” says Behringer. “Each key is meticulously tested and calibrated to the highest precision.

The UB-Xa is available now priced at $1,199/£1,129. Find out more on the Behringer website. 

UPDATE 24/05: Tom Oberheim has now responded to Behringer's claim that he gave the brand consent to develop the UB-Xa, stating that there was "no collaboration between us and no discussions of their plans for synths or anything else".

SUPERBOOTH 2024:  Oberheim has announced the release of a new polyphonic analogue synthesizer, the TEO-5. Priced at £1499, the TEO-5 could offer a great way to access the classic Oberheim sound in hardware form, for a fraction of the price of the company’s top-end OB-X8 or OB-6 instruments.

Sequential’s Take 5 was the first product released after the brand was acquired by Focusrite in 2021. Based on a similar architecture to Sequential’s iconic Prophet-5, the synth took the core elements of the Sequential sound and packaged them into an instrument that was not only more compact and affordable than its influence, but also felt like a fresh and modernised take.

Now we have the TEO-5 – effectively the same concept but with Oberheim in place of Sequential. Once again released under the Focusrite umbrella (while the modern Oberheim brand is still headed up by Tom Oberheim, it operates in collaboration with Sequential and Focusrite) the TEO-5 is based around many of the same features found on the company’s recent OB-X8. 

These include two analogue oscillators per-voice equipped with Oberheim’s distinctive X-Mod functionality, as well a SEM filter that can function in low-pass, high-pass, notch and band-pass modes.

Alongside these core features, the five-voice TEO-5 also packs two DADSR envelopes and two LFOs for modulation, a 64-step polyphonic sequencer and multi-mode arpeggiator. 

There is also a ‘vintage’ control that can be used to add a little of the drift and unpredictability inherent in vintage analogue gear. Its signal path is rounded off with overdrive, plus digital reverb and multi-effect slots.

Find out more on Oberheim's website.

GForce is continuing its lengthy and excellent run of plugin emulations of classic pieces of gear with a new drum machine plugin that recreates the Oberheim DMX.

The DMX was the second digital drum machine ever released, following the Linn LM-1. Its punchy sound can be heard across many early hip-hop productions, along with '80s hits such as New Order's Blue Monday. 

Designed in collaboration with Oberheim, GForce's plugin version is said to be a "testament to the timeless influence" of the original that captures its unique tone while taking advantage of the "speed and versatility of the digital realm". 

Oberheim DMX features 288 sounds from both 1981 and 1983 versions of the DMX and the Oberheim DX, a stripped-back version released several years after its bigger brother. You'll find raw, unedited sounds alongside produced kits that have been treated with various types of effects processing. 

The plugin offers pan, solo, mute, pitch, decay and gain controls for each channel, along with sends for analogue-style delay and a reverb. On the master channel you'l find a multi-mode filter, compressor and distortion for further sonic sculpting. 

Oberheim DMX is available for macOS and Windows in AU/AAX/VST2/VST3 formats. The plugin is priced at $49.99/£39.99, but you can pick it up now for $24.99/£19.99.

Find out more on GForce Software's website.

This week on MusicRadar, we're stacking up hardware synths against their software counterparts as part of the Great Synth Showdown. In our third round, the modern-day classic Oberheim OB-X8 faces off against GForce Software's superb plugin emulation of the OB-X...

While Dave Smith was working on his version of a polyphonic synth, fellow US synth developer Tom Oberheim was also upping the polyphonic stakes. He’d already released the SEM, a single voice synth, way back in the ’70s and putting multiple versions of those together, could lay claim to the early polysynth plaudits.  

But it would be his OB-X synth that, like Dave’s Prophet-5, would put everything in one basket, so to speak, and be the all-in-one synth that captivated players throughout the world. And while Kraftwerk and Gary Numan might have been making headlines over here with monosynths in the late ’70s and early ’80s, it would be American players with American keyboards like the Prophet-5 and OB-X that would spread the word. 

Michael Jackson and Madonna used the Prophet-5 on Thriller and Like A Virgin respectively, while the OB-X was used by both in the early ’80s. If you didn’t know you could play more than one synth note before this time, then those big(gest?) names certainly brought polyphony to pop.

All of these extra voices came at a cost, though, and while OB-X had voice options (four, six, or eight), even the basic version cost well over $4000, so it would only be elite keyboard players who would buy it. The synth would quickly become the OB-Xa (think Van Halen’s Jump) and eventually the OB-Xb, machines that brought a more compact internal design less prone to instabilities, and used by everyone from New Order to Prince. 

The hardware OB-X8 we’re using in this comparison is the latest Oberheim OB incarnation, a monster £4,500 synth with an analogue engine based very much on the OB-X, ‘a’ and ‘b’ architecture. 

As MusicRadar said in its review, this is “a beautiful synth and destined to be a classic in its own right. But there’s no escaping the fact that it won’t be affordable for many”. Which is where GForce’s OB-X emulation comes in, very much a tribute to the original OB-X synth and even made with Tom Oberheim’s seal of approval, but available for just £99.99 plus tax. A real bargain for the quality of the sonics. 

If ever there was going to be a close run match, then, you’d think it would be this one. A Tom Oberheim (bank-breaking) monster synth vs (far cheaper) Tom Oberheim-endorsed software. Let’s go!

Oberheim OB-X: listen for yourself

We have five audio examples from our Oberheim OB-Xs above. These are not direct comparisons because neither version features exactly the same presets. 

We picked similar sounds for you to compare instead, so you should get a flavour of both software and hardware and that flavour is one of great dynamic range, with both hardware and software reaching the lows and highs sonically, with very little to choose between them. 

With a couple of the sounds, notably the piano and bass, we tried to program both hardware and software synths to match one another, as the interfaces are so similar – with varying results! As ever, the software signals were generated within the DAW and played directly into an Audient EVO 16, with no additional hardware. 

The first example is the hardware, followed by the software. Let us know what you think at computermusic@futurenet.com. The audio is as follows…

1. Saw lead

Two similar saw-like sounds.

2. Sweeping bass sounds

One perhaps a little more sweeping than the other...

3. Harder bass

Unusual saw lead.

4. Analogue brass

Two quite different examples of analogue brass.

5. Simple pianos

Here we took the simplest piano sounds and tried to get them close.

Three months on from the keyboard version of the Behringer UB-Xa going on sale, Behringer says that it’s planning to “turn the synth world upside down” with the release of a desktop model.

Quite what this means we’re not sure - the only thing turned on its head so far is a photo of the new instrument - but for those who want a more compact and affordable emulation of the Oberheim OB-Xa synth, the release of the UB-Xa D (D standing for Desktop, we assume) could be welcome news.

Of course, this being Behringer, putting a date on that release is pretty much impossible - the company is known for teasing products on Facebook well ahead of their actual launches - but, given that the synth engine for this one is already in place, we’re hopeful that it won’t be too long in the oven.

Although the UB-Xa D loses the UB-Xa’s 61-note aftertouch keyboard, we’re assuming that the majority of the synth’s other features - VCOs and VCFs that are “heavily based” on the originals, 16 voices, 512 program memories, MIDI support and eight vintage modes, for example - will remain. Given that the keyboard version costs $1,199, we’d expect the price to be less than $1,000, but this is still to be confirmed.

The whole Blue Monday thing - as in the third Monday of January being scientifically the most dismal day of the year - may be hokum cooked up by an ingenious travel company's PR arm, but let's face it, it rings depressingly true. That must be at least partly thanks to the catchy name - a label with traction only because of one of the most important and influential tracks ever produced.

It seems the track was a practical solution to a gigging problem. "We didn't play encores," recalled New Order's Bernard Sumner in 2012, "and we were getting into a lot of trouble over it. 

"Rather naively, we thought we'd write a song that could be played by machines and all we'd have to do was press the button. They'd get what they wanted and we'd get what we wanted. 

"It was an exploration into pure electronic music, so we took the machines to the limit to see what we could do with them. What we could do with them was very basic at the time, so it was making the most out of what little gear we had.

While we respectfully disagree, Sumner puts the track's longevity down to subsonic, rather than songwriting: "It's not really a song. It's more of a machine that sounds good on club systems. 

"I was doing some work with 52nd Street, a Manchester group on Factory Records, kind of funk music, and I was doing some keyboard effects with them. I was going to a lot of clubs with them, clubs I wouldn't normally go to and listening to the sound systems in clubs, the sub-bass frequencies.

"It never occurred to me to listen to that frequency when I was in Joy Division. We never used bass bass really, because Hooky's bass was all middle. We never used bottom end. 

"So we went to a club that had a fantastic sound system with all this sub-bass, and we used that knowledge on Blue Monday. There was a lot of trickery going on that you don't realise. It's not just the bass, there's quite a lot of subsonic."

Below, you can check out an unusually chipper Stephen Morris and Bernard Sumner giving a chirpy briefing on the machines behind Blue Monday, including the pivotal Oberheim DMX - "imagine a little fella with eight arms in there, playing all these things" - and Bernard's Prophet 5 - "a very old-fashioned type of synthesizer" - before performing the track on Dutch pop show countdown in 1983.

As most of you will surely know, New Order were created by the surviving members of Joy Division after that band’s frontman, Ian Curtis, took his own life in 1980.

Bassist Peter Hook, guitarist Bernard Sumner, and drummer Stephen Morris had - along with Curtis - vowed not to use the name Joy Division should any member of that band depart, so the remaining trio assumed a new moniker and added a new member, Morris’ girlfriend Gillian Gilbert, on keys and second guitar.

Sumner was assigned vocal duties on the basis that he could comfortably alternate between singing and playing his guitar.

The band’s first single, Ceremony, was composed during the final days of Joy Division and carries on that band’s post-punk style, as did the band’s first album of newly-penned songs.

However, a trip to New York introduced the band to new dance music, including Italian disco. Electronics and dance elements began to play increasingly prominent roles with each successive release.

Blue Monday itself quite literally originated in the club scene. The band’s label opened the now-legendary Haçienda in 1982. The opening night saw New Order play a lengthy number that included elements that would later be recycled in their biggest hit.

Recorded in 1982, Blue Monday was propelled by a stomping kick drum from an Oberheim DMX drum machine, an out-of-sync sequencer line, and choirs (allegedly) sampled from a Kraftwerk album. A distinctive Moog Source bass snakes through the disparate elements. Sumner’s purposely pallid croon drapes it all in a sepulchral shroud.

Not that the listeners were paying attention to the lyrics - they were too busy dancing. It sold like mad, going on to become the biggest-selling 12-inch single of all time. 

In something of an ironic twist, the expense of producing Peter Saville’s artful packaging meant that it actually lost money each time a copy was sold. Needless to say, Blue Monday was eventually re-issued with a slightly more conservative sleeve...

Build the bassline

Step 1: It’s fitting that a single that would shape the future of music would be made with an instrument that could charitably be referred to as “space age” in appearance! Moog’s The Source was a garish delight in silver, orange and blue. Luckily, it sounded better than it looked. We’ll be using u-he’s BazilleCM to recreate this legendary bass sound.

Step 2: First, we’ll disconnect Osc 1’s Output cable from Out 1, and insert it instead into the top-left Filter Input. We’ll patch Osc 2’s Output to the other Filter Input. The Filter’s LP24 Output will now go to the Out 1 jack previously occupied by Osc 1. Next, we’ll route a cable from Env 2’s Output to the Filter’s lower-left Input.

Step 3: Go to the FX: Delay section and deactivate the delay effect. Let’s start shaping the sound. Set Osc 1’s Modify knob to -2.00 and Osc 1’s Modify knob to 2.00. Find Osc 2’s Waveform menu (it says Saw) and turn the knob above it fully clockwise. Now, nudge Osc 1’s Phase knob up to around 9.00.

Step 4: Our sound is pretty burly at this point, but lacks any sort of shape. Go to Env 1 (it controls the amplitude). Set the Decay and Sustain sliders fully up. Set Release to about 23.00. Now let’s go to the Filter. We’ll set the Cutoff knob to around 42.00. Our sound is now all but inaudible. Don’t panic! That’s where Env 2 comes in.

Step 5: To get Env 2 in on the action, we’ll need to shove the Filter’s lower-left knob up to a value of around 96. This is the knob controlling the amount of modulation coming from Env 2. While we’re in the Filter, we’ll nudge the Res knob up to about 26.00 for some of the ‘squelch’ we hear in the original patch.

Step 6: The sound still isn’t quite there – we need to see to Env 2. The Attack is OK at nil. The Decay should be pushed up to about 22.00. The Sustain slider should be set to around 33.00, and the Release should be at around 29.00. This gives us a close approximation of New Order’s Moog patch, but feel free to tweak it further!