Thanks for watching the show! Did anyone out there have one of these? Did you make a hit record? Let me know! A special thank you to the Museum of Computing (www.museumofcomputing.org.uk/) for loaning the CX5M II machine to make this a more complete video. Neil - RMC

That outro: "I'm playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order."

My middle school in South London had one of the CX5M MSX computers in the music room. about 1984 ish. We used it a lot and I learned to play the piano on it with the piano teacher.

"I've got the musical ability of a banana", before proceeding to blast out a recognisable tune on the keyboard. I want the kinds of bananas Neil eats.

With my software VGMPlay for MSX you can play VGM recordings from many of the arcade games you mentioned straight on the CX5M! (You do need a SD / CF / HDD interface cartridge with extra memory.) Actually the CX5MII that I bought off eBay from an Italian person was the machine that brought me back into the MSX scene after several years of inactivity, and its YM2151 sound chip prompted me to make VGMPlay, so I hold it dear to my heart :). The CX5MII is almost an MSX2 by the way: it has the MSX2 VDP and a 128K memory mapper. But it lacks sufficient Video RAM, the RTC and the MSX2 BIOS. The CX7M is its full MSX2 successor, but it was only released in Japan.

Super interesting video. The FM module in these has more in common with the DX21, DX27, and DX100 synths. The DX7 has more envelopes and algorithms and 16-voice polyphony. I own an DX21 and absolutely love its nostalgia stirring sound.

This made my day. 😂 loved your playing us out! Another top notch, fascinating, informative, but not too heavy, humorous look at past tech. Thanks Neil. BRILLIANT!

I had the pleasure several years back of meeting Dr. John Chowning, originator of FM Synthesis, which all of the chips (particularly Yamaha's) you mentioned use. He was the proverbial father of the DX line of synthesizers, and therefore 80s pop and beyond. My mint condition DX7 Mk I, purchased for $1650 US in Nov. 1985, just sold for $500 last year.

OMG, the Outrun music! Takes me back to skipping college to go to the arcade in 1988...

The 8-bit guy must be drooling over both

Nishi told us that MSX stood for "Machines with Software eXchangeability" at a European computer conference in the early 2000's

Thank you for showing some love for the MSX! The MSX scene is still alive and kicking, but usually doesn’t get much love from the KZfaqrs 😊

I had one of these, sold it, watched your video, 2 beers, bought another!

Notice that in European philips provided the same. In my time we had our own software to write music. We could combine FM sounds with samples which made the possibilities endless. . . Still got my setup.

I once owned three of these, liberated from storage in a school that was closing down. I have even less musical ability, so I sold them on eBay to someone that could hopefully make better use of them. I did notice that the documentation with them had evidence that the plug-in modules had been upgraded, this video finally solves the mystery of why! Other school music department equipment I've rescued (then later sold) have been an Electromusic Research MIDI interface for the BBC Micro, several Atari STs and STEs, and three Acorn A4000s with MIDI podules and Sibelius.

Really enjoyed the synth sounds. You could really imagine this being used for grand external shots in a scifi movie.

I still have my Sony MSX HitBit. Back in the mid 80s I wanted to use the Yamaha sound Module used on the CX5M with my HitBit, and luckily enough there was a project in a magazine that showed how to make a PCB to link the CX5M sound module with other MSX computers. Amazingly it worked and I still have the working HitBit and Sound module today. Also, I'd forgotten about the DMS cartridge which you mentioned, what a revelation that was! Thanks for bringing back great memories with this CX5M video.

The CX series are some of my favorite MSXes, I own a YIS-604/128 MSX2 (essentially a differently labeled CX7M/128) and it’s a heavy beast of a machine. One important thing to note: You didn’t HAVE to purchase an SFG-05 if you had an -01. Yamaha offered a factory ROM upgrade from the 32k original to the 64k updated ROM for US$40. No need to buy a second keyboard either.

This is so cool! I absolutely love things like this, so many instruments and musicians were very ahead of their time computing-wise in this era. It has never ceased to amaze me how forward thinking MIDI is as a standard. I still use MIDI cables to load patches into my Yamaha SY77, and that thing is from 1989. It's so amazing being able to create patches in a modern desktop environment and seamlessly load them into the synth's memory without even having to use the synth's onboard floppy drive, or use the synth as a virtual instrument in a modern DAW like FL studio.

One forgets how impactful effects are on sounds like these. You add a little reverb, and it changes everything.

Great that you put MSX in the spotlights! I grew up with it in the early 90's, easy to program for and fun to work with. To my knowledge MSX stands for "Machines with Software eXchangeability", which would actually make the most sense, since software was exchangeable on the platform, no matter who built the hardware. It was a real visionary project, that had to iron out the software chaos in the early 80's. But, too little too late, even in 1988 they marketed the 8-bit MSX2+. By that time faster and better 16-bit computers dominated the market and it stood no chance against what competitors offered.

The very first brass sound you played immediately brought the original Wing Commander to mind.

Great video, I still have my old cx5m 2 up in the loft, I may just get it down to have a mess with 😀

Neil the only thing missing from that haunting outro (and I use the word haunting in the "Japanese The Ring" sense) was a cheesy grin over the shoulder . I was a jobbing studio musician for 20 years, no hits but a few near misses, and that FM synthesis was ever present in all studios I worked in until of course the rise of the sampler. But even then there would be a Yamaha somewhere in the room. And mate, anyone who can play Toejam and Earl is alright in my book.

The Yamaha YM2151 was also used in most Williams pinball machines from the mid-80's to the MID-90's. It was one of the three sound sources in their games (the others being simple PCM samples via an 8-bit DAC and compressed speech via a Harris CVSD chip). The same with Bally pinballs from the late 80's to mid-90's when Williams acquired Bally.

Your face when you played that bit from Star Wars. Wonderful

This is cool gadget for your retro collection, I originally used atari st with 2 meg upgrade with Cubase. I later switched over to the Amiga with midi interface for music x. Some of my best days that got me creative were because of this wonderful technology we had in England. When technology was changing very fast, unlike today.

Don’t forget about the Philips MSX that was popular in the Netherlands

Love it! Big MSX fan here :-) Tks for the video!

Haha Neil, your outro sounded like the keyboardist for Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood was drunk at the wheel! Maybe you don't have the playing ability but your music knowledge is better than most. I was impressed that you knew what an LFO does. Some "musicians" don't know that. Though I've never seen one of the Yamaha PC's before, the font definitely looks like a DX7 board. Another great video from RMC!

With your legendary musical ears how about a collab. The 7-bit guy actually has a keyboards channel...

In the United States MSX standard was never adopted, but you could occasionally find the Yamaha CX5M in music stores sold along side Yamaha synths like the DX7 as a semi-dedicated sequencer computer. Once the Atari ST series came along the CX5M disappeared from music stores as well.

Love IT!! You are a true musical genius. I was given a Yamaha C1, which I started to repair. It had 8 Midi ports in the rear. The hard drive froze up unfortunately. I then moved continents and had to leave the machine behind. The only thing I have left of it is a floppy disc with the OS and possibly music software. One of my sad retro tales, would loved to have got it running.

Picked one of these up earlier this year, with the YK-10 keyboard, in box. Still haven't got around to fully messing with it as we are preparing to move house, but one day I'll crack into it.

You were making better music than anything I ever created on "Music Maker" for the TI99/4A.

My first yamaha keyboad at the age of 6 was a PSS-30 and my Dad had a PSR-36. The last one I had was a PSR-320 in 1995 and it was terrible compared to the older ones. Thanks for all of the reminder sounds, they take me back. 24:05 this is what mario on the MegaDrive would sound like.

what a lovly machine Niel. i used to own back in the days should never have sold it and all the cartridges and the keyboard.

Mate, that out run tune is so sweet, brings back good memory's of being in the arcades with my parents as a kid.. Good old days

You need to find the Yamaha C1 too! I made so many compositions on mine! I graduated from the CX5M back in 1983 :)

Oh oh I have this Yamaha CX-5 and this soft wear still now this KZfaq is amazing

Surprisingly a lot of mid to late 80s soviet pop has had one of these somewhere down the line… I own a DX9 that I bought for £60 from a car boot sale not too long ago, I hope so much that I can come across one of these though its not likely 😅

What's cool about the styling is that it follows the same design, with green lettering and hexagonally shaped letters, as their professional electronic musical instruments of the time: synthesisers, drum computers, expanders, sequencers, etc. So if you're into collecting those, this one could be highly desirable. I'm a bit of a Yamaha fanboy myself, with a couple of their synths (EX5S, AN1x), and a musical talent more or less on par of that of Neil. Although, luckily, I haven't gone down the rabbit hole (yet!) with collecting unusual synthesisers from the late nineties, such as the Yamaha FS1r, or the Kawai K5000.

There was a Yamaha C1 Portable Music Computer released in the late 1980s, which for the top model cost $4000; the C1 with 20MB hard disk in 1989 was around £2700. It had 2 MIDI IN and 8 OUTS! Do a quick search for more info.

my first pc in 1987 I learn basic on this. also i had a game with Olympics from konami. my piano keyboard was a mini one. you make my cry.

That Roland SoundCanvas has a very nice sound to it!

It's basically a Yamaha DX9 in a computer. The DX9 was the little brother to the DX7 and used a 4op FM Synth engine, rather than 6op like in the 7. Even at £599 that's SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than a DX9, and a DX7 cost several grand in 1983 money. Even if you had to replace the voice card for the upgraded capabilities, it's still cheaper than a stand-alone Synthesizer.

This is extremely up my alley! I love it. It's actually pretty incredible value for the time. The Fairlight CMI costed around twelve times as much as one of these kitted out albeit the Fairlight was a lot more capable and was sampled based. Also as someone who is really into electronic music and old synthesizers you're doing great and getting terminology down perfectly fine!

I used to have a Casio calculator with a built in music synthesiser and of course it was incredibly basic but I tried to knock out a few familiar tunes on it. It was only the normal numerical keys that played the notes. For about 6 months of my life it was my favourite gadget. Never had a Yamaha MSX but instead had a Pioneer genlocking MSX computer for doing video titles and a fairly standard Toshiba msx computer. Loved the Konami range of MSX titles on cartridge they were amazing especially Salamander with a built in sound chip and Penguin Adventure. When I had an Amiga I mucked about with a basic sampling cartridge but never made any decent tunes with it.

Great video! Thanks for taking me back! I owned a CX5M and the keyboard - it was my first computer music setup, and I learned a lot about sequencing. Step entry from the keyboard was great because I also am not a great perfomer! The next kit I got was a Roland MT-32, and the combo of the Roland LA synthesis, sampled drums and the Yamaha FM sound was a great combo at the time! When I moved on from this, it was to the Atari STe which you also discussed :) It was a great way of getting into music. Thank you!

Brilliant video. I love the history of msx computers in particular - never heard of them. Keep up the good work!

I've definitely heard the storm sound effect in something before. It was great to hear other very familiar sounds coming from this computer and keyboard setup. Your ability to play is certainly better than mine.

I sold my BBc B to buy a CX5M and a drum machine. Got me started on making midi backing tracks, and i even played it live in bands :)

Channeling the spirit of Les Dawson at the end there 😉

dat air keyboard :D. i love msx stuff, the later models are a thing of beauty and they can run amazing software

The CX5MIIs were actually already equipped with a Yamaha V9938 VDP, which is the same VDP that is also used in the MSX2 standard. As far as I know there are actually upgrade modules available to bump up the VRAM to full 128kB so that the full capabilities of the VDP became available (though likely not in BASIC).

lol My dog was fast asleep until you started playing she shout up straight and started turning her head to the tunes lol

Now this is my thing!! Always wanted to mess with one of these back in the day but ended up with a 520stfm.

Ahh, MSX computers. As a Brit I was hardly aware on their existence back in the day, but the platform is very interesting if you are a tinkerer... MSX, Spectravideo, Sword, Memotech, Colecovision and ADAM, to name but a few closely related machines. From a hardware perspective it's not that hard to pick one and turn it in to a super-set of the whole lot - I did so with my Coleco ADAM which can now do-ish MSX2+ when it's in the mood, and have been busily butchering an AMSTRAD PCW with the intention of having a CP/M machine that can play along as well. For another take on such fun and games I can heartily recommend building a RC2014 computer and looking in to all the awesome things that machine can be bent in to performing.

You are a better musician than you give your self credit for Neil! Great demonstration

Yes, I had one of these CX5M and the YK20 keyboard (and the disk drive too). I used it as my primary sequencer for a few years 1985-1988. It was a pretty standard 4-op sound, similar to the other 4-ops of the time (dx9, etc.) No hits with it! :-)

Frequency Modulation synthesis is still absolute voodoo to me, and I had spent a lot of time exploring it in the past. To this day, it still has its place in electronic music alongside traditional subtractive synthesis. I don't think any sound designer would deny that it is notoriously difficult to program, but with that comes the possibility of unexplored sonic territory. Yamaha's own FS1R rackmount synth pushed things forward by allowing for more "operators" which are an important building block of sound generation in FM. I believe the systems/chips used in this video use 4 Operators per voice and the DX7 used 6 per voice. The FS1R allowed for 16 per voice. which can potentially create more complex sounds. It's highly sought after to this day. If the sound has continually improved with more Operators per voice - maybe we're yet to hear just how amazing FM could sound when perhaps we quadruple the number of Operators? In reality that would probably just create a load of white noise though! As a side note - check out the JMS DS Programmer that was used by Brian Eno in attempt to coax some new unique sounds out of the DX7... It's this potentiometer-endowed blue box of mystery!

Never sell yourself short. I still listen to your hauntology remix you released a while ago. Keep at it. I think you'll make a fine muso. 😊🦾

We had YIS503IIR and YIS503IIIR over here in some Soviet schools, they looked like that CX5MII/128, with serial adapters in that side slot instead of FM and MIDI; they were student machines, and there was also YIS805-something as a teacher's computer, which could host a file server over the serial, daisy chained network of student machines.

I don't think a family computer would have been in the cards back then, especially one based on the MSX Standard (only two manufacturers released MSX computers in the US, one being Yamaha) and despite wanting a computer for my first Christmas. However, I have a few CX5Ms and one CX5MII now, and plan to take a deep look at them.

I actually had one of those exact machines until I sold it not so long ago. I bought it for £10 at a boot fair in 2010, played it only the once just to see if it worked (and it did just fine) before it ended up sitting in the attic collecting dust. Then last year I sold it via Facebook for the same price I bought it for.

Ahh, imagine playing some Metal Gear or Aleste between recording sessions of your synthpop band.

20:26 must be where Farbrausch got their "world ripping apart" sound for Debris from! Instantly recognizable!

I had one of these! It's really amazing!!!! They are like gold dust now though.... Wish I'd never got rid of it.

I dimly recall having seen these for sale in the mid-1980s in Canada. They were sold at a professional music store, rather then as general-purpose computers. Some friends/classmates were aspiring musicians at the time, but this gear was way out of their price range.

Very nice choice of Headphones there!

First proper computer I was ever bought was an MSX. Love em to bits!

Neil... Your doin grrrreat as it would say in Space Harrier one of my fav tunes and games to play in the arcades back in the day. If I knew about this set up back in the day it would have been awesome to ownen one for less than £500 I bet it could hold its own even today in the right hands brilliant video thanks for sharing...

Crazy, i was literally JUST reading about this sound chip after being impressed by the sound on the Rastan arcade dfortae was playing on a stream here just the other day.....!!!!!D DEF want to get something with this chip in it some day, perhaps just one of the more affordable musical keyboards they put them in first, but some day, a Sharp X1, X68000, or MSX to gain access to those amazing game libraries too would be truly amazing.....!!!D

I have keyboards coming out of my ears. Which is inconvenient but makes me popular at parties.

NEVER EVER change this channel into a synth keyboard review channel lol

Yamaha are still quite notable in the computer music world. They own the company Steinberg (the makers of Cubase) and they also make a lot of hardware and still design their own chips. From Reface keyboards to audio interfaces they do it all. Most of the hardware sold under the Steinberg brand are all engineered by Yamaha. What I also find cool is that they also where one of Sega’s partners for making chips. Yamaha was one the producers of MSX chipsets and that must have impressed Sega enough to make the custom chips for them that are in the Mastersystem and Megadrive.

Your humor is hilarious 🤣 But I really enjoy seeing the European MSX in action too, especially with those MIDI capabilities! It's such a rarity which I'm not used to and it looks like a great machine but then again... I grew up with the Commodore 64 and NES myself, so... SID be friend!

Some of those sounds are lovely on the 128.

Excellent job with the toejam and earl riff :3

Just realise it after all these years. CX5M mirrors MSXC

Says he has no musical talent, then proceed to play better than I could ever dream

This is the only MSX computer I remember seeing an ad for in Byte Magazine

That was an educational video, I knew very little about synths, I will give it a go in the future as I enjoy this type of music. thanks.

This video goes public the same week I receive my MSX2!! its not a yamaha though. Great video as always Neil. Nailed the technical terms.

Earlier versions (SFG-01 to SFG-05) of the CX5M didn't have midi in as you said. MIDI out worked. It is possible to mod the old FM module to activate this if you get a newer EPROM from Ebay and do a bit of soldering rewiring.

There is a firmware upgrade you can get on ebay, I have bought one that hopefully updated the synth to the last version ie with midi in and the better interface.

This is freaking awesome, great work!

24:48 Less interesting fun fact: On the original song they used a Yamaha GS1, which was Yamaha's first commercial FM synth.

Awesome! I could never afford a MSX computer back in the day, which was my dream (Gradient Expert MSX, in Brazil), let alone that music computer which I didn't even knew existed until now. I'm a big fan of your content! 👍🏻

Cheers Neil, i was about to hit the sack over here in OZ...

All these sounds I remember from playing around with my parents Yamaha keyboard in the later 80s - all were still there but no computer, just a small LCD screen on the keyboard itself...not sure what the model was

Awesome! Glad to see some MSX coverage.

8-bit guy, RMC is learning to play piano so you can play together 😀

Also massively popular in the Netherlands. probably because Philips has some great models.

You are one classy chap! I do appreciate how British people have more dignity than Americans from my observations as an American. Anyway have a great day. Good luck with the new cave!

Blimey. Glad I never bankrupted myself for such a low end product. I started on the QY20 and workd upward from there.

21:13 sounds like Im about to watch an old documentary on PBS.

Well this is quite frankly EPIC thanks Neil! One of my friends still uses the Roland Sound Canvas midi files as background audio for his live guitar gigs.

By the way, on your recommendation, I've just used PCBWay for the first time as I needed to revise the Spectranet PCB to change the footprint for one of the chips. Very impressed so far, they turned my order around very quickly, board looks great. Just a satisfied customer :-)

Funny, you should mention the Atari ST [yes, due to MIDI]. When Atari Corp was still developing the ST and hit a road block with getting Atari Inc's AMY sound chip working inside it, they approached Yamaha to use the YM2151. Yamaha refused to sell it to them because they were concerned with the ST competing against the CX5M, especially since Atari Corp had planned to release lower-end STs such as the 130ST and the 260ST in those early days. And consequently, Yamaha would only sell Atari Corp the YM2149, their version of the AY chip. Thus that's how the ST ended up with that much maligned sound chip [instead of the YM2151, the AMY, or both]. At the same time, Yamaha had no problem selling the YM2151 to the separate Atari Games Corp for inclusion with their arcade games. In fact, they had courted the former "Atari Coin" division of Atari Inc even back in 1983 to use the chip but Atari Coin held off making a decision until the AMY was finalized. Of course, they had no idea that Warner would end up breaking apart old Atari Inc and selling the assets of Atari Inc.'s Consumer Division to Jack Tramiel's TTL company [which became Atari Corp], the AtariTel telecom division to Mitsubishi, and the majority stake of Atari Coin/Games to Namco in the following year. Alas...