Giz A Fiver - a tune from the 1990s

Adventures with FX units! I'm pretty sure that the pretend enveloped filter on one of the lead sounds was the 'Cry' effect on the Zoom 9050s. If I remember correctly the percussive/gated padish sound towards the end was the hi-hat part going through the Quadraverb+ resonator, which was being sent note info from the string part. It was something along those lines. If you count along with the tune you'll see where I got the name from. Background I was made redundant for the first time in 1994. I hadn't been in a band for a couple of years so spent some of the redundancy pay on home-studio gear: Yamaha MT8X multitrack cassette recorder Kawai Q80EX sequencer Yamaha TG100 synthesizer Kawai XS-1 synthesizer Alesis Quadraverb+ multi-effects unit Zoom 9050s multi-effects unit After writing some fairly ropey guitar-based songs I started trying my hand at electronic music. Unfortunately, the gear I'd bought wasn't really up to the job. Fortunately, I had a fair bit of time on my hands. Neither the TG100 or XS-1 were particularly flexible - they're fairly basic romplers - and neither had filters. Anything that sounds like a filter is the wah/autowah/cry from the Zoom 9050s. Things which would take a few minutes with a computer now took a few hours to programme on the Q80EX - I spent a big amount of time looking at a small amount of LCD screen. I can't remember if the MT8X was synched to the Q80EX or the other way around but one of them was definitely synched to the other.

Added 8 Apr 2026