To quote the performer, :

“The minuetto/trio (3rd movement) of W. A. Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik realized on the $299 XioSynth with my own patches!

8 tracks of audio – nothing edited, just raw recordings (with FX) from the XioSynth!

The track is made in the style of Wendy Carlos’ Switched-On series! ”

J.S. Bach – Invention #4 in D Minor, Ralph Press, Keyboard – Watch the top videos of the week here

15 Grave from the Drottningholm music composed by the Swedish composer J H Roman. Performed by Lasse Viklund.

From BTPRO’s YouTube page:
The Joy of the Preset-Synthesizer. First battle is Roland SH-1000 vs SH-2000!

I like Preset-Synthesizer. An engineer made sound with analog technology at the time without the sampling technology. It was often that I heard a sound different from the displayed name in them. I often thought “Is this the sound of the piano?”. But I can imagine a desperate face of the engineers who are going to make a genuine sound with an analog circuit. It is very exciting/humorous for me. Roland SH-1000 is Japanese first synthesizer and SH-2000 is Preset-synthesizer for organist.

Get the low-down on the SH-1000 at Vintage Synth Explorer:

Thomas Grillo has also developed considerable skill with the instrument. Here he is performing “The Swan” by Camille Saint-Saëns.

In a nutshell, here’s how the Theremin works (from WikiPedia):
The theremin is unique among musical instruments in that it is played without physical contact. The musician stands in front of the instrument and moves his or her hands in the proximity of two metal antennas. The distance from one antenna determines frequency (pitch), and the distance from the other controls amplitude (volume). Most frequently, the right hand controls the pitch and the left controls the volume, although some performers reverse this arrangement. Some low-cost theremins use a conventional, knob operated volume control and have only the pitch antenna.

The theremin uses the heterodyne principle to generate an audio signal. The instrument’s pitch circuitry includes two radio frequency oscillators. One oscillator operates at a fixed frequency. The frequency of the other oscillator is controlled by the performer’s distance from the pitch control antenna. The performer’s hand acts as the grounded plate (the performer’s body being the connection to ground) of a variable capacitor in an L-C (inductance-capacitance) circuit. The difference between the frequencies of the two oscillators at each moment allows the creation of a difference tone in the audio frequency range, resulting in audio signals that are amplified and sent to a loudspeaker.

To control volume, the performer’s other hand acts as the grounded plate of another variable capacitor. In this case, the capacitor detunes another oscillator, which affects the amplifier circuit. The distance between the performer’s hand and the volume control antenna determines the capacitor’s value, which regulates the theremin’s volume.[9]

Modern circuit designs often simplify this circuit and avoid the complexity of two heterodyne oscillators by having a single pitch oscillator, akin to the original theremin’s volume circuit. This approach is usually less stable and cannot generate the low frequencies that a heterodyne oscillator can. Better designs (e.g. Moog, Theremax) may use two pairs of heterodyne oscillators, for both pitch and volume.

Today, Theremins are widely available, and are fairly reasonably priced.

From the YouTube page:
A Yamaha YM2151 FM Synthesiser IC playing the Second Movement of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony. The CPU of the synth is a MOS 6510 CPU from a Commodore 64. The music was played over a MIDI interface. If you notice any synchronization glitches with the different instruments it’s because they weren’t recorded at the same time, but separately and mixed later.

Here’s some more SID music (and sound effects) for you:

Text from their YouTube page:
Just like modular synthesizers, people connect with each other in order to achieve diverse objectives. In Voltage, robots, half-human and half-synthesizer, powered by a huge amount of energy, connect to each other in an electric and chaotic trance.

Directed by:
Filippe Lyra e William Paiva

Produced by:
Barros Melo Animation Studio

Director of photography:
Filippe Lyra e William Paiva

Animation:
Filippe Lyra
William Paiva
Marcio Vieira
Felipe Soares
Leo D.
Tony Farias

Design:
Filippe Lyra
Marcio Vieira
Felipe Soares
William Paiva
Natalia Franca

Illustration:
Filippe Lyra
Marcio Vieira
Felipe Soares
William Paiva
Natalia Franca

Editor(s):
William Paiva
Leo D.
Filippe Lyra

Sound:
William Paiva e Leo D

Music:
William Paiva e Leo D

Executive Producer:
Izabella Barros Melo

From WikiPedia:
The Minimoog Voyager or Voyager is a monophonic analog synthesizer, designed by Robert Moog and released in 2002 by Moog Music. The Voyager was modeled after the classic Minimoog synthesizer that was popular in the 1970s.

Like the original Minimoog, the Voyager has six sound sources. Five of these (three voltage-controlled oscillators with switchable waveforms, a noise generator, and an external line input) pass to a mixer with independent level controls. The mixed output of the sources is then passed through the voltage-controlled filter and a voltage-controlled amplifier, each of which has its own ADSR envelope generator. The voltage-controlled filter can itself be made to oscillate, thus comprising the Voyager’s sixth sound source.

In addition to similar features of the original Minimoog, the Voyager was designed to have a memory bank capable of storing 128 presets, a touch pad modulation control, dedicated LFO, two modulation buses (one controllable via the modulation wheel and the other with a foot pedal), two ADSR envelopes for filter and amplifier control, a pressure-sensitive keyboard, 14 voltage-control inputs, and MIDI input/output.

Unlike the original Minimoog, the Voyager’s modulation buses can be set to affect almost any parameter of the sound, not just the filters. Although the synthesizer features MIDI control and advanced patch storage, all audio paths in the Voyager are analog with the sound originating from any of three oscillators designed for high tuning stability, as the original Minimoog oscillators tended to slightly shift out of tune while playing.

With the Voyager, certain parameters that were fixed on the original Minimoog can be programmed to suit the player’s preference. This includes selection between low-note, high-note or last-note priority. Also, the envelope generators can be set to retrigger with each pressed note or they can be set not to retrigger until all notes are lifted and the next note is played.

From Wikipedia:
The SID was devised by engineer Robert “Bob” Yannes, who later co-founded the Ensoniq digital synthesizer company. Yannes headed a team that included Yannes, two technicians and a CAD operator running Applicon (now a part of the UGS Corp.), who designed and completed the chip in five months’ time in the latter half of 1981. Yannes was inspired by previous work in the synthesizer industry and was not impressed by the current state of computer sound chips. Instead, he wanted a high-quality instrument chip, which is the reason why the SID has features like the envelope generator, previously not found in home computer sound chips.

The SID chip featured:

• three separately programmable independent audio oscillators (8 octave range, approximately 16 – 4000 Hz)
• four different waveforms per audio oscillator (sawtooth, triangle, pulse, noise)
• one multi mode filter featuring low-pass, high-pass and band-pass outputs with 6 dB/oct (bandpass) or 12 dB/octave (lowpass/highpass) rolloff. The different filter-modes are sometimes combined to produce additional timbres, for instance a notch-reject filter.
• three attack/decay/sustain/release (ADSR) volume controls, one for each audio oscillator.
• three ring modulators.
• oscillator sync for each audio oscillator.
• two 8-bit A/D converters (typically used for game control paddles, but later also used for a mouse)
• external audio input (for sound mixing with external signal sources)
• random number/modulation generator

Interested in playing with the SID for your own recordings? Hop on over to Madame Blavatsy’s and get yourself a SID VSTi plugin for your favorite DAW.