Drifting Aimlessly, Lost in FM.

Signal

Stable

Origin

The Rusty Junction

Filed by

The Stationkeeper

Most people have heard FM synthesis. Very few become fascinated by the machines that make these sounds. Many of us, under siege from the algorithms, have their feeds filled with synthfluencers slanging dreams from the dark corners of social media. They convince us that we too can create in their style by merely owning these little monuments to possibility.

Then, you finally obtain it. This is the thing that will make you feel creative again. Sleek design. Cold, black aluminum chassis. Stiff, small faders. Cold, black knurled knobs with chrome accents.

Blinking, pulsing LEDs. LFO indicators. Algorithms etched into the panel. Inside it, two genuine Yamaha YM2612 chips as were found within the Sega Genesis. Sounds from before the great temporal shift.

Then, it happens. The hardest part wasn’t that the MEGAfm was sitting idle. It was that every time I looked at it, I saw the version of myself I thought I’d become when I obtained it. Now, I sit with this burden, aimlessly messing about with parameters, yearning for understanding. Weeks become months. The transponder lit.

This is my attempt to turn it around.

These are the murmurings of an engineer adrift, allowing myself to wander, to chart the territory, and to leave behind a map for whoever arrives next.