Andy Thomas, the synth enthusiast who organised the first PPG-UK reunion in Wales on the weekend of 24th-25th November, has extended thanks to all the people who attended for making it a success.
'The event was planned as an opportunity to meet some of the programmers behind the PPG sound of the hits of the 1980s and 1990s and look to the future developments for the original hardware/software and software wavetable synthesis,' says Thomas.
'Sound Designer Sunao Inami was so keen to attend he travelled 13,000 miles from Japan to Wales for a weekend!Ü Bearing gifts of Japanese delicacies and boxes of his own album CDs Sunao also performed 'live' with an I-Book on his left arm using Native Instrument's Reaktor!
'PPG fan Ray Cuellar came all the way from Union City, California (a mere 5,400 miles) to gain more knowledge on his favourite synthesizer/sampler. He came well prepared with albums featuring PPG textures. Licensing clearance permitting we could create a multi volume hits collection of CDs with those wavetables!
Thomas thanks Mike Smith (Gary Numan, Go West) for bringing along the 'saddest-looking Wave 2.3. The poor synth had suffered water damage and was refusing to boot up. This is where meetings like this are helpful in researching the right service centre, manuals and harder to find components. Luckily for Mike we had PPG collector and 'Wave Surgeon' Simon Alexander on hand to consider the prognosis so all is not lost.'
