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TimewARP • User Guide
English
English
1
The TimewARP 2600 Manual
1.1
The ARP 2600, 1970 - 1981 and Onward
The ARP 2600 was the second product of ARP Instruments. It was released in 1970, and continued until the
manufacturer ceased operations in 1981.
Its design combined modularity (for studio flexibility, and for instructional use) and integration (for real-time
performance). Functionally, the ARP 2600 was completely modular: any signal output could be routed to any
signal input, with a patch cord. Operationally, the ARP 2600 was integrated, using internally-wired default signal
paths that made it possible to create a wide range of keyboard patches by simply opening up slide attenuators,
as though sitting in front of a mixing console.
The ARP 2600 earned an early reputation for stability, and for flexibility exceeding that of its competitor, the
Minimoog. Used 2600’s in good condition command premium prices on eBay today and businesses around the
country make a living reconditioning, rebuilding, and customizing 30-year-old units.
Among rock musicians, the ARP 2600 was used by Stevie Wonder, Pete Townsend, Joe Zawinul, Edgar Winter, Paul
Bley, Roger Powell, Jean-Michel Jarre, Mike Oldfield, Herbie Hancock, and many, many others.
Its modular design, and the popularity of its Owner’s Manual, made the ARP 2600 a widely used teaching
instrument in many schools and music conservatories around the country and internationally.
We are proud to bring you this software emulation of the 2600. Have fun with it, learn from it, but above all, make
noise with it.
1.2
Foreword
Unfasten the seat belts of your mind. The TimewARP 2600 will be an astonishing, exhilarating, and enlightening
experience.
Creating this manual has been an astonishing, exhilarating, and enlightening experience for me. How many are
ever given the chance to revisit an earlier life, an earlier project, a project like the ARP 2600 Manual, decades later,
and get it right? It’s time travel. I’m grateful to Way Out Ware for providing me that opportunity.
When, at Alan R. Pearlman’s invitation, I began work on the original 2600 manual in September of 1970, the 2600
itself barely existed. For the first two months, I was writing “blind”—without a machine in front of me. My first
hands-on experience with a synthesizer had been only six months earlier (it was a Putney VCS3).
I finished the text in March of 1971, Margaret Friend created the graphics, and the Owner’s Manual for the ARP
2600 began what turned out to be a surprisingly long career. In spite of the many defects that my inexperience
contributed—the gaps in coverage, and outright errors—it became quite popular. To this day, it still gets an
occasional respectable mention in the analog-synthesis community.
When Way Out Ware’s Jim Heintz called in early 2004 to tell me about the TimewARP 2600, a lot of time had
passed. Regarding software synthesizers, I had grown weary and cynical. Analog-modeling software had been
a decade-long disappointment; some products did interesting things but not the things that real analog modules
do. Jim, however, had already encountered, thought about, and solved these problems. He owned a real 2600.
He really aimed at getting it right and would not be satisfied with anything less. It was a pleasure, finally, to accept
his invitation to do an Owner’s Manual.
It’s now clear that Way Out Ware has set a new standard for software-based audio synthesis. The behavior of the
TimewARP 2600 software—both module-by-module and integrated into patches—is effectively indistinguishable
from that of the analog hardware that it emulates.
Soaring and swooping through the free air of analog synthesis—a world of nothing but sliders and cords and
continuously evolving patch configuration—was a capstone course at the Boston School of Electronic Music in
the 1970’s. That is the world that the TimewARP 2600, for a new generation of musicians in a new millennium
(that means you), provides access to: it is the first—and I believe only—software synthesizer to support real-time
performance by sliders and patchcords alone.
So here it is: your new Owner’s Manual, for the new TimewARP 2600.
Unfasten the seat belts of your mind. How else can you hope to experience time travel? How else can you enjoy
free flight?
Jim Michmerhuizen
Jim Michmerhuizen is the author of the original ARP 2600 Manual and Founder and Director of the Boston
School of Electronic Music.
