The Bellish Keyboard sound used in the St Elsewhere Theme from 1983

It actually concerns the bellish sounds. They sound like a DX-7 but as far
as i know, the DX-7 wasn't even made when the song was being produced (1982 i think)
Just want to know was the a DX-7 or a fairlight CMI as a suspect.

The quality is absolutely awful on that, to the extent that it changes the perception of the sounds. What about this:

Is that the same recording? It's slightly faster and higher in pitch. I guess the one you linked to was taped on a VCR so that's why it's slower.

Listening to the clean one it is clearly a DX7 producing most of the sounds. Someone on the youtube comments mentions Dave Grusin being the composer. I imagine someone like him would have got hold of a DX7 as soon as it was released, if not before (ie he may have had a special relationship with Yamaha so they could have given him one to try out, well in advance of release).

could be the ppg wave (released in '81)

No way. Listen to the second youtube.

I'm pretty sure it's the same recording, but the first one is slower because of speed variations from playback in a VCR. It's also been encoded at very, very low quality, resulting in all the top end being stripped from the sounds and grungy artefacts added.

the DX7 became ubiquitous really fast. ive only used a dx100 which is a scaled down version and that sounds quite like the presets

http://grusin.net/tv_series_i_z.htm
(scroll down a bit for St. Elsewhere)

Elaborating on the combination of instruments used, Dave Grusin reveals that the theme was done on a Fender Rhodes, with a Prophet, OB-X and a Fairlight, neither MIDIed together nor using a sequencer. “I played it all in real time,” he says, adding “if I had done it acoustically, maybe it wouldn't have been as unique in some way.” He also points out that the theme was done electronically, one track at a time,” being pre-MIDI for him.

I spent £500 on a DX21 in 1986 (and the keyboard on the damn thing had no velocity sensitivity). I always had to borrow or hire keyboards before that because I simply couldn't afford to buy one. People have it so easy now with free VST synths, widely available cracked copies of the finest software and so on.

Ah, I have to retract. Here's a better quality recording of the music heard in the youtube clip linked to by Startrekman:

http://www.kfcplainfield.com/sound/stelse.wav

The second one, which I linked to, is definitely done on a DX7 and must be a later re-recording.

this show is pretty good. love the pixelated screen wipes

man what

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Westphall#The_Tommy_Westphall_Universe_Hypothesis

You've never seen that theory? It's crazy. I lost a good 2 hours one night exploring the spreadsheets and charts people had made.

s...spreadsheets??