NAMM: Street Boxx and Rockers Mints

Title link takes you to a hillarious video by the Sonic State crew on what looks like the NAMM 2006 after party. There's a couple of plugs including the Street Box SB-246 (a repackaged Zoom Rhythm Trak they claim to be "Hip-Hop's first real beat machine. For the streets......By the streets"), and Rockers Mints. Enjoy. Man I miss LA at times. That's sparkle. : )

Blacet Sound Clips

Update: Title link was pointing to one of the MP3. It's now updated and points to the forum post. Sorry about that.

Title link takes you to a post on HC with some impressive sound clips. Below are the current samples. Make sure to check back for more over time.

"One is some FM craziness using the filter in self-oscillation to modulate a sine wave from the VCO, with the filter frequency modulated by the LFO. The other is a simple saw-tooth bassline, with some standard filter sweeping."

http://home.comcast.net/~r3cogniz3r/BlacetSineFM.mp3
http://home.comcast.net/~r3cogniz3r/BlacetSweep.mp3


"Here is a quick loop I whipped up. The drums are Battery, the lead sound is Vanguard, the bass is the modular. It's a simple pulse-wave patch with PWM."

http://home.comcast.net/~r3cogniz3r/BlacetShortLoop.mp3

Blacet/Wiard/Doepfer Live - The Picture is Dead

I posted about The Picture is Dead back on Nov. 26. Some truly bizarre and interesting music reminiscent of the old 4AD and Fac bands. Well, they will be playing live in the DC area on the 25th of January, and they will be performing with their Blacet, Wiard, and Doepfer modular; you don't get to see that every day. More info below. Title link takes you to their site with a couple of mp3s.



"This message is to inform you that THE PICTURE IS DEAD will be performing at DC9 on Wednesday the 25th of January at 9 PM. The band members are BRYAN CORNELL, SAM SERAFY, PATRICK TIMONY, and JAMES WOLF. To hear what we sound like, visit www.pictureisdead.com or www.myspace.com/thepictureisdead. The band will play along with projected images by PAT PADUA. Joining us will be the bands SPANORB (aka DJ Panic) and JAKUTA AND CARL.

DC9
1940 9th Street, NW, (9th & Florida)
Washington, DC
http://www.dcnine.com

Hope to see you there!"

Synths Make the Sunday Paper

In the UK that is. Note this is in a Newspaper, not a music publication. Pretty cool. Title link takes you to more via Chris Strellis.

Kraftwerk Pocket Calculator Video on DVD Born

Title link takes you there.

Korg Radias on Sequencer.de

Title link takes you to Moogulator's page on the Korg Radias including several screenshots of the editor.

Silky T and the Juno G - Video up on Roland

Title link takes you there. Tired of the standard techno demos? Well here you go.



To get to the video, click the little video icon on the bottom left of the juno image.

KORE Portability?

Title link takes you to a good post about KORE on CDM. The one thing that stood out to me was the following:

"Portability: Because KORE will store all this patch information and performance and control settings, you'll be able to take your whole KORE setup anywhere you want -- move from Logic to Live, SONAR to Fruity Loops, from your Mac to your PC, from your studio tower to your stage laptop, whatever. Of course, you'll have to have the same plug-ins on both systems, but at least you won't have to manually move over plug-ins."

This along with seamless integration of your plug-ins seems one step closer to soft synths bridging that final gap with dedicated hardware synths. I just prefer the directness of hardware, but you can't deny the apeal of having a hundred different synths under one hood; this just might be the solution.

Knobs on The Packrat

January's strip of The Packrat is out. Title link takes you to The Packrat page.

Marvin Jones Website - NAMM Memorial, Paia History and Much More

Title link takes you to Marvin Jones website. I arrived to what looked like a simple, lean website. I then began to explore and found much more than meets the eye. I found the history of Paia, Marvin worked there and became lifelong friends with founder John Simonton. I found some humorous ads from Paia including this great shot of Marvin dressed as Santa.



I found some great shots of NAMM 2006 including these two Buchlas.


And... I realized that Marvin Jones has had a year I simply cannot fathom. The following are shots from this years NAMM Memorial. Morris "Morrie" Jones below, is Marvin Jones father. Title link takes you to his site with much more.