Me, a synthesizer, and a cat.

flickr by leslie.paige.

KORG N364

Cool Synth Solo

via Bitexion on this VSE thread:

"Check this out, it's from a DVD of Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow from 1984. They had a true virtuoso keyboardist. Check out his part of the stage.

And the solo [mp3]

I don't know what the two synths below the Memorymoog on the left are (there are more closeups of the MM during the clip).

Here's a breakdown of the solo since you can't see it. The pipe organ is the EMU Emulator, very good pipe organ sound. He uses both hands all the time like a true keyboardist. On the funny classical part he triggers a MIDI sequencer that sequences the bassline and chords from the Oberheim, and play the lead lines on the Hammond and the mystery synth below the big Memorymoog with each hand. The drum bit is a drum machine I believe, and the beow beow beow bass sound is also sequenced.

Onto the massive Taurus/Minimoog part..He steps on the Taurus, plays the crazy guitarlike solo on the Minimoog (truly raping the keyboard) and the strings bit again on the mystery synth. Maybe it's a strings synth. I love the way he uses delay as a second instrument, bouncing off it. Makes the Minimoog sound like an electric guitar in the Jan Hammer style. I think there is some distortion on the Mini aswell? He also uses portamento heavily in the last part. And we even enter FM territory (audio rate modulation of the filter) at the end.

On the final explosion he jumps around and bangs the Memorymoog. I have tried to play off the delay the way he does, and it's not an easy thing. You need 100% steady timing or the entire thing is thrown off track."

mp3 mirrored here for when the thread goes down.

moog grafitti

flickr by Antan.

Buchla 259 and 261e

The following notes comparing the original Buchla 259 and the new 261e Complex Waveform Generators came in on the Buchla list via Ezra Buchla, Don Buchla's son. Note the reference to the 258 Dual Oscillator.

"the waveshaping circuits of the 261e and the old 259 are very very very close. they "sound the same." except that the old one is indeed hotter, and the driving sine wave is not quite as clean or as stable in pitch.

to me, the functional difference is in the mod osc section. there are tradeoffs. the 259 has nice smooth cv output and you can push it to very low frequencies with cv input. this is good. the 261e has an additional, quite radical waveshaping circuit on the mod osc itself, which allows you to crossfade between sine, square, narrow square and a kindof funky sinusoidal trapezoid. this is good too. listen to the phase locked mod osc audio output! that is not the same, at all.

phase lock behaves differently. there are more possible behaviors in the 261e, as the process can receive certain information from software-land. and these again can come out as very interestingly close spaced chaotic orbits.

experiment with frequency modulation + pitch tracking + phase lock for maximally intricate orbit-space!

we will not do a 259 clone anytime soon. oh well.

i do luv me a 258. now THAT's buildable. of course maybe not by me, just at the moment... i am busy!

-eb"

KORG KPR77 Drum Kit and Pro Solo Sync Guide

via punkdISCO who brought us this great video:

"I have just uploaded a Battery 3 kit I did from my KPR77 which has the Plutonique9 Kick mods. Includes velocity switching for accent/non-accent sounds. Also includes the rather nice metronome sounds from the KPR."

Title link takes you there. Note the zip contains WAV files so you don't need Battery.

See this link for the Pro Solo Sync Guide.

Rogue Element

Title link takes you there. Click on Photos when you get there for the gear shots.

via sequencer.de

Synare Drum Synth

via this auction.

Details:
"Star Synare Percussion Module. I am told that this is a prototype of the PS1 because the pads are not mounted up front as on the production model. This unit has a strange connector on the back of the box to make the external trigger pad connections. Inside the unit is a circuit board that looks to be hand soldered and a hand written diagram beside the connectors to show the different trigger pad connections. I don't know if this unit is functional as far as sound output. I plugged in headphones and played with all of the pots and never heard anything. I do however, see that the LFO led blinks at different rates when I adjust that pot."

Two Oberheim SEMS (4 Oscs) Demo

Title link takes you to the mp3 via REwire in the comments of this post.

The Tubbie Box - Circuit Bent Contraption

YouTube via carpeteria.

"Here's a new kind of box, this time made from the guts of an interactive red Teletubbie doll. The light box is originally from the doll's stomach, ripped out, rehoused, and glitched out. Lots of interesting switches that mess up the noises which already sounded weird to begin with. Enjoy."

BugBrand Stylus Keyboard & Fracrak case

YouTube via BugBrand.

"This is modular porta-power! A 3.5 octave stylus keyboard outputting standard 1v/oct CVs, gate, trigger etc - housed in a case that can hold 7 Fracrak sized modules. Plus some footcontrols thrown in too! Keyboard built with schems from Music From Outer Space.

This is the first tests - not everything is quite finalized yet but its working pretty darn good already!
More details & videos coming soon...

www.bugbrand.co.uk"

BugBrand Weevil07 Prototype

YouTube via BugBrand.

"Hey! New Weevil Prototype trying out some new ideas.... CNC Engraved Frontpanel - tinned pcb frontpanel with 9 touchpoints and engravings around controls Twin ringmod oscillators with pitching / range / pulse width / low power Resonant 2-pole low pass filter - gnarly when resonant Compact size - the production model will be bigger - this is a bit too cramped! Note - this is a prototype only - check www.bugbrand.co.uk to see production development sometime soon..."

BugBrand Dual Pattern Generator

YouTube via BugBrand.

"New sequencing module - pretty experimental.!.

Check the electronics page of www.bugbrand.co.uk for schematic.

You input gate signals to select the step (A through D) - this is binary counting (ie Bit0 and Bit1 -- 00, 01, 10, 11 - does that make sense?!) and the two Bit inputs each have two gate inputs that are OR'd together. Probably losing you now to tech-sleep!

Whatever,,, the Bit inputs select the step and there are two independent preset columns - each step having a range of 0 to +5v.

So, one of my modular techniques is to take a regular clock signal and divide it many ways - - 2,3,5,7,9,13,137 etc... Combine these back together and you get a regular pulse but confused with some cross-rhythms and morphing. FIre the BitInputs from four different clock divisions and the SeqStep will jump between the different steps.

Nice lights too!
Sorry about the wobbly-cam effect!"