MATRIXSYNTH: Saturday, December 15, 2007

He found his happy place i guess

flickr by JoelKiel82

full size

KORG Mono/Poly

"Blursound studios netherlands"

Holiday Music by Jonathan Hughes

via Jonathan Hughes:
"I'm a long-time reader of and occasional poster to matrixsynth. For the past few years around this time, my friends and I have done a Holiday CD. It's usually all original stuff, and nothing like normal holiday music. There are several songs that might be of particular interest to you and the readers of matrixsynth (especially if you can't stand listening to normal holiday music). They're completely electronic, and feature singing robots (well, not really -- it's the VocalWriter software). The songs are all supposed to be at least mildly amusing, and they seem to go over well with kids. But anyone who likes synth pop should appreciate them.

Featured synths include: Roland SH101 (all the solos are on the SH101), Dave Smith MEK, Waldorf Micro Q and Microwave XT, and Roland JP8000, plus Native Instruments' Battery loaded with vintage drum machine samples. I'd that the analog stuff (including analog drum machine samples) makes up about 75% of the songs.

You can find the songs here:
http://www.jonathanhughes.com/holiday.html

These are the electronics songs:
"The Only Present I Want"
"Robot and Snowman in 3D"
"Robot Holiday" (this is in the 2006 section)

I hope you like them
Jonathan Hughes"

JoMoX XBase 888

"XBASE 888

Hoping to continue the grand tradition of these unique and intuitive analog instruments, while at the same time updating their abilities with the latest technologies, we are proud to introduce the JoMoX XBASE 888, our newest analog drum machine. It combines the ultimate vintage sound with a modern, intuitive interface for both modern studio and live requirements.

· 9 Instruments
Bass Drum, Snare Drum, Lo Tom, Hi Tom, Hi Hat, Clap, Rim, Crash and Ride. All instruments are polyphonically playable and have individual outs. From HH section onwards it's short 8-bit samples played back with an analog envelope. The sample flash ROM contains 31 samples per instrument, so there's a total of 155 samples.

· Real analog sound production
on BD, SD, LT and HT with digital control, means storeability and midi-controlability of all parameters. To make the disturbance of analog circuitry as small as possible, all D/A converters are specially adapted to the circuits and being integrated - with proven XBase/AirBase technology.

· 16 knobs
Sound editing is made by endless rotary encoders for every analog parameter which lets you edit the sounds without any jumps or awkward turning jobs.
Close to each knob there is a 3-color LED indicating which parameters for the selected instrument are editable.

· Improved kick drum
The most famous sound of the old XBase09 was actually the kick drum. We have even put a parameter on top and provided the most wicked bass drum in the world with a compression value that lets you decide between a 909-style ultra compressed envelope or an 808-ish exponential curve.

· Analog tom toms
For the beat freak there is also some extremely good sounding and widely editable analog tom toms included.

· Internal step sequencer
The XBASE 888 has the genious step sequencer build in already. There are some improvements to the old products: all patterns are A/B patterns, and it's your choice if it's 2 alternating 16 step patterns ore one 32 step pattern. The sequencer is made up by 3-color LEDs to indicate the individual step edit modes known from the XBase09 even better and more intuitive.
The micro shuffle can now be edited for each instrument individually.
Bank select has now an own switch. 4 banks with each 16 A/B patterns are made available, which results in 128 actual 16 step patterns.

· Stereo mix with pan control
All instruments except for kick drum can be panned in the stereo bus. If a plug is inserted to an individual input, the signal is spared out of the stereo bus.

· External midi tracks
As with the XBase classic there are at 4 tracks to control external devices by programmable midi notes.

· 2 LFOs
Of course the XBASE 888 has again two phat LFOs that can be beat syncronized or run freely and can be routed to any destination.

· Hi Hat Filter
The Hi Hat section contains a great sounding analog band pass filter with independend lowpass, highpass and resonance controls. Other than the 8-bit HH samples, analog noise can be the sound source as well.

· 2x24 Character LCD display
For a more convenient and clear operation the XBASE 888 has a big alphanumerical LCD display. Kits can be named and the analog step sequencer has a bar display.

· Flash sound ROM
The sound flash memory in the percussion section (HH, Clap, Rim, Crash, Ride) which contains 31 samples per instrument can be overwritten by the user via midi sample dump in order to create own samples.

We provide a free tool that converts your *.wav or *.AIFF samples into the right formatted XBASE 888 structure and lets you dump your own created short samples into the XBASE 888.

Further changes without notification"

whiz

YouTube via jasonkramer1

via sendling.

"early demo of whiz. visual lfo editor + 28 step sequencer. the puppy is Max."

10voicePS3100

Another Waldorf Blofeld demo by Boele of SCD: 10voicePS3100.mp3. This one based on the KORG PS3100.

Roland JP8000 JP 8000 Jupiter Juno demo

YouTube via synthartist69

"I had a few request for a demo of the JP8000 so here is a super quick one for you!"

Mining, PA, 1904 -- MG-1 Blues

YouTube via Goldenthrush. "My Woman Left Me And Took The Hammond, So All I Got Left Is A MG-1 Blues".
"This film, I'll warn you now, is in very bad shape. I did what I could with it with iMovie's filters, but it's a prime example of a piece of our historic record that is in dire need of restoration.

An "actuality" film, that is, footage of people doing normal people stuff, this documents aboveground work at a Pennsylvania coal mine. You'll see three explosions to start, one while the camera is panning; the second, two guys go running out of a mine while a third watches, then boom; and the third, a cool under-snow explosion.

Then it moves on to a horse drawing a dump wagon up to a steam shovel. It's amazing seeing how effortlessly the man running it managed the machine.

And finally, it shows the gravity rail that was moving coal up and out of the mine.

Tedd's father worked (briefly) as a coal miner in PA, with his father. This was where Tedd's Dad learned the old truism "you don't have to run faster than the explosion you just caused, just faster than your old man".

Yep, Tedd's dad's stint as a miner was pretty short.

Speaking of the misfits, the music is not a blues, and is actually titled: "My Woman Left Me And Took The Hammond, So All I Got Left Is A MG-1 Blues".

Synthesizer players hate it or love it, the poor little poly-synth enjoys a peculiar place in reality. Tedd loves his, obviously.

In this piece, the MG-1 is set to emulate our Hammond, and does so pretty well, I think.

And I really have no idea why it got the excessively long name. I suppose I should be happy he didn't come tear-assing out of the studio with an explosion on his heels.

Some rights reserved.

Welcome To Route 66"

Marion 8 Voice Analog Synthesizer ( by Tom Oberheim )

via this auction

"The MSR-2 is an Analog 8-voice Polyphonic Synthesizer."

Note the OB-Xa and Ob-8 style blue stripes on black. Anyone out there know what Curtis chips these used and if/how they compare to the Prophet '08?

Oberheim OB-Mx

via this auction
Not the best shot, but you don't see these often. What is interesting is I think the Oberheim OB-Mx wins hands down for the absolute worst ebay shots ever. It actually is a bit fascinating when you think about it.

BTW, another interesting bit of synth info is if you click here you will see every single synth shot I've gathered since I started the blog. You can do a search for any synth and you will see how many images come up for each. This will give you an idea of how often particular synths come up on ebay, or rather the ones I've posted. I *think* the Juno-106 reigns king but I could be wrong. If you find a synth I've grabbed more shots of off the bay feel free to post it in the comments.

Inside the Alesis Micron

via Lyle:

"Here’s a few pictures inside my Alesis Micron. I was expecting to find a Freescale(Motorola) or Analog Sharc DSP but instead I found these low cost Wavefront AL3101CG DSP’s. Nine of them to be exact, 8 for voices and 1 for effects. These are interfaced to a Freescale Coldfire micro via some FPGA glue logic. Some time ago Alesis sold semiconductors for audio and ADAT applications but has since ceased doing that. I wonder if Wavefront is the same group? Perhaps someone else knows."

If anyone knows more, feel free to comment.

Analog Synthesizers; Understanding, Performing, Buying

"In this book, the technical explanation of the nature of analog sound creation is followed by the story of its birth and its subsequent development by various designers, manufacturers and performers. The individual components of analog sound creation are then examined in detail, with step by step examples of sound creation techniques. Then the modern imitative analog instruments are examined, again with detailed instructions for programming and using them, and the book is completed with appendices listing the major instrument lines available, hints on values and purchasing, other sources of information, and a discography of readily available recordings which give good examples of analog sound synthesis. The CD which accompanies the book gives many examples of analog sound creation basics as well as more advanced techniques, and of the abilities of the individual instruments associated with classical and with imitative analog sound synthesis."

click here for more. via brian c.

The System - You Are In My System

YouTube via criticalbeat. Black PPG Waveterm.
"Great music video from The System for the hit single "You Are In My System". Released in 1983 (Atlantic Records)."

Update via Qwave in the comments:
"I wonder what is under the PPG waveterm A.
And where is the PPG wave 2.2 that would play the sounds created by the waveterm?
And this keyboard with the QWERTY keyboard inside is very unique. And it isn't a PPG keyboard for sure.
So we see a PPG waveterm here that loads a "Transiant File" (="sample" in PPG terms) on page 3.0.

The PPG EVU (= Extension Voice Unit) is based on the PPG wave 2.3 and does not work with a Waveterm A sample at all. The PPG wave 2.3 doesn't load them the right way too.
I had a PPG system ith a wave 2.2 and a 2.3.
And an upgraded waveterm A that ran waveterm B software. Bt the reformat disk for booting in waveterm A mode was bad, so I could not use my wave 2.2 together with the waveterm for sampling. But of cause for the very special Event Generator (not realtime sequencer!) of the PPG waveterm B.

keep on turning these knobs

Till "Qwave" Kopper"