MATRIXSYNTH: Monday, November 13, 2006

Fairlight CMI III Audio Demo

Title link takes you to the post on Failed Muso.

I thought the following summed up why many of us still go after vintage synths and why we appreciate different synths from different manufacturers. They all have their own character. You can usually get close approximations between synths, but rarely can you capture the unique character that makes any given synth shine.

"However, after listening to this and yearning to own one more than ever, I found myself thinking about why I really wanted one as I could get sounds like these from any number of newer, more advanced and able machines. Heck, my Alesis Fusion is 100 times more powerful and can produce many similar tones. A Kawai K5000 could do very good additive as can Camel Audio's Cameleon 5000, but there is something in the Fairlight sound that tends to be lacking from many modern day instruments and that is character. The Fairlight has it in bucket loads, like many other synths of it's era. Nowadays, we seem to accept power and bloatware as the way forward. This is a big mistake."

The Simmons Electronic Drums Virtual Museum

Title link takes you to The Simmons Electronic Drums Virtual Museum where you'll find manuals, patches, images and more.

via Georg.

AH Bay Area Gathering 2006 Gathers $565 for the Moog Foundation

Brian Comnes, host of this year's AHBA set up a raffle for the gathering in which proceeds would go the Bob Moog Memorial Foundation for Electronic Music. They raised $565. Pretty cool.

"Here's the list of goodies some lucky folks walked away with yesterday. Not bad for a $5 ticket
** Korg Mono/Poly in a flight case (donated by Nick Peck)
** Metasonix TM-6 tube filter (from Eric Barbour of Metasonix)
** $100 gift certificate to Analogue Haven (from Shawn Cleary and Chuck Oken, owners of the store)
** Moog DVD from Moog Foundation
** Several Moog Hats from Moog Foundation and RobotSpeak (Steve Taormina and Alan Stewart, owners of the store)
** Hooded sweatshirt from Livewire Electronics (from Mike Brown of Livewire)
** Moog Tshirts from Moog Foundation and RobotSpeak
** Studio Electronics T shirts from Robot Speak

Please go to www.moogfoundation.org. You can find out about the group's work. You can also contribute online. Their goal is to get to $5mm and to date they only have $30k, plus our $565, so they have a ways to go and could definitely use help from the synth enthusiast community.

The goal of this Foundation honoring this unique and special (Bob Moog) is to foster innovation and curiosity in electronic music.

In my humble opinion, I think the AH local groups should adopt the Bob Moog Foundation for at least all of 2007 and maybe in perpetuity if all goes well.....and beside a raffle adds an element of excitement, tension and anxiety to an otherwise blissful day ...and if they can't get any prizes they can just set out a coffee can and collect.

Peace
Brian"

Great idea Brian.
If you haven't checked out the Bob Moog Memorial Foundation for Electronic Music, please do.

Update: Brian suggested I put up a permanent link to The Moog Foundation. Great idea. I'll be adding the below image shortly.

The GTR Orgatron

via loscha. Update via Loscha in the comments:

"Hi Folks,

Once a year I get someone emailing me asking for information on the Orgatron. Sadly, I lost all that information to a HDD crash in 2009 or so, and I sold the Orgatron soon after these pictures were published, as I moved to a much smaller house.

So, I'm really sorry - I can't help anyone out with further information about the keyboard.

It had a chord organ section on the left, and the main synth voice was a very sketchy monosynth. There was some kind of weak lowpass filter that would close on some of the brass sounds, I seem to remember.

If you can get one for $50 -- do it!
If you can get one for $200 -- don't do it!"

Air Synth Shirt

Well, technically it's an air guitar t-shirt, but I'm hijacking it. I need to make my Matrixsynth T out of this stuff. Then we can have a Matrixsynth rave with everyone actually creating the music as they dance in a trance.

"Our air guitar consists of a wearable sensor interface embedded in a conventional 'shirt' which uses custom software to map gestures with audio samples. Freedom of movement is a great feature of these textile-based interfaces. It’s an easy-to-use, virtual instrument that allows real-time music making – even by players without significant musical or computing skills."

via CDM and Gizmodo. Title link takes you to an article on the shirt with contact info. Also see this article on the BBC.

Kenton Selling Starts Selling MIDI Retrofits Again

Add MIDI to your old analogs. Title link takes you the list. It's a long one. Korg Polysix MIDI Retrofit pictured. I think it costs about as much as a Polysix. : )

AH Bay Area Gathering 2006 Gallery on synchro1

Title link takes you to the gallery.

Oberheim OB-1

AH Bay Area Gathering 2006 Gallery on redfish.net

Title link takes you to the set.

Dave Smith and Brian Comnes at AHBA 2006

Love the T Brian!

You rule. ; )

Update: I sometimes assume that anyone that comes to this site knows who Dave Smith is. I know I wasn't born knowing, so if you don't, in short, he was the founder of Sequential Circuits, maker of the Prophet 5 (the first full programmable polyphonic analog synth with patch memories), the Prophet VS, Prophet T8, Pro One and more. He now has a little company called Dave Smith Instruments, where you will find the Evolver and Poly Evolver line of synths. Oh, one more thing: he was the guy that brought us MIDI. Yeah, that guy. Wow. I am not worthy, I am not worthy... : )

BTW, if you came across this post directly, check out this previous post for shots of the event. Also check out this post of John Bowen talking about his time at Sequential Circuits.