The new Mute / Dirty Electronics MUTE 4.0 SYNTH is a synth with inputs, a digital wavetable synthesiser, an analogue noise circuit, and programmable sequencer. These features can all be combined in an environment to experiment with sound. Being hand-held, battery-powered and with headphone and line out, the synth is ideal for music making on the move as well as in the studio. At a turn of a knob and press of a button, sequences, control voltages, and cut-up loops can be programmed; or listen to the Voltage Collection by Dirty Electronics.
The MUTE 4.0 POCKET SYNTH is the on-going research by Dirty Electronics into making music with wires and code, objects and materials; and an artwork printed circuit board collaboration with Adrian Shaughnessy and Regular Practice. Printed circuit board meets album cover.
It doesn’t stop there. Expand the Pocket Synth with a limited edition chip by Dirty Electronics and Max Wainwright with mangled waveforms and accompanying fold-out booklet on microcomputer music.
"The new René sequencer from Make Noise is a three channel CV and gate sequencer with interesting snake and cartesian movement modes. In this video we use a Black and Gold Shared System with a Tempi added into the case. The René can now change presets on the Tempi, so your sequencer can control your clocking.
"Making a 1 part pattern on the System80 880. Giving it a little tweak too so you can have a listen to how it sounds. No processing except for a touch of limiting."
"Tested and fully functional.
Right Master Volume pot was bent an broken so a new 50k was installed.
Has all 5 original piezoelectric pick-up cables.
One trigger is dead on one side (marked with blue tape).
The DRUMFIRE 500 has 5 separate channels to let you set 5 different electronic drum voices such as synth sounds, hand claps, super kick, gunfire and more.
The unit also has stereo headphone outs, foot switch in and Stereo outs with individual level control."
Each channel has 8 parameter controls.
Sensitivity: Controls input sensitivity.
Oscillator Decay: Controls decay time of oscillator sound.
Playlist:
1. AJH Synth Sample & Hold and Slew // Synthfest 2018
Here's the new Sample & Hold (SH / S&H) and Slew module from AJH Synth. It has a shapeable noise source and clock source on board alongside a gated slew circuit with linear and exponential control as well as your standard sample in and outs.
2. AJH Synth Fixed Filter Bank 914 // Synthfest 2018
Here's the rather tasty sounding Fixed Filter Bank 914 from AJH synth. I'm sure the 914 in the title resonates with a few Moog Modular fans out there. It's a low and high shelf/filter with completely isolating bands in between. There's odd/even or stereo outputs as well as CV blend-able mix output between the left and right bands and the dry and wet. So you can fully exploit the huge range of tones and shaping this can offer. Looking forward to getting this one in to demo.
3. AJH Synth Fixed Filter Bank 914 // Synthfest 2018
I really liked the Mega-Phase 12 from AJH Synth and now there's the new (totally uniquely named ... ) Next Phase! This is an updated version of the Mega Phase which a much lower noise floor, dual inputs with level control and a new colour control to tilt and shift the colour of the phasing. This was one of 4 new modules from Synthfest others below.
The Glide + Noise module was the only AJH Synth MiniMod module that wasn't skiff friendly. The new version is now a slim single re-designed board that's skiff friendly, now responds to negative CVs and has a huge 14 octave range. There's positive, both or negative only slewing, noise generation and a unique gated slew effect that was unique to the original Moog Minimoog Model D.
"Over the course of his career, John Escreet has earned a reputation as one of the most active and diverse pianist/keyboardist/composers working in jazz and improvised music. His prolific output is reflected over the course of eight diverse and critically acclaimed albums. His most recent release “Learn To Live” finds Escreet using the Prophet-6 extensively, alongside a dream band comprising 2 drummers (Eric Harland and Justin Brown), trumpeter Nicholas Payton, saxophonist Greg Osby and bassist Matt Brewer. As well as being a leader of prolific output, Escreet is also a much sought-after sideman. Since 2011 he has been an integral part of Grammy award-winning drummer Antonio Sanchez’s band “Migration,” touring the world extensively and recording three albums with the group." --- You can find previous posts featuring Sequential's Spotlight series here.
"A live performance on the ContinuuMini through the La Voix du Luthier Onde resonator. Stereo mic configuration to capture the sonic space created by the two separate lower and upper Onde soundboards."
Soundium: Enabled fuse theory, practice and experiences in the field of music technology. Main goal of the event is to demonstrate and educate. For the first time in the Baltics a space under one roof will be dedicated to DJ/studio gear testings, lectures with brand ambassadors and performances of local geeks.
However, we think the most important part of Soundium: Enabled is its participant (YOU), coming with his/her own approach to the creative process – so the door is open to anyone, and networking is strongly encouraged. See you on October 20th.
Program
Demo Space
Demo space a designated getting-your-hands-on-gear area. You can expect various equipment here, part of which will be hot & new: starting from DJ turntables, ending with modular synths, drum machines and DAW controllers. Some brand representatives will also be around, so do not hesitate to get tips straight from these professionals.
"rolls of rolzer patches into an ultrasound, gong, and pitch input of an Avdog. so you’re hearing three voices. showing how things suddenly gets chaotic and unpredictable manner, beyond comprehensive planning of control.
to be predictable needs some unique approach to learn - patch memo often doesn't reproduce the same result... well, that's actually the point of this thing partly, tho.."
Plumbrolzer session! [plumbutter jam #20]
plumbrolzer video is still relatively rare on tube so here’s a session on one night. Well, it’s not TRULY Plumbrolzer which I can’t afford yet but it is essentially the same ;)
"Rolzer is a beat generator add-on for the Plumbutter, a drum and drama machine. The Plumbutter offers complete voltage control of all parameters, including its pulse-rolls, for generating beat tempo patterns. However, when voltage control is added to an androgynous circuit such as the rolz, it has the tends to roll-off the ultrasound chaos present in the original incarnation of this idea, the rolz-5. So here we have the Rolzer, a collection of geometries graded into tempi by virtue of their capacitors. It is for developing a relationship and searching for the oddest, most alive rhythms, not by twiddling knobs but by making connections.
According to the concepts outlined in the Rollz-5 papers, combinations of even and odd geometries, such as a square and a triangle, generate sophisticated beat patterns including chaos at ultrasound frequencies. An even roll maintains a steady pattern, and an odd roll tries to resolve its inherent paradox; connecting them blends these attributes over time and with "grain". The original paper circuits presented each solder-worker to construct her own idiosyncratic assemblage of geometries, with assortments of capacitors based on what was on at hand, or strict dogmata, or pure whimsey. When the concept evolved into a Laboratory Rollz, the Plumbutter discarded any idiosyncrasies for the sake of pure control and dialing in aesthetic by knob. However, the Tocante line offers a way to think about the materials of electronics- capacitors- that allows a revision of the original Rolz concept..."
Never seen one of these before. It appears to be a serial buss expansion for computers to use with the Rhodes Chroma synthesizer, with sequencing software. The disks are dated 1982 and from Fender Musical Instruments who took ownership of ARP's assets with the Rhodes Chroma and Chroma Polaris.
"Vintage Roland 4 voice polyphonic CV Keyboard working perfectly and in great shape. It is 100v but can run on 120v. I have a 240 to 120 transformer I can include too, if the buyer will pay the extra shipping cost. The arpeggio is a bit confusing, so I've attached the instructions from a Jupiter 4 which works in the same way. I was using it with a euro rack system."
"Excellent condition, some minor signs of use, black metallic finishing (see pictures) . Cool, Rare and Discontinued. Includes:
Vocoder EPROM chip
Rare "Vocoda" overlay
Original chip puller
Original manual
Power Adapter
Original box"
"as-is. I have not gone over the entire synth and checked every feature and combination but it certainly works and makes that incredible 2600 sound. Known issues are a handful of broken faders and pitch tracking issues on Osc 2.
You can listen to audio examples of this exact synthesizer recorded for the purpose of this auction:"
"In near mint condition. It has very few minor signs of cosmetic wear including a couple of small scratches but nothing too visible. All functions are working well, all keys and sliders are functions without any problems. Please see pictures for more details. Tested before listing.
The voltage for this item is 100V. You will be able to use it in North American Main Voltage of 115/120V without
a transformer. However for long use, we do recommend using a step down transformer to perfectly match the voltage."
Note the listing states KORG in the title. Not sure what's up with that. As always, go through eBay for the buyer protection. These don't come up often.
"I've bought the Source Audio Ventris, an effects pedal that features two reverb / delay engines that can be combined, either in parallel or serial mode. This gear experiment is a deep dive into the features of the Ventris, in combination with the Volca Bass. Headphones recommended!
The basics of this setup are pretty simple: I program some slow arpeggios on the Keystep, which is played by the Volca Bass. The Bass has a slow and intense LFO on the cut-off, which produces the volume swells. The output of the Bass is then sent to the Ventris, and that's where the interesting stuff starts.
The Ventris has two effect engines running in serial mode. The first effect is called "offspring" and that's the cascading, modulated delay at the start of the video. This sound is then fed into the "shimmer" effect, which I introduce by increasing the "control 1" and "time" knob. The "time" knob also increases the delay feedback of the 'offspring' effect.
Each reverb / delay engine on the Ventris has its own set of parameters, but only part of them can be controlled from the pedal's interface. It becomes more restricted when using both reverb engines at the same time, because two of the knobs are then dedicated to controlling the dry/wet mix of the two engines. Live control of the other parameters, and for both engines at the same time, can be done using MIDI CC messages. I've configured the nanoKONTROL so that the first 4 sliders and knobs control parameters of effect A, and the second 4 control parameters of effect B. For example, the fifth knob controls the amount of shimmer of effect B, which is a parameter I tweak quite a lot in this video.
One hardware problem I had to solve: the nanoKONTROL only has a USB MIDI connector, but the Ventris requires a 5-pin MIDI plug. I don't currently own a hardware USB MIDI host (I'm considering the Retrokits RK-005), so I used my MacBook to achieve the MIDI routing. The nanoKONTROL is connected to my laptop, and so is the iConnectivity mio, which is in turn connected to the Ventris. By default MacOS does not support MIDI routing from one device to another, so I used the open source "MIDIrouter" app to achieve this (see link below).
The reason I decided to try the Ventris is because I'd like to see if it can replace my GFI System Specular Reverb V2. I love the sound of my Specular, but it only really does one sound (beautiful lush ambient epicness) and misses features that I'd like (e.g. 100% wet, control over pre-delay and modulation, MIDI clock sync for delay timings). I'm happy to say I can create a sound with the Ventris that is just as lush as the Specular, but with a lot more control and whole lot more extra features due to the possibility to use two reverb engines. (You can even use the Ventris' stereo inputs to feed it two different instruments, give them each their own reverb engine, and then configure it so that it is 'summed' into stereo again!) I feel like there's a lot more to discover with this device, even more so since you can download patches other people have created using its Neuro app.
Video recorded with iPhone 7. Audio recorded with UFX1204 in "standalone" mode, recording directly to USB HDD.
You can stream our music from Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play and other streaming services, or download our music from Bandcamp: https://slenterendebeer.bandcamp.com"
all synthesizer sounds: YAMAHA DX7 II FD FM synthesizer from the year 1987
drums: LinnDrum
recording: multi-tracking without midi
fx: reverb and delay"
"plumbrolzer video is still relatively rare on tube so here’s a session on one night. Well, it’s not TRULY Plumbrolzer which I can’t afford yet but it is essentially the same ;)"
"This is a workflow tutorial for the SENODE node step seqencer. https://www.senode.org – The demo contains: (1) How to record a sequence from MIDI, (2) How to draw nodes and edges to the canvas, 3) How to edit the chords contained in each node, (4) How to use MIDI bindings to control CLEAR and EMIT of the emitters, (5) How to step through a graph using MIDI bindings. And of course, there's some improvisation going on."
