We have been busy searching the planet for components and parts and have some updates on the release schedule for the Buchla project.
We plan to start shipping the 245t Sequencer and 257t Voltage Processor around the end of August or early September. There can always be surprises along the way that might add some delays but August/September looks realistic. Almost all Eurorack shops we work with have some of these on order with us and we hope this batch will cover the demand. We will inform the shops of the final price and when they can open up for Pre-Orders as soon as we have enough of these modules tested and ready to go.
The shipping announcement will come through this newsletter and our social media channels
The new batch of Model 281t Quad Function Generator should also be ready around mid September. Some of you have waited a long time for these and hopefully soon you will finally get it.
"Another Nymphes improvisation with the Linnstrument and Microcosm. Don't know why I called the piece Baby Dinosaur, but that's just what the track was titled in my Logic folder.
Hope these aren't getting to repetitive or self-indulgent. But uploading the videos is really encouraging me to practice with the Linnstrument, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of Youtube content featuring the Nymphes and MPE.
The above features instrument builing with Native Instrument Kontakt.
"Learn to invent your own digital instruments and use them to compose more evocative, surprising music in Soundfly's premium course, Ryan Lott: Designing Virtual Instruments. Preview the course for free at: http://soundfly.com/ryanlott -- About the Video:
In this excerpt from our new course, Ryan Lott: Designing Sample-Based instruments, Son Lux composer, songwriter, and producer, Ryan Lott, shares how learning to create his own virtual instruments has become a key element in his creative process. Building instruments from scratch allows Ryan to write music that he can imbue with intentional, emotional meaning, without the associations and expectations that come along with more traditional instrumentation. 'Making your own instruments can be empowering in all the places where working with existing instruments can feel very limiting,' says Ryan of the skills he walks students through in the course.
Watch how Ryan creates and records sounds, processes them, and turns them into playable virtual instruments using Native Instruments' Kontakt and a MIDI keyboard, and then uses those surprising, unfamiliar sounds to inspire a whole approach to making music. -- About the Course:
Inject a new dose of creativity into your music by composing with your own custom-made digital instruments. In this course, Ryan Lott, composer and bandleader of Son Lux, will show you how to find and construct inspiring, unpredictable sounds, and turn those sounds into playable instruments. Learn to write music in response to instruments that emerge through experimentation, rich with contour and variation. And see what kind of music you can create when you move beyond the limits of traditional instrumentation.
Ryan will walk students through the techniques he uses in his own music and in scores for films including 'Everything Everywhere All at Once' and 'Looper' to catalyze new creative ideas and build music that evokes complex emotions.
This course was designed for producers looking for more control in their sound design, composers who want to add evocative and otherworldly qualities to their music, and anyone in search of an inspiring new tool to drive their songwriting forward.
Ryan Lott: Designing Sample-Based Instruments is available now as part of Soundfly's subscription library of creative music courses. Preview the course for free and sign up today at: https://soundfly.com/ryanlott – This course is exclusively available as part of Soundfly's course subscription, where you can access dozens of in-depth, high-quality courses on topics ranging from songwriting to producing, mixing to beatmaking, and so much more. Subscribe today to get learning: https://soundfly.com/subscription"
"Despite the excellent condition, this particular unit has a lot of character. Inputs, outputs and potentiometers all operating as they should with no noise. Many synthesizers this age will have scratchy pots or loose jacks, this is not the case with this one. It has clearly been taken excellent care of since it left the factor 45 years ago."
"During the filming of the Bright Sparks - Tom Oberheim documentary, we discussed interactions with seminal Oberheim users such as Joe Zawinul, Oscar Peterson and Lyle Mays. In this bonus footage, Tom and Marcus impart a few great stories from those halcyon days, including the real story behind Lyle's 8-Voice ending up in Tom's possession, plus Marcus' reaction to being asked to demo the Oberheim System for Oscar Peterson.
"To purchase this soundset follow this link http://www.lukeneptune.com
Vintage/Classic is a soundset designed to turn your Take 5 into a vintage dream machine.
Whilst focusing primarily on the sound of the Prophet 5 this soundset also emulates many other classic synthesisers such as the Pro one, Minimoog, Jupiter 8, Juno series, Yamaha CS80 and many more.
In the soundset you will also find many recreations of ‘famous’ sounds such as Toto- Africa, Don Henley Boys of Summer, Van Halen- Jump, Kim Carnes Betty Davis Eyes, 808 State- Pacific State, Daft Punk- Da Funk and many more.
It was a pleasure to make this soundset. The Take 5 is a fantastic synth and i believe it can sound very vintage indeed. I hope you agree.
"Ever wondered what a MASSIVE pipe organ would sound like running through the signal path of an analog synthesizer? Me too! Is this what @Moog Music Inc had in mind when they put an "instrument in" on the Moog Matriarch? I think so too.
0:00 - what are we doing?
0:38 - a little about the organ and me
1:35 - why the Matriarch?
2:14 - the limitations of an organ
3:01 - the cool thing about THIS organ, and why it's hard to record
5:11 - getting the organ into the Matriarch
7:02 - underwater flutes
8:19 - BIG sounds
9:40 - massive reeds through a Ladder filter
10:20 - these string celeste stops are amazing
12:46 - Organ and Matriarch duet time (doing some patching)
14:30 - oh my...
16:34 - download some [free] samples from this session
17:27 - I made a track with the samples :)"
"Ongaku is the sister panel of the infamous Bento japanoise box.
This panel has different features including LPGs, delays and reverb. With Ongaku you will create new sonic worlds from cavernous soundscapes to vibrant generative pads in the style of Eno’s, to unpredictable noises or super bongo action west coast style… It is so organic that it feels alive. See for yourself how the probabilistic clock can create amazing strange rhythms.
DESIGNED FOR PERFORMANCE
You don’t need anything else. Just open Ongaku and you are ready to fill the stage with otherworldly sounds.
Ongaku is a magnificent tool for live improvisation, drones, strange rhythms and extremely flexible for sound design.
You can use any virtual audio driver to connect Bentō with your DAW, just in case…
RECORD ON TAPE
A cute tape recorder with many tape simulations is at hand to record your sound and gigs
Ongaku is pure experimentation, free from cliché and formulas."
One of my favorite songs from the mid 80s.
Don Henley - Boys Of Summer from the year 1984
I used the Yamaha DX7 II (original Prophet5 and DX7) for all synth sound parts and like in the original song the LinnDrum for the drums. External fx: delay, reverb, chorus
Here can you find the full DX7 playlist with a lot single sound demos and one synth demo tracks. Enjoy."
"Major Oscillator brings us a chilled summer jam using the hottest synths on the market. Grab some headphones and kick back with a long island iced tea and enjoy."
"Driftbox J is the first VCA-CV controller + sequencer in the series, assuming a combination of a Driftbox S / R Synthesizer and an external device such as a sequencer. Two large joysticks control the CV output on the X axis with VCA on the Y axis. Although oscillator is not installed in Driftbox J itself, by inputting audio and CV / GATE / MIDI signal from the outside, it is possible to change the level and pan without changing the audio signal groove, output the processed CV It is possible to manipulate parameters of other Synthesizers.
Features:
2 Joystick VCA controller
XY dual CV controller 2 C manual CV output control and attenuation 2 channel programmable CV sequence output 16 steps · Program memory
Step input and manual / loop input
MIDI / GATE synchronization
Master / slave operation with gate pulse signal Slave operation by MIDI
Connections
MIDI In Gate In/Out Audio In (2x) Audio Out (2x) CV-A / CV-B 1ch /2ch"
"rare synthesizer model of Sequential Circuits the Split-Eight. The patch memory battery was replaced 3 months ago. Factory patches have been installed and a few custom patches. It has a few scratches on the side wood panels. Thanks for looking.
Details:
-8 voice VCO analog oscillators
-patches can be stacked making it a 4 voice synth with the possibility of using 2 different patches at the same time
- unison mode stacking all oscillators into one voice for fat sounds"
"The Composer is a 49-key, ensemble synthesizer.
Featuring mono & poly synth, poly organ, string, and dual oscillator synth sections with dedicated outputs.
The synth section features 7 monosynth presets, 3 polysynth presets, resonant low pass filter, and ADSR envelope.
The string section features an AR envelope, and the organ section features four presets, leslie simulator, release control, and percussion...
"This is a vintage Crumar Orchestrator (known as the Multiman-S in Europe). The strings on this synthesizer sound remarkably similar to the ARP/Solina String Ensemble, because they use the exact same TCA350 BBD delay chips found in the Solina, and have a very similar triple delay line configuration for its ensemble effect. In addition to the Violin and Cello string sounds, there is a Brass section with a four pole ladder filter that was most definitely infringing on the Moog patent at the time. There's also two piano sounds ("Piano" and "Clavichord"), and a bass section that works on the lowest 27 notes of the 61 key keyboard.
This particular synthesizer is in excellent operating condition, and remarkably good cosmetic condition for a synth manufactured in 1977. The right-hand piano volume slider shaft is broken, but the original slider cap still can grip on to the stub (most photos show the cap in place, I included another photo with the cap removed for purposes of full disclosure). There is no lid and the original lid latching hardware has been removed.
"In good working condition. Comes with non-factory rack ears. Has a missing cap on the encoder knob (doesn't affect anything) and non-factory volume knob. Everything works perfectly. The original editor runs great on Mac up to Monterey through Wine emulation, so in theory it should run on M1 Macs without any issues. But you better to check if you have M1."
"This synth has some pretty wicked synth textures and beats at a great price. Amazing arpeggiator too. Very underrated and well worth double the price. Great synth, lightweight, can be used as a controller too!"
Unfortunately you need an external editor to access the full synth engine.
A couple of these have been featured on the site before, but this one did a better job of showing the white side planl. It would be interesting to see the smaller black keys in white as well. Note this listing states it's an original vintage analog synthesizer, but later mentions it is the reissue. Gig bag/soft case pictured below.
"A gate signal is sent to the MSV gate input, but also an audio signal from 259e is sent to the RES (resonator) input. Not directly, but first to an attenuator (210e) and then to a 292e used as modulated VCA.
An LFO is scanning through the wavetables of the modulator VCO on the 259e to add some variation and also produce some weird sounds. I like it for instance around 01:50.
No external effect added."
It appears some people are letting their domain names expire. This is understandable as people move on. The problem though is phishing sites are taking them over. This site is run on Blogger and Blogger has been notifying me of malicious links. I've spent several hours removing problem links. Because of this I've decided to no longer actively link to external sites, with only a few exceptions. If you are interested in a product featured in a post, search for it online or highlight any unlinked links and copy and search.
"Rob Papen is a well-known sound designer from the Netherlands and many of his sounds and plug-ins have become legendary. Back in the 90s, he supplied several sound sets for the Microwave 1, which just saw the light of day. His 'Techno' and 'Signature' cards inspired many users and can therefore be heard on countless productions of the 90s. The two sound sets have been freshly reworked by Rob Papen and optimized on the M.
Both sets have been combined into one soundbank. The current signature set contains 128 patches and offers different lead sounds, basses, percussive sequencer sounds, pads, plugs and much more.
For external effects, the two FX plugins Delsane and RPVERB2 by Rob Papen were used.
If you purchase the soundset you can get a discount on the two plugins. Please send a proof of purchase to : info@robpapen.com"
An interesting take from Espen Kraft. I always assumed these mods kept the original sounds and functionality, and simply expanded on them. Feel free to leave a comment if you know more. Key point: do your research before modding.
"After using a Kiwi modded JX-3P for quite some time I can honestly say I really dislike this mod. Way too many features, hard to access, bugs, but most of all; they changed things that makes the modded 3P sound inferior to the original synth. Especially the envelopes. With a Kiwi modded 3P you get envelopes that sounds more clinical and less musical than on the original synth.
Admittedly the new controller from Retroaktiv, the PG-2K makes it a lot faster and easier to access the parameters, but even that can't take away that the mod is a bad choice for any 3P lovers. I highly advice to stay away from these mods.
The above rant is of course my highly biased opinion I admit to that. ;-)"
"The Three Body is an FPGA based triple digital oscillator and frequency modulation toolkit.
0:00 Introduction and overview
0:54 Ratio Mode
6:44 Modulation normalization
7:23 Modulation Indexes
9:17 Free Mode
12:55 Patch example"
Note the prototype Three Body made it's first appearance on the site in 2020 here. Unfortunately that video has been removed.
"The Three Body is a phase and frequency modulation toolkit, designed to bring digital techniques to an analog interface. It consists of three oscillators which can be used independently but which have normalized connections to facilitate exploration and improvisation.
Features:
Three separate high quality oscillators Each oscillator has volts/octave input Each oscillator has both a phase and a frequency modulation input Each oscillator has a modulation index (VCA) cv input Each oscillator has sine, triangle, saw, and square outputs (for a total of 16 outputs) The center oscillator has two phase related output pairs for stereo usage (sine and cosine, saw and cosaw) Each oscillator can independently be set in a free running or ratio mode Each oscillator can have either exponential or linear through zero frequency modulation Each oscillator can track external signals at a cv controllable frequency ratio Frequency ratios can be cv controlled Tracks volts per octave over at least 4 octaves of positive CV and 2 or 3 of negative CV.
Built around an FPGA core with high internal sample rate for audio rate modulation 30HP Skiff friendly 30mm depth current consumption of 95mA on +12V (less than 200mA on startup) and 50mA on -12V"
We have been busy searching the planet for components and parts and have some updates on the release schedule for the Buchla project.
