MATRIXSYNTH Turns 21

Yes, MATRIXSYNTH is now old enough to legally have a drink in the US!

Joking aside, MATRIXSYNTH in its current form started on July 20, 2005 with this post. Since then there has been only a single day without a post, which occured back on that dreadful day of August 6, 2005. I can't link to it because there isn't a post to link to. :) Sorry for the bad humor. That said, since then, I haven't missed a single day posting on the site including holidays, vacations, and two bouts of eye surgery due to a retinal tear and detachement in 2025. It was painless, but scary, and now all is good.

For those of you not in the know, MATRIXSYNTH is a one-man operation, run by your host, me, matrix. Every single post has gone up by hand - there is no automation and definitely no AI. Including this post, there have been at least 260,897 posts to date. There have actually been been more but some have been taken down due to either videos or audio dissapearing over the years, which brings me to a point: please don't remove your videos and audio demos off the web. You might think they are no longer relevant or you might even be embarrased by them as you think things have progressed and they no longer meet your standards, but they are relevant. They are part of history and will always be worth a look-back in context. Who you are today isn't defined by what you put up years ago. Trust me, I am often embarrased when I look back at some of my older posts. I'll likely be embarrased by this one. That said, please keep your old content up! It's a bit of synth history, and it's a look back at what you felt worth sharing back when you posted it. It doesn't define you today. It's like throwing away old family photographs because you are now older. That and there is always something interesting to find in older videos. A timbre from a given synth, an experience relevant in time.

That brings me to something I wanted to clarify for those that may be wondering: in general I prefer to keep myself out of posts for fear of influencing or even ruining the experience for others. I feel it is my job to present content w/o bias, and I prefer to post things as they are presented by the person or entity that created the content to begin with. Not influencing how others might or might not experience what goes up is a conscious decision. I realized over time it's akin to talking through music.

What I love about running MATRIXSYNTH is getting to share what's new to me on a daily basis. I have a policy of only posting specific content once. That means out of 260,897+ posts to date, nearly every single one is unique. It's also great to realize that there have been multiple things to actually feature every single day of the year, shared on the day itself, over the past 21 years!!! That's saying something, not about me or the site, but about the community.

The original MATRIXSYNTH actually started back in 1997. Click to see the monstrocity. That site will be 29 this year! The site was my personal portal into the world of synths. On the left were a list of sites I visited back then that would open in the right window frame when clicked on. Unfortunately that functionality is no longer supported in modern browsers; however you can right-click any link and open it in a new window. It's worth a look back at what synth sites were around back in 1997. Remember, YouTube didn't come out until December of 2005. MATRIXSYNTH in its current format, the blog, came out before YouTube. Think about that for a bit. This site has tracked the personal world of synthesis since before YouTube came out! Also, you might notice the old site came out well before The Matrix movies. The alias matrix, and hence MATRIXSYNTH, comes from my first synthesizer, the Oberheim MATRIX-6 which I purchased new in 1986 and still own to this day.

OK, this post is long enough. I want to end it by thanking the supporters of the site, the banner sponsors of the site, and most importantly, you, my readers. This might surprise some people, but I sometimes feel irrelevant, like why am I even doing this? I then remind myself I do it for the sake of doing it. I want to capture a bit of what's out there on a daily basis. I want the site to be a log (a weblog - blog) of synth history. I started back in 2005, and ever since that day I've had something to post, except for that solemn day on August 6, 2005. (P.S. I went on vacation that day and didn't think there would be internet access, let alone that I would be posting every single day after that - imagine not being able to say "I never missed a single day!" for the rest of your life because of one single day! "If it wasn't for that day!..") I think I will be doing this until the day I'm no longer here, and although I know I would be doing this regardless of whether I had an audience or not, knowing I do have an audience makes a world of difference. And thank you to all of you out there sharing your synth content. You are creating SYNTH HISTORY!!!

P.S. I want to give a special shout out to Amanda of CATSYNTH who not only is a supporting member of the site, but was kind enough to remember my anniversary and reach out to me today. Thank you!

P.P.S. It was CATSYNTH's 20th Anniversary yesterday. Happy Anniversary CATSYNTH! :)

MATRIXSYNTH Should be 100% Back Online

Update: maybe not 100% after all. It looks like https is not working yet.

Update2: https is back. All should be good now.

In case you were wondering what happened to the site, the ISP that hosts the matrixsynth.com domain name suffered a DDoS attack.

When I noticed the site was down, I reset Blogger to host the site back on matrixsynth.blogspot.com and sent a notificantion out on Twitter and Facebook (and The MATRIXSYNTH Lounge).

Key takeaway as a reader of the site: bookmark https://matrixsynth.blogspot.com, and check-in on Twitter and/or Facebook for updates.

It's worth noting site outages have been few and far between.

After this outage though, I am considering going back to the https://matrixsynth.blogspot.com domain. I can just set matrixsynth.com to redirect to it and when I'm long gone, the site will remain available. One of the reasons I chose Blogger as a platform is because it should live on long after I'm gone, ensuring the site and all the captured history lives on.

Update3: One thing to consider: if the matrixsynth.com domain were to ever expire, links using it within posts would need to be swapped with matrixsynth.blogspot.com in order to work. I wish there was a way to purchase domain names permanently...

If You Are a Supporting Member of the Site Please Read This!

Hi everyone. If you are a supporting member of the site wondering why I've been missing your synth videos, it's because YouTube subscriptions are broken. I haven't been getting updates for everyone. If you'd like a post for anything I missed, please send an email to matrixsynth@gmail.com. For non supporting members of the site, please note due to the high volume of posts that go up daily, you do need to be a supporting member to request a post. There are exceptions of course - news on new gear, news on old gear, rare synths, and the exceptional demo or tutorial. Before anyone complains, please understand every single post you see on the site goes up by hand, seven days a week. Running the site is an extreme amount of work. Supporting the site starts at only $1 a month, and viewing the site will always be free.

P.S. If you are curious why so many LFO.Store posts just went up (26 to be exact), this would be why. YouTube subs broke towards the end of December.

Apologies to members I've missed! Thank you so much for the support. It makes a huge difference.

P.P.S. You can see what has gone up for you by searching your YouTube name on the top right Search box. It will show posts in newest order.

Tipped 200k Posts Today

Apparenlty I tipped over 200,000 posts on MATRIXSYNTH today. I wasn't planning on posting anything but I figured I should at least account for the milestone in a separate post. I also wanted to let the natural order of posts flow for the day vs. hijacking the 200,000th post.

The site has been running non-stop since July 20 of 2005, so roughly 15 years and five months. I've only missed a single day posting at the very beginning back on August 6 of 2005, when I had no idea there would be something to post every single day, and before the days of decent hotel wifi. Note 2005 was two years before the first iPhone was launched.

The crazy thing some may not know? Every single post on the site has gone up by hand. There is zero automation. That's over 200k manually created posts to date. :)

Thank you to everyone who has stuck around all this time, supporters of the site, and of course the banner sponsors you see to the right and Sequential up above.

Happy Holidays everyone!

P.S. The 200,000th post? "WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD". It came in at just the right time and up it went.

KnobCon 2019: Welcome Reception Party & Kraftwerk Tribute Set by SynthMania

Published on Sep 10, 2019 SynthMania

"Clips from the Welcome Reception at KnobCon #8 (2019)
https://www.knobcon.com"

KnobCon 2019: My Kraftwerk tribute set

Published on Sep 10, 2019 SynthMania

"Tribute to the godfathers of electronic music at the KnobCon Welcome Reception 9/6/2019"

MATRIXSYNTH T on the right! :)

Happy New Year From MATRIXSYNTH!

Happy New Year everyone!

First I want to thank everyone who takes the time out of their busy schedules to come visit the site. I want to give an extra thanks to everyone who supports this site, including the sponsors you see above and on the right. Without them this site would not be possible.

As many of you know, running MATRIXSYNTH is a labor of love. The site has been running for over 13 years and hopefully will continue on for many years to come. Every single post goes up by hand, seven days a week, including holidays and "vacations." Some of you may not know this, but MATRIXSYNTH is a one man shop by me, matrix. I have not missed a single day of posting since back on August 6 of 2005 when I first launched this format of the site. I say "this format of the site" because I actually registered matrixsynth.com back in October of 1997. You can still see the old site here. On the left were links to sites I visited back in the day. It's actually a pretty neat snapshot of what was around on the web back then before the days of YouTube and social media. I launched this version of the site back on July 20 of 2005. As of this post there have been 175,117 posts on the site. We had 13,302 posts in 2018. Every single one went up by hand. I am extremely humbled and grateful of those who choose to support the site. Thank you so much!!!

Now, for some numbers. I haven't shared them in a while as they started to feel a little redundant year after year, but I figured why not? The image above is a map of visitors to the site in 2018. We had 540,712 users visit for a total of 3,418,064 pageviews. We finally have a visitor from North Korea this year! The numbers are from Google Analytics and should filter out bots. BTW if you look at this all time map, the only country to not have visited MATRIXSYNTH to date is the Central African Republic. It's pretty amazing to think someone from every single other country in the world has visited the site.

The following are the top 10 countries to visit by traffic:

1 United States 4,564(35.30%)
2 United Kingdom 1,070(8.28%)
3 Germany 866(6.70%)
4 France 653(5.05%)
5 Canada 544(4.21%)
6 Italy 512(3.96%)
7 Japan 464(3.59%)
8 Netherlands 357(2.76%)
9 Poland 331(2.56%)
10 Norway 314

(Update: I originally had the list by language which duplicated DE and FR. The list has been updated for country only).

A couple of years ago I started tracking new gear for the year with "new gear" labels. For 2018 we had the following:

695 new items never featured before on the site. This includes 49 posts on older gear never featured before.
111 new makers
92 new synths
63 new soft synths
67 new sound/noise machines
36 new synth effects
266 new modules
42 new mobile apps
11 new drum machines
111 new DIY projects
26 new controllers
40 new tools
7 new cases

And finally we had 52 posts to get the exclusive label for the year. These are the rarest of the rare featured on the site.

Note there is some overlap and the primary focus of MATRIXSYNTH is hardware synthesis. Rather than go into a top 10 list (which I never was into because all gear has its use imo), click through any of the links above to see what came in by category.

On the mega synth front, we saw the release of the Sequential Prophet X and XL (DSI changed names to Sequential as well), the Moog One and Grandmother, Yamaha MODX, Korg Prologue, and the Waldorf Quantum finally made it to release. You can also recap what was featured at NAMM 2018, SUPERBOOTH18, Knobcon, and SoundMit and other events.

This year we lost the following in the synth world. Note this does not include discontinued gear, although with Erthenvar being featured as a company, I may include gear in the the future.

Erthenvar Closes Shop
RIP John Leimseider
RIP Shirleigh Moog
The Candlelight Vigil: A Synth Cover in Memory of Jóhann Jóhannsson (From Prisoners)
David Van Koevering Has Passed Away

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And that's it for 2018. Happy New Year and onto 2019! Thank you to everyone that enjoys, contributes, and supports the site! I started MATRIXSYNTH to track everything synth. It's rewarding to know people out there still enjoy the site. MATRIXSYNTH is my gift to you.

Happy New Year from MATRIXSYNTH! A Quick Look Back at 2017

Happy New Year everyone!

We have to keep this one short as the festivities are about to begin of course.

I just wanted to wish everyone a happy 2018! Keep strong and remember you are never alone. At least not as long as MATRIXSYNTH is around! :) I hope this site provides an escape for everyone. Remember to take time out to play your gear!

As for gear... In 2017 we saw a total of 764 new products featured on the site along with 119 new makers on the scene. We also saw 29 vintage products never featured on the site before. The following is the break down (you can click on each to bring up the posts in reverse order. Note only 20 posts per page will load so don't worry about overwhelming your browser):

14 New Cases
28 New Controllers
106 New DIY projects
119 New Makers
63 New Mobile Apps
343 New Modules
80 New Soft Synths
40 New Sound Machines
9 New Sound Packs
32 New Synth Effects
106 New Synths
47 New Tools
29 New Old Products

Update: 1/8/2017: I forgot to mention the stand out posts of 2017! You can find them here. There were 62 this year. These are essentially the rare and oddball synths you may not have known existed or you rarely ever see.

No New Years post is complete without a look back at who we lost in the synth community. This year we lost five:

William Onyeabor - Nigerian Electronic Funk Pioneer as well as Nigeria's 1st Moog Dealer
Ikutaro Kakehashi, Founder of Roland
Mika Vainio of Pan Sonic
David Alan Luce - Former President of Moog Music & Creator of the Polymoog
Pierre Henry

I hate ending on a sad note, but we can't forget who we lost.

I wish everyone a great 2018. Make the best of it!

Thank you for taking the time out of your busy days to visit the site. Thank you to all who take the time out to create the videos showcasing the gear we love, and of course the makers who make the gear that inspire us. And finally, thank you to all the supporting members of MATRIXSYNTH, and of course the sponsors you see via the banners on the site!

See you on the other side! :)

MATRIXSYNTH Turned 12 Today!

Yep, we are almost a teenager. I'm going to keep this post super short compared to previous years, where I went into a long diatribe about what this site is about. I'm guessing if you are here, you already know. If not, be sure to come back often, and stick around for a bit. :)

I do want to thank ALL of you, the readers and contributors of the site. It's an incredibly flattering and humbling experience to realize how many people take time out of their busy schedules to both visit, and contribute to the site on a daily basis. I hope this site, and what goes up, makes your day just a little bit better. I want to thank the people that create the content that gets featured on the site - all the makers and users of the gear we love. We sometimes take things for granted, but honestly, it's only been 12 years since we have been able to see and share so much in our world of synths. This site started at the birth of media sharing sites like YouTube, and before SoundCloud. The purpose of this site is to showcase our world. Be sure to support others when you can. I hope this site does.

Finally, I want to thank all of the sponsors you see on the site, and of course all of the supporting members of MATRIXSYNTH. Without your support this site simply would not be possible. Thank you so much!

P.S. We are at well over 150,000 posts and counting! :)

MATRIXSYNTH TURNS 11!

Hi everyone! Today marks the 11 year anniversary of MATRIXSYNTH! This site launched on July 20 of 2006. For anyone curious about the name and the matrix alias, it comes from the Oberheim Matrix-6, my first synth, purchased brand new in 1986. That means this year also marks 30 years since my first synthesizer!

Since 2005 the site has received approximately 51 million pageviews from over 23 million visits from all over the globe. This is post number 140,858. That's over 140,000 posts that have gone up, individually by hand, since July 20, 2006. This site is a daily snapshot of the synth world including content from both the makers and users of synths.

I want to thank everyone who enjoys and contributes to the site, including the sponsors and all the supporting members of the site! THANK YOU!!!

MATRIXSYNTH NAMM 2016 Pics

Update: Booth list added below.  30 booths in one day!  It's become tradition for me to come on Saturday only.  The site is just too busy leading up to then.  Be sure to see the last image in the set  It's the NAMM Booth promo for the first showing of the original Minimoog Model D.  The Bob Moog Foundation was giving out buttons of the flyer which you can see in the second to last image.  You never know what will be your last pic at NAMM.  I am glad it was this one.  It's more than fitting considering the Minimoog was the birth of modern day synthesizers.  Apologies for not calling this out earlier.  It was one of those should I not say anything and let people pause at that image and discover what it meant on their own, or should I call it out.  I guess I did both.  :)

--

So first of all, apologies for the super tall pic to start! For some reason Flickr's slideshow is not resizing it, and a few others, to fit the desired frame size. Mouse over the image and use the controls that come up to move through the slide show. Once you get past the first image, the majority of the rest should fit fine. For what it's worth, the super tall pic to start does give you a feel of what it's like to walk up to the entrance of NAMM. If you prefer you can check out the set on Flickr here. Feel free to grab any pics for your wallpaper but if you'd like to use them professionally (not that any are that good :), please contact me by clicking on the small email icon on the bottom right of the site. This year I took a total of 328 pics.

All that said, enjoy the set! The pics speak for themselves. If you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them in the comments.

NAMM was great this year. Lots of familiar faces and lots of new. Modular has grown exponentially. It was on the main floor this year rather than what we like to call the dungeon. As for new synths, the DSI Oberheim OB-6 stole the show. The minilogue looked and sounded great and the KORG Volca FM was a very nice surprise. Roland's booth was great; nice dim lighting to let the blinky synth lights shine, as well as giving you a more intimate experience with their synths. There was also a cool wall sized timeline of Roland synths. Malekko's Roland System 500 synths were in show and I actually was able to help with one that had its envelope switched to loop mode. Moog's Island of Electronicus was an incredible space. The pics don't do it justice. It was literally like an oasis in NAMM. Things get pretty hectic and can feel overwhelming at times. Moog's booth just made you smile and relax. Thank you Moog!

PS, there are a couple of non-synth shots in the set that might make you smile. I took them to show my wife what I was looking at. :)

Including this post, 253 NAMM2016 posts have gone up and more are sure to follow.

Update: The booth list in order of appearance in both the set and in me walking through NAMM.  The pics in the set are in the order taken.

1.   Entrance to NAMM
2.   Dave Smith Instruments
3.   Moog Music
4.   Schneiders Buero Booth featuring Doepfer, MFB, Birdkids, AJH Synth, Endorphines, soundmachines, and Haken Audio
5.   Pittsburgh Modular
6.   Modal Electronics
7.   Make Noise
8.   Moon Modular
9. WMD (4ms, Verbos & Koma pics came prior to Moon Modular as they were across from each other. The WMD modular area was huge): 4ms Pedals, Abstract Data, Audio Damage, BaSTLE, Delptronics, Elite Cases, Rossum Electronics, Expert Sleepers, Foxtone Music/ Black Market Modular, Koma Elektronik, Hexinverter, Macro Machines, Mordax Systems, Noise Engineering, Qu-Bit Electronix, Soulsby, Steady State Fate (SSF), STG Soundlabs / Detachement 3 [check out the Crowbox black SEM eurorack module!], TipTopAudio, Toppobrillo, Verbos Electronics.
10. Studio Electronics, Mode Machines, and D-Tronics (check out the massive DT7 dedicated programmer for the DX7 similar to the old Jellinghaus)
11. Roger Linn's Linnstrument
12. Tom Oberheim
13. Elektron
14. Malekko - complete with Roland banner to promote their new System 500. Check out the glowing case! You can control the color with CV control.
15. Big City Music - Analogue Systems, Critter & Guitari, Cwejman, Dewanatron, Dirty Boy Pedals, Effectrode Tube Effects, EMC, Eowave, Jomox, Livewire, Mellotron, MWFX Pedals, Sherman
16. Schmidt in the Big City Music booth.
17. Radikal Technologies
18. Waldorf
19. Arturia
20. intelligel
21. Social Entropy and Abstrakt Instrument
22. Expressive E
23. John Bowen Synth Design - check out the custom Sonic Six with Sequential Model 700 Programmer & modded Model 800 Sequencer.
24. Roland (the guy with the hat on the right is the drummer for Train - I was taking pics of the timeline and they were standing there. I asked them if they wanted to be in the pic and they said sure! :) Apologies to Ed Diaz! I took his pic right when he saw me. Trust me he was full of smiles after that pic. I was flattered to find out he knew about the site! :)
25. Yamaha
26. Novation
27. KORG
28. Tangible Instruments showing their Arpeggio
29. Industrial Music Electronics (formerly Harvestman) and Sputnik Modular Synthesizers.
30. The Bob Moog Foundation

30 booths in one day!

MATRIXSYNTH TURNS 10!!!

We are slowly maturing... :) Today marks the 10 year anniversary of MATRIXSYNTH! It's hard to believe 10 years have gone by since I started this format of MATRIXSYNTH. If you are curious what the original version of MATRIXSYNTH looked like, take a look here. That was a portal to all the sites I used to visit. I started the site back in October of 1997. Some people might falsely think the matrix alias and site name came from The Matrix movies, but the first movie did not come out until 1999, two years after matrixsynth.com went live. Did I have the foresight to predict the name, or were the Wachowski's a fan of the site and computer terminal green? :) The truth is the matrix alias and name of the site actually came from my first synth, the Oberheim Matrix-6. I could have gone with a blue on black theme, but my favorite color is green and I liked the retro terminal look, so green on black it is.

Every now and then I get some confusion as to what exactly is the point of this site. Is it a professional news media outlet or just some guy's blog? The truth is it's a bit of both. It started as "some guy's blog" sharing everything he came across in the world of synths and eventually it caught on and grew. It's now a mix of official press releases, demos, videos and everything else I find out there as well as what people send in, with some rules. I promised myself I did not want to fall into the trap of becoming a media outlet only. There is one reason this site exists - to share the world of synthesizers from a synthesizer's perspective. Think about what that means. Nothing else matters. A few days ago I updated the intro to the Post Guidelines. I think it sums up the spirit of the site:

"MATRIXSYNTH is a daily glimpse into the world of synthesizers with the focus on specific, individually identifiable synths. Every single post on the site is created manually, by hand. The current format of the site launched in 2005 at the birth of sharing platforms like Blogger, YouTube, Vimeo and Flickr. SoundCloud wouldn't launch until 2007. Facebook wouldn't open to the public until 2006. Prior to these platforms the only way everyday users of synths could share what they were doing was by having their own dedicated website. Sure there were forums where people could talk about synths, but to upload videos, audio demos, and hi-res pics, you needed your own website. Print publications were dedicated to professionals in the industry, rarely featuring non-professionals, and media was limited to static images. MATRIXSYNTH is meant to compliment print by showcasing what us, the fans of synthesizers, do with our gear on a daily basis. The site is a mix of what I (matrix) find out there and what readers send in. The content is balanced between press releases, official demos, and what everyday users of the site are doing with their synths, along with a glimpse of the used synth marketplace. The site evolved over time to meet both the needs of readers, and to maintain the overall spirit of the site. Imagine if we were able to capture what users of synths were doing back in its infancy. Much of that time may be lost, but we can capture synth history moving forward!"

So how many posts have gone up to date? A whopping 127,448 including this post. Every, single, post, is edited and posted by hand. The sad thing, is because of format changes over time, along with Flash going by the wayside, I have had to start the long process of updating the majority of posts in the archives. It will be slow, but MATRIXSYNTH is a labor of love and I think it will be worth it. The site has received over 46,832,215 pageviews to date. Some question why I chose Blogger as a platform. The reason is because I want the site to live on long after I'm gone. Blogger is free and is owned and hosted by Google, so that's about as safe as it will get. Someone will need to switch the the URL back to matrixsynth.blogspot.com so the site doesn't disappear when/if the matrixsynth.com domain name expires, but hopefully I'll be able to take care of that ahead of time, when I am much, much older. :)

I don't want to take too much time in this post, so I'll cut it short. I just want to say running MATRIXSYNTH has been quite the experience. As with everything there are good days and bad. I feel a sense of ownership and identity when it comes to the site, almost in a parental sense. The site has become my best friend and has been a constant companion over the last ten years. BTW, in the last ten years I have only missed a single day of posting back on August 6, 2005, the first year of running the site, when it definitely was just "some guy's blog". I had no idea there would be something to post every single day of the year moving forward. Think about that a bit. There is something to share every single day. What an wonderful world of synths we live in.

I want to end this by saying thank you for an incredible ten years. I want to thank everyone that has supported the site in their own little way. I am humbled that others love the site as much as I do. THANK YOU!!!

On to another 10 years!

Update: Thank you to everyone who has wished me a happy anniversary in the comments below, on Twitter , and Facebook (and here), email and websites - thank you Palm Sounds!  Below is a screen grab of the initial post from @chris_carter_ (wikipedia) and a cool little image from Audio Hoarder made on his phone.  Thank you!

MATRIXSYNTH Turned 9 Today!

Today is the 9th anniversary of MATRIXSYNTH! It's hard to believe it's been nine years already. The site has had over 42,299,515 page views from 19,198,250 visits. This marks post 113370. Every single post has gone up by hand. What goes up is a combination of what I find out there and what people send in. The site currently averages between 40 and 50 posts a day and only one day was missed at the launch of the site back when I didn't expect there to be something to post every single day of the year.

Anyway, I'm keeping this post short this year. I almost didn't post anything, but I thought I should at least mention the date.

Thank you everyone! Running the site has been a great experience. I love promoting "Everything Synth" and giving a voice and an audience for us die hard synth fans.

Update via Bobby Shipe on The MATRIXSYNTH Lounge along with some anniversary wishes from the group:



"AS Telemark-K/Doepfer DarkEnergy Birthday song. One of my favorite websites turned 9 today so I made a Happy Birthday song with some synthesizers."

So awesome! THANK YOU!!!

And one via Rune Bastrup Zetterström on the Lounge as well:

Happy Birthday To You - Mario Paint Composer - Carousel Organ Style 8-Bit Synth Chip

Uploaded on Mar 13, 2011

"Happy Birthday To You song. The style is similar to that played on a carousel, with a simulated organ and xylophone. Produced on Mario Paint Composer from unfungames.com."

Synth Legend Spotting - John Bowen on Bass & The Solaris

This one in via Patrick Link

"Legendary synth designer John Bowen (Moog, Sequential Circuits, John Bowen Synth Design) playing bass June 14 at Vino in Issaquah, WA with his band Ventura Highway Revisted!

I met John a couple weeks ago when I received my Solaris. He gave me a guided tour through the instrument, explaining several design decisions and highlighting the many user-interface features for ease of navigation, editing, and sound design. The Solaris is my new go-to sound design tool, offering similar flexibility to modular systems - and it sounds fantastic!"

Great taste in websites as well! :)

Check out the stack of synths below.

MATRIX Crates at NAMM?

This one spotted on the NAMM show floor and sent my way via Scott Jaeger of The Harvestman.

If they're filled with synths, I'll gladly claim them.

The Harvestman will be in booth 1076.

Update: I confess. I shipped myself out for the NAMM.  I'm actually in the box posting away waiting for the show to start.

Update One more pic via Suit & Tie Guy on Facebook below.

"We're unpacking him last. Ha. — with Matrixsynth Jones."

You better watch out. I'm gonna burst out like the Kool-Aid dude.  Or maybe that guy below.

Classic vintage green Lou Ferrigno era Hulk.

Rauls World of Synths 2 Year Anniversary!

Published on Sep 11, 2013 Raul's World of Synths·229 videos

"A short video discussing Raul's World of Synths two year Anniversary! Pretty exciting.
Sound and video by Raul Pena."

MATRIXSYNTH gets a mention!  :)  Thank you Raul!  Happy Anniversary!

Raul also created a couple of surveys to help improve his videos.  Take them here:

Raul's World of Synths Modular Videos
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3YGXKYZ

Modular Wild Video Series
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/DZMTQRQ

MATRIXSYNTH Turns 8!

Today marks the eight year anniversary of MATRIXSYNTH!

I usually go a bit in depth on what it takes to run the site, but this year I thought I'd keep things relatively short and just focus on what the site means to me and why it exists in the grand scheme of things. I'd also like to ask you what MATRIXSYNTH means to you. Please share in the comments below.

For me the site is a daily log of everything synth from the perspective of us, the users of synths, with the focus on the individual synths. With a few exceptions, each post showcases and features individual synths that you can clearly identify and get a feel for. It's a day in the life of synths. It's what was put out there each and every day and in time we'll be able to look back and see what was shared by the community every single day since July 20, 2005 (minus Aug 6, 2005). You might notice I don't interject much in posts. There is a reason for that. I believe things should be presented as they were meant to be presented by the creator of the content. It's my job to share what is out there unbiased. It's up to you to take whatever you want from it. MATRIXSYNTH in essence is a weblog in its truest sense.

The original non-weblog MATRIXSYNTH launched in October of 1997 and was a simple site with links to various synth portals on the web. If you take a look, you can see what sites were out there before the current format of MATRIXSYNTH launched. Before MATRIXSYNTH, print magazines and online synth portals primarily focused on full articles - press releases, professional reviews, interviews and tutorials. What was missing was what us the users of synths were doing with our gear on a daily basis. Most publications would likely turn you away if you had something to share unless you were a known artist, manufacturer or other influential. The DIY and circuit bending scene? Not covered. Botique manufacturers? Not covered. MATRIXSYNTH was the first to bring it all to you. Back then if you wanted to share anything you had to host your own website. YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, SoundCloud, Twitter, and so on were not out yet. I created MATRIXSYNTH in its current format in 2005 to capture and share what I came across. The site gained in popularity and soon people were sending in things they found or created on their own to share with others. The site has remained true to this since day one.

MATRIXSYNTH is a site that celebrates and showcases what we, the people passionate about synthesizers, are doing with our synths on a daily basis. It is a site that celebrates the synthesizers we love, all synths, old and new, simple and complex. All synths have character, all synths are special, all synths can be explored and discovered. It's about the exploration of sound, and not just traditional tonal music. Like an artist discovering palates of color, we discover palates of sound. Synthesizers are our gateway to the exploration of unheard timbres. MATRIXSYNTH celebrates that.

THANK YOU for helping make this a great site!!!

For those interested in numbers, this post marks number 96,509 published to date.  Every single post on the site has gone up by hand, and since the site's launch on July 20, 2005, there has been only one day missed, August 6, 2005.   Back then I had no idea there would be something to post every single day of the year.  Little did I know.   The site currently averages about fifty posts a day, seven days a week, 364 days a year (Christmas is the one day I take it easy).   What goes up is a combination of what you the readers send in and what I come across out there.   According to Google Analytics the site has had 37,074,619 pageviews from 16,976,707 visits since the site launched, while Site Meter shows 39,630,44 pageviews from 18,469,084 visits.

The Packrat Sampler Arrives

My copy of The Packrat Sampler  has arrived!  I thought I'd post some pics up along with a note on why this book is extremely special to me.  I started MATRIXSYNTH in blog format back on July 20th of 2005. The first post on The Packrat went up on Halloween of that year  (with two prior references here and here).   The Packrat was with me on year one and has been a staple on the site ever since.  The MATRIXSYNTH Packrat image pictured on the right of the site went up on August 2, 2006, and to my surprise and complete honor it graces the cover of the book!

The Packrat pretty much symbolizes the true inner synth obsessed in all of us.  He took a little hiatus in 2006 and came back in 2007 and has been going strong since.  He brought us synth dreams and Buchla Christmas wishes.  He has a significant place in synth history as the longest running, if not the only running, true synthesizer based comic strip.  Because of that, and because of the awesome coolness of the man behind the strip, Mr. Dave C. Lovelace, who brought us much of the artwork behind Metasonix products as well as his other comic strips, and plays ripping keys in his band Parallax, I highly recommend this book.  Check out that Tron keytar (more here)!

In all seriousness, The Packrat, also featured in Keyboard Magazine, is part of synth history.  Not only does the book feature each episode of the comic, you get the history behind each including interesting tidbits you might miss in the comic otherwise, and you get a 12-page adventure never seen anywhere else (which includes another MATRIXSYNTH appearance).

Seriously, get this book now!  It's dirt cheap, it's synth history, and it is AWESOME!

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MATRIXSYNTH NAMM 2013: Dave Smith Instruments Booth Pics

Pics of the DSI booth at NAMM. The highlight of course was the new Prophet 12.  If you watched some of the previous videos on the Prophet 12, you should have noticed that the messaging has been that the Prophet 12 is essentially the best of the Prophet 08 and the best of the Poly Evolver keyboard (see :52 on in this video).  One thing to consider is that it does not share any of the oscillators of either the Prophet 08 or Poly Evolver keyboard.  The Prophet 08 has analog oscillators with sawtooth, triangle, saw/triangle mix, and pulse waves (with pulse-width modulation), and hard sync.   The Poly Evolver has two analog oscillators and two digital with the original Sequential circuits Prophet VS waveforms.  The Prophet 12, however, has new digital (software) oscillators which include wavetable oscillators.  It's not clear how the wavetable oscillators are implemented.  In PPG and Waldorf based wavetable synthesis each wavetable is essentially an oscillator with 64 waveforms that you can interpolate or step through.  You can pick different wavetables each with 64 waveforms.  On the Prophet 12 I was told that there are three wavetables that you can morph between.  What wasn't clear was how the interpolation between the waveforms works.  It does sound great.

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MATRIXSYNTH NAMM 2013: Moog Music Booth & Sub Phatty Performance

matrixsynth·252 videos

http://www.moogmusic.com
A quick performance demo of the Moog Sub Phatty by Amos Gaynes.  Let this one evolve.  I think Amos was trying to put me in a trance and it worked.  I could have kept listening forever.  The Sub Phatty sounds great - substantial, massive and raw, and of course Amos rocks.  Below you'll find a ton of pics including the 50th Anniversary Gold Voyager and the Aluminum Voyager.  They both looked pretty incredible in person.  I definitely like the gold one more in person than pics, fingerprints and all.  The white Moogs look very sharp in person as well.  If you scroll down you'll find a little non-Moog surprise.  I asked Amos about it and he said it was from his friend who makes it.  I thought that was pretty cool.

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MATRIXSYNTH NAMM 2013: Big City Music Booth Pics

Tons of pics for tons of gear represented at the Big City Music booth this year. Pictured to the left are Roger Cordell and Stephi of Big City Music. Unfortunately I forget the name of the gentleman playing the new Mellotron M4000D MINI. I believe it is Markus, but I'm not 100% sure. Check out how slim it is - the Mellotron not the gentleman. Apparently it has the same specs as the model M4000D with a high quality Fatar keyboard that is velocity sensitive, weights only 21 pounds (9.5 kg), and should run $2100 when introduced.

Other new gear highlights at the booth include the Metasonix S-2000 Vacuum-Tube synthesizer (you'll find some details in this post for one that is currently for sale), the F-1 Complex Distortion Pedal, the new KOMA Electronic pedals, and the Jomox Akasha (check out the video here).

Other brands featured include Analogue Systems,  Dewanatron, Dirty Boy Pedals, Cwejman, Critter & Guitari, Vermona, Eowave (who had their own booth this year), and various eurorack manufacturers."

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