'The High Road' Patch Video From 1994-95

video upload by ParadisoModular

"This is the earliest synth patch video that I've made. The piece was inspired by thinking about Fripp & Eno style drones - this is where that went. This video shows this actual patch running the the basement studio I had in my townhouse condo at the time - most of it features line-recorded audio, shifting to an actual live camera microphone when I shut everything down at the end. I shot it on a Hi-8 camera that I brought home from the Media Lab for the occasion - it has authentic grain of age here. Several years later, I named this piece 'The High Road' - it has that vibe."

Resynthesizer: Modular Synthesizer Installation at MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center

Published on Jun 25, 2018 MIT Media Lab

Note this is an upcoming event. You can find previous posts featuring Joe Paradiso’s modular synthesizer here.

"In collaboration with the Department of Nuclear Science & Engineering and the MIT Media Lab, ACT presents Resynthesizer, a performance, installation, and public tour series of MIT Media Lab Professor Joe Paradiso’s modular synthesizer, temporarily installed within MIT’s internationally known Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC).

More information at: https://www.media.mit.edu/events/resy...
License: CC-BY-4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)"

"Friday — Thursday
April 27, 2018 —
May 31, 2018
MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center
Building NW21, 190 Albany Street
Cambridge, MA

In collaboration with the Department of Nuclear Science & Engineering and the MIT Media Lab, ACT presents Resynthesizer, a performance, installation, and public tour series of MIT Media Lab Professor Joe Paradiso’s modular synthesizer, temporarily installed within MIT’s internationally known Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC). Resynthesizer will incorporate a month-long series of public tours of the synthesizer at PSFC intended to highlight a participatory dialogue between the varying departments—and the public—concerning transdisciplinary research efforts engaging one of the 21st century’s most pressing challenges: to produce the next clean, economically efficient, and sustainable energy.

The Paradiso Synthesizer, arguably the world’s largest homemade modular synthesizer, produces sounds which are 'programmed' manually by running wires between various outputs and inputs. Unlike today’s digital synthesizers, which normally hide their many capabilities behind menus or graphical interface screens that allow for changing only one parameter at a time, the modular synthesizer exposes all aspects of sound creation and modification simultaneously via the physical modules.

In Resynthesizer, the Paradiso Synthesizer will utilize final data gleaned from PSFC’s legendary fusion device, the Alcator C-Mod tokamak—one of only three domestic tokamaks housed within a US Department of Energy funded user-facility. In 2018, however, C-Mod lies dormant due to a completion of operations and termination of previously obtained government funding in 2016. Nevertheless, containing a wealth of data archived from more than 20 years of operations, C-Mod continues to exist on the MIT campus as the world’s only compact, high-magnetic field, diverted tokamak, allowing it to access unique experimental regimes and influence the direction of the world fusion energy program.

With this collaboration and contribution of PSFC data, the synthesizer’s modules will produce complex and varied sonic environments from the complicated “patch”—the set of connections—that Professor Paradiso creates. The patch determines both the sounds and how the sounds are controlled and triggered, ensuring that the sonic environment generated by the synthesizer will never be repeated. Made evident by Paradiso’s installation and performance, this experimental and artistic process of creation and modification is ultimately what connects both the history of fusion energy at PSFC and Professor Paradiso’s exploration of sound as a malleable product of digitized data."

Joe Paradiso and his Modular Synthesizer

YouTube Uploaded by crudface on Apr 7, 2012

"Joe Paradiso demos his incredible DIY modular at the MIT Museum"

Also see:
Paradiso Modular - Online Physical Programable Modular
The Paradiso label

Paradiso Modular - Online Physical Programable Modular

The Paradiso modular was recently featured in this video. What you might have missed, myself included, is that it is actually programmable online here. Via Wired : "Now, anyone can play one of the biggest modular synthesizers in the world, thanks to a new project, code-named 'PatchWerk.' With PatchWerk’s simple web interface, users around the world can control the colossal rig in real time, from its current home at the MIT Museum...

By manipulating various toggles on the web interface, users around the world can turn on a sweeping oscillator sound, activate the chaotic sequencer, turn on drum machines and a growling speech synthesizer sound, control frequency and tempo, and much more. Letting anyone play the synth in real time could potentially lead to chaos, but the current design of PatchWerk — which has a small group of users experiment with sounds while other users wait in a queue — is meant to help control for that... (You can listen to the synth at any time, day or night.)"

If you take a look at the Paradiso label you'll see the first mention comes in the comments of this Cat on a Modular post from back in 2005.

This one in via Jim.

The Paradiso Synthesizer

YouTube Uploaded by MITNewsOffice on Mar 13, 2012

Be sure to see the Paradiso label at the bottom of this post for prior posts.

"In 1973, Media Lab associate professor Joe Paradiso was an undergraduate at Tufts University, and didn't know anyone who had built an analog music synthesizer, or "synth," from scratch.

It was a time, he says, when information and parts for do-it-yourself projects were scarce, and digital synthesizer production was on the rise. But, he decided to tackle the project — without any formal training — and sought out advice from local college professors, including his now-colleague in the Media Lab, Barry Vercoe. Paradiso gathered information from manufacturers' data sheets and hobbyist magazines he found in public libraries. He taught himself basic electronics, scrounged for parts from surplus stores and spent a decade and a half building modules and hacking consumer keyboards to create the synth, which he completed in the 1980s.

That synthesizer, probably the world's largest with more than 125 modules (http://web.media.mit.edu/~joep/modlist.html), is now on display in the MIT Museum.

Every few weeks, Paradiso changes the complex configurations of wires connecting the synthesizer's modules, called "patches," to create a new sonic environment. The synthesizer streams live online 24 hours a day at http://synth.media.mit.edu; starting this week, visitors to the synthesizer's website can even change the patch parameters online.

Learn more about Paradiso's synthesizer! http://web.media.mit.edu/~joep/synth.html"


Update 3/15/12: it's actually programmable online here. See this post for reference.

Prof. Joe Paradiso's Modular

via synth night @ sprout

"This spring, the MIT Museum will begin an active exhibit of a modular synth designed and built by Prof. Joe Paradiso. A live stream of this synths current patch is available here. Schematics and a write up of some of this synths inner workings here albeit this was an early write up in the projects history. More info on Joe’s synth."

Links @ sprout.

The CAMAC Music Synthesizer

I spotted this one on Deviant Synth. It's a DIY synth by Dr. Joseph A. Paradiso. You can find full details here.

"I spent the winter of 1979-1980 in Europe as a graduate student of the MIT physics department, working at our R209 muon pair experiment running at the Intersecting Storage Rings at the CERN Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. These were extremely stimulating years; CERN is a fantastic environment for high-energy physics (especially then, as it was about to enter a golden age with the launch of the p-bar-p collider), and living in Geneva was fabulous; with the French Alps and Jura nearby, there were many highpoints. Things quieted down though as the winter shutdown began at CERN and all of the postdocs left town for the holidays. I myself was about to leave for a couple of weeks in Rome to visit relatives, but there was a good gap of a week or two beforehand when I had a fair amount of time on my hands and a nice workshop available (always a dangerous situation). Although I often took advantage of an old piano that was hidden in a cable tunnel under the main CERN restaurant, I missed my synthesizers, and wanted to play with electronic music again."

Also see a video of Dr. Joseph A. Paradiso modular in this post.

Joe Synth

YouTube via GGTrashes

"A video of Dr. Joseph A. Paradiso's modular synthesizer setup."
Update via peterwendt in the comments: "I met Dr. Joe Paradiso (same person) at MIT Media Lab once. He does interesting work in alternate controllers/interface. His WWW page is here. I didn't get to see his modular, though."

Synth Albums

This shot was taken from the same site as my previous post. Just thought it was worth putting up separately. Sometimes you just don't have time to check out every single image, so here you go. Check out the module plates standing on their sites like the albums. Pretty cool in that they will eventually also be the source of music. The title link takes you to a really nice video on his modular.

Cat on a Modular

Ran accross this site on this VSE thread. Notice it's hosted on mit.edu. This is one of those cases where I'm tempted to just copy the whole thing down in fear of it dissapearing forever, but... I'll hold off in good faith. Please don't let this site go down. Title link takes you there.



BTW, if the title link ever goes down, post a comment so I get it. I'm going to save the pictures offline just in case...