BROOKLYN, NY — The Brooklyn Synth & Pedal Expo returns October 17–18, transforming a 7,000-square-foot Greenpoint warehouse into an immersive playground for electronic music creators.
Presented in partnership with the legendary Three Wave Music, the Expo offers a strictly in-the-headphones experience — letting attendees demo the latest synthesizers, effects pedals, and modular gear from over 100 brands in a noise-friendly environment.
Nestled in one of Brooklyn's most vibrant musical corridors, the show is expected to draw more about 2,000 visitors, a mix of musicians, producers, and gear enthusiasts.
"Intro to Synthesis" Workshops This year, the Expo expands beyond its large exhibition floor with a new lineup of educational workshops focused on synthesis — from hands-on patch-building sessions to deep dives into modular workflows, led by working artists and builders. A schedule of the workshops will be announced soon.
"In this Signal Colors: Primer - I'm checking out the Solarfaze from Vongon. This saturation and detuning device adds sizzle to your tracks and a little bit of space too. Check it with me while I send some test tracks through it from the Elektron Tonverk."
"Please support my work on Patreon: / jayhosking A live synthesizer jam performed entirely on hardware.
I enjoyed having the Vongon Solarfaze and Polyphrase on the table for my last jam and left them there on a whim. That was the starting point. Next, I needed to run a synth through them, so I chose the Novation Circuit Monostation. I borrowed the CMS from a friend and had been looking to make some music with it; my opinion is that it's an extremely underrated synth that can do way more than people recognized at the time. And once I had its sequencer running and a bassline queued up, I could hear more of what was needed.
I also recently got a couple of Stylophones, because they are extremely affordable—the S-1 was something like $60 Canadian—and because I like the sound of them. Using the CMS's CV outputs, I sent a second set of sequences to the Gen X-2, which has CV input. I also took advantage of the Gen X-2's beautiful internal delay for cascading performances. The S-1 ended up my improv melody device for the last third of the song.
At this point, I needed reverb but didn't want to add multiple reverb boxes, so I added the Jellymix to act as stereo send to all the synths. For reverb, I chose the Swells, because I currently have it in a case with the Fieldtone Weaver and Qu-Bit Stardust, which can add a lot to a mix through stereo sample mangling. The Stardust is playing something that came from the CMS into Weaver; the Weaver is playing a snippet of my voice.
By this point, I could hear the full song, and it was just a matter of adding a couple of sequences and performing the whole thing. Pretty fun to see how wanting to explore a bit of hardware can lead to a finished song.
Performed and recorded live to a stereo output from the Jellymix, with EQ, compression, and limiting on the master.
"Please support my work on Patreon: / jayhosking
A live synthesizer jam performed with the Redshift 6 at the centre. Percussion added afterward in the box.
Fair warning: both Supercritical and MAS Distribution sent along their respective gear (the Redshift 6, and the Solarfaze/Polyphrase, respectively) for free. Take that as you will. Neither of them explicitly asked me to make a video with the gear, although I'm sure that was the point, right? But in both cases, the gear they sent along was a joy to play, which is why they're here.
I ended up really enjoying the Redshift 6. It's ostensibly analog where it counts—6 DCOs and VCFs—but it's also really clean and precise sounding, giving it a digital sheen. That's somewhat less my thing. However, it has a few things to really give it personality: multi-timbrality, up to a different timbre for each of the six voices; a Character parameter which vastly can change the sound of a voice, its filter and mixing and more; a great built-in effects suite (can only run one at a time); three pairs of stereo outputs to run your timbres separately (as here); easy-to-setup macro knobs for live performing using multiple timbres, all from one page; and a built-in sequencer for getting basic ideas onto the table without outside help. In many respects, it feels like an iteration on some of the ideas from the Elektron Analog Four, another synth I really love, only with enough voices to create a pad, arp, and drone at the same time.
Here, I run one timbre, a constant note, into the Vongon Solarfaze, which adds chorus and then drive/saturation. The second timbre, a single-note sequence, runs to the Vongon Polyphrase, adding delay. Both of these pedals impressed me way more than I had expected; there is something extremely performable about the Polyphrase that makes me want to get it on the table again straight away. And then for the third timbre, the pad, I run it direct out from the Redshift 6, using the synth's built-in reverb. I'm pretty picky on reverb these days and I think it sounds awesome.
With the macro knob opening all filters at once (to varying degrees), this live performance got huge. I had originally intended it to be only the synth, but once I heard the final performance, and how much it reminded me of a soundtrack cue, I knew I had to add orchestral percussion. I built the percussion out of modified samples from the Reason Studios loop library.
Altogether, it created an extremely cinematic performance and I'm very happy with the musical results. I was having such a good time with it that I'm excited to get back to the studio today and explore a little more. Thanks for listening.
"The beauty of having access to different devices is they inspire different things. You can't rely on muscle memory and your usual chops.
(If you leave you one device long enough, the same thing happens :) )
Btw, the little jitter on the Replay is by modulating the filter with an LFO with sample and hold."
"I have always wanted a Medusa ever since i tried it at Superbooth (i think?) many years ago, i found it very intriguing, both layout / workflow with the grid and the very special sound engine. For some reason i never got to the point actually buying one until the other day when i stumbled over one used for a very reasonable price. I mean, i dont even really have the space for it.. i just knew this was the time to get one. :)
What you see and hear in this video is me taking it for a quick testrun, i love its quirkiness, how one can assign the voices are being played which creates some really fun happy accidents all over the place. The grid is quantized into Dorian scale, root in D.
FX from the Vongon Ultrasheer Reverb and Red Panda Particle, EHX 720 Stereo Looper from for the intro loop recording. All is recorded live straight on 2 track with some minor touch up post, e.g limiter and little bit of EQ at the top.
This is perhaps the first of a number of longer-form performances focused on some existential themes. I thought perhaps I might use the Solar 42F for all of them; I may still, but I also don't want to limit myself with any arbitrary rules, so we'll see.
"I love discovering new and inspiring tones. Tones that surprise me - preferably not by layering tons of effects, but achieved much simpler.
Enter the Vongon Rosetones, a polyphonic resonator.
What's happening here: it's hooked up to the Tonverk via MIDI and audio, and MIDI CC's are being changed with the patterns from the Tonverk. In the first part, the percussion from the Tonverk is fed into it as the impulse to excite the resonators, while I play the Replay as a midi keyboard to define the pitches.
In the middle part, the audio from the replay is the input to the Rosetones, which resonates sympatically to the chords. In the third part, it's back to drums exciting the resonators and MIDI control of the pitches. Lots more to be discovered.
And of course, the Rosetones looks beautiful as well."
"rosetones creates a polyphonic synth voice that follows your playing. it listens to
your notes and routes them through sympathetic resonators, creating blooming
harmonic textures and evolving chords
more info @ vongon.com"
"rosetones creates a polyphonic synth voice that follows your playing. it listens to your notes and routes them through sympathetic resonators, creating blooming harmonic textures and evolving chords
at the center of rosetones is a 12-voice chromatic resonator bank that continuously analyzes the input signal and routes detected pitches into tuned delay lines. each pitch class excites a resonator that can sustain, swell, and interact with feedback to create dynamic harmonic movement"
"In this Signal Colors: Layers, I'm pairing up the Strymon BigSky MX and the Vongon Paragraphs II - a massively spacious reverb processed through an atmospheric panning stereo filter. These two heavy hitters are a powerful duo. Hang out with me while I pair them up with the Teenage Engineering OP-XY!"
"More tones of the Vongon Replay. So simple, yet so versatile. Paired with the Ultrasheer, it makes for a beautiful combo. The ticket to this patch here is filter frequency modulated by LFO in noise shape - you can see all other setting straight on the front panel here.
A hint of eq and some limiting on the master bus, that's it."
"Here's another patch on the gorgeous @genkiinstruments Katla synthesizer.
For this keys patch I made use of Katla's voice rotation, with one of 5 voices tuned an octave higher than the rest, resulting in unpredictable pitch jumps in the melody, which I love. I didn't make use of Katla's oscillators for this patch, in stead the sound is coming from the filter with the resonance fully up, which tracks pitch very nicely when tuned with the simple calibration mode of holding down the two filter mode knobs.
I'm a big fan of these singing filter sine waves, which always feel a tiny bit unstable which makes them sound magical. To top it off I'm modulating the panning of the voices, I blended in some of Katla's lovely noise for some warble and I added some of the amazing internal reverb, which reminds me a bit of my Vongon Ultrasheer. I love this sound so much and I've never heard any other synth make it quite like this!
You don't see me playing the keys in the video, but I played this patch for hours, instant inspiration really. This melody is came out of that improvisation.
Thank you for watching!
ps. sine waves generally don't translate all that well on phone/laptop speakers, so speakers/earbuds/headphones advised.
Katla is shipping as of this week, find more info at: https://genki.is/"
"The Replay sounds fantastic, but here it just delivered a phrase sample and is acting as a midi controller for Outgrowth, which I have just gotten around to trying. An insane tool. No other effects used here, except for some eg and limiting."
"Changing the aesthetic of an old tune with a new tool. I am running the entire mix from the Model:Cycles through the Vongon Solarfaze Saturator. This transforms the entire appearance of the original tune."
"Listen for a gentle warming uplift, as the earliest glimpses of spring are emerging. Days are getting lighter, as they always do.
👋 Join my Patreon for FREE for similar videos, tutorials, studio vlogs and creative inspiration 👉👉👉 / hazelmills (...plus a description of how I built up this piece).
This is "Expanse Part 2", an improvisation that came to be because I'd been re-jigging my studio set-up and was testing a gear combo (listed below).
