Kurzweil Borg

Via Gizmodo. No VA1 for us, instead...

A Borg

Tokyo Synthesizer Hunt - New Flickr Shots

Wow. Huge set of shots in via bdu on Flickr.

The shot below looks like something from one of my synth dreams.

If I wake up I wonder if this post will be there.... : )

Moog on the Moon

Jonathan Lutz posted this on AH. Looks interesting. If anyone knows more or can actually make this in Philly, please feel free to comment.

"The Franklin Institute presents this spectacular analog synthesizer show featuring an out-of-this-world visual journey on the Fels Planetarium dome. Includes tribute to the late Bob Moog, inventor of the famous Moog Synthesizer."

Update via AH:
"Mark Jenkins is flying in tonight from the UK. 2/3 of my band Xeroid Entity (I'm unavailable Saturday night) will be at the concert. Orbital Decay from Quakertown, who have played many times on my radio program (Galactic Travels, WDIY, Allentown) as well as on Star's End (WXPN, Philadelphia) and at the Soundscapes and the Gatherings concert series, will be there. All three bands played at the fantastic new Electro-music festival last June. (See http://electro-music.com for details.)It's a Moog tribute concert in a planetarium.

1. There will be analog synths.
2. It's being held in a planetarium.
3. The musicians are top shelf.

Conclusion: If that isn't enough to get you to go to this, then you must be living in Timbuktu. ;-)

Cheers,

Bill Fox - http://soundscapes.us"

Miniorgan - Realistic Concertmate Rhythm Box

Trip. Never saw this before. Title pretty much says it all. It's a rhythm box made in 1981. Not sure if it's analog and/or whether it uses any design or components from another manufacturer like the Realistic MG-1 did with Moog. Click here for more on Miniorgan.com, a site worth checking out in its entirety and on it's own.

Hammond 102200 Synthesizer

Haven't seen one of these in a while. Shots pulled from this aution so they are not lost. More info in this Vintage Synth post.

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Roland JX-3P - New Flickr Shot

Cool shot via Flickr. I think that is a JX-3P.

INetSynth

Saw this on Music Thing. The weird thing is I swear I saw and read about this synth a while ago somewhere. I remember thinking it was overpriced and odd, but for the life of me I can't remember where. Title link takes you to the auction. Music Thing link takes you to their post on it with more.

"The INetSynth is a true stereo 96kHz digital hardware synthesizer with tons of cool features like multi oscillators, filters, envelopes, LFO's and a programmable matrix. It has 16 layers, each with a programmable arpeggiator and a keymap, finally the synth has 128 tones polyphony and 2 built-in stereo effects, a real "work horse" for music production"

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Minimoog Voyager Sequence

Someone on AH posted this track by Mathew Davidson as an example of a Minimoog Voyager being controlled by an external analog sequencer. Thought it was a nice track and a good example of the Voyager. Note that because the Voyager is monophonic, this piece was done by laying down one track at a time. Title link takes you to Mathew Davidson's site with more of his tracks including notes on each. Swimming is the title of this track.

Kurzweil VA1

2004 Kurzweil VA1 Musikmesse Video Demos

Published on Nov 16, 2015 matrixsynth

"A collection of short demos of the Kurzweil VA1 at the 2004 Musikmesse. The synthesizer never made it into production. The engine instead made it into the PC3X."

Original post from 2005:

The synth that wasn't. It was shown by Kurzweil at either NAMM or the Musikmesse. I forget which. Check out the display. It was a working model and people at the show heard it. The thought at the time was that it needed some polishing and the MSRP was going to be a bit pricey, but people were excited. We haven't heard from Kurweil since as far as I Know.

Update: Thought the following in the comments below was worth putting up in the main post. Thanks Mike. I agree that the competition combined with price at the time is what probably shelved it. It's too bad as it looked like it had a bit of potential. I wonder what the inside word at Kurzweil was; what would the engineers and the team working on this have to say. It's an amazing bit of synth history nonetheless.

"I saw and played the prototype on the 2004 Musikmesse in Frankfurt. It was still in Beta as many features were not working, but it sounded ok, though not spectacular as far as i remember.

Maybe they discontinued it, regarding the competetive market of Va's these days.

However, it's a shame that a manufacturer like Kurzweil seems not to be able to release "their statement" of a 21th century synth. Especially considering the undoubtable genius of Mr. Ray Kurzweil. Maybe it just get's overhauled and will find it's way to the market at one point. But guys, you have to throw something more in there to catch interest. The usual 2 OSC, 2Env one DCF isn't enough these days...

Cheers,

Mike"

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Octave The Cat

New Octave Cat fansite. Great, now I'm going to be reverring to the synth as Octave the Cat. Cool site including samples. Very Goth.