electro-music 2006 - Philadelphia, PA

Title link takes you to more info.



"We proudly announce electro-music 2006(TM), a three day international conference/music festival to be held at the Cheltenham Art Center in Philadelphia, June 2 - 4, 2006. The program will include lectures, demos, jam sessions, and concerts.

The scope of this festival is very broad, covering all aspects of electro-music, experimental electronic music, including circuit bending, computer music, electro-jazz, modular synthesis, musique concrete, improvisation, noodles (generative music, automatic and algorithmic composition), multi-media, visual art and much more. The focus will be on participant involvement, sharing, community development, audience education, and great music."

Alesis Fusion - New Flickr Shot

Recently played with one of these. The knobs, buttons and mod wheels really have a different feel to them. It's an interesting design that strays from the conventional design of other synths.

Synthmania.com

It always trips me out when I find a site like this for the first time. If you scroll to the bottom of the page you will see the first entry of March 14, 2004, "SynthMania.com is published to the World Wide Web for the first time." Moving up you will find synth after synth listed and the dates when they were added. Click on one and you will be rewarded with a details page and in many cases a motherload of samples. Really nice if you want to check out what some of these synths sound like. I always wanted to know what a Kawaii SX-240 could sound like. Still scratching my head as to why I hadn't come accross this site before. Title link takes you to there.

Siel EX-80 and Suzuki SX-500 MIDI-Map Chart

Title link takes you to a bmp of the chart. Via Sander Meyer on AH.

Emulator III and Akai VX 600 EPROM Images

If you need em, title link takes you to a post on DVDBORN that has em.

New Emu Bits

Update: Here's the full press release: http://www.productionforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=5414



Comments via James of Retro Thing via this post:
"The new Emulator X2 software will include the Transform Multiply functionality that was included in several classic E-mu samplers (The Emax and Emax II for sure). It's a DSP convolution tool that is well known for the bizarre textures it creates. They're also automating multisampling of your fave synth patches with a tool called SynthSwipe."

The New Rolands

Title link takes you to more.

Update: Looks like the 808 has it's own page.

"From the company that made “groovebox” a household name comes a remarkable addition to the famous Roland groovebox family: the MC-808. Optimized for realtime performance, the sleek, silver powerstation features eight motorized faders on its surface — a groovebox first! With Roland’s most sophisticated processor at its core, the MC-808 possesses top-of-the-line sampling, sequencing, and synthesizer features yet it comes in at a new, low price point."


"Look familiar? True to its heritage, the new JUNO-G is affordable and user-friendly. But that’s where the comparisons to yesteryear end. This modern marvel packs a studio’s worth of sound, sequencing, and audio recording into one amazing instrument. Sharing the same high-powered processor as Roland’s famous Fantom-X series, the JUNO-G puts a world of first-class sound and performance features under musicians’ fingertips — and allows more sounds to be added via SRX expansion. Songs can be created with the onboard audio/MIDI recorder, all for an incredibly low price!"


"For musicians new to synthesizers, Roland announces the most friendly and fun analog-modeling instrument on the market: the SH-201. For synth pros, the SH-201 will remind them of why they fell in love with synthesizers in the first place. Simply, the SH-201 is a blast to play! It sounds great too, thanks to such features as Roland’s famous Supersaw waveform, resonant filter, saturation control, and more."



"For musicians who can’t accommodate a choir or group of background singers for their gigs or recording sessions, Roland proudly presents the VP-550 Vocal Designer Keyboard. Much more than a traditional vocoder or harmonizer, the VP-550 uses Roland’s breakthrough vocal-modeling technology to bring the highest-quality, interactive vocal sounds to a dedicated instrument. Connect a mic, select a sound, and play. You won’t believe what can come out of this instrument: spectacular classical choirs, soulful gospel choirs, pop and jazz voices, male & female ensembles, vintage vocoder, and lush string/vocal hybrids."

The Future Retro XS

Title link takes you there.

Toshio Iwai's SimTunes

My masterpiece


I finally got a chance to check out the Demo of SimTunes graciously posted by thewhiteline on this post. To run it, I set the program to run under 256 colors in Windows 95 Compatibility mode (just right click the program icon, go to properties, then Compatibility to set this). I must say I was pleasantly surprised. It's a lot of fun. The way it works is you draw pixels on the screen while four little "bugs" walk around; when they walk over a pixel a sound plays. Different colors play different sounds. There is also music running in the background that your pixels play on top off. It's pretty fun. There are some included images that play composed pieces of music. As you can imagine if you line things up correctly you can get some cool sequences going, or you can just go random and see what comes out like my masterpiece above. I'll be keeping an eye out for the full version myself. Title link takes you to the demo. Thanks again to thewhiteline for this little gem. It would be cool to see this pojected on screen, in some performance art (oh, a composition running that is, not my masterpiece above). : )

The Neurodelic Experience

Update: I've been asked to pull down the original post. I've gone on the scavenger hunt to get into raves a hundred times and have had the wonderful light show of the LAPD break my bliss too many times to remember, so I totally respect this. Modified image below.