Moog - New Flickr Shot

flickr by Mark Henderson Portfolio.

Sanfrancisco Electronic Music Festival via Brian Comnes

Remember the SFEM? The following are Brian Comnes' notes on the last Friday of the event.

act 1 - Barbara Golden, a big Bay Area name in alternative music came out and read a piece of prose about getting lusty with some now dead poet, allegedly Lenoard Cohen's mentor, and there was a home slide show of her in the 70's with canned bouzuki music - a nice prose spoken word piece, but wierd for the SFEMF is you think about it

Act 2 was Steven Roden, his rig is in the picture I attached and as far as I can tell it is a few guitar delay boxes and some sound sources, harmonicas, slide guitar, and including the wooden peach crate which is apparently rooted in some electronica history , very nicely done piece but it put me to sleep, hardly synth porn..... here is another shot from the sfemf press photos site, hey he's playin a harmonica, not biting his nails.

Act 3 part 1 was a 12 minute set of Risset Tones (Risset tones are based on the work of Roger Shepard in the 1960's and the further developments made later by Jean-Claude Risset, RissetTones is designed to create an acoustical illusion. Perhaps best explained as the aural equivalent of the barber pole, the product of the RissetTones is a gliding tone which seems always to be moving either up or down in pitch while staying in the same general position.) Bottom line is that it was about 9 minutes too long, heck I could have done that with a copy of AudioMulch and 2 mouse clicks, a lot of people were looking at their watched at the 5 minute mark, to top it off I think it was from CD and not genrated live.

Act 3 part 2 piece by Toronto-based James Tenney whose piece which was played back from CD with a live percussion overlay by percussionist William Winant. He showed up with about 80 pieces of kit, including tuned Bundt cake pans, assorted pan lids in addition to a gong, tympani and other more traditional drum stuff but look at that other attched picture and you will see a door bell buzzer (!) in a box that was fileterd by opening and closing the lid, the canned track part seemed to be random synth burps and gee if I had 80 things to bang on I'd like to think I could keep it going, he had some great techniques though with the gong and tympany by rubbing on them with a mic'ed stick of some sort

the best of the evening was before the show .....a multimedia installation at Recombinant Media Labs by Semiconductor....the venue is superb, you are surrrouned by ten 15 foot wide by 8 foot high video screens in a 30X45 foot room and it has 16 channel surround, the video was NASA video and still shots of the sun using the solar energy patterns worked down to audible levels and added harmonics, i.e. the whiter the screen the louder the music, ...its a really cool way to experience solar flares to say the least

also I didn't see it but on Thursday night Brenda Hutchinson was playing this rig"

The Horrorist Korg Legacy MS 20 Soundset

Title link takes you there. I don't have a Korg Legacy, so I couldn't try this out. There were created and sent my way via Oliver Chesler (The Horrorist).

The Synth Buckle

Nice. Put this on along with your Synth tie, lapel, bling, and skirt and you'd be good to go.


Title link takes you to more on Music Thing.

Little Phatty Champagne

In case you haven't heard, Little Phattys are shipping. Someone on AH had there's delivered. Hmm... Wonder if Carbon111 got his yet.

image via CDM

Udpate via the comments:
"Mine showed up the friday before last.. It's everything they promised, and the presentation is perfect. There's also a CD-Rom with articles and audio from Bob and the memorial celebration, as well as a really cool poster of Bob."

That's pretty cool.

Linux Rock Star on the Alsa Modular Synth

For any Linux users out there, there is a new Linux music blog, Linux Rock Star. Click here for a post on the Alsa Modular Synth.

"This full modular synth (with "modules" that allow one to build a complete synthesizer) has one of the fattest sounds and most realistic I have heard from a virtual synthesizer (I've been using them since the days of Vaz Plus 1.7). There are thick basses, lush pads, searing leads, all the cliches plus all the weird sounds one can dream up. There are some amazing sounds that remind me of Klaus Schulze in the presets."

via CDM

Northern Air - The Wretch

Michael Weeks has contributed to quite a few posts on this site, so it's only appropriate I mention his new release Northern Air. Title link takes you to more info. Make sure to check out the video (there's an iPod formatted version after the jump as well). Congrats Michael!

Squarepusher Profile Sonicstate.com - on YouTube

via SonicState. More Squarepusher.

Technomania on SonicState

Sonic State has launched Technomania, a video grab bag of randomn synth clips. Below are links to the first two episodes.










Episode 1
James Anderson and Circuit Bending
The Fairlight on Discovering Electronic Music
Russian Polyvoks
Fumitaka Anzai and a Lego Moog Modular
Mootbooxle and his Synthesizers.com modular

Episode 2
Roland CMU-810
The Moog Modular on Discovering Electronic Music
ARP 2500
James Anderson and Circuit Bending
Fumitaka Anzai and a Mellotron 400 patch change

via sequencer.de

DSMIDI Demo V.1. Unveiled

MIDI for the Nintendo DS. Title link takes you to more info.

via ben shannon illustrator.