MATRIXSYNTH

Hiromi Live Report via Brian

In case you missed the update to this post. Via Brian in the comments:

"I missed the Tuesday night show, but I caught the Wednesday one...WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I feel it is my duty as a Matrixsynth frequenter to report on the keyboard aspect of Hiromi's performance.

Gear: Nord Electro 2, microKorg, and a Nord Lead 2. The Korg and the Lead 2 were sitting on top of this truly massive polyphonic analog monster made by...Steinway??? Maybe it was a spin off from Steinberg.... Anyways as far as synthesis is concerned, no envelopes were pushed...mostly square wave leads with LOTS of really good mod wheel and pitch bender action. The Nord Electro 2 electric piano was very expressive, going from soft and sweet sounding to harsh and overdriven like "that"!

Technique: This woman has AMAZING chops! I know in this blog most people are concerned with synthesis parameters, component specs, range of "that knob". But when you hear someone that can really play, it doesn't matter if it's a Casio POS or MIDI'ed CS-80 with the sampling option- they can make ANYTHING sound great!

The rest of the band: Hiromi is no show hog. The bass player and drummer have been with her for about four years and they are the definition of tight. The bass player plays a HUGE 6 string electric bass with about 10 pedals that have lots of blinking LEDs. His playing style reminds me of Les Claypool from Primus...very fast fingering and quirky progressions. The guitarist has only been with the band for TWO WEEKS, but shared the spotlight with Hiromi more than any of the other band members.

I did get her autograph but at the time I couldn't think of any keyboard related questions, so I just said "You were REALLY good!" Duhhhhhh...but at least I saw some kick ass jazz (are those terms ever used together?) by one awesome keyboard player!"

Well, you could have said, "Hey don't you just love Matrixsynth?!!!" Hah! Just kidding of course. ; )"

http://www.hiromimusic.com/. You can find the rest of Hiromi's tour dates here.

COMMONTONES

Thought I'd put up another plug for COMMONTONES, in case you missed it here, Sonicbrat and some friends are attempting to produce a track a day, and they are doing it. All tracks on the COMMONTONES site list the instruments used, so they are a good way to check out what a given synth sounds like. The latest entry, "Le Tour de Nuit" features solely the KORG Radias and KORG Kaoss Pad III. Check it out.

MASA's Lyricon Analysis - Electronic Analog Flute

Title link takes you to the original site in Japanese. Here's a link to the Google translated version.

"“performing in the orchestra, was the idea like the electric flute which is audible sufficiently in the hole”, so is. It has started from the place where it tries probably to reproduce the performance method of the wooden bobbin musical instrument and the constitution of the timbre electrically. Being afterwards, appeared, become constitution of the general analog synthesizer VCO, VCF and VCA…. whichWith there is no similar point yet, changes harmonic overtone constitution and on the other hand, it can call with the point which does the sound making that it has been similar to [dorouba] of the organ. At this point in time as for [ririkon] of the first generation [ririkon] II which it mentions later, formation differs from [doraivua] completely."

via Rick. "A great Japanese page on the Lyricon, including the maddest circuit
board in the world: check out the circular array of photocells!"

Plan B Model 28 Product Page with Samples

Title link takes you there.

TEXAS INSTRUMENTS LANGUAGE TRANSLATOR SPEAK & SPELL

via this auction

"ULTRA RARE - Texas Instruments Language Translator and Cartridge. Made in 1980 and famously used by Kraftwerk on the Computer World album. Follow this link for more info. This is an utterly cool piece of retro kit. Bright green fluorescent display, TI's famous robot voices, runs from 4 AA batteries or a standard ac adapter, has a built-in speaker, audio output and volume control. But, if you are looking at this then you probably know all about it anyway. This one works perfectly, is in great condition and complete (including battery cover). As well as the voice functions (spoken words, phrases and letters/numbers that you can type in) it also makes all the usual blips and beeps like the Speak & Spell and other similar TI units. The only minor cosmetic faults are a couple of small indentations on the metal grille covering the speaker. These could be easily removed with a bit of care. Originally designed for word and phrase translation, it can translate between French and English, Spanish or German in either direction, and is complete with the French voice cartridge (tres sexy!) and a printed copy of the manual. I will also include a set of new batteries."

Synth Lovers Attend AHNE2007

Title link takes you to Sonic State's coverage on AHNE which included a collage of vids, some you have seen here and some you haven't, so don't miss it. There are also notes from Dave (that's him playing the MOOG Model 12) of umop and of course, our synth favorite The Packrat. BTW, congrats to Dave for scoring the animation for Weird Al Yankovic's video Virus Alert! A GOOM synth makes an appearance. Not sure what the other one is though.

Virus Alert - "Weird Al" Yankovic

How to play fast on a Microkorg synth

YouTube via hamsterdunce.
"Sure, the keys are smaller than salamander toes. That doesn't mean you can't try and play a squillion notes per second, now does it? Enjoy yet another blistering array of wankadoo note slurrying by Uncle Dave!"

Sonic Lab: Arturia JP8V Virtual Synthesizer

YouTube via sonicstate.

"Sonic Lab presents the Arturia JP8V, a virtual synthesizer based on the fabulous Roland Jupiter 8, as made famous by pretty much any 1980's keyboard based band who had the cash.

Shorn Rah puts on his 80's gear (he's lucky it still fits), hair gel and lipgloss and takes us into the world of the polysynth.

Visit http://www.sonicstate.com/articles/ar... to view the original article"

GARY NUMAN - BERSERKER

GARY NUMAN - BERSERKER ----TOTP's

video upload by industrial82

Two Oberheim OB-Xas. And two DX-7s in the next vid:

GARY NUMAN - BERSERKER ----Razzmatazz

video upload by industrial82

And and OSCar in the last vid:

gary numan berserker
video upload by dexbam

My favorite Numan track. So, anyone know what synth or synths were originally used? The Tops of the Pops version is obviously a lip sync to the original track which does sound like Oberheim to me.