Casio MT-400V Filter Tweak

"The Casiotone MT-400V may not be a serious, professional synthesizer, but thanks to its true analog lowpass filter section, it is seriously fun to play with. Having realtime sliders on a "toy" synth is completely unheard of in recent products and rare in 80s-90s products as well.

That said, the MT-400V's filter falls a bit short on the resonance side; it just doesn't make it into the "squinky" realm of self-oscillation when the resonance control is pushed to the max. But, with a simple tweak, it can!"

[link] via best in the comments of this post

Synthi Anton

"A comic from the year 1977, created by Klaus Schulze (text) and Harald Grosskopf (drawings). The story was one of Klaus' many efforts to tell and explain to the world: What is a synthesizer? This was still necessary in 1977. More than twenty years later we have digital equipment and computers..."

[link]

via Till "Qwave" Kopper

Tron - Light cycle sequence (1982)

YouTube via allertonoff.
"Among the all time great science fiction classics. The first feature film to make extensive dramatic use of CGI. It still looks fresh today, with a wonderfully retro score by Wendy Carlos. Sheer industrial delight and magic. Highly reccomended."

via Wikipedia:
"The background music for Tron was written by pioneer electronic musician Wendy Carlos, who is best-known for her album Switched-On Bach and for the soundtracks to many films, including A Clockwork Orange and The Shining. The music featured a mix of an analog Moog synthesizer and GDS digital synthesizer (complex additive and phase modulation synthesis), along with non-electronic pieces performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra (hired at the insistence of Disney, which was concerned that Carlos might not be able to complete her score on time). Two additional musical tracks were provided by the band Journey. They were originally going to be recorded by British band Supertramp. The soundtrack album was released on record and tape by CBS Records. It has been recently re-released by Walt Disney Records."

ARP 2600 Vintage Modular Analog Synthesizer Video Demo 2

YouTube via 123synthland. Demo 1 here.
"We deal in vintage synths, so we get to play a lot of fun toys. One of our favorites is the ARP 2600. We've sold many of them over We deal in vintage synths, so we get to play a lot of fun toys. One of our favorites is the ARP 2600. We've sold many of them over the years, and each one sounds different. This is a video of 1 of a couple short "jam sessions" I had with the we just put up for sale. Its knobs are off as we were wrapping up cleaning and servicing this unit. We've got a keyboard for it but it wasn't used for this noisemaking session. ARP 2600s are well known for their filter instability. This one in particular is quite unstable - the filter clips really easily when the resonance is low, to the point where the sound can sometimes disappear, so it's great for distorted noises. Simply altering the volumes of the signals going into the filter and VCA can cause some very interesting rhythmic effects. Because of its unique sound, we decided to leave the filter the way it is rather than tweak it or replace it with a "better behaved" one. This video is a departure from my normal 10 second clips, so hopefully this won't bore you guys to death. :) Enjoy. Email us anytime at minime123@onebox.com"

Zeit in the Box

via Robert

Note this Zeit is not yet completed hence the lack of knobs.

The New Mellotrons on Radio 4

via Nelson:
"UK national speech station Radio 4 reported on the new Mellotrons today:
Link to the realaudio segment. The relevant sequence begins at 11m40s. in case that link doesn't work here's the link for the show. The relevant segment being 7:30-8:00. I don't know how long these links will work!

Cheers,
Neltron"

The Red Room NW

flickr by The Red Room NW

click here for the full size shot

click here to see the mouse overs for each item and more shots.

Prepare to get Wave:d

"As the development process of the new nord wave is about to be finalized, we would like to take this opportunity to share with you some of the astonishing sounds that has been flying around the office the last couple of months. The latest nord invention closes the gap between analog and digital; now you can use digital samples in an virtual analog environment. That means that you can take a sampled sound and tweak it into something completely different. Here is an example using a sampled trumpet - the sound is tweaked in real-time. The nord wave has a classsic analog synthesizer set-up with filters, LFO's and envelopes plus a massive oscillator section capable of producing classic analog waveforms (with sync), FM-synthesis, wavetables, sampled waves (wavetable with attack), noise and other miscellaneous waveforms as well as - yes - samples. Plus, oscillator modulation allows you to modulate one oscillator with the other; for instance a FM-sound modulated by a sampled sound - the character of the sample is applied to the FM sound - this example uses a sampled persian santur, as well as a classic analog lead. At the end, the lead is tweaked into a drone like sound as it is modulated by a sampled accordion(!). Every sample in the nord wave can be replaced. You can use your own samples - simply map any standard .wav-file in the nord wave manager software (for Windows and OS X) and transfer via USB. Here is an example using a custom loop with some filters and overdrive, and adding some analog stuff as well as a some oscillator modulation using a Mellotron violin sample (multi-track recording). Since the nord wave uses flash ROM to store samples, even user samples are constantly available at power-up - no external loading media is required! The nord wave has a few more weeks to go in developement - more information to follow!"

more info on the Clavia website.

supa machine - supercollider + iPhone

YouTube via tn800. A little Kraftwerk.
"experiment for supercollider and iphone. Also the hommage for the masterpiece of 70s, performed with small contro"

ANALOG SYNTH SID 8580

more images

"This is a hand made Analog Synth with SID 8580 as the sound engine. It has a 2x16 Blue LCD, RED LED power and BLUE & ULTRAVIOLET midi in indicator LED's. There are (6) BIG GREEN ARCADE Buttons to select menu functions. There is also an extra GREEN BIG SID MENU SELECT BUTTON on the side. It is the same function as the small gray one on the front. There are midi in and outs on this unit.


_it has blue, ULTRAVIOLET and red LED's
-this version has artwork on front panel
-All internal wiring is CAT5 and hot glued down at the solder locations to survive a very long lifespan
-the front and back panels are very thick clear and Transparent RED plexiglass.
-12v AC power adapter is included (WALLWART)
-It can be edited via CC midi messaging.

This item was a prototype I had for about a month, that is why it is 'Used'. I was going to keep it for myself because of the Rare 8580 SID chip but i have decided to let it go. The wood is painted C64 case color. The bottom has a few scratch marks on the wood. You can't see them unless you lift the unit up and take a close look.

The difference between the 8580 chip and 6581 is that the 8580 sound more musical and has more clarity. The resonance is also a bit more defined.

Here is the myspace link to here a demo of what it is capable of: It was mixed down in CUBASESX. The demo's here however re from a 6581, i haven't had the time to record the 8580.

All songs are 100% SID only, the first song only has VOCODED INTRO."

Not fully analog. More info on the SID chip here.
More info on MIDIBox here.