MATRIXSYNTH

Don Buchla - A History of Buchla's Musical Instruments

You can find the video link on this page. You can find a link to a PDF here. Also see this interview.
And of course see the Buchla link below under Labels for everything Buchla on MATRIXSYNTH.

City Skies 08 Electronic Music Festival

"City Skies 08 Electronic Music Festival will be held in the Atlanta area on May 2-3, 2008. The list of performers includes musicians from around the U.S. heard on Music From the Hearts of Space, Echoes, Star's End, Soma FM, StillStream, Galactic Travels, and more.

Musical styles will range from ambient to downtempo chillout to Berlin school to electropop to space rock to experimental. All music will be performed, this is NOT a DJ event.

We have chosen Kavarna in the Oakhurst area of Decatur for the concert venue. Kavarna gives us a perfect vibe for our inaugural event, with a nice selection of food and beverage for festival attendees."
For more info including the full lineup, click here.

Update: Richard Devine who's been mentioned in a post or two here on MATRIXSYNTH will be performing.

Update via Jim in the comments: Photos from the event are now up at http://www.cityskies.com/photoswrek.html

Synth Noise Box

flickr by NOMOMUSIC

full size

"Shawn Royal of sirkut electronics built this synth for me. I sent him these two toy telegraph boxes, with some vintage dakaware knobs, and after 2 years, he sent me back this crazy thing."

Kurzweil K2500XS Audio Elite Keyboard - $19,995.00 New

images via this auction
"The K2500 Audio Elite System (AES, pictured above) is a Rolls Royce version of the K2500 masterpiece. It comes with every single option available to the K2500 and is fully expanded with ROM and RAM to the max! It also includes extra peripherals such as 2 DMTIs and a CD-ROM drive. And finally it has the most elegant and classiest look of any synthesizer ever! This is truly the World's most powerful and amazing Synthesizer ever...it list's for $19,995.00! The K2600 series is virtually identical to the K2500. With all the same and compatible options and features, the K2600 adds increased preset V.A.S.T wave memory with a standard 12MB expandable to 44MB as opposed to the K2500's 8MB expandable to 28MB."
via Ryan

Does a Cow say Moo or Moe?

This image is actually from the prior post's flickr set. I thought the cow analogy was pretty interesting. As children we are pretty much taught a cow says moo, but if you ever heard one actually moo it sounds more like a sustained moe, or the like. If someone says you pronounce MOOG like moo of a cow, what are they saying?

So, does a chicken say boc, broc or ba-cack?!

Yamaha CS80

images via this auction via Joshua
"I am the second owner. I bought it years ago from a Las Vegas musician who had not used it professionally for some time, although it had pride of place in his living room. SN is 1373. For those of you who are interested, that means that the boards are the later ones with the tuning modifIcation to make it more stable. Also included are the manual,the music stand inside the tolex top cover, spare parts, including key mechanisms and at least one circuit board, pedals, and a spare power supply ( the label on the box the spare PS came in is worth the price IMO and BTW the addresses are old ones for both parties). I do not know whether the pedals and the spare parts are functional ( spare parts are rumoured to have come from a cs80 once owned by Toto-although this could be a drawback for certain folks , I suppose) . I have recently tested all functions and every electronic function works, including polyaftertouch, except that some of the lamps on the preset buttons that light up to show which preset is operating have burned out- however the buttons still work. This Cs80 has one modification, a useful one I believe, As you probably know if you've read this far, Cs80s were notorious for generating heat that made the tuning go bad. They were also quite heavy. The original owner simply made the rather heavy power supply EXTERNAL- this cuts down on the weight of the unit. It is housed in a red toolbox (visible in one of the pics). The unit is ( a little) lighter and the tuning is quite stable. Cosmetically, the tolex is in good shape and the wood is well represented in the pictures."

Portishead-Machine Gun-Later...April,2008

YouTube via chrisf242. via billy. Spot the synths.
"Portishead performing 'Machine Gun' live on Later...18/4/08"

VICMOD JAM

via Ross:
"Here are some sounds and photos of our recent VICMOD meet. This time it was an improv session, 2 members were soldering while we recorded and joined in after their modules were finished :-)

For interested people
Ross Healy - EMS Synthi AKS, Bugbrand Postcard Weevil.
Simon Birds - DS Desktop Evolver, Electro Harmonix 2880, boxes.
Brett Maddaford - FR-777 Monophonic Synthesizer.
Graeme Trott - Wacky Sound Generator, DIY Euro Modular Toby - MS2000 Scott Baker - DIY Euro Modular Gerrard Jenner - Nintendo DS . Nord Micro modular.
Mel - soldering iron, camera

Photos
Sound (look for the STE tracks)"

You can find all VICMOD posts here. Remember, search is your friend.
You can find the search box for MATRIXSYNTH on the top left of the site.

Pro One J-Wire Keyboard

Two shots of the Sequential Circuits Pro-One J-Wire keyboard sent my way via Gregor. Be sure to click on them for the full size shots. This is currently up for auction here.

noisesource

MATRIXSYNTH reader noisesource wrote in to let me know he has started a new blog. You can find it here.

Eurorack modular synth self generating patch, tweaked.