BEAM READY HOMAGE TO REED GHAZALA

YouTube via SonofCastille
"Well, special thanks to Reed Ghazala, who sent me some really killer cold war era military surplus lamps. The big one says BEAM READY, and the smaller one has the atomic symbol, hence the name. Enjoy"

Akai MPK49 Controller Overview

YouTube via gearwire
"The Akai MPK49 controller keyboard makes things easy -- as some would say, a little too easy. It's a keyboard controller with 49 keys that won't break when you touch them like other types of keyboard keys, 12 pads and enough options to where you could probably record something that sounds passable as music while you're off in the Caymans in the middle of some kind of money coma.

Bill Holland demonstrates.

See more on Gearwire.com."

Patching using the Patch Cable Generator

via Synthesizer Art where you will find more models of "electronic musical instruments in 3D"

"Here you see the results of feeding the X, Y and Z co-ordinates of some of the jack sockets into my Patch Cable Generator"

MIDIBox SID

via the forum, up for auction here.

"Synthesizer based on the famous SID chip from the C64

* Finished MIDIbox SID constructed - based on the DIY project UCAPPS
* Easy to use, all functions are controlled by the large display (2x40) immediately reachable
* Addition, all parameters Midicontroller or editor software controllable
* 8580 Sid chip from the C-64
* 3 Oscillators, filters LP, BP, HP
* 6 LFOs, Wavetable sequencer / Arp
* Sync Midiclock
* Audio-IN ... u.v.m.
* 128 presets
* High-quality 19 "Rackgehäuse
* Midi In / Out
* Internal power supply"

Stupid Design Green Machine

New videos here.

via the forum.

Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Year everyone!
I hope it was a great one! This year was a great one for the site.

I said this last year and I will say it again. This site is NOT about me. It's about EVERYTHING SYNTH. It is about what's out there. It's about all of us, it's about what others with similar interests are doing - videos, music, pictures, events, the new and the old, EVERYTHING SYNTH!
I want to THANK ALL OF YOU FOR A WONDERFUL 2008 and I WISH YOU ALL A FANTASTIC 2009!!!

Once a year I like to share a little bit about what the site is about, its history and its readership.
Some stats for the fun of it. World Domination? 12 countries short! If you remember last year, we had 181 countries visiting the site. This year (top map), we are up to 194 countries. Since the inception of the site in 2005 we are at 201 countries (left map)!!! If you click on the map, anything in green means someone out there visited the site from that country. Those in white haven't. The darker the green the larger the number of visits. According to the map, only the following 9 countries out there have not visited the site: Western Sahara, Chad, Central African Republic, DR Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Turkmenistan, and North Korea. Crazy! Someone from every other country out there visited the site. It boggles the mind when you think about it. [Side note: I think I found a bug in Google Analytics: Take a look at the top map followed by the left. The top is this year, the left is all time. If you look closely you will see Tajikistan and Kyrgyztan flip colors. For the all time map both should be green if you think about it.

Numbers:

Total Visits:
2008: 2,010,102
2007: 1,383,340
2006: 513,060
2005: 207,750 (via AdSense)
Total: 4,114,252

Total Page Views:
2008: 3,865,863
2007: 2,519,689
2006: 912,490
2005: 207,750 (via AdSense)
Total: 7,505,792

For reference, Site Meter has:
4,289,986 Total Visits All Time
7,960,740 Total Page Views All Time
The total Page Views for Dec was 433,030, the total visits 197,214.
The average Page Views a day for Dec was 13,969, average visits a day 6362.

Pretty amazing when you think about it.

As for number of posts:
I put up 10,090 posts in 2008
21,962 posts all time
That's an average of 27.64 posts a day for 2008 and nearly double 2005, 2006 and 2007 combined.
What this simply means is that there is more out there.

Some history:
I created the original matrixsynth.com in October of 1997 as a portal for me to track "everything synth." The site consisted of two frames. A simple link list on the left and a viewing frame on the right. If you go to the site you will see what it pretty much looked like since its inception. The problem was that the links on the left were only to the root of the sites. I found that a ton of the interesting information out there was deep within sites, and sometimes the info was not even in an actual website, but on various sound, image and video shares, forums, email lists, and so on. I had a backlog of emails saved and bookmarks in my web browser. In July of 2005, I decided to start the blog to track everything.

What am I trying to do anyway? When people ask I usually just say its a blog that I track stuff with. It is that in essence, and over time, I hope it will become something more, something much more.

What is the bigger picture?
I want the site to be a place people can come back to in time. 50 -100 years from now, I want people to be able to come to the site and look back in time. I want anyone that is curious about the world of synths to be able to see a glimpse of it here. A log in time of what was out there every single day. I know I won't capture everything. There are other blogs and other websites for that. What I do hope to capture is just glimpse of it all. I hope it will be a fun trip back in time for future generations. This is actually why I chose Blogger as my platform. When I first started the blog, I started it on my site matrixsynth.com. I hosted it, but the site eventually went down due to increased traffic exceeding my allocated bandwidth. The event made me remember losing some great synth sites out there like drummachine.com (anyone remember that one?). I ended up choosing Blogger as it is owned by Google and you can host the site on their servers instead of your own. Hopefully this will translate into the site running long after I am gone.

Hopefully this wasn't too long. I just figured I owe some background on the site at least once a year. :)

Again, HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! HAVE A GREAT 2009 and THANK YOU!!!

Goodbye 2008 - The Most Important Decision of 2008

Two vids. One good, one bad, you decide below. Not sure if this is fair as the bottom video isn't even from 2008, but neither is most of the content on this site, so... :) Vintage or...

Guru Josh Project - Infinity 2008 (Official Video - Klaas Vocal Edit)

YouTube via HammerDontHurtEm. via Lt. John Rambo's Goodbye 2008 post which obviously instigated this post and thus gets the title. "A freak like me... just needs the Trinity."

Disclaimer: so as you've probably figured out by now, my number one rule in putting up a post is that you have to be able to ID the synth. I'm usually pretty strict on this, but during the holidays I lighten up a bit. As for this post, the excuse for posting is the KORG Trinity. Or is it the Triton? Who knows... Enjoy the sax... or not.

As for the second video...

Fluke - Atombomb (Video Version)

The synth connection is... the KORG Trinity... and the Synth Babes of course, although the only real Synth Babe is in Fluke. I actually saw Fluke live over a decade ago. I remember the female in the band playing the Trinity live. I was quite impressed. At the time my friend gave me a call and let me know Spectrum was playing the same night. I already had tickets to Fluke so I went with Fluke. My friend told me Spectrum had this funny little suitcase synth which turned out to be the EMS Synthi. In hindsight, Synthi aside, I made the right choice. Fluke was indeed impressive and this video was a track for the times. Good memories... New Years shouldn't just be a reflection of the prior year in my opinion, but rather your life up until this point. Past. Present. Future. Make it all good.



The vote for the hell of it...



BTW, I'll be putting up my traditional Happy New Years post with stats for the year tomorrow on the day. As the festivities will obviously happen before then, have a VERY HAPPY (AND SAFE) NEW YEAR! SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE!!!

MB-6582

flickr by SineSurfer
(click for more)

inside the MIDIBox SID

Noisebug Buchla and Plan B at Winter NAMM

http://noisebug.net/
http://buchla.com/
http://www.ear-group.net

Dictee Supreme

YouTube via bubagoo.
"This is a heavily modified learning toy called La Dictee Magique.
That's the french version of the much more common Speak&Spell.
I added the standard range of glitch and pitch bends and also added:
-Pitch modulation LFO
-2 Baby driver toy sound circuits
-Voice changing megaphone sound processor circuit
-Atari joystick control port (for triggering sounds and glitches)
-Defibrillator paddle control jacks (trigger sounds and HOLD effect)
For more info go to casperelectronics.com"
The Magic Dictator! as in dictation of course.