NAMM: Waldorf Blofeld to get Sample Functionality

bleepology has the scoop. It will be available as a paid upgrade. No price yet.

Funny side note for the archives: Brandon of bleepology asked Stefan Stenzel and was told he was the first person to actually ask them there! :)

MELLODRAMA: Mellotron/Chamberlin Documentary Trailer

YouTube via MellotronMovie. via Brian Kehew of The Moog Cookbook.
"From a California garage to Royal Albert Hall, Mellodrama is a documentary film by Dianna Dilworth that explores how the haunting sound of an ingenious contraption called the Mellotron changed the production and texture of popular music, from the Beatles to Kanye West.

http://www.mellotronmovie.com
http://www.myspace.com/mellotrondocum..."

SEM bearings packed 'n Tire Rotation

Frequency pots for the Oberheim SEM

image via synthwood

Electronic Music Circuits by Barry Klein

"I originally wrote Electronic Music Circuits back in 1982. Published by SAMS, it went out of print a couple years later, as interests turned to computers and digital synths. But interest in analog synthesis has returned! If you want to build your own synth, repair an old one, or just try and understand the basics of analog synth design this book is for you.

I have enlarged the page size to 8 1/2" x 11" and made corrections to several of the original circuits. The pages are held together by a plastic "GBC" binding that allows one to open the book on a lab bench for reference while working on a design. The book has schematics for VCO's, VCF's, VCA's, envelope generators, noise sources, keyboard interfaces, sequencers, and much more (over 300 pages). Check here for the table of contents . Each of these schematics is accompanied by descriptions of the theory involved in the design but I tried to keep the math to a minimum. These designs have been implemented in some pretty amazing home-built synths."

You can find more info here.

Cerebral Sabbath” at Octane Coffee

via suicide lane:
"Merkatroid opened up the night with a Live PA feeding his keys into Ableton controlled it via iPhone.
Reset performed as Suicide Lane (MonoMachine, Jomox XB09) tag teaming with the almighty Thunderkiss on Speak&Spell and 909 and Rightclique friends at Octane Coffee.
Check out Rowland's and Distal's great DJ sets as well.

Sets and pictures can be found [here]"

Update via shortstack in the comments:
"Thanks for checking us out, we are already piecing everything together for the February installment of Cerebral Sabbath. Stay tuned to our blog for more information as we will provide updates as they become available. Glad you all enjoyed what we had to share, there is still one more mix from the evening being uploaded in the next few days, so if you like what you've heard so far, just know there is more to come."

SYB bass synths

flickr set sent my way via kulten

"standard color shots with a digital camera, then turn to black and white with my iMac."

SYB-3 and SYB-5

Felix's Machines composition 02-2007

YouTube via pintsznifer. Felix Machines - Felix Thorn "early stage of development."
You can read more about it here. via fabio.

NAMM: Akai EWI USB

You've seen the videos and prior posts. Here is the latest press release including price.

"NEW EWI BRINGS WIND-INSTRUMENT EXPRESSION TO ANYONE

EWI USB Delivers Full Electronic Wind Instrument Functionality at Attractive Price

Cumberland, R.I. (Jan. 15, 2009) – Akai Professional, the leader in music technology for wind players, announces shipment of the EWI USB, its latest wind controller. EWI USB and its new operating system will be on display at the 2009 NAMM Show in Anaheim, Calif., January 15 – 18, 2009 at the Akai Professional booth, number 6400.

EWI USB enables anyone, regardless of wind instrument-playing experience, to perform with the expressive capabilities of the wind instrument of their choice. The wind controller features a plug-and-play USB interface for use with the included Aria software, with Garritan and Akai Professional samples as a sound source. EWI USB is Mac and PC compatible.

Professional players will find EWI USB fully capable of performance for stage and studio with a five-octave range, breath modulation with adjustable threshold, pitch bend, adjustable vibrato, transposition and octave shifting capability, and fingering modes to emulate various electronic and acoustic instruments. Further, the Garritan/Plogue Aria software enables instrumentalists to perform with up to four instruments selected from the full collection of more than 75 orchestral, band and synthesizer sounds.

While EWI USB has full professional capabilities, its attractive price point and easy-to-play design make it a perfect choice for wind students. With a removable, dishwasher-safe, interchangeable mouthpiece that works well regardless of embouchure, EWI USB is excellent for introducing students to the world of wind instruments. Former wind instrumentalists who would like to return to playing will find EWI USB easy to adapt to, eliminating much of the embouchure-building time required with a traditional instrument.

Thanks to multiple fingering modes, EWI USB perfectly emulates saxophone, flute and oboe, as well as traditional EWI and EVI trumpet. The result is completely intuitive performance, even for players who have never picked up an electronic instrument.

“With EWI USB, we are delivering an incredibly expressive instrument to a whole new world of wind players,” states Gregg Stein, Director of Marketing, Akai Professional. “Traditionally, electronic wind instruments have fallen into two categories: very expensive professional instruments, and inexpensive instruments of low quality. EWI USB is the first instrument to offer professional quality at such an affordable price.”

EWI USB is now shipping to musical instrument and pro audio retailers at an MSRP of $499."

samplemulti - Waldorf Blofeld Sample

Another Waldorf Blofeld sample via Boele of SCD:

http://www.synthmusic.info/mpdries/samplemulti.mp3

"This is a live played line on the keyboard just 20 minutes ago. A split keyboard with the two arps on the left part and right part of the keyboard (same sound), plus a third sound coming up half way across the whole keyboard.

The arped sound uses sample oscillators the third sound uses wavetables.

It's another example of how intuitive and inspirational this synthesizer will be!

Boele"

Vaco Loco MonoWave II

"The MonoWave II is a complete change for me in that it's a 100% DSP based synth. My reason for this is that it allows me to experiment with features and the sound of the synth without having to rebuild circuits from scratch.

The MonoWave II is a free download for anyone who uses the Sound Art Chameleon. It was designed with the same goals in mind as the original Monowave, a unique sounding monosynth with unique sonic abilities.

I'm new to DSP and this is my first project, so I've decided to make it a freebie. You can get the latest version, along with a patch dump, in the downloads section. You can also find the source code, including DSP assembly language, here. Please feel free to use it, but I would request that you keep a link to the modulus webpage and also SoundArt webpages in the files."

Samples here

You can find more info on the original MonoWave here. In short it was a mono synth with Moog style filters and the PPG waveshapes for the Oscillators.

As always see the labels below for what's gone up in the past.

Update via Qwave in the comments:
"I can clear up a thing, because I own three MonoWaves: it does not produce wavetables. But it contains all the waveshapes the PPG waves used to make up the wavetables by interpolation. So it does sound like a PPG from the oscillator side. But the filter is a pure and legal (written permission by Bob Moog!) Moog filter.
http://www.till-kopper.de/monowave.html
Scroll down for the english (sort of) version.
Here is my MonoWave rack:
http://www.till-kopper.de/monowave-rack-small.jpg

keep on turning these knobs"

Till"

Update via Lord Avon in the comments:
"It's worth noting that you can control the wavenumbers via MIDI CC, so if you sequence it you can get psuedo wavetable effects, like this demo from Paul Nagle ;-
http://www.vacoloco.net/synths/monowave/sounds/MonoWaving_Seq.mp3"