Synth Talk with Richard Burgess of Landscape

LANDSCAPE: 'European Man'

Uploaded on Jan 19, 2008
Landscape's 'European Man', featuring Barbie Wilde.

Pea Hicks who runs Optigan.com and the MC-8 blog, has a great post up on Richard Burgess and the use of the Roland MC-8 Micro-Composer.  The following are a couple of excerpts and videos for reference.  Along with synth talk there are some interesting historical bits on the time including the origin of the New Romantic label and scene.  Richard Burgess worked with Rusty Egan who in turn was in Visage, a band consisting of him Billy Currie and Midge Ure of Ultravox, John McGeoch of Magazine, Siouxsie &  PIL (Johnny Rotten of The Sex Pistols), and others.  Lot's of cross collaboration at the time.  If interested you can start with Visage on wikipedia and click through the names.  The post-punk New Romantic followed by New Wave movement brought synthesis to many.  In Pea Hicks' interview you'll find a great audio snip with some geeky synth talk on setting values for the MC-8 - this is in an actual track.

"Pea: I’m sure to you it probably seems like a head-scratcher why anyone in this day and age would voluntarily subject himself to the hassles of dealing with ancient sync dilemmas, but for me that’s part of the fun and also it’s a way of working that inevitably produces some idiosyncratic results that you wouldn’t get by doing things the “easy way.” I’m definitely after that metronomic Human League type groove.

Richard: I think the machine definitely influences the result so I don’t see it as odd to want to use the MC8. I have thought about it myself.The same thing applies to analogue sequencers. Like I said, we synched the MC8 to the CR78 by programming a square wave to come out of the mulitplex outputs and then we adjusted the level through a console until it ran the CR78. Most of those old drum machines run on simple square waves with no flags. Getting them to run in the same time is less of a problem than getting them to start at the right time. I used the MC8 in preference to later machines because of the timing. I found early Cubase to be shaky (it’s fine now) and SMPTE Track from Hybrid Arts was very sensitive to processor load. I always liked the timing of the Linn 9000 and I still have mine. I don’t know about the DMX but the 808 should lock tight – it’s only one machine later than the CR78 if I recall correctly."

And on Shock's Angel Face:

"Richard: Oh yes, that was all me. Rusty Egan brought the group and the song and I programmed everything in my home studio and recorded it at Mayfair Studios in South Moulton St. with John Hudson engineering. It was the System 100Ms with the 10x gate modification on the bass line for sure. I did all their recordings and I wrote the rest of the songs with various members and Rusty."

Shock - ANGEL FACE - Shock

Anyware Instruments SIMPLESIZER Gallery

via Tommy Welsch of Anyware Instruments on Facebook (click through for more pics)

"The SIMPLESIZER. In memory of my old old DIY synth project. The start of some people into the modular world. The name was invented from my daddy (because he don´t know about synth´s)"

One went up for auction here in 2011 and one was featured in a video here.

I Love The 1970s - Documentary on The Stylophone

I Love The 1970s - The Stylophone (BBC2?, 2000)

Uploaded on Aug 6, 2010 by GuildfordGhost

"Not sure what channel this was on, so feel free to correct me. Smashing old Stylophone footage for you techno-geeks!"

Don't miss the recently announced Stylophone S2

And some tracks featuring the original:

David Bowie- Space Oddity Original Video (1969)


Kraftwerk - Pocket Calculator


The White Stripes - 'Icky Thump'


Update: correct videos embedded. Apparently if you embed individual videos from a playlist the embed for the first video shows regardless, so Bowie was embedded three times.  Thanks goes to daden in the comments for catching it.  Typically when I publish a post, I'm already moving on to the next, so if you see mistakes, let me know!  :)

Doepfer Announces A-171-2 Voltage Controlled Slew Limiter II

"Module A-171-2 is a voltage controlled slew limiter with a lot of additional features beyond a simple slew limiter. It's mostly a licensed copy of Ken Stones VCS which is in turn based on the Serge VCS.

These are the most important features:

Manual control of the Slew-Up time
CV control of the Slew-Up time with polarizer
Switch for linear/exponential shape of the rising section of the response curve
Manual control of the Slew-Down time
CV control of the Slew-Down time with polarizer
Switch for linear/exponential shape of the falling section of the response curve
CV Up and CV Down sockets are normalled
Signal input (the "to-be-slewed" signal)
Trigger input
V/Oct input
End output
Cyle on/off (when "on" the End output is internally connected to the Trigger Input)
Output
LED display

A detailed description of the module will follow soon. Until then the explanation on Ken Stone's website Ken Stones VCS can be used as a preliminary information. "

Echo Pad + Audiobus example - Sound on sound looping

Published on Dec 12, 2012 by HoldernessMedia

iTunes:
Echo Pad - Holderness Media Inc
Audiobus - A Tasty Pixel
AudioShare - audio document manager - Kymatica (Jonatan Liljedahl)
FunkBox Drum Machine - Synthetic Bits, LLC
sir Sampleton - Paul Slocum

iOS Devices on eBay - Don't miss the Daily Tech Deals

Soundiron - Ambius 2

Soundiron - Ambius 2: Systematik - Walk through 1 by Brad Halverson
Published on Dec 11, 2012 by Soundiron Sampling

"A detailed walk-through video and tutorial of Soundiron's new Ambius 2: Systematik library. This cutting-edge hybrid synthetic/organic lead, pad, texture and ambience design library is built on powerful new adaptive groove-building tools and inspiring performance shaping features that you won't find anywhere else. Create and tweak your own multi-layered instrument concepts with nearly 5GB of freely mixable content and dozens of unique presets, each with nearly limitless creative potential."

http://www.soundiron.com/instruments/ambiences/ambius2/

Soundiron - Ambius 2: Systematik - Walk through 2 by Brad Halverson
Published on Dec 11, 2012

"A detailed walk-through video and tutorial of Soundiron's new Ambius 2: Systematik library. This video focuses on the Layer Builder presets in Ambius 2: Systematik."

E-MU Emax SE Rack + 31 Disk Library

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via this auction

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Mutable Instruments Shruthi Synth - with Extras

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via this auction

Auction Includes:
Mutable Instruments Shruthi-1 with SMR-4
Extra LCD
SSM Filter PCB
SSM 2044 Filter IC & SSM 2164 VCA IC
Power Supply (9v 400ma)

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Evolution X-Session USB Midi Controller with Moog Style Knobs

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Ensoniq ESQ-m SN:11255-C with TouchOSC iPad Template

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via this auction

"Included in the auction:
The ESQ-m Synthesizer
Two rack ears with screws (not pictured)
An editor template for TouchOSC - please note, the TouchOSC software and the pictured iPad are NOT INCLUDED - only the template file is included.
A power cable
A voice RAM cart, allowing for two extra banks of storage on the ESQ-m. The ESQ comes pre-loaded with the patches from Teanegro (Google it - some of the best patches for this out there)
The TouchOSC editor is something I've recently finished, and will be releasing to the general public in the next couple of weeks. The template, with the TouchOSC software and appropriate MIDI interfacing between the two, allows you to use an iPad to edit every voice parameter on the ESQ-m."

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