Schroeder and His Modular

via @backyardghost

Peanut's Schroeder goes modular.

Roland Interview with the Developers of the Original JUPITER-8, JUNO-106, and JX-3P

The interview is currently on Roland's site here. The text is captured below for the archives.

"WHAT ARE YOUR HONEST OPINIONS REGARDING THE ROLAND BOUTIQUE SERIES? AS DEVELOPERS OF THE ORIGINAL PRODUCTS, WHAT WERE YOUR IMPRESSIONS WHEN YOU HEARD ABOUT THE MODERN RECREATIONS?

Takahashi:I'd heard about this product series rather early on thanks to my position at the company, and my honest feeling about it was that I was excited. I was truly excited at the prospect of a simulation being released of a product that I was involved with decades ago. Synthesizers from those days have a unique feel that you can only get on analog, so I was interested in seeing how much of that could be reproduced in the digital realm. I knew that the Roland Boutique series development team was working on this very seriously. More than being intrigued, I was truly very excited.

Matsui:I'm no longer with the company, so I hadn't heard about this until very recently when someone mentioned, "We're working on this project relating to the JX-3P." Honestly, I was very happy to hear that. I was very happy to hear that Roland will be releasing a product that I had a part in developing in the past in a new form. That's because the JX-3P was a very special product for me.

DO YOU HAVE ANY INTERESTING MEMORIES RELATING TO THE JX-3P?

Matsui:That synth was developed at Roland's Matsumoto factory. I was working at Matsumoto at the time and was involved in guitar synth development. Guitar synths up to the GR-300 and GR-100 were based on converting pitch into a CV (Control Voltage) signal, which would then trigger an analog synth. But for the next generation of guitar synths, we decided to use a design where pitch would be converted to MIDI, which would then control the sound engine digitally (though the sound engine itself would still be analog). We studied how guitarists were using the GR-300 and GR-100 and realized that they didn't do much sound creation on their own. (Laughs.) So if that was the case, we decided to go with an easy-to-use synth with presets. And this was the start of the GR-700 project.

The [GR-700] would feature a built-in pitch-to-MIDI converter and a sound engine with presets. But even if this was to be a preset synth, it would still be too difficult to create sounds without any knob controls. So we made a programmer—solely for development purposes—with which we could adjust the tones. Sometime later in the development process, one of our superiors remarked, "You can attach a keyboard to that and make a polyphonic synth out of it, can't you?" [Laughs.] So that's how the JX-3P came about. The reason it's a six-voice polyphonic synth is because it started out as a sound engine for guitar synths, guitar being a six-string instrument. (Laughs.)

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Roland Interview with the Developers of the Boutique Line of Synthesizers

The interview is currently on Roland's site here. The text is captured below for the archives.

"WHAT WAS THE STARTING POINT IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ROLAND BOUTIQUE SERIES?

Tojo:Our starting point was that we wanted to create a full-fledged synth in a compact form factor; something that might look like a gadget at first glance, but was capable of producing amazing sounds. We wanted to create a synth that people could casually enjoy, came with a built-in speaker, and could also run on batteries. Since we had the ACB (Analog Circuit Behavior) modeling technology that was developed for AIRA and a mini keyboard that was first incorporated in the JD-Xi, we thought that we could make something interesting by combining these two. That was around the end of last year, and actual development began in around January this year.

WERE YOU PLAYING WITH THE IDEA OF BASING THIS SERIES ON SYNTH CLASSICS RIGHT FROM THE OUTSET?

Tojo:Yes, we were. We wanted to combine ACB and the mini keyboard to reproduce classics that everyone was familiar with. The JUPITER-8 and JUNO-106 were candidates right from the start, since these synths are still very popular today. We wanted to add another synth to the lineup, so we decided to go with the JX-3P, which produces different types of sounds from either the JUPITER or JUNO. We reached the decision to go with these three synths rather quickly, without much debate.

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BEMI: The Music Easel

Published on Dec 2, 2015 Buchla BEMI

"BEMI: The Music Easel

CREDITS
TEXT: DON BUCHLA & CHARLES MACDERMED
EASEL SOUND DESIGN: ALEX TYSON
EASEL PERFORMANCE: TODD BARTON
VOICE 1: TOM CARROLL
VOICE 2: BERNICE EVANS
ARCHIVAL: WILLIAM FISCHER / FRED FISCHER
DIRECTED BY ALEX TYSON
A SYNTAX ERROR GROUP FILM
THANKS TO DON BUCHLA & MATTHEW SANCHEZ

© 2015 Buchla Electronic Musical Instruments

WWW.BUCHLA.COM
WWW.ALEXTYSON.NET
WWW.TODDBARTON.COM"

Note Don Buchla filed a lawsuit against BEMI back in March. Not sure what the current status is.

Overpower Lines (Circuit & Bent SR-16)

Published on Dec 2, 2015 HardtekStudios

"Download the audio track for FREE here-https://soundcloud.com/hardtek-studio...

My newest Novation Circuit jam accompanied by my Circuit Bent Alesis SR-16 drum machine. SR-16 is midi slaved to Circuit. Routed into my Mackie Onyx mixer and recorded into Logic Pro where a bit of compression, EQ and reverb is used to sweeten the mix."

http://us.novationmusic.com/circuit

MINI NOVA PRESET MODULAR R TWEAKING

Published on Dec 2, 2015 PLUCKA,S SHED

"Live Tweaking just using the Modular R preset using the filters 1 and 2 also tweaking adsr and filter envelope on the run with a great variable of sound"

http://us.novationmusic.com

Haruo Yamashita's Vintage DIY Modular Featured at the 2015 Japanese Analog Synth Builders' Summit

This year's ASBS15 event was held on Saturday, November 28.  You'll find pics of the event here and here.  Of particular interest was a vintage DIY Modular by Haruo Yamashita.  This is actually the first post on MATRIXSYNTH to feature the system. The links below will take you to more info.

via Sam Hoshuyama who attended the event:

"The greatest thing this year was a booth displaying the original modular synth of the legendary SDIY papers published in 1977 by Haruo Yamashita.  They were issued as a series of magazine articles, and have been a legend for 30 years. They were recently published in November as a book with a new description and new schematics using modern components. The booth was invited after the publication.  You can find Yamashita's site here." [Googlish translation here]

Roland AIRA Series Jam Demo Session System 1, TR8 and TB3

Published on Dec 2, 2015 Calle Nilsson

"Jam session with the Roland Aira System 1, TR8 and TB3. Minimal techno, acid."

AniModule M1xXOR Dark Lord Of Darkness

Published on Dec 2, 2015 JRock17991's channel

"The M1xXOR, Dark Lord of Darkness, Spawn and Creator of all that IS Dark, Darkened up some dirty 2 sequence patches along with its fellow Sonic OverLords the XXX_OR, the SOB, and the V9a
You can find all of these abominations and more at : http://www.animodule.com/"

AniModule M1xXOR Modulating BitCrusher Clock TrAniModule Speaker out as Distorion

Published on Dec 2, 2015

"Same dark Patch, Dark Lord, Darkity Dark Dark and so on...
This time Bit Crushing the 4th Channel with a ShNoiZe and modulating the Sample Rate Clock. After that It's run in to a TrAniModule--Speaker Out for some DARK transistor Distortion then on to a Modulated SOB for some WaveFolding and filtering... and Darkenss!!! Mwahahaha

Check out the Darkness at http://www.animodule.com/"

TipTop Audio: Grain de Folie Z-DSP card demo

Published on Dec 1, 2015 Ed Hickey

"Demo of the Grain de Folie granular processing card for TipTop Audio's Z-DSP eurorack module.
Recommend you use headphones or a good system to listen on: lots of low-end and stereo panning going on.

More info & manual: http://www.tiptopaudio.com/zdspcart.p...

Presets:
#1 Four Spread Grains 1 - 0:04
#2 Four Spread Grains 2 - 1:54
#3 Pitch Modulated Grains 1 - 4:01
#4 Pitch Modulated Grains 2 - 5:35
#5 Three Pitched Grains - 6:41
#6 Six Grains Stereo - 8:50
#7 Three Flying Grains - 10:40
#8 Three Modulated Grains - 12:07"