Rudiger Lorenz

loran modular
formant modular
terzvocoder
analog sequencer
frequency shifter

Title link takes you there.

ELP Tribute: Modular Sunth - New Flickr Shot

flickr by poligraf.

Dewanatron Birdhouse

Two shots of the Dewanatron pulled from this electro-music.com post, which came from the Dewanatron site. I bet Thomas Dolby would like these.

Title link takes you to Dewanatron.

"Dewanatron: a family of instruments which hazard unpredictable behaviors and self playing tendencies. They make all previous and future instruments obsolete."

Modded Roland TR-606

Via mono-poly in the comments of this post.

"I got a modification done with my tr-606 and i am really happy with it.
My 606 got now trigger outputs for all sounds. And trigger leds to show witch chanels get triggerd. Now the days i use the 606 most times to clock my analogue sequencers and other stuff witch use trigger sources. It also got the the modification wit the noise output from the hihat circuit i am really happy with it!

link

There i am using it to controll a wiard sequantizer and vco i just got. and made quickly a little demo with it.

Here are some pics of just the 606
link
I am really thinking about another one because i could use more 5 volt triggers. And perhaps i want a module to control the gate time."

Update via Rogo in the comments:
"Check out http://www.numberofthebeast.org/ as well. Julian is a very nice guy and his mods are awesome"

I also put up a post a bit ago here.

Tanz Dandy - A6 Demo

Title link takes you there. Via this post on HC.

"SFX Pro, Space Designer were accomplices."

DJ Shakey on One Blue Monkey

Some Ableton Live action via the Warper Party. Title link takes you to the video on One Blue Monkey.

Ableton Live rules for live play.

The First ARP 2500

You are looking at the first ARP 2500. It's home is at the New England Synthesizer Museum in Nashua, New Hampshire. I was fortunate enough to actually see it in person a couple of years ago. It was an amazing experience, standing in front of it, realizing what it is. I took a few shots including this one. Title link will take you to them including a much larger version of this one. Also note the SYNTHE license plate on top. : )

What is just as amazing is how Dave Hillel Wilson, the curator of the museum, acquired it. There are amazing deals and then there is this... But don't feel to bad, as you will see, somehow karma has a way of balancing things, but somehow I think Dave still came out ahead. : )

"Many years ago a man tried to sell an ARP 2500 to Daddy's Junky Music in Nashua, New Hampshire. They didn't want it, so they referred him to me. I looked at it and was afraid to offer too little; I offered $500 US. He was expecting to get $50 for it, so he was so happy he threw in his gray meanie 2600 as well. Later Alan R. Pearlman confirmed that this 2500 was the first ever made.

Best purchase I didn't make - I looked at a Buchla Music Easel (before I knew much, but after I thought I new everything) and said it wasn't as good as an ARP Axxe. The guy offered it to me for $400 US dollars and I said no. Boy have I made some stupid mistakes in my lifetime!! (Some guy bought it for 400, turned right around and sold it to a dealer for $1200, who sold it to someone in Europe for $2400, so it's long gone)."

- David Hillel Wilson
Curator
New England Synthesizer Museum
_DWilSynth[]aol.com
_www.synthmuseum.com/nesm

Update: a few more pics below. Note David Hillel Wilson passed away in 2010.

MPC Shots and Sample

Title link takes you to more shots including some gorgeous shots of an EDP Wasp, Serge and more. He even has one of these! : ) You can find a 4.6M mp3 here. Via Dennis Vershoor. Thank you Dennis!

More on the MPC.

The History of Roland on SOS

Title link takes you to Part 1 of a four part series. Roland was founded by Ikutaro Kakehasi. Something tells me James of Retro Thing will appreciate the following. : )

"Born in 1930, Ikutaro Kakehashi was just two years old when his parents died from tuberculosis, and he spent much of his youth living in Osaka under martial law. He studied mechanical engineering and simultaneously worked as a schoolboy worker in the Hitachi shipyards where Japan's 'midget' suicide submarines were built. As a result, he witnessed a great deal of destruction in the last months of the war.

Once World War II was over, and after failing on health grounds to enter the city's university in 1946, Kakehashi moved to the southernmost of Japan's four major islands, Kyushu. This offered a far more rural existence and, to survive, he took a day job as a geographical survey assistant. But, at just 16 years old, he noticed that, with no watch or clock industry in post-war Japan, there was a thriving business to be had repairing existing timepieces. He was unaware of it at the time, but a chap named Torakusu Yamaha had also started out as a watch repairer, as had Matthias Hohner. Even the Hammond Organ Company started out as a sub-division of the Hammond Clock Company!"

Update via the comments:
"Mr Kakehashi is a very nice man.
He will give you his full attention and fully listen to you without interruption.
He visited Roland US once when I worked there (mid '80s) and I was shocked to find that he took the time to sit with me and go over things I found in error with some Roland products.
He even took notes.
Consider that. The president of a huge international company actually listening to a lowly repair tech.
This is part of why he's successful.
He has very little ego and loves music."

Vyonich Yamaha CS10 Sample

Title link takes you to a sample of a Yamaha CS10 monosynth with an extra OSC modded, being driven by a Roland EF-303 through a Kenton Pro Solo MIDI to CV converter. Via Chris Strellis' Vyonich.

Robert Rich Review and Shots

Title link takes you there. Link to photo set is in the box on the top left when you get there.

Analog Revolution - The Sound of the Century

"This is the story of the synthesizer, the entirely new class of instrument born out of the technological tumult of the 20th century. It had a revolutionary impact on the sound of the century, crossing all musical genres on the way. We hear how artists as diverse as Pink Floyd, Sun Ra, Herbie Hancock, and Doctor Who's Tristram Cary took to Bob Moog's invention with fervour, weaving it into the cultural fabric and popular psyche." Title link takes you there.

Update via the comments:

"I posted this on the analogue haven list yesterday. Hope everyone enjoys...don't forget part 2, it's called Transformer, and it should be up within the next few days."

sequential circuits pro five - New Flickr Shot

flickr by windupgodzilla.

One Blue Monkey Adds RSS

Awesome. I'm subbed. Title link takes you there. Look for the orange RSS icon up top for the feed. I also added the link to my blog roll on the right.

Studio 303 Roland MC202 Samples

Title link takes you there. Some beefy samples. The MC202 sounds goooood.

Vangelis Video on DVDBorn

Title link takes you there.

Popol Vuh Beat Club 1971

Click image to launch. Via nx.

"It's time to freak out with some glacial soundscapes from Popol Vuh (florian) on the beat club television show, 1971"

Update via james in the comments:

"Very nice. Sadly, Florian Fricke passed away in late December, 2001.

Here's one of the few interviews you're likely to find:

http://www.eurock.com/features/florian.aspx"

Update via James Anderson in the comments:
"just to let others know...

a bunch of popol vuh's cds,
mainly soundtracks I believe, have been re-released on the cd format in the past couple of weeks.

I work at a record store and have wanted to know what it sounded like. thanks Matrix! "

You're welcome! BTW, to my surprise Yahoo! Unlimitted actually has them including their early stuff. I'm listening to it now. I love Yahoo! Unlimitted. I pay 5 bucks a month and get access to all this stuff. And no, I have no affiliation with them. I just like the service and don't want it to go away. : ) They have 19 Popol Vuh CDs. These alone would pay for the subscription. Think about that... I also get to check out Christopher Randall's music of Analog Industries (Sister Machine Gun and Micronaut)! Alright, off of my soapbox.

Mike Walters' Geeky License Plate

Mike Walters' of Mystery Circuits sent this shot of his Polymoog license plate in. Nice! I'd be honking my ass off if I saw that driving down the street. : )

Korg Sigma - New Flickr Shot

Another great shot by SkullKid.

Japan on YouTube

Japan Promo Video - Life In Tokyo
Japan - Quiet Life
Japan - Gentlemen Take Poloroids
Japan Quiet Life 1981
Japan - Cantonese Boy (Live)

via Micke in this VSE post.

Shimmer - Synthesizers.com Demo

Via Andrew of bleepsandbloops, "Here's a little demo I made with my Synthesizers.com setup. It's pretty minimal right now - just two oscs, noise unit, one envelope, one filter, one multiple, one amp - but I've already been able to do a bunch with it."

Title link takes you to a 2.84M MP3.

Computer Controlled Live

Two videos: one, two.

gear used:
TB-303
TR-505
TR-707
AN200
A4000 sampler
TBS DRM2 minisyncussion
Alesis Philtre modfx

Synthesizer Modifications

Title link takes you to Synthesizer Modifications. Scroll down when you get there for a list of modification and images.

BTW, before you go modding away consider the following comments on AH:

via Martjin:

"Let's hope that the kit I got slipped through AS quality control somehow, otherwise I'd say that these kits aren't worth the money. Nevertheless the CP and HH mods are very interesting, but the Tom mods are very uninspiring."

Via Ryan:
"I'll second the pondering AS quality control. i had a tr808 with kenton midi and the AS tonal mod. the tonal mod imho destroyed the 808's sound. the 808 sounds perfect as is. you don't have to mess with it. once you mess with it, it starts sounding all sorts of cheap ;("

Via Jason:

"i'll "third" that: i would highly advise against Analogue Solutions for tonal modifications (they are not done with musicality or usefulness in mind), and in general i think their quality control standards are very low. not only that, but if you try to complain about the low quality, customer service is terrible: "the customer is always wrong" might be an appropriate slogan. too bad, because their products and services sound great "on paper", and sometimes they get it right... but not often enough IMO."

Coma - live at CJAM - New Flickr Shots

flickr by unrest. Title link takes you to more.

Space Camp on YouTube

Title link takes you there.

studiotoolz

"We're building this to make a list of quality freeware and opensource programs for Apple Macintosh OSX computers. We'd like to mainly focus on Max/MSP standalones/patches and other hard to find experimental audio applications but we also have some selected VSTi, AU plugins and other cool and useful music making software. Make your own noise!"

Title link takes you there.

Fleshtones

Click here an interesting video psouper. The video consists of pixelated porn driving a piano. Acording to Philip Sanderson, "the app was put together using max/msp/jitter. Its provisionally called Instant Kitten." Background on the piece via Philip:

"At last a use for all those unwanted adult movies now using the wonders of max/msp/jitter you can turn them into pixelated lyrical piano music. At least that is what psouper has done with an updated "light organ" image to accompaniment synthesizer.

The concept of a correlation between sound and vision goes back to antiquity. One starry night on the island of Samos Pythagoras stood contemplating the skies, to him he very rhythm and motion of heavenly bodies in their orbits appeared to him as if governed by a cosmic harmony, a carefully choreographed sequence, the music of the spheres.

Renaissance artists such as Leonardo da Vinci produced sophisticated spectacles for court festivals that fused music and colour. In 1760 Father Castel constructed an Ocular Harpsichord or as he described it a " harpsichord for the eyes". Castel's machine was a normal harpsichord above which were 60 small windows, each with different coloured-glass and a small curtain. Each time the player depressed a particular key, the relevant curtain would rise to show a burst of colour.

In the next two hundred years many new instruments for combining light and sound were built. The British painter A. Wallace Rimington developed a Colour Organ which provided a moving light accompaniment to the 1916 New York premiere of Scriabin's symphony Prometheus: A Poem of Fire. Scriabin had scored not only the music but also the precise colours he wanted to accompany particular passages.

Such colour music forms the conceptual starting point for Fleshtones, a piece for extreme pixelated porn and auto generated accompaniment. Footage from webcams and other online sites is broken down into a simple tableau of colour bands, at times rather like the paint charts one might find in a DIY store. Given the subject matter this palette is either predominately pink or coffee coloured thus producing a sequence of flickering fleshtones. Using the wonders of max/msp/jitter these Fleshtones are turned into lyrical piano music that rises in falls in response and exact correspondence to the onscreen movement. The motion of earthly bodies thus is transformed into something of beauty, harmony and contemplation."

Casio SK Site

Title link takes you to group site dedicated to the Casio SK line of keyboards including pics, mods and more.

Notes on the SK-5 and SK-8 from Ryan (Plutoniq9)

- 4 sample slots opposed to the (1) on the SK-1
- Samples saved when powering off, SK-1 loses memory due to DRAM.
-When adding midi (i.e Highly Liquid's midi retrofit), the SK-5 & SK-8 can trigger all four samples via midi, so you can use it as a crude lo-fi drum sampler.
- Reverse mode.....always cool for xperimental sounds.

The SK-5 & SK-8 are very very close to one another, I still haven't tested
it yet, but i think a ROM swap could be made between the two. Although they
are the focus of the group, discussion on all SK keyboards is welcome. The
files section has detailed modifiations for the sk-5 & SK-8, real
modifications...not circuit bending.

Bob Moog on Vocal Sounds - New Flickr Shot

flickr by bdu. Looks like bdu is on another roll. Title link takes you to more shots. When you get there, click on the all sizes link above the shot to see a bigger, readable image.

Arp Axxe Shots and Video

Title link takes you to shots and an AVI from this auction.

Warper Party Vids on One Blue Monkey

Title link takes you there.
Love the green. : )

Sendex Live

Sendex live at club Fabric Londen part 1


Sendex live at dystopia Den Haag Holland april 2005

J.S. BACH: FUGUE IN G (Gigue)

Title link takes you to a video of the piece performed with synths and pedal board. Pretty amazing. The top synth is a Korg DSS-1; not sure what the bottom one is.

MOTU Enthno Promo Movie

Remember the MOTU Ethno? Title link takes you to a 46.9M promotional video with music performed by Mathew Davidson. This one is really well done, both the music, and presentation of features.

Lenny the Lemur Rocking an MS20

Move over cats, Lenny is here.

via Ron West on AH.

sequential pro one - New Flickr Shot

flickr by misscaro. Title link takes you to more.

More Keys - New Flickr Shot

flickr by SkullKid.

Oberheim OB-1 - New Flickr Shot

flickr by bdu.

Moog MuRF - New Flickr Set

flickr by Meng Qi. Title link takes you to more. This shot is my new wallpaper.

Casio FZ1 - New Flickr Set

flickr by sameli. Title link takes you to more. : )

Inside a Korg Polysix - New Flickr Shot

flickr by Equaliser.

Wavemakers - New Shots and New Samples Up

You can find them here. When you get there, click on the music knob for new samples and click on the photos knob for new shots.

Dubsounds

Title link takes you to Dubsounds. Along with a section on the Moog Polymoog including history, resources, restoration, owners directory, and the polymoog owner's club, there are member studio shots, samples, a forum and more. Via Jordon Gibson.

Access Virus TI Racked

Title link takes you there. Via Mr. Array way back in the comments of this post. I thought I put this up already, but I can't find it, so here it goes.
Note the new ins and outs on the bottom surface which becomes the back when racked.

The Freesound Project

Title link takes you to The Freesound Project, home of a ton of free samples. When you get there try a search on anything on the top right. Results will come back with sounds that match what you are searching. All of the samples are free to use via the Creative Commons license. Pretty cool. There is also Google maps integration where you can actually see where some of the samples, like trains come from, but I couldn't figure out how to trigger the sample when browsing the map. I'll need to try it again. Saw this via CDM.

Casio CZ-1 - New Flickr Set

flickr by asgberg. Title link takes you to more.

Roland, Yamaha and Casio Manuals

In via Loscha. Bookmarking these for when we need them. Note that if you don't find what you want, try again. For example I searched for SK-1 on the casio site and nothing came back. Loscha suggested I try SK, and sure enough I got results.

Casio
Yamaha
Roland (must register first, but, it's free)

The First MIDI Butt Controller

Well, aside from shakin' it in front of a theremin I guess.

The Animazoo Gypsy 2.

"Enormous Capture Area -- Capture motion data wherever you need to – indoors or out."

Title link takes you there.