Old Korgs are Cool

YouTube via synthesizerman
"Old korgs are cool. The MiniDoc is doing all the work pushing around a few Korgs, a modular synthesizer, and a Roland TR-808. The MiniDoc can also lace sync tracks onto analog tape or a DAW."
Spot the synths. That little orange one is an EML Polybox.

Mono Synth --- Poly Synth

YouTube via btpro. via Waveformless.
"Using EML Polybox, you can make polyphonic sound with 1 VCO monophonic synthesizer.
Connection is Korg MS-10(1VCO synth) VCO out (customized) --- Polybox --- MS-10 VCF in"

Album Art

Anyone know where this image is from?

"LEM Studios." Via Cynthia on AH:

"The picture appears on the back of the LEM album MACHINES (highly recommended), Wavefront Records 1977. It is Bryce Robbley's chrome mannequin and Serge System next to Doug Lynner's Serge System, and Alex Cima's Steiner Parker SynthaSystem... It was shot in Star Track Studios on Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood, circa 1977 or so. Danny Sofer of Oberhiem Electronics also played with them and may have contributed the Polyfusion modular on the right side of the picture? They also used an ARP String Ensemble, a Synthi AKS, and an EML PolyBox, a Syndrum, some Oberheim, and a little Buchla 200. These guys were good friends of mine and part of the Synapse/LEM/Triode crowd. They recorded together under the names MOBIUS and LEM (Live Electronic Music). Bryce (RIP) and Doug went to Cal Arts, and Doug's 5-panel Serge was the very first sold as an assembled unit, instead of as a synth kit from the CIA "staircase assembly party" days. Doug went on to use his Serge in the band INVISIBLE ZOO which enjoyed radio airplay of their pop tune "Synthesizer Man" and he performed with it as recently as last October when he and I played live at the the Sacred Elixirs Festival at the San Jose Convention Center."

Update via Loren in the comments: "I use to have that album. You forgot to add Steve Roach as another person who played with these guys. I know Steve played in MOBIUS and I think he made a guest appearance on the LEM album if my memory is correct."

Update: more from Peter Grenader of Plan B:
"A bit more trivia about one part of that photo - the Steiner-Parker
Synthasystem shown in the photo to the left of the robot's ear. - that was
Alex Cima's..

After Alex stopped rep'ing Steiner Parker in Southern California, this
system became the property of John Waddell, who already had one other and
along with a VCS3, were being used for the Electronic Music Studies
department of Birmingham High School in the SF Valley, LA. John was my very
first EM mentor and is wholeheartedly responsible for me being accepted to
CalArts as he pushed me to enter a concert competition that Alex hosted. I
did, I made it, I submitted that to Cal Arts, I made that. Waddell gave me
the best music theory instruction I've ever had, up to and including CIA.

John passed away four years ago, and willed that Steiner-Parker to
me...which I really loved and, although it's recently found a very good home
in Marina Del Ray. It's a great system.

Back about 1977 (?) Alex and I hosted a couple of EM concerts together, one
of which LEM performed live on the seond half. Cima and I also performed
live once with Emmett Chapman, which was one of the highlights of my
performance career. Oddly enough i didn't touch electronics on that one - i
was playing flute and sax, w/Alex on synths, this dreadful percussion player
Alex found and Chapman, who as usual played the stick like no other.

I ended up inheriting Alex's EM concert series, called Electronic
Explorations, after he had had enough. I did three or four of them, one
co-produced by John Waddell, which got that horrible review in Synapse by
Doug Lynner (of LEM) i've spoken about here before. The poster for that
event was done by a very good friend of Cynthia's at the time who used the
name of Sue Dinim (get it?) for her artwork credits.

Ain't it weird how the fabric of the LA electronic music scene was sewn?

Alex Cima is still around, teaching recording and electronic music at
Fullerton College and while he has long departed with his various Steiners,
still owns his Synthi AKS."

EML Polybox

Title link takes you to shots pulled via this auction.

Details:
"The Poly-Box is an odd piece of synthesizer technology. It's basically a small-remote keyboard controller for ancient analog synths, but with a twist. It takes control of your analog synthesizer and, even though they're monophonic, the Poly-Box will create polyphony by programmable chord memory presets. Designed for use via CV/Gate with these Related synths. Here is how EML describes it:

'Poly-Box is a pitch following variable chord generator controlled by your synthesizer and Poly-Box's own keyboard with built-in memory. Poly-Box takes a single pitch from your synthesizer and creates two banks of pitch sources. Each pitch bank contains 13 simultaneously available pitch sources at precise semitone intervals - covering an entire chromatic octave. The pitch banks may be in the same or different octaves, and can cover the range from one above to three octaves below the synthesizer oscillator.'

Also look up these links for more info: link 1, link 2."

Previous posts on the EML Polybox.
via DK (aka gentle bakemono).

The Shumann PLL

Analog harmonizer that allows you to take an input signal and create square waves based on that input signal for chords and other effects. Similar to the EML Polybox: link 1, link 2.

Title link takes you to more including samples on Sendling.

Sonic State Podcasts

I didn't realise Sonic State started doing podcasts. The second one just came out. Title link takes you to there. There's a link to the first one at the bottom of the page.

"Our second round-table discussion once again with Andy Jones and Dave Spiers ranges in topics from monitor choice – Dave have just bought a pair of ADAM monitors and wants a Roland D50, Andy wants something like the Lemur polyphonic touchscreen but not quite and the best and worst of Ebay. We also talk of Imgoen Heap, Thomas Dolby, Russian synths, EML Polybox, Daves enormous synth collection, the Optigon and a few grumpy words on ringtones and more."

EML Poly-Box Samples and the SynthCluster

Click here for a couple of samples of the EML Poly-Box by George Mattson. Check out his monster setup (click the image for a much bigger shot). That is one massive EML Sequencer. You can see the orange EML Poly-Box below and the EML 101 to the left. Also check out George's site for more.

Update: Notes from George:
"They're all EML, The sequencer is running on it's own, the Polybox is following an oscillator on the 101 and the 500 is doing the bass line. The drums are actually a real Pearl acoustic set on Power Dive being played by a guy named Pete Gerdin. The vibraphone sound at the beginning of Happy Tune was the vibratone setting on a Yamaha YC-45D combo Organ. The sequencer just gets programmed and turned loose. I just played along with it."

"the samples were 29 years old and dug up off an old cassette in order to let people hear what a Polybox could be used for besides chords. Remember, the BIG music happening then was Disco. (ugh)"

EML Polybox & Korg MS-10 : Mono Synth --- Poly Synth

Published on Mar 13, 2006 Genius Anz’s movie vault / Retro and Latest tech!

"Connection is
Korg MS-10(1VCO synth) VCO out (customized) --- Polybox --- MS-10 VCF in

----------
If you send one VCO signal to the EML Polybox, it will become a chord and come out. In the movie, I connect Korg 's MS - 10 VCO out to Polybox, return Polybox out to MS - 10' s VCF in, and play it.

For example, when holding a chord of "C, E, G" with Polybox and playing a note of "C" with MS - 10, "C, E, G" sounds, and MS - 10 plays "D" Then you can get chords of "D, F #, A" and so on.

----------
Long ago, when I was trying hard with a synth with only one VCO, if I could buy such equipment, I would have done a mad cynicalism and copied ELP."

Finally get to see one of these in action. The Poly-Box allows you to play your monosynth polyphonically almost like a real time sampler. It's not clear to me if you can actually play multiple keys at the same time for true polyphony. The video does not show this. If you know please comment.

"Poly-Box is a pitch following variable chord generator controlled by your synthesizer and Poly-Box's own keyboard with built-in memory. Poly-Box takes a single pitch from your synthesizer and creates two banks of pitch sources. Each pitch bank contains 13 simultaneously available pitch sources at precise semitone intervals - covering an entire chromatic octave. The pitch banks may be in the same or different octaves, and can cover the range from one above to three octaves below the synthesizer oscillator."

More on the Poly-Vox on VSE.

Updates:
1. Make sure to check out the comments for more on the Poly-Box
2. David Rogoff sent the following link on the basic technology to AH: http://www.organservice.com/crm/topdividers.htm
3. RSF made a comparable box, the black box (via synth ollie also on AH).

Update via Mike DB on AH:
"Clearly he has the polybox output being "re-filtered".
It's an amazing tool, but descriptions of it are often misleading.
Here's my attempt to clarify what it can and can't do. (originally posted
to the EMLsynth yahoo group):


Basically it is designed to track the pitch of one single voice. Then it
has 12 of it's own voices tuned chromatically apart from each other which
can be played on the 12 keys and will sound and stay relative to the
tracked pitch. The original root pitch is always coming from the low "C"
key on the keyboard. For example, press the "E" key of the Polybox
keyboard and you would hear a voice that is a major 3rd above the tracked
"root" pitch. It will follow that source and stay a major third above
it. You can play "chords" or any combination on the 12 keys or all of
them. It does a couple of other tricks like you can move the whole output
up or down a full octave and there are some phasing effects.

It won't read more than one voice and if you try, it will only
respond with some chaotic squawks. Same goes for noise and other sounds
with no distinct single pitch----of course chaotic squawks have their value
too.
It does not translate envelope or filter from the original voice; the
source timbre and expression is not preserved. The new voices are basically
either on or off as you play the keys and they are pretty much of a
generic sawtooth tone which you can fool with a bit on the Poly's
controls. You could, of course, run the Poly's output thru other effects
and filters and such to further modify it, but that's as much as it does
on it's own."