A visit to the Marche Synth Museum

video upload by Guido Scognamiglio

"A visit to the Marche Synth Museum
Museo Del Synth Marchigiano (e Italiano)
July 2023
https://www.museodelsynth.org/"

Some of the synths featured on their site:

Eko Computerrythm
Elka Synthex
CRB Oberon
Crumar Spirit
Farfisa Compact Duo
Welson Symphony
Crumar Compac Synth
CRB Uranus 2
Elka Rhapsody
Farfisa Syntorchestra
Milton Gemichord
Logan String Melody

I also spotted a Welson Syntex recently featured in Hainbach's Blast of Sirens promo video. Solton RSC Polyvox at 1:59.

Vintage Italian synths.

You can find additional posts mentioning Marche Synth Museum here.

Reminder: SoundMiT in Turin on 12/13 November 2022 (English)

video upload by SOUNDMIT

"The largest event in southern Europe for synthesizers and new music technologies. 2 days full of activities with international brands, workshops, talks and concerts.

SOUNDMIT 2022
November 12/13, at: Toolbox, via Montefeltro 2, Torino.
BUY TICKETS ONLINE: http://sndmt.link/tickets

CONFIRMED EXHIBITORS:
ARDUINO - ARTINOISE - AS29 STUDIO MONITOR - ATVOPROJECT - AUDIO DJ - AUDIOFACTORY - AUDIO MODELING – X AUDIO SYSTEMS - CLATTERS MACHINES - GMLAB - DREADBOX - ELECTRA ONE - ERICA SYNTHS - EUTERPE SYNTHESIZER LABORATORIES - FASELUNARE - FC PRO AUDIO - FINEGEAR - HERBS & STONES - JOMOX - JORANALOGUE - MIDI ASSOCIATION - MODOR MUSIC - MRG SYNTHESIZERS - MUSE OVATIONS - MUSEO DEL SINTETIZZATORE MARCHIGIANO E ITALIANO - MUSICLAB - OFFICINA DEL MALISTA - ONDOMO -PULSAR AUDIO - ROBKOO - SCHMIDTH SYNTHESIZERS - SOUND MACHINES - SYNTHFEST FRANCE - SYNTH PANELS DESIGNER - SYNTHR - TEKNOSIGN - THERESYN - VECTOR SYNTH - VERMONA - XODES - ZIRANTE ...and more to be confirmed!"

Hainbach - Syn-Ket Studien (Full Album)

video upload by HAINBACH

"My album "SYN-KET STUDIEN" as it was recorded at the Museo Del Synth Marchegiano. Pre-order one of the limited run vinyl now or buy the digital: https://hainbach.bandcamp.com/album/s..."

"Syn-Ket Studien (German for „study“) is as much an exploration as its a love letter. When I tried to coax music from this wonderful but not always perfectly working instrument, I was under the spell of the beautiful Marche region and the hospitality I encountered at the Museo. The album cover by Zé Burnay reflects that - the countryside and culture frames the session.

Having only a few days with the Syn-Ket, I needed to work effectively. I decided it would be the tempo that would guide my interaction with the instrument. By setting the speeds of the modulators first I learned quickly what the instrument could do and what I could do with it. Every piece is the result of a learning curve, the struggle of playing an undocumented instrument and the joy of its incredible rich and powerful sound.

At home in my Berlin studio I left the sound as raw and unedited as made sense musically, adding only a touch ambience with an old stereo spring reverb."

Hainbach, Berlin, 2022

A Short History of The Syn-Ket

"The Syn-Ket is a truly exceptional instrument: developed in Italy at the same time that Robert Moog and Don Buchla set out to write instrument history, Paolo Ketoff created what is probably the first portable synthesizer.
Born from the experience of making the huge Fonosynth and inspired by the works of Harald Bode, Ketoff worked closely with musicians and composers of the American Academy of Rome (John Eaton, Bill Smith) to create an electronic instrument that would allow live performances without tape playback.
Shunning mass production, the Syn-Ket was only produced in nine custom pieces, starting in 1963, all tailored to the musician that ordered it. And those lucky few got a lot, despite the compact size: three voices with tube oscillators, two filters and an LFO, an octave filter bank and three output modulators (a mixture of LFO/Envelope/VCA). All is controlled by a very expressive three row pressure sensitive keyboard.
It found widespread use in Italian movies of the times. Little wonder, as one Syn-Ket was famously owned by Ennio Morricone"

- Riccardo Pietroni, Museo Del Synth Marchigiano, 2022

released August 23, 2022

See the Synket label below for more.

A Visit the Italian Synth Museum

video upload by Alex Ball

You can find additional posts featuring the museum here.

"Whilst taking a holiday in Italy we stopped off at Museo del Synth Marchigiano for a couple of days and this is the account of what I experienced there.

Enormous thanks to everyone at the museum, particularly Riccardo and Paolo.

https://www.museodelsynth.org/

0:00 Intro
1:19 Synket
4:40 EKO Computerhythm
8:01 Chilton Talentmaker
12:07 Crumar Compac Synth
13:41 Crumar DP-50
15:07 Elkatwin 61
16:29 Elka Synthex
19:38 CRB Oberon
21:29 CRB Voco Strings
22:53 CRB Uranus 2.0
24:34 Farfisa Polychrome
25:24 Logan Piano Strings Synthesizer
27:10 Welson Syntex
28:28 Keytek CTS-2000
29:47 Baleani Solista"

Syn-Ket: Portable and Powerful In 1963

video upload by HAINBACH

See the Synket label for more.

"In 1963, when synthesizers were wall-sized, Paolo Ketoff designed a portable yet sonically rich electronic instrument, the Syn-Ket. Created for film scoring and experimental musicians, the Syn-Ket became a classic of Italian film scoring, with Ennio Morricone being one of the early adopters. Only 8 or 9 where made, and I got to play the only one that is known to work @Museo del Synth Marchigiano .

GET THE ALBUM 'SYN-KET STUDIEN': http://hainbach.bandcamp.com

Soundpacks, Music and Love: http://patreon.com/hainbach"

An Extensive Overview Of Vintage Italian Drum Machines

video upload by HAINBACH

"I visited the Museo Del Synth Marchigiano again and had a look at all the drum machines they have in their huge collection. According to Riccardo Pietroni of the Museo its a good 80% of all rhythm instruments produced in the Italy. Featuring machines by Elgam, Eko, Farfisa, Viscount, Crumar, Godwin and many many more. Patrons get a huge soundpack, so sub over here: http://patreon.com/hainbach"

Crb Elettronica Oberon Italian Vintage Synthesizer

video upload by Riccardo Pietroni

"Some sounds recorded by Crb Oberon, one of the rarest and most exotic Italian electronic instruments.

This particular unit was found completely empty and without the internal cards and was totally rebuilt by the 'Museo del Synth Marchigiano'."

Addtional CRB Oberon posts

SOUNDMIT 2021 - SPECIALE SYNKET - Il Sintetizzatore italiano più raro! - UNBOXING

video uploads by SOUNDMIT

Googlish translation (original Italian below):

"Topical event of SOUNDMIT 2021 was the discovery, by Francesco Mulassano of Soundmit, of one of the rarest electronic musical instruments in the world and certainly the rarest of those designed and built in Italy.

Found in the United States almost by chance, the SYNKET designed and built by PAOLO KETOFF in 1964 was acquired by the Marche and Italian Synthesizer Museum and is currently undergoing restoration before being exhibited at the next edition of the Museum in 2022.

With this video series, we retrace the history of this tool with interviews, unboxing and passionate chat!

Soundmit 2021 was created in collaboration with the Marchigiano and Italian Synthesizer Museum in Macerata

Due to a technical problem during the second day of the "Soundmit & Museum of Synth 2021" some videos may be of lower quality. We apologize for the inconvenience.

►WEB: https://www.museodelsynth.org

SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEWSLETTER
► https://sndmt.link/newsletter " OUR LINKS ► SOUNDMIT - https://sndmt.link/soundmit "

Italian:

CLICK FOR MORE »

V.A.I. 69 : CRB Oberon / Elka Drummer One

video upload by Vintage Audio Institute Italia

"The CRB Oberon is a dual oscillator monophonic synth made in a very limited production run in Italy in the late 70s by CRB, at the time mainly makers of consumer transistor organs. The synthesizer is equipped with a third limited oscillator and it has a wide range of sound capabilities: it can produce huge lush leads - like in this video here - but also the very opposite : harsh and oddly thin textures and sound effects.
It’s fairly stable in pitch and performance and has lots on board, 2 noise generators, a switchable low and high pass filter but also sporting a third filter type, that we need more time to explore, plus interesting LFO possibilities.
We want to give a massive thanks to Marco Molendi and Mirco Trentin for repairing this unit - reverse engineering it to create the schematics from scratch - literally saving a machine that was in bad shape on arrival. Also big shout out to Riccardo at Museo del synth Marchigiano who helped out by cross referencing his machine to this one, and lastly Marcello Colò, who developed the CRB Oberon in the 70s, while working at the CRB plant.

These are immensely rare and there aren’t many recordings or videos of the Oberon out there so we hope you enjoy, all in all we need more time with this machine since it’s a bit more complex than the other monophonic Italian synths of the era - but they'll be more videos coming - so please stay tuned."

CRB Oberon posts. Be sure to see The Forgotten Synthesizers Of Marche Region.

Soundmit & Museo del Synth 2021 - Virtual Edition - DAY 2

video upload by SOUNDMIT

Use the player controls once started to skip around.

"SOUNDMIT & MUSEO DEL SYNTH MARCHIGIANO Edizione 2021

13 e 14 Novembre • On-Line

PROGRAMMA ONLINE:
IT https://soundmit.com/it/programma
EN: https://soundmit.com/en/schedule"

Soundmit & Museo del Synth 2021 - Virtual Edition - DAY 1

Soundmit & Museo del Synth 2021 - Virtual Edition - DAY 1

video upload by SOUNDMIT

Dave Smith interview about an hour and a half in. Note the video is a live feed running over 6 hours as of this post. You can use the player controls to get to the beginning and scroll around.

"SOUNDMIT & MUSEO DEL SYNTH MARCHIGIANO Edizione 2021

13 e 14 Novembre • On-Line

PROGRAMMA ONLINE:
IT https://soundmit.com/it/programma
EN: https://soundmit.com/en/schedule

SoundMit e Museo del Synth Marchigiano e Italiano, per la prima volta insieme nella nuova edizione della fiera/evento internazionale dedicata agli strumenti elettronici.

Dopo i grandi successi delle ultime edizioni le due realtà italiane attive su diversi, molteplici fronti nel mondo delle musica elettronica, uniscono le forze per dar vita ad una inedita collaborazione, un'edizione on-line articolata su un programma ricchissimo che ne armonizza le diverse anime dando nuova linfa ad una cooperazione che dura da alcuni anni.

In questa nuova edizione, SoundMit e Museo del Synth presenteranno una successione di eventi in streaming per connettere e raccontare passato, presente e futuro del suono elettronico: showcase, live, interviste, pillole formative e dimostrazioni saranno dedicate ai protagonisti dell'industria musicale contemporanea e alla riscoperta dello storico patrimonio italiano del mondo dei sintetizzatori vintage."

Googlish:

"SoundMit and Museum of the Marchigiano and Italian Synth, together for the first time in the new edition of the international fair / event dedicated to electronic instruments.

After the great successes of the last editions, the two Italian realities active on different, multiple fronts in the world of electronic music, join forces to give life to an unprecedented collaboration, an online edition articulated on a very rich program that it harmonizes the different souls giving new life to a cooperation that has lasted for some years.

In this new edition, SoundMit and Museo del Synth will present a succession of events in streaming to connect and tell the past, present and future of electronic sound: showcases, lives, interviews, training pills and demonstrations will be dedicated to the protagonists of the contemporary music industry and to the rediscovery of the historic Italian heritage of the world of vintage synthesizers."

The Forgotten Synthesizers Of Marche Region

video upload by HAINBACH

Update: you can find additional posts featuring The Museo Del Synth Marchigiano here.

"The Marche Region in Italy was home to a thriving industry of music instrument production from the 1950s to the mid-90s. Tens of thousands of people made organs, accordions and small runs of synthesizers that were like nothing else in the world. Much production closed in the 90s, leaving only a few companies around, and many people lost their jobs. The history of Marche synths was not talked about, too bitter were the memories. The Museo Del Synth Marchigiano aims to change that - a motley crew of synth lovers work together to get the story about this special time in music instrument history out.

I was invited to play a show at Acusmatic Festival in Ancona and visit the collection before. I was overwhelmed by the amazing sounds these machines made, so I captured them on tape and for use in my performance. I also just had to film every synth I could get my hand for you to enjoy. You will find instruments by Siel, Elka, Elgan, Farfisa, Crumar, CRB and more here.

https://www.museodelsynth.org"

Timeline:

CLICK FOR MORE »

MARS Musical Audio Research Station Iris Farfisa Bontempi - Ares Software

video by Museo del Synth Marchigiano

You can find an additional post from 2012 featuring the MARS Synthesizer here.

"In this video we demonstrate how the Ares software allows you to program the Mars card, Isa card inserted in the computer, connected via Scsi connector to the Ics816 audio output card.

The Musical Audio Research Station (MARS) is a programmable specialized digital machine for real-time audio applications which has been entirely developed by the Italian Bontempi-Farfisa research institute IRIS.
The MARS workstation is composed of:

• one or more sound boards, called NERGAL connected to one or more audio units;
• a PC running the graphical interactive development environment called ARES.

The first version of MARS, which has been presented at the ICMC92 was running on Atari computers.

The sound generation board is a full size standard IBM ISA card running at a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz.

The board may be divided into three main sections: DSP, control and mixer sections.

The DSP section contains two dedicated IRIS DSPs called X20 with their respective program and sample memories. These DSPs are memory mapped onto the microcontroller memory area.

The X20 is a fully programmable DSP. Its architecture is highly parallel and allows pipelined operations.

Its internal arithmetic is 2’s complement fixed point with a 16 x 16 bit multiplier and a 24 bit arithmetic and logic unit.

Each X20 has two blocks of internal data memory which may be addressed in parallel. It also contains a 512 x 64 bit words of external program memory, and may access to external sample memory. The sample memory is supported by SIMM modules with 4 up to 32 megabytes of DRAM.

Each X20 provides four audio input channels and four audio output channels. The audio signals are managed on 16 bits. The X20s may be used in parallel or in serie, by sending the four outputs of the first one to the four inputs of the second one.

The control section is managed by a proprietary real-time operating system, called RT20M, running on a MOTOROLA MC68302 microcontroller. The RT20M manages all the MARS objects described previously, and all their interactions with the DSP section, the mixer section and the external world. It also controls any communication through the three ports available on the board: MIDI, RS232, and a special parallel one for high speed connection to the PC’s ISA bus.

The mixer section controls a set of predefined audio mixing operations among boards and audio units.

Each board have one connector to/from the audio-unit, and four connectors (two inputs and two outputs) which allow multi-board links. This last feature allows to create a MARS boards network with a parallel, a serial or a mixed configuration using one or more audio units.

Two types of IRIS audio units are available for NERGAL: low-cost and professional.

The low-cost unit is a small external box (1/3U) with two monophonic input lines, four monophonic output lines, and one stereophonic headphone output.

The professional audio unit is a 2U standard rack module. It is modular and may pilot up to 8 input/output analog channels and 8 input/output digital channels. Each unit can be shared between two different NERGAL boards."

Museo del Synth Marchigiano

Trailer del canale Youtube del Museo del Synth Marchigiano e Italiano

Published on Apr 22, 2020 Museo del Synth Marchigiano

Don't miss the video below from some rare vintage synth spotting. Amazing...

"Siamo lieti di presentare il canale youtube del Museo del Synth Marchigiano e Italiano

Parleremo della storia degli strumenti elettronici italiani, di tecnologia, restauro e conservazione, dei musicisti che hanno usato i nostri strumenti, della storia del distretto produttivo e dei suoi protagonisti
Vi mostreremo gli strumenti più rari e le loro sonorità.
Presenteremo le attuali aziende italiane e i loro sintetizzatori, ci saranno interviste, dibattiti e chiacchierate con gli esperti e con chi fa crescere il museo ogni giorno

We are excited to launch the Italian Synth Museum Youtube channel

We will talk about the history of Italian electronic instruments, about technology, restoration and preservation, about famous performers who played these instruments, about the history of the manufacturing district and its main actors.
We will showcase the rarest instruments and play them, spotlight today's Italian companies and their synthesizers, host interviews, debates and chats
with the experts and with those who work daily to make the museum grow"

Museo Del Synth Marchigiano 2019 - Virtual Tour

Published on Apr 30, 2020 Museo del Synth Marchigiano

"Una visita virtuale tra le sale dell'esposizione temporanea del 2019, il museo non ha una sede fissa, ma sviluppa ogni anno esposizioni tematiche.
A virtual tour of the temporary exhibition from 2019, the museum has no permanent location but it spins temporary exhibitions on specific topics."

A walk in the Museo del Synth Marchigiano.

Published on Nov 1, 2019 Riccardo Pietroni

"Una passeggiata tra i synth durante l’esposizione del Synth Marchigiano 2019"