*+.+* - Asako Music

Link

Red Roland SH-101

via Sonicbrat

Cosmic Shenggy

The caption to this shot reads:

"my husband:MS20"

Title link takes you there.
via SoNiCbRaT

Lismore

Title link takes you to Lismore on MySpace

ARP 2600

via SoNiCbRaT

Synth Clusters

Title link takes you to the individual shots on SoNiCbRaT.

Roland SH-101, Doepfer, Sherman and More on SoNiCbRaT

Title link takes you to more shots. Some demos might be coming as well.

Synths in TV and Film

Note: some of the videos below have been pulled from YouTube, but I'm keeping mention of them up as a reference that they are out there.

Let the page load before scrolling - it's a long one.
Be sure to see the Synth Movies list and see the Synth Movies and Synth TV and Film labels for more.

1. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Synths: ARP 2500 played by Phillip Dodds, head of ARP Engineering, Yamaha CS-?.


2. Fame Synths: ARP 2600, MOOG Minimoog

CLICK FOR MORE »

GRANIPH Minimoog T

Cool looking T-shirt posted on SoNiCbRaT.

COMMONTONES - Roland MC-303 Demos

On July 1, I posted about COMMONTONES, a project by Sonicbrat, Eric, and LDT, in which they would produce a track once a week. The interesting bit is that each week the role of contributors to composer changes. Contributors will provide samples for the composer to work with. This week Eric will be the composer and LDT and Soncibrat will be the contributors. Title link takes you to a post by LDT which includes his contributions, mainly Roland MC-303 samples. You'll find the samples along with notes on the 303. You can find a post by Eric following LDT's post on COMMONTONES that pictures the additive soft synth, Morphine just recently posted here.

COMMONTONES Phase II

COMMONTONES is a project by Sonicbrat, Eric, and LDT. In Phase I of COMMONTONES the members produced one track a day. The great thing about each track was that the description included a list of the instruments used. I put a few posts up on tracks featuring only one or two synths. It really was an interesting trip listening to what they come up with each day. For Phase II they will be doing one track a week. Each track will feature one member as a main driving force with the other two members as support.

"Three musicians...
Three minds...
One song...

A weekly affair between the trio. Their first music making effort as an entity rather than solitude contributions. They will be working on a single piece weekly, a song a week, for the entire month of July. This is their next step, something they had in mind for a long time... and finally materializing. This is only the beginning."

Title link takes you there.

DOEPFER A100 Modular Synthesis

Title link takes you to the post with some thoughts and samples via Sonicbrat.

INSOMNIA

Title link takes you to a Doepfer A-100 track via COMMONTONES. Be sure to check out the rest of their daily tracks. Note this is a project of Sonicbrat.

COMMONTONES

Thought I'd put up another plug for COMMONTONES, in case you missed it here, Sonicbrat and some friends are attempting to produce a track a day, and they are doing it. All tracks on the COMMONTONES site list the instruments used, so they are a good way to check out what a given synth sounds like. The latest entry, "Le Tour de Nuit" features solely the KORG Radias and KORG Kaoss Pad III. Check it out.

kung-fu

YouTube via pre1204. Sent my way via Pete. Awesome. I always wondered what Hiromi sounded like. Click here for more videos.

Upate via Sonicbrat:
"Hi being a fan of Hiromi and having seen her live, she is highly versatile. This video doesn't doe her justice and they either revamped the song for the tv version or it was their earlier version. I am not sure ... but this is how Kung-fu sounded like in concert, a lot more intense :)"

COMMONTONES

via SoNiCbRaT:

"I am doing an online collaboration with LDT from Bangkok and Eric Saliege from France... do check it out... we will be using synths and effect processors and some other to make music... basically it's to make one music a day, daily, for the month of May... :)"

Pretty cool. Title link takes you there. The first entry is up and includes, "a toy piano, a contact microphone, sampled on KORG Kaoss Pad III and grained, Roland SH101. Recorded live, except drums added later using Reaktor 5 and layering the toy piano samples, pitching them down and reversing them at parts."

BTW, if you haven't checked out an RSS reader this would be a good opportunity. The COMMONTONES site is a blog on Blogger. With a reader like Bloglines (my favorite), you can subsribe to it and you will get updates in Bloglines as new posts go up. You can subscribe to the sites on my blogroll on the right and any other site with RSS. It's super useful in that you don't have to remember to check back and you don't waste cycles going to the site only to find there's nothing new. With an RSS reader, if there is an update it comes to you. You can then click through and check it out. I currently track 216 feeds this way. Imagine going to 266 sites several times a day to look for updates. Not gonna happen, but with Bloglines I can just bring up one site and see it all.

Roland MPU-101 MIDI to CV Converter

via this auction.
Not the best shots, but you don't see these too often. You can find some better shots of the MPU-101 on SoNiCbRaT, and more details on this Roland MPU-101 site.

MIDI Performance Controllers

I finally got around to reading this post in detail. Yes guys, sometimes I don't even have time to read my own posts. :( Funny thing is I read about the arpeggiator I'm about to reference on SoNiCbRaT who linked to my post. Anyway, I just realized the Akai MPK49 has a built in arpeggiator. I currently have an E-Mu Xboard49. I absolutely love the key action, size and the knobs. The other day I was thinking how if it only had a built in arpeggiator, sequencer and more, it would be perfect. Why should a MIDI controller be limited to just the tactile? It would also be obviously cool if you could save your sequences and patterns. What else would you like to see in a MIDI controller? I think my list would start with the following:

- Arpeggiator as powerful as the Oberheim Cyclone and/or Techno Toys ARP-X8 with the ability to mute steps like the MicroKorg.
- Multi-track, 16 step, step sequencer. A minimum of 16 tracks - one for each MIDI channel and or different CCs.
- Per above, the sequencer would definitely need to support CCs and not just notes.
- Multi-track phrase sequencer/looper - same number of tracks as above

What else?

SH101|PODxt Live

Great drone by SoNiCbRat (more info).

KORG Museum

Title link takes you to an online museum of KORG Products on the KORG JP site.

KORG 800DV pictured

via SoNiCbRaT

FiRsT GuiTaR iMpRoViSaTiOn

Bleep Labs Thingamagoop

Title link takes you to the post on SoNiCbRaT.

Depeche Mode - Puppets - late 1981

YouTube via JohnAdrenochrome. Sent my way via SoNiCbRaT.