Live 5

Live 5 is out. Check it out. I have Live 4 and it absolutely rocks as an intuitive DAW. You can play the dang thing like a live instrument if you want.

Extreme Synth Weirdness Project

Site dedicated to archiving "sound bites of synthesizer whackiness." You can send them samples of your synth whackiness. Very cool idea. I can't wait to see what comes in. From the site:

"We have all heard the typical synth demos. A milky pad, a cutting lead, a bass sound. What do we really learn about the potential of the synthesizer itself?

This archive represents real live demos of people like you turning knobs and tweaking the boards hard. Show everyone just how messed up your otherwise ordinary synth can be and take us to tweak heaven. If you have a giant modular system, or a homegrown mouse-powered keyboard, we wanna hear it get strange. No size or length restrictions (within reason) so just let fly for as long as you need to."

Aerosol Grey Machine: vintage analog keyboard museum

http://www.dougwyatt.net/news/2005/07/AGM1/

This came in via AH. Ga...ga...ga...ga...ga... Talk about analog gear porn. If I ever make it to Sweden... A trip to the Clavia factory and this will be on the top of my list. And he has a blog! Cool!

History of the 303

http://nkhstudio.com/pages/popup_bassline.html

Thought I posted this already, but realized I sent it to AH before setting up this blog! Oh well, bettter late than never...

M5 Samples

Some great M5 samples via AH.

Macbeth Studio Systems for more info on the M5.

Summer NAMM

NAMM news is trickling in. My two favorite sources:

Sonic State
Harmony Central

Both have RSS feeds if you prefer the convenience of your reader.

For those without a reader, check out http://www.bloglines.com.

A Misunderstood Synth...

http://www.tapeop.com/magazine/bonus/fizmo.html

There is a thread on the-gas-station.com, on the Voyager which evolved to comparisons to the soft synth Minis (Arturia's Minimoog V and GMedia's Minimonsta) as being even better. The thread like most goes off into tangents and the notorious OB-Mx comes up. But the theme is all the same. Synths that disappoint, which the OB-Mx is notorious for. So far I've only heard neutral to negative comments on the synth. Neutral is bad when something as anticipated as an uber all analog Oberheim with Don Buchla on helm comes out. But this particular post was *not* another bad one, it was an actual "hands off to Don Buchla." I remember being in awe when the OB-Mx came out (heck, matrixsynth and matrix comes from my first synth the Matrix-6 and my love for it and my "ultimate" synth, the Matrix-12). As the saying goes, there's nothing like the first... : )

I am curious as to what the poster, Giant Robot, has discovered that so few if anyone else has with the OB-Mx. What is the hidden treasure in there? Does it exist? This reminded me of another little flop in the synth world. A little magical synth that was killed before it was ever allowed to shine, the FIZMO. See the link above to read the interview. It's worth reading.

From my post:
"I remember being intrigued by the FIZMO when it came out. Not on the synth legend level but pretty intrigued nonetheless. Then it got horrid reviews and I finally got my hands on one. I wasn't too impressed, but again... only a "2 second" trial and I was in the VA mode digging the Nord Lead and JP8000; so like everyone else, when it couldn't make "those sounds," I dismissed it. Just recently I was more intrigued and out of my everything analog and VA stage. So many beautiful synths out there and just a few methods of synthesis. Transwave being something missing in my gear I thought I'd try it again. One came up locally pretty cheap. I read up on it again and found an article by the maker who stated how sad the whole thing was. The FIZMO was supposed to be anything but VA. It was supposed to be a new take on transwave synthesis with more motion and immediate control. It was supposed to be a beautiful evolving synth, and a synthesist's synth not some sample playback preset synth. And sadly it flopped because of the power supply issue and people just couldn't see past the knobs, thinking knobs = analog/VA.

I picked it up and man... I was and still am blown away. It's an ethereal synth. Just beautiful; in motion. It actually reminds me of a softer version of the Evolver. It kind of sounds like the FS1R, but different - almost more delicate for lack of a better description. It's a beautiful synth that was misunderstood and mistakenly given a bad wrap. I think all synths have something to offer. I keep wondering what the OB-Mx has. Even if Oberheim cut it short, it did have some of that Buchla magic didn't it?"

Lucky Kid...

This one came in on Engaget. I can't remember if I've seen this exact pic before, but I swear I've seen other pics via AH before.

Yamaha VL1 samples

http://www.kbspace.com/vl1m/audio/index.html

This one came in from a thread in the friendly Gas station pump on sonicstate.com. Link to the thread below. The link above will take you to a dedicated site with some samples. The VL1 is a physical modeling synth that reproduces the physics of real world, and not so real world instruments. It's different than sample based digital synths that play back recordings of real world instruments. The Korg Prophecy was another notable physical modeling synth that came out around the same time as the VL1. Needless to say, the VL1 sounds amazing.

Link to gas station thread: http://www.the-gas-station.com/messages.cfm?Type=normal&thread_id=61217&lastdays=999

Ninjam

Not really sound synthesis, but interesting nonetheless. Ninjam lets you jam with others on the net. Latency sucks on the net, so Ninjam works by increasing that latency. Seems bizarre, but very interesting in that what you are playing to has that extra bit of unpredictability. More, including some samples after the hop.