Access Programmer - New Flickr Shot

Access, makers of the Virus line of synths made knob boxes for the Oberheim Matrix1000 and the Waldorf Wave rackmount. Pictured below is the Access programmer for the Waldorf Wave.

Dubreq PianoMate Analog Devide Down Synth

Note: Auction links are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated. Music Thing has a post up on this interestig piece up for auction. I grabbed the auction shot and the description of the unit for posterity. Title link takes you to the Music Thing post as the auction link will eventually end up in limbo. I wonder how much valuable information has just dissappeared from the *bay over time. Kind of sucks when you think of it.



"This is a COMPLETE Dubreq PianoMate. This is a 1970s vintage piece of interesting technology from the people who brought you among other things, the Stylophone. It's a simple polyphonic synthesiser working on the divide down principal from a master oscillator (I'm told - i'm not an expert on PianoMates but it seems to work that way.) The idea was that any pianist could add the PianoMate to a piano by attaching the two (bass and treble) two octave bars above the keyboard. The two bars have plungers which sit over the piano keys. when a key is pressed by the player, the plunger is released, makes up a circuit and a note is played by the PianoMate as well. The two (bass and treble) plunger bars are attached by multi-pin plugs to what looks like a small combo amplifier. This has controls for tone, voice, articulation of vibrato, speed of vibrato and master tuning. There's a 'swell' pedal to allow control of the overall volume of the PianoMate and an input and volume control for a microphone. In essence, this clever little box which produced the sounds, controlled them from the plunger bars and amplified them was an ideal addition to a venue where the entertainment was pure piano. It has a makers plate showing the serial number of 1218. At the time these clever little devices came out, there were fewer and fewer venues relying on pianos - second hand organs were becoming cheap enough for even the smallest club and church hall and there were plenty of organ/bass/drums/ trios who would play an evening's cabaret for 30 quid. Thus, Dubreq didn't become the Microsoft of the keyboard industry overnight and not many of these eclectic little oddities survive. Most went to the skip and of those that remained, most lost their plunger bars and ended their working lives as practice amps for guitarists with no money."

New EMS Synthi A Track

Via Paul Evenblij on AH. Title link takes you there. Get's really interesting around 2:00 on. Crazy little synth. Like a little Tasmanian Devil. Track is titled England vs. Australia, so there you go.



Update: Yep, this is pretty much what it sounds like...


(Image courtesy of wikipedia.org)

Two PPG Resources & the Realizer

Some discussion on AH regarding PPG resurfaced. Nothing new, just differences between the Wave 2, 2.2, 2.3 and the Realizer. Thought I'd put up a post to the PPG site, but I then realized there were two! Someone on the list posted to http://www.ppg.synth.net/. It looked familiar but there were a bunch of pictures I haven't seen before, and oddly, I didn't see the PPG Realizer on the site. I searched for the PPG Realizer and found the following site http://www.antarcticamedia.com/ppg/index.htm. That's the site I remember. Anyway, both are worth checking out.

The image below is the PPG Realizer which never made it to market. It would have been the first VA back in 1986, nearly 10 years prior to the first official VA, the Nord Lead in 1995. BTW, it's hard to see but the wireframe synth in the monitor below is the Moog Minimoog. It was one of the featured models.



"An impressive exhibit from PPG was the Realizer (about $50,000). This consists of software versions of familiar synthesizer configurations. It allows you to design your own analog, FM digital, and sampled sounds, patch any of the components of one instrument into another instrument, and then sequence or sample the resulting sound. Wolfgang Palm, designer of the Realizer and head of PPG Instruments, earns the the quote-of-the-show award for explaining how he designed it: 'I copied the circuit diagrams into software.' No easy task."

Update: also see this post for one that went up for sale and links to Wolfgang Palm's notes on the history of the synth and PPG.

Crumar Electric Organ - Free on the *bay

Fully working. Looks like it took 10 days for someone to grab it. Anyone know what model it is? Has a bunch of sliders. Wonder if it's purely organ or one of those synth-organ combos.

Emulating the Waldorf Pulse OSCs on a Clavia G2

Title link takes you to an interesting post on emulating the Waldorf Pulse oscillators on a G2. Now that's cool. : )

C64 Drum Machine

There is a great post up on the C64 Music! blog on programs that allowed you to use the Commodore 64 as a standard drum machine. If you know of any, hop on over and contribute to the list. I didn't realizer there were so many.

Modded Roland TR-606s are a comin'

A while back, I posted on the knob laden Roland TR-606 on the *bay. Julian announced on AH that he will be offering the full units as finished packages for sale. He's shooting for under 500ukp, which translates to under $871 US. Title link takes you to a bigger shot of the below; no website yet.



http://port23.co.uk/touse/troop.jpg
http://port23.co.uk/touse/stuckon.jpg

The feature set will be:

24 voice controls
8 trigger outputs (fully buffered)
7 trigger inputs
individual switched outputs on all voices, with volume pot on each (toms /
hats no longer share an output)
various outputs and inputs to/from multi oscillator array and noise
generators
trigger leds
3 position kill switches on each voice (off, on/no accent, on/accented as
accent track)

Modular System Workshop - Paris

via Denis on AH. November 18-19. Title link takes you there.

Analog Solutions Vostok


"Each year, Marc Sirguy (the guy behing MESI, the French importer of
most analogue stuff, and also behind Eowave.com) organize an analogue
day(s) and this year it's a Modular Workshop at MESI premises.

There will be "old" modulars around (ARP 2600, Roland system 100m…)
There will be new modulars around (Doepfer, ASys, ASol, Cwejman,
Macbeth M5, Curetronic…)
There will be soft modulars around (Arturia)
There will be some Moog too…

Will be around too, Mr Ken Macbeth himself (cheers!) and some top head
from Arturia (sorry, can't remember the name, oops), and me of course!
;)

It's a very good idea to register (it's a free workshop) before as the
place is not expandable unfortunately, either on phone using +33 (0)1
45 15 41 95 or using info@mesi.fr

18-19/11/05
14h - 20 h
6, rue Marceau - 94200 Ivry/Seine - France
Métro : Pierre Curie - BUS n°132

If you have any questions, I'll try to answer them :)

Denis =G)"

DSI Evolver Video

Update via the comments:

"Axiom said...
Thread updated with two new videos :)"

Cool.

Nice LONG DSI Evolver video. This is literally like testing out a new synth for the first time. You basically get to sit there with him and check out a full range of sounds the Evolver is capable of. Very, very cool. It's a great example of of how bold and full an Evolver can sound as a lead instrument. Via Axiom, via electro-music.com. Title link takes you there.