Shot by eyefulimages
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
More Synth on Retro Thing
Philip Taysom's Extreme Home Synthesis Studio is featured. Title link takes you there.
Roland TR-909 through ARP 2600 Sound Clip
Another via Heath Finnie. Title link takes you to the post on VSE.
Monday, February 13, 2006
Multi-Touch Interaction Research
This one is making its rounds. Title link takes you there. Impressive indeed.
Wiard 300G
G as in Gold. Nice. Title link takes you to a few more shots. Sent my way via Matt. Thanks Matt!
G2 Audio Controlling a Korg MS10
Title link takes you to a post on electro-music.com sent my way via Luca Capozzi. There are a couple of videos by Axiom (Luca) tracking a Korg MS10 with the audio out of a Clavia G2. Crazy. : ) Thanks Luca!
Merleon Cedraeon - Elecktroplankton Compositions
Title link takes you to Merleon Cedraeon with a set of compositions made with Elecktroplankton. Enjoy.
The Meyermoog
Now this is something I bet a lot of us think of doing. Jason and Bob Meyer took a Creamware ASB Minimax, an M-Audio Keystation 49e, some wood, and built their own poly Minimoog, complete with a hinged control panel. I've always wanted to do this with a stack of Waldorf Pulses. Pretty cool. Title link takes you to more shots. The details of the project from Jason are below. Thanks Jason!
"i just thought i'd share with you the fake moog that i built. it's built from the new-ish creamware minimax asb and an m-audio keystation 49e. the keystation was gutted and the lower five keys were removed. both the keystation and the minimax can use the same ac adaptor, so i hard-wired them both to the same ac adaptor which is wired to a PC style power plug port. the ac adaptor and all the power wiring is hidden in one of the small compartments that are connected to the sides of the minimax to make it the correct width for the keyboard. now it uses a standard PC style power cable instead of the cruddy wall-wart. i soldered a midi cable directly to the internals of both units, to not have to bother with a midi-cable. my dad cut all the wood for the case for me (out of oak), from plans i drew up using the original dimensions of the minimoog. i assembled and stained it a dark walnut color. the top panel is hinged just like the original. i'm still working on a left-hand controller with wheels, so there is a temporary controller in it's place with knobs for pitch and modulation. though i definitely plan on replacing them with wheels, having knobs instead is kind of growing on me. the minimax asb was $800, the keystation was something i already had, but can be bought new for $100. the wood and other supplies were about $100, and it took about two weeks of a couple hours every night to build it. so about $1,000 for a polyphonic minimoog that won't ever need adjusting and that i don't have to be afraid to take out of the house.
thanks for a cool blog, i hope you find this interesting!
-jason meyer"
Definitely interesting! Thanks Jason.
"i just thought i'd share with you the fake moog that i built. it's built from the new-ish creamware minimax asb and an m-audio keystation 49e. the keystation was gutted and the lower five keys were removed. both the keystation and the minimax can use the same ac adaptor, so i hard-wired them both to the same ac adaptor which is wired to a PC style power plug port. the ac adaptor and all the power wiring is hidden in one of the small compartments that are connected to the sides of the minimax to make it the correct width for the keyboard. now it uses a standard PC style power cable instead of the cruddy wall-wart. i soldered a midi cable directly to the internals of both units, to not have to bother with a midi-cable. my dad cut all the wood for the case for me (out of oak), from plans i drew up using the original dimensions of the minimoog. i assembled and stained it a dark walnut color. the top panel is hinged just like the original. i'm still working on a left-hand controller with wheels, so there is a temporary controller in it's place with knobs for pitch and modulation. though i definitely plan on replacing them with wheels, having knobs instead is kind of growing on me. the minimax asb was $800, the keystation was something i already had, but can be bought new for $100. the wood and other supplies were about $100, and it took about two weeks of a couple hours every night to build it. so about $1,000 for a polyphonic minimoog that won't ever need adjusting and that i don't have to be afraid to take out of the house.
thanks for a cool blog, i hope you find this interesting!
-jason meyer"
Definitely interesting! Thanks Jason.
The BRONTOLOGIC
Another interesting piece. Details below by Stephen of parsick.com. Title link takes you to Codex flores, what appears to be the home of the BRONTOLOGIC. Thanks Stephen!
Unfortunately I couldn't find a bigger shot. Update: bigger pic below.
"The Brontologic was designed by a certain Werner Lambertz who had originally made a fortune selling jeans trousers (of all things...) in Germany in the 1970s. The first instrument was presented around 1979/1980. Lambertz´ idea was to design a musical computer that automatically produced good music, without any faults that musicians would create. Later, Kurt "Pyrolator" Dahlke of Germany´s proto electro band Der Plan (The Plan) wanted another machine like that as he felt this was something he could push the limits with, thus he started building a second Brontologic, assisted by Lambertz, in around 1980/81.
Basically, it was a sequencer which had several counters running in parallel, synced to a master clock. It was capable of producing up to six (I think) sequences at the same time, all running at different rates, having different numbers of steps, and all could be set up to different cycling modes independent from each other. I never quite figured how pitches were determined as it had no pots for adjusting voltages, just half a million of banana patch sockets. I guess each patch point in a horizontal row represented one pitch while the sequencer progressed vertically from the top to the bottom (though I have no evidence for that). It allowed the user to interact with the sequencer patterns, have one play backwards, have another stop at a certain point, or have yet another one shift its start and end points continously during playback. When fully patched up, it looked like "Spaghetti Bolognese" as Dahlke once pointed out. As an external controller the operator used some thing called "DIGitarre", made of stainless steel tubing and shaped vaguely guitar-like with loads of switches which allowed control over certain parameters of the Brontologic. Dahlke later admitted it was sort of bizarre to use this controller which clearly resembled the traditional rock´n´roll-type guitar while they were trying to get away from these overused r´n´r clichés.
In a 1993 interview with Germany´s KEYBOARDS magazine, Dahlke briefly explains the Brontologic. He used it to control his Korg MS-20 and later, he had an Emulator One interface built into it. Functionally, Dahlke compared the Brontologic with Buchla´s Thunder which allowed for similarly complex interactions with parameters and sequences on a MIDI level. I´m sorry I don´t have this issue available right now, maybe some fellow AHer could look it up for me (May 1993 issue, I think).
In my view, this device was sort of a comedy of errors. It must have been immensely expensive, and it was huge (about 2.5 metres square). It had an intimidating user interface, and it took ages to patch up. I think something along these lines could have been made in a simpler manner (like having a Serge Touch Keyboard Sequencer) but at that time Serges weren´t hugely popular in Germany. Neither were Buchlas. It seems to me that the Brontologic was best-suited for fractal-like sequencer patterns.
There is a nice track (180°) by Der Pyrolator on a compilation called "Verschwende Deine Jugend" (waste your youth) which sounds very much like a blueprint for the Node track "Alternator", all done on Korg MS-20 and Emulator One, most probably controlled by the Brontologic.
Sorry not to have more info,
Stephen."
Update via marcel: "on http://gesellschaftsinseln.de/punkbuch/fotos_78.html you'll find one bigger pic of the bronto, and much more old punk pixs
site is made from the author of "verschwende deine jugend", a book about punk and new wave in germany, juergen teibel"
Update via pyrolator in the comments:
"I found this article, not all of it is correct, but nevertheless thank you for talking about it. The Brontologik2 is now standing in a museum and I decided to write it in Max/Msp with a few further modifications, which was called the bronotlogik3. About two years ago I saw the monome and the potential to be the perfect controller for the brontologik4, which is written for the monome256.
More informations:
http://brontologik.blogspot.com/
http://docs.monome.org/doku.php?id=app:brontologik4
best wishes
pyrolator "
some vids:
a composing system
6 layer sending midi data (pitch, velocity and 2 controller)
1 layer starting clips in ableton live
8 variations each layer
8 modes (for each layer) to manipulate and arrange pitch, velocity, controller, scales, transpose, key, pattern length, randomness and probability of playing.
load and save single pattern or complete data
This is the first public-beta now.
This is Donationware and will be availible at:
brontologik.blogspot.com/"
Unfortunately I couldn't find a bigger shot. Update: bigger pic below.
"The Brontologic was designed by a certain Werner Lambertz who had originally made a fortune selling jeans trousers (of all things...) in Germany in the 1970s. The first instrument was presented around 1979/1980. Lambertz´ idea was to design a musical computer that automatically produced good music, without any faults that musicians would create. Later, Kurt "Pyrolator" Dahlke of Germany´s proto electro band Der Plan (The Plan) wanted another machine like that as he felt this was something he could push the limits with, thus he started building a second Brontologic, assisted by Lambertz, in around 1980/81.
Basically, it was a sequencer which had several counters running in parallel, synced to a master clock. It was capable of producing up to six (I think) sequences at the same time, all running at different rates, having different numbers of steps, and all could be set up to different cycling modes independent from each other. I never quite figured how pitches were determined as it had no pots for adjusting voltages, just half a million of banana patch sockets. I guess each patch point in a horizontal row represented one pitch while the sequencer progressed vertically from the top to the bottom (though I have no evidence for that). It allowed the user to interact with the sequencer patterns, have one play backwards, have another stop at a certain point, or have yet another one shift its start and end points continously during playback. When fully patched up, it looked like "Spaghetti Bolognese" as Dahlke once pointed out. As an external controller the operator used some thing called "DIGitarre", made of stainless steel tubing and shaped vaguely guitar-like with loads of switches which allowed control over certain parameters of the Brontologic. Dahlke later admitted it was sort of bizarre to use this controller which clearly resembled the traditional rock´n´roll-type guitar while they were trying to get away from these overused r´n´r clichés.
In a 1993 interview with Germany´s KEYBOARDS magazine, Dahlke briefly explains the Brontologic. He used it to control his Korg MS-20 and later, he had an Emulator One interface built into it. Functionally, Dahlke compared the Brontologic with Buchla´s Thunder which allowed for similarly complex interactions with parameters and sequences on a MIDI level. I´m sorry I don´t have this issue available right now, maybe some fellow AHer could look it up for me (May 1993 issue, I think).
In my view, this device was sort of a comedy of errors. It must have been immensely expensive, and it was huge (about 2.5 metres square). It had an intimidating user interface, and it took ages to patch up. I think something along these lines could have been made in a simpler manner (like having a Serge Touch Keyboard Sequencer) but at that time Serges weren´t hugely popular in Germany. Neither were Buchlas. It seems to me that the Brontologic was best-suited for fractal-like sequencer patterns.
There is a nice track (180°) by Der Pyrolator on a compilation called "Verschwende Deine Jugend" (waste your youth) which sounds very much like a blueprint for the Node track "Alternator", all done on Korg MS-20 and Emulator One, most probably controlled by the Brontologic.
Sorry not to have more info,
Stephen."
Update via marcel: "on http://gesellschaftsinseln.de/site is made from the author of "verschwende deine jugend", a book about punk and new wave in germany, juergen teibel"
Update via pyrolator in the comments:
"I found this article, not all of it is correct, but nevertheless thank you for talking about it. The Brontologik2 is now standing in a museum and I decided to write it in Max/Msp with a few further modifications, which was called the bronotlogik3. About two years ago I saw the monome and the potential to be the perfect controller for the brontologik4, which is written for the monome256.
More informations:
http://brontologik.blogspot.com/
http://docs.monome.org/doku.php?id=app:brontologik4
best wishes
pyrolator "
some vids:
brontologik4 for monome 256 (quick walkthrough) from pyrolator on Vimeo.
"brontologik4 for monome 256a composing system
6 layer sending midi data (pitch, velocity and 2 controller)
1 layer starting clips in ableton live
8 variations each layer
8 modes (for each layer) to manipulate and arrange pitch, velocity, controller, scales, transpose, key, pattern length, randomness and probability of playing.
load and save single pattern or complete data
This is the first public-beta now.
This is Donationware and will be availible at:
brontologik.blogspot.com/"
The SALMAR CONSTRUCTION
Interesting piece. Title link takes you to more. "In 1969, Salvatore Martirano along with a group of engineers and musicians at the University of Illinois began work on the design and construction of a musical electronic instrument. The instrument, named the SAL-MAR CONSTRUCTION, is a hybrid system in which TTL logical curcuits (small and medium scale integration) drive analog modules, such as voltage-controlled oscillators, amplifiers and filters.
The performer sits at a horizontal control panel of 291 lightable touch-sensitive switches (no moving parts). The two-state switches are used by a performer to dial sequences of numbers that are characterized by a variety of intervals and lengths. A sequence may then bypass, address, or be added to other sequences forming an interlocked tree of control and data according to a performer's choice. The unique characteristic of the switch is that it can be driven both manually and logically, which allows human/machine interaction. The most innovative feature of the human/machine interface is that it allows the user to switch from control of macro to micro parameters of the information output. This is analogous to a zoom lens on a camera."
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© Matrixsynth - All posts are presented here for informative, historical and educative purposes as applicable within fair use.
MATRIXSYNTH is supported by affiliate links that use cookies to track clickthroughs and sales. See the privacy policy for details.
MATRIXSYNTH - EVERYTHING SYNTH
