RCA Synthesizer MK II

via Analog Industries where you'll find a sample link.

Via 120 Years: "The RCA Synthesiser was invented by the electronic engineers Harry Olsen and Hebert Belar, employed at RCA's Princeton Laboratories, as a way of electronically generating popular music. Although it never fulfilled its inventors expectations it's novel features were an inspiration for a number of electronic composers during the 1950's."

Exotic Moog - New Flickr Shot

Shot by kevinfmason.



Exotic Moog by Martin Denny
Track Listing:
Cast Your Fate To The Wind
Let It Be Me
Quiet Village
I Talk To The Trees
The Enchanted Sea
Midnight Cowboy
Deulah
Let Go
Love Me Tonight
Was It Really Love
A Taste Of Honey
Yellow Bird

Synth DIY UK

"Synth-DIY UK 2006 is to be held on July 29th at Robinson College in Cambridge, the same great venue as we've used since 2003." Title link takes you there. Makes sure to click on the year links on the top right for the p*rn.

Jane Child's Fairlight Series III

Title link takes you to shots pulled from this auction. Some details saved below. Via Kevin Kelley of Audio Playground.



Includes:

Monitor
Keyboard
Fairlight Unit
CPU/Processor for Fairlight Unit
Stylus
Replacement Stylus & Stylus Pad
Optical Drive
Tape drive
SCSI CDRW Drive
32MB RAM
4GB Internal HD
3 Cables for Fairlight (as pictured below)
Custom fit Road Cases for EVERYTHING!!!!!!

2 User Manual Boxes that include the following:
•Reference Manual
•Tutorial Manual
•Fairlight Service Manual Binder (with blueprints)
•Command Summary
•CAPS - Midi Sequencer For Series III
•Cue List Timecode Sequencer For SoundFX
•Software Revision 5.4 Command Summary
•Series 111 STUDIO (Describes a lot of history behind the Fairlight)
•Rhythm Sequencer for Series III

Libraries:
Master Sampler Collection Rev 1.2 Strings
Prosonus Mono Library
Brass Reeds & Strings
Prosonus
EBN Sounds 2
Prosonus Disk Two
Fairlight EBN
Fairlight Sound Library
Fairlight Sound Library
MS Co Rev 1.2 Composite Strings & Drums/Percussion
Prosonus Disk One


Software Disquettes Include:

Electric Sound & Picture Revision Keydisk
Fairlight CMI Revision 9.34R Software SYS K2
Fairlight CMI Revision 9.34R Software USER K1
Fairlight CMI Revision 9.34R Software 0S9 K0
Fairlight Revision 8.30R Software SYS K2
Fairlight Revision 8.30R Software USER K1
Fairlight Revision 8.30R Software OS9 K0

Update via the comments: "Not that anyone cares, but I doubt that's Jane Child's Fairlight - the cases say M.S.P. (Maximum Sequential Potential) on them, which was Ned Liben's studio in NYC. Liben was "EBN" of the 80's synth duo EBN/OZN. Also, some of his sounds are listed as included with the auction."

Haven't Found The Perfect Sequencer?

Maybe this will help. A sweaty towel owned by none other than Keith Emerson! Wear it while you play for that extra perspiration, I mean inspiration, or take it to your local cloning lab and grow your own Keith Emerson. Details from the auction below (the seller sniffed it).



Via the auction:
"Keith Emerson's Towel
From Black Moon Tour
Here's a weird one. I was digging through my old boxes at my parents house and found my old concert t-shirts and this blue and white striped bath towel in a bag. It didn't take long for me to remember why I saved this towel in a ziplock bag - it was Keith Emerson's towel he used during the ELP concert I saw at Stanhope, NJ back in the summer of 1992.

My two brothers and I got to the show many hours early and I was lucky enough to get to stand against the wall in the front of the stage. I remember it being a very good show and that they played the classic song "Pirates". Keith used the towel the whole show to wipe his head and neck and threw in into the audience after the show was over. My entrepreneurial brother who was standing behind me actually caught the towel out of the air and then sold it to me for $15 on the ride home. (Nice brother, huh?)

After getting home, I placed the towel into a plastic ziplock bag and I NEVER washed it. (Pretty gross, I know) It has stayed in the bag ever since. It doesn't smell though- I sniffed it to check.

Well anyway, I'm not much of an ELP fan anymore, so I'm selling this piece of music memorabilia starting at the $15 price I paid for it 14 long years ago. You are welcome to use it as a bath towel, use it to cover your mini moog, hang it on your wall for inspiration, or somehow possibly extract Keith Emerson's DNA from it and make super keyboardist babies in the future! : )"

Frack Multis

Just liked this shot for some reason.



Title link takes you to some for sale by Steve Maietta.

Kawai K3m Schematics

Title link takes you to a 5M zip posted on AH by Plutoniq9. Note these are for the K3m, not the K3. Scan by Fredrik Zetterling.

Admin Note: Updating Flickr Posts

Update: I haven't seen any new posts in Bloglines, so maybe this won't be bad at all. I wonder if there is a point where updates just don't show up anymore. So if you don't see them, this might be why.

No title link. If you are subscribled to my RSS feed with any of the popular readers, you might notice a bunch of Flickr posts being updated. I'm going through each and updating them with "Shot by xxxxx" where xxxxx is the name of the author on Flickr. I just finished February and will work through the rest of the archives over time. Right now I need a little break. It's amazing how many synth shots have come in via Flickr since I started this blog. Anywho... Apologies for the noise - beleive me, this isn't much fun for me either. Just ignore them or enjoy them all over again. : ) I'm also commenting in Flickr to let people know I am posting and linking to their shots. If you are one of them, please know that this is not me attempting to spam you. I originally did not comment for that reason, but then realized I should be letting people know when I link to them and post one of their shots. I'd want to know.

miniMusic BeatPad driving a Voyager and 909

Update2: Moogulator put up a post on this. The funny thing is that I completely missed the irony in the shot - a mighty knob ladden Voyager being driven by a tiny pda. Too funny. Thanks Moogulator!

Update: I should note that everything in the samples is being triggered by BeatPad - I am not using the 909 sequencer. Also you can sync to BeatPad, so I could have the 909 running its own sequence, synced to BeatPad and have BeatPad sequencing another synth though the 909 via the 909 MIDI through.

I just posted about the miniMusic MixPad. That post actually came about when I was setting up this post. I was playing around with BeatPad driving a Minimoog Voyager and a Roland TR-909 and I thought I'd put up a couple of samples and a link to miniMusic. When I checked out their site I found the new software. That aside... Title link takes you to a couple of samples and shots. Note that these samples are a bit long, daft and don't fully showcase what BeatPad is capable of. I was just dinking around. BeatPad has a super intuitive UI. There is one page for your main lead and one for your drum machine (pictured above - click the shot to see the individual parts). You can mute and solo different sounds on the drum grid and you can mute either the entire lead or drum section. In the lead section you can mute notes, adjust the length of the pattern , gate time, velocity, transposition and tie notes all on the fly. It's a blast to tweak things live. There are four things I wish it had - support for driving multiple lead sequences driving different MIDI channels at the same time (basically multi-track live sequencing), the ability to sequence MIDI CC independent of notes for things like filter, resonance and other modulations, the ability to save sequences, and the ability to flip back to saved or "sanp-shot" sequences. To clarify when you edit one of the 64 sequences available, the edits remain when you close out, so in that sense they are saved, but once you edit one there is no way to go back. I beleive you are supposed to just use a new track, but when you have multiple tracks previosly saved it can be painful remembering each track. Hmm... Add a fifth item - the ability to name your sequences for saving. Regardless BeatPad is pretty amazing - there is just something super intuitive in using a stylus to control your sequences. Believe it or not, it beats the pants off of a bulky knob box. I'm still in disbelief that a Pocket PC MIDI device/cable for external sequencing has not yet hit the market.

What's up with that?

miniMusic MixPad and More

I previously posted about updates to MiniMusic's Beatpad. Well it looks like they have more software coming including MixPad, a full featured MIDI file player/recorder/editor. Title link takes you to the miniMusic site.



"MixPad is a full featured MIDI file player/recorder/editor. It will let you take any raw MIDI file with you on your Palm and play on any connected MIDI hardware. MixPad differs from any other Palm MIDI file applications with powerful graphic support for simple viewing and quick editing.

Ideal for real performance situations, MixPad uses the Palm hardware buttons for playback control, allows you to lock songs to prevent unintended changes, and gives you a powerful real-time mixer interface to control channel volumes, panning, and solos and mutes for every track during playback. The main display gives smooth scrolling of all MIDI data (including velocities and controller data in the lower window) and full zooming functionality. We are also building in a full range piano controller to play along with the current file or to add a new track to an existing file, and some slider controllers as well that can be assigned to any MIDI controller value (pitch bend, volume, vibrato, etc.).

We expect to release a Lite version of MixPad that works only as a player/viewer, and a full Pro version with complete recording and editing features enabled.
Available soon for $19.95 (Player) and $39.95 (Pro)"