MATRIXSYNTH

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

EAR Musikmesse Shots

Title link takes you to a couple more shots on the EAR site - scroll all the way down when you get there, they are the last few pics.

"BLUE 1.5 is now released with an unique and powerfull arpeggiator, 5 new FX's, 5 HipHop/RnB banks, 3 DnB Session banks (with Sola of Giana-Brotherz) and many other new presets. Listen to the new demo-songs or try the demoversion. " Title link takes you there.

Doepfer A-100 Modular on One Blue Monkey

Title link takes you there. Video under date under title. The site is still a little slow for me, but it come up fine after refreshing.

The video features their sampling and delay modules as well as their touch sensitive keyboard.

esx tubes - New Flickr Shot

flickr by lukatoyboy.

EML 100 - New Flickr Set

fickr by Heath Finnie. Title link takes you to the set.

BallDroppings

"BallDroppings is an addicting and noisy play-toy. It can also be seen as an emergence game. Alternatively this software can be taken seriously as an audio-visual performance instrument. Balls fall from the top of the screen and bounce off the lines you are drawing with the mouse. The balls make a percussive and melodic sound, whose pitch depends on how fast the ball is moving when it hits the line. This delightful application allows experimentation with sound and vision which will compound and intrigue you. Whether you are an adult or child, scientific brainbox or avid gamer. It doesn't have a plot, no heroine, no villain. It has no guns or alien beings. It is simply time to get creative, and those who are creative will love this. --Gosfish Games "

Addicting... You can have multiple instances running at the same time for some interesting sequences. Title link takes you to the site with download. The download is a single exe that runs the app directoy - no install. Now if you could only use it as a MIDI trigger... Via Joe McMahon on SynthSights.

Anyware Groove Generator

Title link takes you there. Unfortunately I hear they are no longer made. Update: looks like there will be a new one - see the comments in this post.

MOTM, MacBeth and More

Title link takes you to a couple more shots on Moogulator's Synthesizer Forum.

Check out the modded WASP.

MoS 289 Cropped - New Flickr Shot

flickr by Knuckledragger. Title link takes you to more.

Virus and Doepfer.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Musikmesse Videos on Moogulator

Title link takes you there.

Jörg at the Radikal Spectralis

CS01 - New Flickr Shot

flickr by JSRockit.

Tsutomu Katoh and the History of Korg

Title link takes you to Part 1 of an excellent three part series by Gordon Reid on the history of Korg and its founder, Tsutomu Katoh. Part 1 starts in the early 1960s with the DoncaMatic rhythm machines and ends with the DW Series in 1986. Here are links to Part 2, Part 3. Fascinating reads if you haven't read them before.

Their first synth? The Minikorg 700

Image via Sequencer.de's Korg page.

Via SOS:
"Whether by luck or genius, Katoh and his team produced something truly innovative. Taking many of the concepts from the 1970 organ prototype, they broke numerous unwritten rules that decreed that synths should have multiple oscillators, self-oscillating filters, and variable parameters for all the functions on the panel. Instead, the 700 offered oscillator settings such as 'chorus I' and 'chorus II' (which produced rich, swirling tones), and its strange percussion/singing controls created envelopes quite unlike those of the competition. But the little synth's greatest strength was its 'Traveler', a low-pass/high-pass filter section that proved to be extremely intuitive and manageable. Sure, there were limitations, but to concentrate on these was to miss the point entirely. The 700 was stable, it was affordable and, most important of all, it sounded great, eventually numbering players as respected as Kitaro and Vangelis among its users."

Korg Professional Laboratory Systems

Click here for a full sized image of the ad to the left on Korg Kornukopia. The ad is for the Korg PS3100 and PS3300 fully polyphonic analog modulars. Yep, fully polyphonic. Each offered full polyphony at a stagering 48 voices - you could press every key down and they would all play. They used divide down circuitry for the oscillators but each note triggered its own dynamic filter, envelope and VCA. The PS3100 featured 32 patch points and the PS3300 featured over 60. The PS3300 was in essence three PS3100s in one.

Read the ad for more followed by this Sound on Sound article on 40 years of Korg by Gordon Reid. Do a find for PS3100 to jump to it's section when you get there.

R@F's TR-909 Page

Home to miscellaneous info on the TR-909 including a mug shot of Atsushi Hoshiai, a list of hardware changes, some schematics and more.

Korg Radias Sample

Title link takes you a 5.68M sample of six minutes and twelve seconds of the Radias. It's a good demo, showcasing individual patches rather than the typical dance track samples.

EFFEXON - New Flickr Shots

flickr by unyo303. Title link takes you to more.

CEM3340-3 - New Flickr Set

flickr by flowthrough. Title link takes you to more. Unfortunately there are too small to read. : (

Update via Jack Astro in the comments: "Here are a few I have found on PDF."

Korg MS10 - New Flickr Shot

flickr by jjohanne.

Monday, April 03, 2006

01:02:03 04/05/06

Play a note when it happens. : )

MIDI Sword Keytar

Music Thing has a post up on the MIDI Sword Keytar spotted on the *bay. Title link takes you to the post. Sweet. Hmm... Why does this make me think of Retarded Animal Babies...

MIDIbox SID

Title link takes you to more on the MIDIbox SID including more designs, samples and info. The MIDIbox SID is based on the Commodore 64 and it's sound chip, the SID.

Morka natt - Hundarna fran soder

Title link takes you to a cool video featuring what sounds like a SID chip (Elektron, MIDIBox SID, HardSID). Via this post on HC.

GMedia Radio Webcast

Interesting. GMedia has an audio webcast up featuring some pieces with GMedia products and coverage of the Musicmesse. Pretty cool idea. Title link takes you there.

Waldorf Will Continue the microQ and Possibly Others

Not only is Waldorf back, but they will continue with some of their previous products. Only the microQ was specifically mentioned. Title link takes you to the post on the German Keys magazine. Babblefished to English below. (whale village = Waldorf : )

"Now it is completely official: The Synthesizer manufacturer whale village was formed new. The key editorship spoke with Stefan Stenzel, franc cutter and Joachim Flor about one of the sensations of the Frankfurt music fair of this year. Beside the continuation and far coil of some established products (for example microQ) there is to be also new, innovative products in the future. We in the next expenditure for key (06/06) on the reestablishment to report in detail and in detail. "

EAR - Livewire & Plan B on One Blue Monkey

Title link takes you there. Video under date under title. Worth noting in the video is mention of the first Steiner-Parker re-incarnation modules that EAR is working on with Nyle Steiner of the Steiner-Parker Synthacon fame. The two modules are the FrequenSteiner filter and the Subdivider.

The final audio capture in the video is pretty funny as well. Oops. : )

Note: Vladimir tells me the server is a little slow as of the time of this posting. I noticed it, but now it's coming up fine on my end.

More on EAR

The Old Crap In The Living Room - New Flickr Shot

flickr by polaranta.

Studio Pics

Title link takes you to a thread with more on Sonic State's the-gas-station.

Yamaha SY20

Trip. Never seen one of these before. The SY20 is an analog mono synth that came out in 1982. Another via the mighty Moogulator. Title link takes you to more shots on Attractive Dillies!

More Musikmesse Shots

Title link takes you to more Musikmesse 2006 shots on Jörg's Synthesizer Site. Nice Curetronic's modular to the left. Via Moogulator.

Alesis Fusion Updates on Synthwire

Title link takes you to some updates via Carbon111 worth checking out.

Direct Links:
Fusion Signal Path
Upgrading from an Alesis Fusion 6HD to 8HD
Alesis Fusion - One Week In ;)

Yamaha's First Affordable FM Keyboard

The Piano and Synth blog has a post up on the Yamaha CE-20. The post includes their official 1982 press release. The CE20 was a preset only FM keyboard by Yamaha. It predates the DX7 which came out in 1983 according to this Yamaha timeline. Title link takes you to the post on The Piano and Synth blog.

Sunday, April 02, 2006

Heathens! - New Flickr Shot

flickr by schmilblick. Thought the caption was pretty funny.

"Whats a LCD doing in an analogue machine? There should be only knobs and switches!"

Polyfonken - New Flickr Set

flickr by polyfonken. Title link takes you there.

18 Oscillator Done Box on Get LoFi

"The synth contains banks of 6 oscillators with 2 acting as LFOs and a ring mod-like effect that is achieved with a summing the signals and also feeding them back into the oscillators." Title link takes you to the post with more shots and video link.

Synthi A - New Flickr Shot

flickr by msk. Took me a second to relize it was upside down. : )

Korg SB-100

Korg Bass Synthesizer. Title link takes you to a couple of shots and a long sample of various sounds. Via Benjamin Ward of Korg Kornukopia on AH.

Flowthrough Studio Shots - New Flickr Set

flickr by flowthrough. Title link takes you to the set.

Korg - New Flickr Shot

flickr by phaturanium.

Cwejman Modular Shots on Moogulator

Title link takes you to some drool worthy shots.

psychedelickitchen - DIY

Via Moogulator. Title link takes you to the post.

5xvco
2xvcf (moog 24db & wasp)
2xenv
Lfo
Noize
Ringmod
Switchable mod matrix
Semi modular patching
Fm
Distortion
Sync
Pwm

10 cv-in , waveform direct out, lfo out
49knobs, 13 switches

Midi to 2xcv/1xgate interface

AHNE 2006

Just a reminder, AHNE is coming April 29th. Title link takes you to more info.

Saturday, April 01, 2006

Lemur 2006 Video on Sonic State

Title link takes you there. The Lemur now supports MIDI. The video shows interaction with Ableton Live and Absynth. Impressive. I was thinking the origami might be a cheap alternative, but unless the origami supports a multi-touch inteface, the Lemur kills it for this application. Here's a link to more on the Lemur.

Korg MS-20 Black Devil Edition

Title link takes you to shots pulled from this auction. Keyboardless MS-20 with 8 channel MIDI-CV/Gate interface.

First Music Video Featuring the Little Phatty

Titlle link takes you there. I have no idea how these guys kept a hold of it, but there you go. : )

Dirty Synth P*rn - New Flickr Shot

flickr by polyfonken.

Pearl Fightman FM-8

Don't know much about this unit other than I believe it is analog. It came up on Ah, with someone asking for more info. If you know more please post in the comments and I'll update this post.

Update via Ross, the person who sent this to the AH list and the owner of one:

"It sounds analog and not quite like anything else analog that I've
heard. Better than a cheesy drum machine but not pristine analog like
a Tr-808. It sounds sort of like very early Kraftwerk type drums
(autobahn or earlier); noisy and minimal."

via

Moog 1120 Drum Controller

Title link takes you to a couple of shots pulled from this auction. Via John Gellings.

Details from auction (I have no idea if this is correct):

"Rare Moog 1130 drum controller. hook it up to your minimoog & use it as a signal source. think of the synth drum break in 'frankenstein'. made by Moog, built into a Ludwig 8" tom. very cool."