Making Musical History

Title link takes you to a new article on Bob Moog in the New York Times.

"ONE night in January 1964, Herb Deutsch, an experimental composer from Long Island, and Robert Moog, an electrical engineer from upstate, sat with their wives at a little Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village and excitedly discussed a new idea: What if they created an instrument, a kind of “portable electronic music studio,” on which musicians could compose and perform?

“We were thinking primarily of composers,” Mr. Deutsch, now professor emeritus of music at Hofstra University, recalled a few weeks ago at his home here. “That performance part was not that important to Bob and me.”

That conversation in 1964 begat the Moog synthesizer, which helped launch a music revolution that started with the psychedelic rock stars of the 60’s and — several seismic electronic upheavals later — reached suburbia’s kid-next-door, the one with the Japanese keyboard and the garage band."

The First Moog Quartet - Bei Mir Bistu Shein - 45rpm

YouTube via Frritzz. via AudioLemon."My father got this from a Salvation Army store for 25 cents. He must've made some find. Played on my Pioneer PL-518."

Update via Frritzz in the comments:
"By the way, I do own a 3-CD set 'The Out Sound From Way In' as part of my CD collection. Fun to listen to.

On YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=Frritzz
On MySpace: http://myspace.com/frritz"

Update via the world of next tuesday in the comments:
"In a nutshell Kingsley and Perrey were both in NYC working with electronic music pre-Moog Modular. I believe the label A&R guy thought if they could team up they might put together a great album which was the case, and they subsequently did a second album together after the Moog came out and then parted ways.

For a subsequent project Kingsley came up with the first Moog Quartet concept trying to meet the challenge of playing live, in this case 4 performers on modular moogs. Moog built semi-custom gear for them. One of the members went on to form Hot Butter who had a hit with Popcorn some years later. So even though the recordings were done in the studio I suspect the concept was 4 guys could play it live though there are some non-synth instruments you'd presumably need backup guys playing.

Keith Emerson whom I guess was balking at the prices Moog wanted was offered one of the Quartet's Moogs after they disbanded and Moog's loaner gear was returned, so Emerson accepted Moog's offer to pick up a second hand gear, which I presume was quite useful to him since it had primitive patch switching for live use. So that synth was the first pieces of his modular."

Various Lab Volt Kits

Title link takes you to shots via this auction.
Details:
"Various Lab Volt trainer kits:
-Frequencey Synthesizer X 3
-Pulse Code Modulation X2
-Channel Simulator X 2
-Frequency Disvision Multiplexing X 1 Case

Had the idea of making some kind of modular synth experiment out of these modules, but realized I just don't have the time.."

keybdwizrd - Korg Micro X Demos 4 and 5

keybdwizrd - Korg Micro X Demo #4 (programs)


keybdwizrd - Korg Micro X Demo #5 (programs)

YouTube via keybdwizrd.
"Some favorite programs on the Korg Micro X synthesizer."

WABOT-2 and the Yamaha FX-1

Cool shot via LOBOTS via Music Thing.

Previous posts mentioning the FX1

Midibox Sid with Matrix Panel

Saw this one on sequencer.de. Notice the matrix panel with blue leds on the top left. There is a shot of the inside on the sequencer.de forum.

Tau/Aries/ARP-inspired 20-pole Phaser

via JH via AH:
"I've made some first tests with my version of the Tau/ Aries/ ARP-inspired 20-pole Phaser.

Sound demos (mp3 format) are available:

jh_tau_demo_1_115.mp3
(White noise, and single VCO saw wave gated by Trapezoid, from Synthi Clone.
Run thru the Tau, added a little bit of reverb, recorded with Tracktion.)

jh_tau_demo_2_korg_drums_181.mp3
(Two stupid drum patterns from my Korg Electribe.)

jh_tau_demo_3_lambda_clavi_161.mp3
(Me playing the Clav sound on the Korg Lambda and my 5-year-old son Tassilo
turning the knobs of the Phaser.)

jh_tau_demo_4_lambda_strings_604.mp3
(Lambda Strings, also with Tassilo on the Phaser knobs)

Picture of the finished module: link

(What I will make available is not finished modules; just the naked boards
as shown here: link)

If you want to follow this project further, I'm making updates and announce prices on the electro-music forum: link

I've chosen this way simply because I can put up pictures and audio files there, so I can document this project without making a web site of my own for it. (This will probably come later.)

JH."

Polls on Matrixsynth?

Must! sent me a link to some polling tools for Blogger. He thought it would be a good idea to have a poll now and then. I don't see why not. So... Let me know what you'd like to have a poll on if anything in the comments of this post. I'm thinking one poll every month to every week max would work. What do you all think?

Irukandji

"This is at the moment a page for my earliest work. I use in my studio: a Korg Mono/Poly, and a Powerbook G4. thats it. Pretty limited i know but youd be surprised what can be teased out of such equipment with a little ingenuity. I use Amadeus pro and Reason 2.0 to record, edit, and sequence samples from the mono/poly. I monitor everything through audio technica headphones. My strength is analog synthesis and although the mono/poly isnt modular, its pretty flexible. Trust me, if i could afford a synthi 100 or even an aks, id be in heaven. But given financial circumstances, I work with what i have. Any of you out there who are like minded, (analog synth focused and interested in experimenting) in western mass, and would like to collaborate, let me know. Im always looking for more people to program with. And everyone else just enjoy and leave lots of comments. Im always glad to hear feedback."

Note the tracks are low volume to start but the pick up. Really interesting soundscapes. Matthew wrote in after reading The ELF Generator post:

"I noticed the most recent post deals with the relation of sound and brainwaves. Ive been experimenting with this subject recently. I actually just got a myspace page up and running with some of my earlier work in this area. Check it out, and if you feel so inclined, feel free to post it. All sounds relating to brainwave entrainment are produced with the waveform generators in amadeus pro and everything else is done on a korg mono/poly. Its actually the only synth used in my music as my studio is pretty low budget at the moment."

hello my friend!

juno 60. pro one and sh1000

via ben
www.myspace.com/badl0ader
www.badloader.com