Yamaha AN200 Demo

I finally got around to listening to the Yamaha AN200 demo linked to in this previous post. The demo mp3 is being hosted on a file share site here. It took forever for me to download on a cable connection so I thought I'd put it up on Twango for others to enjoy without the wait. It is probably the most diverse demo of a synth I have heard to date. At first I questioned the auction's claims to the AN1X being designed to emulate the TB-303, Prophet-5 and Minimoog, but you can clearly hear the emulations and more in this demo. Hit play and check out the other posts for the day. This marks number 40! Must... take... a... break...

mp3 demo here

wire to the ear Free TimewARP Soundset

click here for the post with samples.
"My absolute favorite soft synth is a recreation of the ARP 2600 from Way Out Where. It’s called the Timewarp 2600 and it screams, bleeps, grinds and explodes. No other plug-in I own has such detuned madness happening inside it. Today I give you my first free sound set for the Timewarp 2600. If you don’t own this synth you owe it to yourself to head over to Way Out Where’s website and try the demo."

via Oliver Chesler (The Horrorist) of Things to Come Records.

KORG KOASS PAD KP3 OS 2.0

Looks like OS 2.0 is up on the JP KORG site. Nothing on the US site as of this post. via sequencer.de:

- Polyphonic Sample Edit Mode
- New Sample Playback Trigger Gating Options
- New Loop Type Option

Update via Sean in the comments: "english language download at link"

side view

flickr by nakedintruder

full size

"side view of fully assembled 'mystery module'" coming from The Harvestman.

mystery module

Patching Pub

flickr by PatchingPub

click here for the full size shot.

The Electronic Arts Foundation

"The Electronic Arts Foundation was started by Tom Rhea, David VanKoevering, and Les Trubey (my father) to promote electronic music and preserve historical electronic musical instruments.

What follows is the text of an article written by Tom Rhea in 1976 for Contemporary Keyboard magazine. Reprints of this article were included in an info package with each synthesizer sold.

Tom Rhea is the president of the Electronic Arts Foundation, has done extensive work as an electronic music clinician, and has served as a synthesizer consultant to keyboard players such as CK Advisory Board member Keith Emerson. Rhea has a Ph.D. in music from the George Peabody College, in Nashville, Tennessee, with The Evolution Of Electronic Musical Instruments In The United States as his dissertation topic. Tom is also a member of MENC (Music Educators National Conference) and the Audio Engineering Society, and has written instruction manuals for Moog Music's performance oriented synthesizer line."

link to full article

Reissued: Gakken Denshi EX Electronic Experimenter's Kit

"The kit includes instructions for 150 different projects. The text is Japanese only, but there are illustrations of each project to help you put them together, although the final result may come as a complete surprise. The projects include several radios, a lie detector, motorcycle and gun sound effects, wireless microphone and a variety of logic circuits [AND, OR, NOT, NAND and NOR]."

Someone needs to come out with an audio/synth centric version of one of these. regardless, this does look pretty cool. I have a Radio Shack Electronics Learning lab with a bread board and well written project guide. I highly recommend these things if you want to learn the basics and just have a fun toy to play with.

You can find more info on the Gakken on Retro Thing.

Roland SH-5 on Aliens Project

click here for more images on Aliens Project.

via sequencer.de.

Con Brio ADS200... in a van... down by the river...

A little humor in the title for any fans of Chris Farley and his classic Van Down by The River skit on SNL (Saturday Night Live).

Humor aside, Brian Kehew of The Moog Cookbook sent me some exclusive shots of his Con Brio ADS200. You can check them out here. More will follow after the show mentioned below. If you remember from this previous post, only two of these were made and this one has just been resuscitated. If you are in the area you can see and hear it at "The FAIR and the MUSEUM: Sat/Sun 10-6 pm!! Exhibits from 2-6pm!"

More info on this shots from Brian:
You will see -
1) Con Brio ADS200 - the one I've had for over almost 15 years. This was me driving it up to a "vintage computer warehouse" in Silicon Valley - hoping we could get it running again.
2) Con Brio ADS200-R, which was picked up on the way, where it had been stored in a garage! Or the main part of it - minus the keyboards, which are already taken out. It hadn't worked when it was put away either - and no discs or manual, alas...
3) One of the main boards inside (forget which one), there are about 10 inside, various functions.
4) The wiring BEHIND that very board - now you can see why this stuff was so expensive to make - this is called "wire wrap" construction, and VERY time intensive - and you can't make a mistake!"

genoQs Dev Environment Tutorial

Grabriel of genoQs wrote in to let me know a tutorial on setting up an Octopus OS development environment is now available here as a pdf.

"Credit for this document goes straight to John Kimble, who was brave enough to take a few hints from us and turn them into a perfectly running installation of the Octopus development environment. At the same time, John was kind enough to capture his experience and gained expertise into a written document, which he supplied to us so we can make it available to the rest of the Octopus community.
Thank you, John!"

And thank you Gabriel for making the OS available to the community.