HiFi

YouTube via minsky57. via fisheck. Some studio synth spotting.

Curtis Roads Part 1: The Breakdown

YouTube via DellLounge

"Curtis Roads is a true composer. While he may not be a superstar hitmaker producing songs for Madonna and Brittany Spears, his scholarly approach is to create sounds youve never heard before. Using a process known as granular synthesis and software he invented, Roads breaks swarms of sounds down into millisecond-long slivers."

Curtis Roads Part 2: Getting Granular


"Microsound encompasses any sound thats so short it couldnt fit on the normal musical time scale. In terms of measurement, youre talking anywhere from 10 milliseconds to 1/10 of a second."

Curtis Roads Part 3: Build It Up


"No doubt about it, Curtis Roads compositions are virtuosic. Even though a single piece can take half a decade or longer to make, hes released tons of recordings and has more in the works."

Update via Rory VICE/VBS.tv Be sure to see the comments of this post for more info as well.

"There are two divergent streams in 20th century electronic music: The one most people are familiar with starts out with goofballs like Jean-Jacques Perrey and Vangelis noodling around on synthesizers and eventually devolves into Kaja Googoo. Curtis Roads is part of the other path, the one that follows insane geniuses like Stockhausen and Morton Subotnik and uses whatever-period-it-happens-to-be's state-of-the-art computer technology to produce compositions that completely defy conventional music logic and sometimes sound more like a freaked-out ATM than tunes you put on and listen to.

Professor Roads' primary interests/methods are granular and pulsar synthesis. We're still trying to wrap our brains around pulsar, but from what we gather granular synthesis is where you break down individual notes and sounds into teensy tiny little bits (or "grains") and then reassemble them into music full of such microscopic nuances that it could only be fully appreciated by a man who's like some kind of computer-man or something. There's also this thing where the reconstituted microsounds don't produce actual, distinctive tones but nebulous sound masses that can be modulated in ways that regular sounds can't which we don't fully understand despite Roads' best efforts at explaining."

Update via Alfred in the comments: "Cloud Generator can be found here. Mac OS 9 only
ftp://ftp.create.ucsb.edu/pub/CloudGenerator"

SEQUENTIAL CIRCUITS Prophet-600

via this auction

MIDI Control Summary

Little Boots - Stuck On Repeat

YouTube via ElementaryPingu. Little Boots and the Tenori-On. Previous posts with Little Boots.
"Interview and impromptu performance on Breakfast TV May 11 2009."

Roland TB-303

flickr by Chris Randall
(click for more)

full size

Oberheim OB-8

via Analog Industries

audioMIDI.com presents Arturia Origin- Part Three

YouTube via audiomidicom.

follow-up to Parts One and Two.
"audioMIDI.com's Mitchell Sigman shows off Arturia's new Origin hardware DSP modeling synthesizer- part three of a series. Call audioMIDI.com at (866) 283-4601 for more info!"

Native Instruments Maschine Inspires Great Change In Gearwire Staffer

YouTube via gearwire
"Sporting a new hairstyle and glasses, the intrepid Owen O'Malley dives into a decidedly non-guitar adventure. Native Instruments Maschine may be initially intimidating, but Owen's confident and thorough approach will have you grooving that box in no time. Can we say that on the internet?
See more on Gearwire.com."

JayB's Patches for Yamaha S80 and CS6x (New Video)

YouTube via Hanni13579
"Hi there! This is my fresh video with partly new sounds from my S80/CS6x sound bank. Actually there are many more to present, but as a matter of time, I only chose a few. The bank can be downloaded for free at http://jayb.ath.cx/."

Musikmesse: Reactable Experience - 1 - Messe 2009

YouTube via MusicmarketingCanada
"This is 21st century tactile sound synthesis of the Star Trek kind. Wow! You are inside the synthesizer and you are working it with your hands. Bjork uses one live."