"This is a rare item, a New England Digital Synclavier II Digital Synthesizer full color brochure from 1980, the first year it was made. It is eight pages with many full color photos (including the famous one that shows something that never existed, the stand with the original keyboard on top and a single density floppy disk drive underneath).
It describes the operation of the entire system, with system specifications on the back cove"
"This is a Maplin 5600s demo about filters and his warm phasing & spring reverb effect.
In this matrix patch some vco's are open on mixer 2 in order to send modulations on Filter 1."
"Extremly rare Triadex Muse, Triadex Amplifier and Triadex Light show. A complete collection of a trio set from '72 still with the original boxes, manuals, cards and...the old warranty papers ;-) ALL is perfect working and lighting.
The Triadex Muse is the first digital musical instrument and was produced in 1972. It was designed by Edward Fredkin and Marvin Minsky, the creator of the alien "MONOLITH" in 2001 SPACE ODYSSEY, friend & collaborator of Stanley Kubrick.
Marvin Minsky has made many contributions to AI, cognitive psychology, mathematics, computational linguistics, robotics, and optics. In recent years he has worked chiefly on imparting to machines the human capacity for commonsense reasoning. His conception of human intellectual structure and function is presented in The Society of Mind (1987), which is also the title of the course he teaches at MIT.
The Triadex Muse it's an algorithmic music generator: it uses digital logic circuits to produce a sequence of notes based on the settings of various parameters. It has four small sliders that control Volume, Tempo, Pitch, and Fine Pitch. It is not known how many were made, but they are considered extremely rare.
For years, the Muse was a featured exhibit at the Museum of Science, Boston. The signage explained the device's algorithmic (and deterministic) approach to the creation of its seemingly-random music. Far from being random, its preset "song" played continuously -- and was even given a name, "Museum Musings," by the staff."
Update via Minsky in the comments:
"Thanks! Really nice article and explanations.
No, I didn't invent the Kubrick-Clarke monolith. I only made some suggestions about the appearance of some of the movie's intelligent hardware. (Early versions of the computer modules were rather fancy -- but we simplified them.)
YouTube via chromeeumm "I flipped on the cam whilst recording some spooky sounds to scare the little kiddos on halloween night. Mwa ha haaaaa!
Here's some info on the patch before I forget it: The main sound features two oscillators that are gettin all tangled and twisted up in some gnarley audio rate frequency modulation- Osc2 sine goes to a VCA CV in, Osc1 saw to said VCA's signal in, and VCA's out to Osc2 FM in. These two gnash each other apart and then, clicking and howling, funnel into an STG Sea Devil diode ladder filter, thru a series of three Cynthia Buchla 292 low pass gate clones, and into a Synthesizers.com Q107 filter. Bandpass out of that filter runs to the final VCA, and the high pass out goes to STG wave folder. A pan/fade module balances the two for instant adhoc control of horror and mayhem.
The obligatory "creepy wind" eminates from a single oscillator FM'd by white noise, fed into a Q150 transistor ladder filter and a COTK C1630 Bode. A pressure sensitive CV ribbon controller modulates the oscillator frequency and filter cutoff.
The whole barrage of sound is orchestrated by a Q119 sequencer running in 3x8 mode with first bank controlling pitch of the oscillators, and 2nd and 3rd banks generating gates for an STG gate delay and three EGs used to modulate the various filters and amps and such in totally eeevil ways, fer sure omigod.
Thanks for stopping by and listening to my ghostly (ghastly?) noises!"
YouTube via Synthiefrau. Synton Syrinx on top of the Minimoog. "Hello lovely Synthfolks, yesterday it was raining the hole day and I must work, today the weather is fine, I doesn`t work and I stay at home and play Synthesizer . Musik, electronic musik is the best music of the world. Listen of the two LFO`s from the little Doepfer Dark Energie...It`s a realy lovely Synth...."
YouTube via birbabirbabirba "This is a comparison of the Mos-Lab 904-A Moog filter clone (fully identical to the original filter used in the Moog modulars) and the Synthesizers.com Q150 Transistor Ladder Filter (a modern version of the classic 24db Moog filter). For this test, both filters were feeded with the same saw wave of a Q106 Synthesizers.com oscillator and modulated by the same LFO sine wave. Altough i tried to apply the same manual settings on the frequency and resonance controls to both filters, the different structure and control parameters of the 904-A and the Q150 did not allow an exact 1:1 comparison and the intention is only to demonstrate in a general way the specific "sonic identities" of both filters. The Mos-Lab 904-A is on the left, the Q150 on the right channel."
Overview (see the site for samples, more info and pics):
"This is a simple but very effective waveform modifier module. It has two basic modes selected by a switch. Hard clipping is a hard edged distortion type effect useful for grunging up your signal. Soft clipping is a more subtle effect and produces a clean sounding overdriven amp sound.
Three front panel pots control the sound. Gain controls the overall gain of the 'pre-amplifier' stage and essentially determines the level of overdrive or distortion. The Timbre control is an effective EQ control that affects the frequency response of the effected output. The Balance pot is essentially a wet/dry mix control that allows you to add only as much of the effect as you want.
Voltage control is determined not within this unit, but as part of the signal chain placed before this module. Using a VCA to control the signal level that is fed into this unit will determine the strength of the overdrive or distortion. Using a VCF to alter the timbre of the signal fed to this module will control the overall harmonic level far more than using a filter alone. In fact, hard sync type sounds can be easily obtained by simply sweeping the filter's cut-off frequency."
I just unpacked the first (?) Leploop sold and this is my first impression: it is very well built and sound really nice! My first impressions are that the small trimpot-like knobs actually have a good feeling to them and the shafts are long enough to allow good tweaking. The case and panel looks to be well manufactured, laser etched aluminium and wood. The wooden parts are a bit soft and scratches easily so I have to get a (very small) case for it.
The box is tiny as you can see in the picture, a 303 alongside for size comparison.
The bassdrum has almost 808-like qualities at low settings but the resonance and dist knobs makes it transform into something else when turned high. Resonance is the same as decay so I guess it is a triggered resonantfilter, half of the range of that control gives longer decay and the other half makes the filter oscillate for harsh and screaming timbres.
The sound of the oscillators and filters are good and the modulation possibillities are vast since lfo and s/h can be applied to many parameters. It goes low in the bass and you can make a nice dissonant detuned sounds using the two oscillators.
The sequencer is a mystery so far, I have some reading of the manual to do! I managed to make som nice basslines and beats after 15 minutes but I don't really know how I did it!"
Update via camp 303: "I ordered from Antonio, I found the email on his blog. I paid 345 EUR including shipping, a very good price I think...I can't even imagine how much work they put in to this! I'm starting to get the hang of the sequencer and rythm section and it is unlike anything I ever used in over 15 years of synth-tweaing! You enter notes by routing the sample and hold (with either LFO or noise as an input) to an A/D converter and writing a melody. Then you rearrange the notes by selecting clock division speed, last note and active steps and step order to get the melody you want! You can make pretty complex melodies and I think I managed to get five voices out of the box once by modulating the cutoff and resonance of the filter! (Bassdrum, VCA1, VCA2, VCF and modulated resonance!)"
