MATRIXSYNTH

iPad Retronyms SYNTH! DEMO with Korg Kaoss 3 and DS10

YouTube via VJFranzK — May 03, 2010 — Retronyms iPad App "Synth!" used with other instruments for looping, and backing tracks. A fine combination!

Retronyms on iTunes
iPads on Ebay

808 beachbox

Roland TR-808 sand castle via softmachine

giving this one the synth cake label...

"this song was made by sampling small portions of songs and looping them on an mpc, then sending them into a kaoss pad 3 to really spice things up theres also other songs on the soundcloud account and many more songs featuring the mpc, kp3 and emx as the main focus on my myspace www.myspace.com/psychramento.

the photo included is a visual representation of what I do to music digitally F@#%! things up"

How the Vocoder Saved the World, Literally

This one in via fabio. Motherboard has a good review on Dave Tompkins' How to Wreck a Nice Beach. You can find it here.

"The brink of nuclear annihilation calls for sound advice over a secure phone line, at least one that works properly. On October 25, 1962, John F. Kennedy pushed the button and spoke on the vocoder. While his voice went to the machine, his body was at the pharmacy, infused with steroids, painkillers and anti-spasmodics. He heard a hiss of static and pushed again. At the other end, British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan heard “garble,” not, “I don’t want to have an incident with a Russian ship tomorrow.” While the US Strategic Air Command was at a DEFCON 3 state of readiness—with no secure way to communicate with the ground—Kennedy’s Brahmin accent was being transformed into “Mickey Mouse/Donald Duck,” a side effect of processing the president’s vocal tract into a binary code. Talk of a “Naval interdiction” of all vessels bound for Cuba was compressed and artificially rendered at 1667 bits per second. The letter R was nowhere to be found.

Kennedy had been using the KY-9, a 500-pound 12-channel scrambler developed by Bell Labs in 1953. He often turned to the KY-9 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a time when a single teletype exchange with Premier Khrushchev in Moscow could take over twelve hours between transmission..."

Click here for all posts featuring Dave Tompkins' How to Wreck a Nice Beach including video.

How to Wreck a Nice Beach on Amazon. Added to the Synth Books section as well.

TechnoTrance - Waldorf Largo

YouTube via RLSoundDesign — May 18, 2010 — Waldorf Largo Soundset by Rob Lee

TechnoTrance for Largo Part 2

GForce impOSCar2 controller

YouTube via FutureMusicMagazine — May 13, 2010 —

"No matter how good software synths get, you can't beat a bit of hands-on control. FM talks to GForce's Dave Spiers about this creation and gets a quick walk-through on the controller"

Also see:
Underworld Meets the impOSCar Controller
Synth-Project impOSCar 2 Hardware Controller
Synth-Project label added.

Morgan Page on the Dave Smith Instruments Prophet '08

YouTube via FutureMusicMagazine — May 14, 2010 — "Morgan Page gives FM the lowdown on why he loves the Prophet '08 so much.
You can find out more about Morgan Page and his production techniques in his "In The Studio' interview in FM227 on sale 18/05/10."

MacBeth Mk1 Test Setup Vid #1

YouTube via macbethsynthesizers — May 18, 2010 — "Here's a small sized video that I did of the MacBeth Mk1 Synth module prototypes that I have now set up- although the video is not the best quality- the sound went into the desk and then recorded! I'm using the pure analogue X-Series keyboard to play the stuff! Hope you enjoy...KM"