MATRIXSYNTH

BOSS Factory Quality Control

YouTube Uploaded by rolandmedia on Jun 23, 2011

"A quick look at some of the quality control testing that takes place at the BOSS factory."

Buchla 259e TWISTED WAVEFORM GENERATOR

via this auction

ether^ra NOTION

YouTube Uploaded by potterpaint2000 on Jun 23, 2011

"a Buchla 200e improv w/251e and 297 modules. http://etherra.blogspot.com/"

Fun with Kaossilator

YouTube Uploaded by Loomeer305 on Jun 23, 2011

"Only for fun (-:"

Koassilators on eBay

space analog satellite: dark time + mfos ultimate + omnichord + arp axxe

YouTube Uploaded by tominioe on Jun 23, 2011

"A synth jam in multitrack mode I did at the end of may:
Doepfer dark time drives the two independient sequences in the mfos ultimate + expander,
Mfb 522 for the drums, an omnichord om27 for the pad and harp sounds,
and the arp axxe for the lead synth at the end of the song.....

I hope you will enjoy it!!!!!!"

Ben Sollee

flickr By Moog Music Inc
(click for more)

"Ben Sollee came by the Moog Sound Lab armed with his cello and became the first artist to play the MF-108M Cluster Flux final prototype."

Motherboard TV: The Father of Circuit Bending: Reed Ghazala & NY Fest

via motherboard.tv

This is part of Motherboard’s Sound Builders series that they are running in celebration of Bent Festival's kick-off in Brooklyn today.

"This particular installment takes the Motherboard team to the 'Anti-Theory Workshop' of Reed Ghazala, the father of circuit bending. It’s a nice timely tease for this awesome New York electronic music and arts fest.

With Ghazala as our guide, we navigate the history of circuit-bending sound art from its accidental beginnings in his childhood bedroom to the discovery's lasting impact on electronic music and art. Host Jordan Redaelli even has a shot on the tinkered toys, creating a duet with the legendary circuit tweaker that is unique to say the least."

"In 1967, Reed Ghazala discovered something amazing just by sitting at his desk.

At the time he was a broke teenager, musician, and experimental artist known to friends for his magnetic sculptures and the sort of pyrotechnic displays that once sent him into emergency surgery. And then one day in 1967, his desk began to emit strange sounds. He recognized their sci-fi whirrs and electronic tones as something like the sound of the expensive synthesizers of the day, and he was sure he wasn’t imagining it.

The source turned out to be nothing more than a toy amplifier he had left in a desk drawer, its wires exposed due to a broken case, its power still switched on. The toy’s innards were short circuiting against the inside of the metal desk, and in so doing were making music that neither its creators nor its owner could ever have imagined. Circuit bending was born.

Today thousands of amateur electronics hackers around the planet follow Reed’s lead, customizing or simply breaking their synthesizers, children’s toys and other easy-to-crack-open gadgets with the hope of generating uncanny and wonderful cacophonies of sound..." Full post on motherboard.tv.

Update: I just created the Bent Fest label and added it to a ton of posts. Check it out for a trip back in time and to get a taste of some of what you can see at the event. Note there are a couple of general circuit bending fest posts as well.

BYE BYE EMX 2 & 3

YouTube Uploaded by kowloonmusicbuero on Jun 12, 2011

Check out that view. You can see a couple of day and night pics of it here.

BYE BYE EMX 3

follow-up to this post. via KMB aka Asia Synth Station

XV5080 Demos by CoolColJ

"At the start is a flanged pad I made yesterday on the Roland XV5080.
It uses 2 different detuned sawtooth on each side to create a PWM tone, and then flanged, with 2nd wheel/breath controller to flange rate

Then I load up raw JP8 string and later sawtooth waves - 2 variants on a single tone. On the XV5080 some waves have an A, B and C variants, some are just stereo versions of each other, at different phases, others are inverted to create PWM effects when detuned.
I dial in some Analog feel function which creates a detune and makes it all nice and stereo - remind me of my Jupiter 8 in dual mode :)

This is done using 1 of the 4 tones in a patch - each tone can hold up to 2 different waves!
So you don't to waste 2 tones to create a stereo effect or detune

Going through the different filter types with some LFO modulation - bliss!

----

At first I didn't quite like the sound of the unit, with the presets and all, but now that I've fiddled with it, it's a keeper me thinks :)
128 voice polyphony, good effects and filters and can load samples for a decent price.
Once my SRX-07 expansion board arrives with more waves and all, it's gonna be even more fun!"

"Loaded a sample that I use to benchmark all my samplers, hardware and software into my XV5080, from a Smartmedia card. Just dropped a wav file into the Roland directory in Windows
and loaded it up on the XV5080

Sounds good, but you only get a 2 octave range on either side of the original key.

Filter is decent, as beefy as the one on my old S-550 at the bottom end, but cleaner, smoother and more refined sounding. And you get way more filter types and can use stereo samples.
Low pass, band pass, high pass and peak - plus in some structures you can use dual filters
Definitely sounds better than the filters in a soft sampler

This 1.5mb sample took 10 seconds to load via Smartmedia - only took 1 second to save on Windows though.... Might be faster via SCSI with a SCSI to Card reader with a 8GB Compact Flash Card

Sounddiver doesn't support the samples you load in unfortunately, well you can't select them from SD. But when I use the Roland XV editor to assign them to a patch, and then have SD request the edit buffer they show up.

So that is one way around it, using both editors togther. I don't like the Roland one much, but it supports everything and is fast so I use it as a remote control of the XV5080 - especially for selecting patches :)

Clip was limited due to the massive volume fluctuations"

"Testing my own drum samples loaded via Smart Media - Recorded via XV5080's digital output

808 kick, sanre and 909 kick, loop and a synthesised kick from Stomper.

Testing out drum samples on the XV5080. I mapped them across the keyboard in a single patch, and the filters get turned on and off. You can use 4 tones/samples in a patch in such a manner, while still retaining the synthesis features.

The 808 kick and snare uses the FXM trick as shown here to add "life" to the static samples

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/nov03/articles/xvjvmasterclass.htm?session=f9f7e5e0282848d9a0f7cd70cc04cd63

I trimmed the sounds right at the very start of the attack snap, and I can't detect the transient being cut off. A problem with the Roland samplers in the past like the S550 and S760!
The XV5080 engine could make a nice stand alone sampler.... if they still existed...

I wonder how the Fantom compares?"

Roland SH-2 & Minimoog x0x'ed

Roland SH-2 x0x'ed by CoolColJ
"A Roland SH2 sequenced via CV/Gate from a modified x0xb0x TB-303 clone, and then run through it's filters and VCA

Roland acid squelch 70s style :)"

MiniMoog XOX'ed acid style :) by CoolColJ
"My Minimoog sequenced by a modified X0XB0X TB-303 clone, and then run into it's filter and VCA.

Quite interesting sounding - the Moog oscillators still sound like a Moog even after all that :)"