MATRIXSYNTH

EKO K1 ANALOG BASSPEDAL SYNTHESIZER SN 1078

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Motown's Raymond Scott Electronium Breaths New Life

You might remember the Electronium Restoration Project from this previous video post.

Jeff E. Winner, one of the men behind the critically acclaimend documentary film on Raymond Scott's life, Deconstructing Dad, wrote in on The MATRIXSYNTH Lounge that they have made progress on the restoration and the Electronium is now producing sound!

A little history via wikipedia: "The Electronium, created by Raymond Scott, is an early combined electronic synthesizer and algorithmic composition / generative music machine.

Its place in history is unusual, because while in intention it is analogous to the digital algorithmic composition systems that would follow it, it was implemented entirely as an analog electronic machine.
The exact time for the beginning of Scott's efforts in making the machine is not known, but it is estimated to the late 1950s or early 1960s, with a workable unit by 1969. Scott, however, never ceased to modify and further develop the device by the time of his death in 1994.[1]

It was one of the very few electronic creations of Scott to be sold to a customer, as he was normally highly secretive about his devices[1]. A single Electronium machine was sold to Motown records, following a 1969 meeting between Scott and Motown’s Berry Gordy. The initial contract required that Scott visited Motown for three months to teach staff how the machine is used. This culminated in the 1971 hiring of Scott to serve as director of Motown's electronic music and research department in Los Angeles, a position Scott held until 1977.[1][2] No Motown recordings using Scott's electronic inventions have yet been publicly identified."

via Jeff E. Winner on The MATRIXSYNTH Lounge:

"It's Alive! Yesterday I received this email from Darren Davidson, who is attempting to restore the Motown Electronium:

On Nov 28, 2012, at 1:18 PM, Darren Davison wrote:

Good Morning!

Last night a few Electrical/Egineering freinds of mine and I were trying to get to the bottom of why the Electronium would still not utter a sound. After about an hour of tinkering and following the initial setup procedure Raymond wrote up, the machine began to make very simple and crude sounds. We recorded the sounds and although they are hardly musical, it is a fantastic milestone.

Most of the tone generators, but of course, there are more questions than answers. The voltages delivered by the power supplies are still not quite right and many of the pot switches are so sticky, that adjusting them is like steering a car in ice with a flat tire. The recording and "Auto-composing" portion is still not working and my feelings were "just get it to make some kind of controllable sound" first, then work on getting fancy.

I am sure this will accelerate things, and I have been in contact with Alan Entenman and am sending him photos of the internals of the Electronium in hopes of refreshing his memory of how some of it should work on the recording and keyboard side.

Anyway, I am hoping that by March, even if it is not recording or auto composing, the sounds are less harsh and that some of the other features such as the "Bass generators, "counterpoints", and other features are working.

I will send a copy of the sound files as soon as I can, most likely this evening. It's on the Engineering guys phone and he is having trouble sending vide for some reason. The whole thing was recorded on an Iphone and there is a 4 min? video of me adjusting knobs and such. In all fairness to their help, their names are Guy Lewis and Pete Levno.

Now I think we will start picking up steam!

—Darren"

Also on http://raymondscott.blogspot.com/2012/11/electronium-restoration-update.html - you can track the site for updates on everything Raymond Scott.

You can also see the Electronium and Raymond Scott labels directly below, at the bottom of this post, for all posts here on MATRIXSYNTH.

Micromoog Synthesizer with Original Box

via this auction

Custom Made Roland MKS-30 Voice Chip Clones

Roland MKS-30 with 2 voice replaced to clones

Published on Nov 29, 2012 by Alexey Taber

"custom made juno chip"

Curious if these are SynthSpa's. Note there is no mention of the JX-3P. The MKS-30 is known to be a JX-3P in a rack with some modifications. The PG-200 programmer works on both.

Update via Alexey: "I developed my own project for the repair roland synths . in the future I plan to add different versions of the project : 12/24 db switch (like in roland jupiter8), aditional filter switch -add board with more classic filters polivox/moog ladder/korg ms/steiner-parker/arp4075.

and i do clone mc5534 fo juno106. i plan to modify original schematic of mc5534 to add additional tuning voice(2th dco). i maked juno 106 chorus mod- to reduce noise and add 3 channel essembly chorus, add speed, depth ,feedback pot.....
With best regards Alexey"

Under $20 PWM Synth Project from Perspective Sound

Published on Nov 29, 2012 by larryfraz

Perspective wrote in to let us know he has a 1-bit Pulse Width Modulation synth project called "Lucy" based on the TI Msp430 microcontroller "Launchpad." It is open source, and has an attack, 3 oscillators and an LFO. It can be put together for under $20. It shines as a bass synth, and is modifiable. Code and demos at perspectivesound.blogspot.com.

Alpha Juno 1 vs. Juno 6

Published on Nov 29, 2012 by caleb condit

"I'm comparing these two synths, and also illustrating using the VCF (filter frequency) external control and controlling the arpeggiator clock with a xoxbox that synced to ableton to keep the Juno 6 in time with my DAW without using any midi.

This isn't meant to be an artistic thing, more of just showing what these two synths can do technically. Hit me up with any questions you have in the comments.

Also, check out my tracks at soundcloud.com/lvoe and soundcloud.com/calebcondit"

Pittsburgh Modular Foundation (PMF) Demos ------ by DesertF!sh

Published on Nov 28, 2012 by DesertFishHQ
---Please Subscribe for more Synth Demos!---
---Soundcloud.com/Desertfishhq---

"Here is a DEMO of the PMF. The patch featured is two Square Oscillators routed to the LP Filter with two ADSRs, and one VCA. one of the OSC is tuned an octave lower.

For the 1st scene I simply played by keyboard (mind my playing).
The 2nd scene I used the Ableton Arpeggiator with Chord and Scale plugins (also added the good ol Ableton Reverb).

The IPAD oscilloscope app is called oScope.

Enjoy,
DesertF!sh.

For more info on the PMF visit:
http://pittsburghmodular.com/foundation/"

Doepfer A1061 Xtreme Lowpass/Highpass Filter Audio Demonstration

Published on Nov 29, 2012 by raulsworldofsynths
"A look at an audio demonstration of the basic features of the Doepfer A106-1 Xtreme Lowpass/Highpass Filter.Sound and Video by Raul Pena."

All parts here.

Black Cat & ARP Odyssey

via Mark on Facebook

Movement MCS Percussion Computer MK2 (Drum Machine) for Auction

Note: Auction links are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.

via this auction

"This is a very rare British made drum machine from the early 1980's. According to wikipedia approximately 30 were made! Famous users included The Eurythmics (can be heard on Sweet Dreams, 1984), Phil Collins and The Thompson Twins.

It is capable of both analogue synthesised sounds (Simmons style) and sampled drum sounds and has 14 voices in total (2 per card). Each voice can be switched individually between analogue and 8bit sample playback - quite an unusual feature. Patterns are created using the internal computer and chained together into a sequence much like any other drum machine.

Overall physical condition is excellent, the casework is free from cracks and there are no missing knobs / keys. Of course, there are some signs of use which is to be expected. Most obvious are some scratches on the orange casework (can be seen in the photos) and a few missing knob caps.

Functionally, there are a few issues which I shall list below. None I believe are serious.

Voice 1 - doesn't switch between analogue/digital playback - digital always seems to be selected.

Voice 5 - very very quiet.

The CRT display is faulty and does not display an image. However, as you can see from the photos the internal computer is alive and well. I've demonstrated this by connecting an external monitor to the video out on the back panel.

There are some crackly pots.

I was unable to get the midi input to respond.

Other than the above it seems to be in good working order.

Approx. dimensions: 52cm(w) x 56cm(d) 45cm(h)

Power requirements: 240v 50Hz

More info here"

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