MATRIXSYNTH


Sunday, January 06, 2019

ARP 2500 February 2016


Published on Feb 21, 2016 Mike Olson

"On February 19th 2016, I spent the better part of an afternoon at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, exploring the legendary ARP 2500 modular synthesizer. This was the first time I had ever used this instrument. I recorded a bunch of material to take back to my studio to use in a new composition. This is a short video of me generating some of that material."

ARP 2500 Modular Synth


Published on Oct 23, 2007 David Morley

"I was checking the ARP 2500, so decided to video whilst noodling.
Will make something better later...
AMAZING synth. Funky, fat, flexible."

ARP 2500 Modular and TR-808

Published on Sep 6, 2008 David Morley

"Just a small jam on the 2500 with the 808 triggering it and mixed in."

4 hours into testing


4 hours into testing from DeltaDeltaDelta on Vimeo.

"arp 2500. after some repairs. some fiddling and some old scanned manual reading."

wind farm with sounds of the arp 2500


wind farm with sounds of the arp 2500 from Tara Rodgers on Vimeo.

"Aerial view of wind farms north of England, with sounds of a restored ARP 2500. Sound + video from October 2014."

Shipping News - demo showing the ARP 2500


Shipping News - demo showing the ARP 2500 from David Morley on Vimeo.

"Here is a demo of the ARP 2500 modular I made. No other instrument was used.

My objective was to show off the range of the instrument in a musical context.

Please visit http://www.davidmorley.com and check out my other works and a better quality version of 'Shipping News'

My music is published by Bug Music in London http://www.bugmusic.com

The video was something I knocked up in iMovie just in Sequencing was performed with the ARP sequencers.

Multitracked in Logic 8. Mixed on my D&R Orion desk. Reverb came from my EMT 246 and an Eventide H3000 was used for delay."

Koutsomichalis - 2500, ordine geometrico demonstrata: substantia prior est natura suis affectionibus


Koutsomichalis - 2500, ordine geometrico demonstrata: substantia prior est natura suis affectionibus (excerpt) from MarinosK on Vimeo.

Subwoofers required

http://marinoskoutsomichalis.com/arp-2500/

Roger Powell "Cosmic Furnace" (1973 synthesizer album)


Published on Apr 23, 2017 Cosmic Pickle

ROGER POWELL "Cosmic Furnace" (1973)
This is synthesist Roger Powell's first solo album, originally on LP in 1973, here taken from the 2005 CD re-issue, which is currently out of print.

Roger Powell worked during this period for the ARP synthesizer company and after as a programmer for the Apple computer company for a number of years (1997 to 2009) . More recently he works at Electronic Arts as a Senior Producer on emerging music technologies.

In between he played with Todd Rundgren's Utopia group, from the mid 1970's to the mid 1980's.

Roger Powell: ARP Synthesizers, Electric Clavichord, Electric & Acoustic Pianos

All tracks composed by R. Powell-

1)"Ictus: Primordial Pulse"(0:00)
2)"Lumia: Dance Of The Nebulae"(4:55)
3)"Fourneau Cosmique: The Alchemical Furnace Of Cleopatra"(10:01)
4)"Hermetic Enigma: The Fixed Volatile"(17:38)
5)"Queene Enfineska: Serenity Of The Lion In Summer"(23:23)
6)"Tensegrity: A Dymaxion Triptych"(26:44)

S&H Explorations for Bb Clarinet and ARP 2600 Synthesizer


Published on Nov 11, 2013 Ronald Pellegrino

"Since 1967 I've worked with a lot of different sound and light synthesizers. Whenever I get a new instrument my MO is, early on in the exploratory stage, to challenge myself to do a piece with it. As director of the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music Electronic Music Studios I added the ARP 2600 to the facility in 1971 around the same time Larry McDonald, the faculty clarinetist, asked me to compose a piece for him. At the time of Larry's commission I was exploring the Sample and Hold function, thus the first part of the title, S&H Explorations. This is an excerpt of that piece (the final two thirds).

Larry and I performed this piece numerous times at museums, cultural centers and universities from Ohio to Connecticut. I also gave performances with top clarinetists in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Dallas and New York City. It generated a lot of gigs so at the time I thought of it as my "money piece". Other composers definitely liked it; I was part of a composer's gathering where Luciano Berio was conducting a master class and this was only piece he wanted to talk about to the chagrin of the other composers. It was composed so only I could do the synthesizer part; talk about painting a piece into a corner.

The clarinet part is traditionally notated in great detail. Larry is an outstanding musician, nevertheless to get what I wanted to hear I often had to sing the music to him and the same was true of the other fine musicians who performed it. For me those experiences highlighted once more the inadequacies of traditional notational systems and I was well on my way to setting them aside to focus on the development of my personal raga system and real time composition for the rest of my musical life. I count myself as being very fortunate for having taken that road. It's infinitely more exciting and more productive for me personally and for any artists who have worked with me."

ARP Analog Synth Jazz Band (Video)


Published on Jan 25, 2013 Matthew Brigida

"Vintage footage of Michael Brigida on the Good Day show demoing Arp synthesizers. 'Take the A Train'."

RIP Alan R. Pearlman



It has come to my attention that ARP founder Alan R. Pearlman has passed way. He was 90 years old at the time of the NAMM TEC Awards in 2015. The ARP 2600 SYNTHESIZER received the award that year. You can find a video from the event featuring Pat Gleeson and Jim Heintz of WayOutWare, who worked with Alan on their ARP emulations, below. Alan was no longer traveling at the time and was not at the event.

You can find a great video interview with Alan R. Pearlman from 2006 at the NAMM website here. The following is an interesting excerpt from the site: "Alan R. Pearlman was nicknamed 'ARP' as a kid growing up in New York City, so it seemed the perfect name for a company when he was later designing electronic musical instruments. The first instrument created by Alan was the modular synthesizer known as the ARP 2500. The monophonic product was released years after the first Moog and Buchla instruments, but gained attention for several new features including the ever-popular function of not drifting out of tune, which was a common problem in the earlier products. Next came the now classic ARP 2600, and soon the company became a great leader in the growth and development of the electronic musical market."

And via Wikipedia:

"Pearlman was born in New York City in 1925. His father was a movie theatre projector designer and his grandfather made parts for phonograph machines. He grew up building radio sets, inspired by Popular Science and Popular Mechanics magazines, and served in the military briefly following World War II.

Following his military service, Pearlman attended Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts and in 1948, for his senior thesis designed a vacuum tube envelope follower that could extract the envelope of a sound from an instrument. He later audited a Harvard University course taught by one of the inventors of the transistor, Walter Brattain.[1]

Pearlman spent five years designing amplifiers for NASA's Gemini and Apollo programs. He worked at George A. Philbrick Researchers with Roger Noble, and the two later founded analog module and op amp manufacturer Nexus Research Laboratory in Canton, Massachusetts in the early 1960s. Nexus Research Laboratory's business grew to $4 million in annual sales before being acquired by Teledyne in 1966.[2][3]

In 1969, Pearlman founded ARP Instruments, Inc. (originally Tonus, Inc.) with $100,000 of his own money and matching funds from a small group of investors. The name ARP was derived from Pearlman's initials. ARP entered the fledgling synthesizer industry with the introduction of the ARP 2002, which with twice as many switch rows on top, became the 2500 analog modular synthesizer. The 2002 was introduced at the AES show in Fall 1970, and subsequently competed head to head with other leading synthesizer companies of the time. Pearlman eschewed patch cord methodology for interconnecting synthesizer modules, designing instead a system of sliding matrix switches. He also applied his op-amp experience by utilizing dual transistors on a single integrated circuit to overcome temperature gradients and provide very stable oscillators - more stable than other popular synthesizers on the market at the time, namely offerings from Moog Music and Buchla.[4][5]"


ARP 2600 Synthesizer Award Show w/ Dr Pat Gleeson & Jim Heintz NAMM TEC Awards 2015

Published on Feb 3, 2015 Byron Hotchkiss

"ARP 2600 SYNTHESIZER receives NAMM TECH Award at 2015 show. Speakers Dr. Pat Gleeson and Jim Heintz of WayOutWare recall stories of the ARP 2600 instrument. Quotes from Pete Townsend, Alan R. Pearlman (ARP name taken from inventors nickname as a youth) Video by B K Hotchkiss"



Note it is extremely difficult to pick videos for a RIP post especially considering how many great videos there are out there and how many have been already featured on the site as you can see via the ARP label. I'll be searching for some not previously featured to put up in individual posts throughout the day. If you have any you'd like to share please do so in the comments. I wanted to share the following as it features Alan R. Pearlman's first iconic synth, the ARP 2500.


A Portrait of Eliane Radigue (2009) from Maxime Guitton on Vimeo.

"A portrait of Eliane Radigue, produced by the Austrian IMA (Institute for Media Archeology), which observes Eliane in her workspace, operating the ARP and talking about the process of composing and recording."



Featuring ARP engineer Philip R Dodds who passed away in 2007.

Update: found this ARP 2500 playlist on YouTube:

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