Box of Textures

Richard Lainhart, 1953 - 2011

2012-01-05T23:36:00.000-05:00

Richard Lainhart died a week or so ago.

I didn’t really know him personally, but we did correspond a number of times. I wish I could have called him a friend, but it was more of a modern age electronic acquaintance rather than a true friendship. He used a photo I took at one of his shows (above) as a publicity shot, which made me pretty happy.

In some ways I just have no idea what to write. I met him, I saw him play, his music is amazing (although nothing at all like I would play). He had a long a varied career, doing all sort of things that were surprising to me once I read about them.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that although I didn’t really know him, he somehow touched my life, and that I’ll miss him now that he’s gone. Not just his wild musical journeys with “non-traditional” synths played using “non-traditional” interfaces that he somehow managed to combine together into coherent and compelling musical pieces, but also things like his his famous bird cam, for instance.

When I saw him play live he had an incredible psychedelic background projected on the wall behind him. It was beautiful, mesmerizing, amazing. At the time I was very much interested in video projection, and searched for weeks for the clip he used. It was frustrating to not be able to find it, so finally I asked him where he got it. His answer? A very casual, “oh, I programmed that myself in After Effects.”

Zing! Blew me away again.

That was Richard. I wish I’d gotten the chance to know him better.

I Dream of Wires interview

Richard's web site

And his YouTube page

Solaris First Impressions

2011-12-26T21:41:00.001-05:00

Smooth as butter.

I feel like I could end post this right there, but I suppose I ought to explain myself just a little bit more. Today I really sat down with my Solaris for the first time, for maybe an hour or so. I made just one patch, and not having read the manual at all didn’t go all that deep into it. But man, that one patch was it. Nothing fancy, just a Minimoog/Memorymoog hollow, echoey, phasing, two-pulse-wave sort of sound. And yeah, it wasn’t fancy, but it was completely awesome. And there were things I wanted to do with it that I just don’t yet know how to accomplish, things like deep modulation routings, but it doesn’t matter. Just an hour with the Solaris was enough to show me that this is one monster synthesizer.

This is not a review that will cover every feature. You can get a feature list on the Solaris web site. No, this is about how it feels. And how it feels is smooth as butter.

The knobs feel like they’re oil-filled, in a sense. They resist turning in an oh-so-gentle way. Easy to turn, easy to control. Just right.

Six displays. All your basic information is right there in front of you, easy to take in at a glance. But if you need to go deeper it’s easy to get there. It’s like the synth offers no resistance. It’s easy, effortless. Every place I looked there was a control I’ve always wished my other synths had.

Piles of oscillators, each one with many different kinds of waves. I could have Oscillator 1 be a Minimoog pulse wave and dial in Oscillator 2 to be a wavetable. Phenomenal power for just one knob. And it’s not just that the Solaris is powerful, it’s that it’s easy too. I could fiddle with the oscillator display all I liked, but the filter display was still on and telling me what it was doing.

My Waldorf Q has many different oscillator and filter models, but it feels totally different because it has just the one display. It’s a great synth, but it’s always reminding you that it’s a virtual analog, mostly because at one moment the display is an oscillator and the next it’s a filter. And there’s nothing wrong with that at all. But the Solaris feels like a “luxury synth” in comparison. It doesn’t feel virtual at all. There’s no switching functions in and out all the time because it has just one shared display. I have an Oberheim Xpander too, and while the Xpander also has the multiple screens the Solaris goes and takes it to the extreme. I can honestly see selling the Xpander now. It’s real analog, but it just doesn’t compare. It doesn’t have the horsepower, the flexibility.

I must have said “it’s easy” about six times. But that’s my first impression of the Solaris. There’s no resistance, it’s not in my way, I don’t have to scratch my head while I’m trying to find something. It’s like a software synthesizer brought to life, except it’s way better than dealing with a mouse and a computer screen. You’ve got knobs and screens and joysticks and ribbons and wheels, all things you just don’t have with a computer synth. But you’ve also got the power of the computer right there under your hands as well. It’s the best of both worlds.

When I first read about the Solaris it sounded like exactly what I’d always been looking for in a synthesizer. And after an hour or two, I can say that’s totally true.

This is the real deal.

In War Times

2011-10-31T19:47:00.000-04:00

In Which a Science Fiction Author Writing About Jazz Completely and Unexpectedly Illuminates Why I Play Synthesizers

If I was 10 years older I’d probably be a sax player instead of a synthesist.

But I didn’t know that until I started reading Kathleen Ann Goonan’s book In War Times. Goonan writes amazing novels. They’re thick, heavy, and deep. In the best of ways, of course. And they’re filled with music, with jazz. Now I like jazz, but would not call myself an aficionado. Keith Jarrett, Branford Marsalis, Etta James, even, all favorites of mine along with many others. I’m much more of a rocker, though. But if I’d been born in 1940 or ’50 instead of 1960 maybe I would have turned out much like her characters.

The beauty of Goonan’s writing is how I feel almost immediately immersed, even though I’ve never been to those 52nd Street jazz clubs, or to the ones in Harlem. And when I was the impressionable age her characters were when they were listening to their first jazz platters, for me there was Switched on Bach, Yes, ELP, Genesis, Todd Rundgren’s Utopia, Larry Fast, and later, in high school, Tangerine Dream. It was all over after that. I am to this day haunted by the textures of the movie version of A Clockwork Orange. So compelling, so beautiful, and making the movie all that much more intense.

As a preteen, though, my world was filled with the textures of the then new synthesizer. Just like the people in Goonan’s novel discovering the magic of jazz, in my slightly different time I was awakened to the birth of the synthesizer. I remember the disgust and outrage about these new “so-called instruments.” They were unnatural, synthetic, offensive, which was a common complaint. They would cost orchestras their jobs was another. But to me, it was eye-opening. The world of my father humming Greensleeves while conducting invisible musicians on the radio was what I was brought up with, followed by the ’60s with the “hippy” music, thanks to my sister and her DJ boyfriend. But then the synthesizer happened, and that was it for me. And like Goonan’s characters, I was taken in, swept up, and swirled away into a new world. That magical box of textures, sounds previously undreamt of, the joining of music and technology, just as in her book, that happened to me, too.

If I was just a little older, I might have picked up a saxophone. But it was the Moog that got me instead. But Goonan’s book got me as well, grabbing me in its headlong rush into jazz and physics and world conflict. From the first page it had me, and who knows where it’s going to take me as I’m only 21% in (thanks, Kindle, for stealing page numbers out from under us!). And I admit that sometimes at the end of her books I’m left wondering what I just witnessed, but in some ways that’s half the fun. I’m always left with a “wow,” regardless.

This is not a review of In War Times, nor is it even that much about the book at all. What this is about is the sense of discovery, the exhilaration, the newness of something that had never been heard before. For Goonan, maybe, jazz. For me, the synthesizer. No, what this is about is her unbelievably accurate description of me, as a kid, hearing the synthesizer for the very first time, with its magical textures that uprooted my world. Even though I’m not actually in her novel of course, yeah, she was writing about me.

So I’m writing this to say, “thanks” to Ms. Goonan. She somehow managed to finally put into words exactly how I felt, and why I chose the synthesizer to fill my life. Why I had to. Even though the novel was jazz and the ’40s, it was also about me in the ’60s.

Yup. She nailed it.

In War Times By Kathleen Ann Goonan

Animoog for iPad

2011-10-22T21:13:00.000-04:00

So today was the first day I really sat down with Moog’s new Animoog app for the iPad. Not for any good reason, but I stayed up after midnight on the night of the announcement to see what it was about, and when I saw that it was only $1 (temporarily) it was basically a no-brainer. And for a few days after that I picked out presets and played with the knobs a bit and thought it was pretty cool. I even downloaded the manual. (Which I have now read. Twice.) And while there’s been a bit of controversy over their “First Professional Synth Designed for the iPad” tagline, I have to say that after spending some quality time with it I’m pretty much blown away.

At first I thought it would be a cool toy, but after using it for most of the afternoon today I’ve come to think of it as a “real” synthesizer and not just an iPad app. First off, it doesn’t just have a few waveforms. Instead it has 56 different “waves,” plus one silent one. They’re not static waves either but rather actually synthesized tones. It’s almost like they’ve taken an analog synthesizer and a wavetable synthesizer and made a mashup on the iPad.

But it goes further than that. They’ve done things with Animoog that you really couldn’t have done on an analog synth because the whole playing surface of it is touch sensitive, and the “keyboard” responds to multi-touch. It’s almost like they’ve taken a synthesizer keyboard and a Haken Continuum and formed them into a 2D synth controller that responds to poly-pressure. It’s actually strange that such a unique and interesting keyboard came out of Moog, but apparently Bob Moog made an actual physical keyboard like this for someone decades ago, and the Animoog keyboard is modeled after that. And the glass playing surface is perfect for it. You can play individual notes, and you can slide your fingers left to right to slide between notes. You can also slide up and down on a note to change the timbre of the tone as well. There’s a pitch correction control as well. Set all the way up makes each note discrete, set all the way down makes it slide evenly from note to note as if you were playing slide guitar. You can also set up the keyboard to play in a scale, either one of the preprogrammed ones or one of your own making.

In addition there are all the “standard” synthesizer elements such as a multi-mode filter, delay module, envelope generators (three of them), etc. Beyond that, there are things like four fully routable modulation paths. But what’s totally cool is that it’s four-voice polyphonic. When they said “professional synth” in their marketing copy I took it with a grain of salt, but after spending some time exploring the synth I have to say that it’s true. I might not have used their “first” bit, but the thing is an incredibly expressive instrument, and I can’t wait to finally hook up my iPad to a MIDI keyboard (although honestly I think I’m going to miss the on-screen keyboard because it’s just so good).

But in some ways all this, while nice, is not even the interesting part. What they’ve done is to add on an X/Y pad like they have on the Minimoog Voyager. The pad is divided into 8 vertical and 16 horizontal zones. The true power of the Animoog is that you can assign a different sound to each of the 8 vertical zones if you want to. You can then change timbres by moving your finger around the X/Y pad. Moving up and down changes between the 8 basic timbres you’ve chosen, and moving side to side changes some parameters of that zone’s sound. It’s hard to explain but simple to do. There’s a great animated image showing exactly what’s going on with the X-Y pad, and in this case a couple of images will save me a few hundred words at least.

But it goes beyond even this. The TRUE true power of the Animoog synth is that you can animate the X/Y pad in several ways. Notes you play on the keyboard are not static, but rather they move around the X/Y pad, and in doing so the timbre constantly changes as the note crosses the boundaries between zones in the 8 x 16 grid. But wait, there’s more. It’s not just that the notes move, it’s that you can draw a path that the moving notes will follow. It’s a simple idea, but that’s what makes this synth generate its unique sounds. While it’s certainly possible to make a static sound that just sits, there are so many elements of motion you can impart to your patches that it’s just hard to express in written words what this thing can do.

Oh, and did I mention the sound-on-sound recording module that has layering and overdubbing? Almost forgot.

So all marketing hyperbole aside, Animoog is an incredibly powerful synthesizer. And while I’m totally looking forward to getting an iPad/MIDI interface soon, 10 minutes with Animoog has made me wish I had a Continuum. And if someone out there decides to make a physical 2D flat surface keyboard I’d definitely consider plunking down some dollars just so I could use the Animoog synth to its full potential.

This is by no means a complete review of every feature the synth has to offer. It has a 9 page manual, but even though that doesn’t sound like much the Animoog has a tremendous amount of depth to it. I’ll try to record a few examples of what it can do over the next few days and post them here. And just to balance out my bubbling praise, there are a few rough edges. Like when “turning knobs” I’ve sometimes managed to hit the change module buttons in the middle of adjusting something. That’s probably my fault, but I’ve managed to do it a bunch of times. Many Mac software synths give you a choice between rotary or linear control of the knobs and I guess I’d prefer rotary. And I have to say that the way you save your patches is completely unintuitive and that’s being polite. It’s also barely mentioned in the manual. It’s not a huge deal as once you figure it out the first time (hold the Save button for an indeterminately long time and you’ll be OK) it’s easy enough to do. Another thing I’d like to see is sound banks. There’s only one, and while that’s fine I’d rather have the built-in bank separated from my own patches. And oh yeah, if you’re going to play live with this, make sure you turn off notifications unless you want to hear all those Words With Friends notification sounds while you’re playing. These are all pretty minor niggles, though. In case you couldn’t tell, I think this thing’s amazing.

Animoog for iPad, from Moog. The real price will be $30 in a month, but for now it’s only $1 (as is their Filtratron app as well). If I didn’t already have an iPad, this app would make me go out and buy one. It’s that good. This is the Moog polysynth I’ve been waiting for.

Update —here’s an Animoog tune I just did:

Waiting For Your Return by Seth Elgart

Music Creation On The iPad

2011-08-22T20:30:00.000-04:00

So I’ve had my iPad for maybe five months now, and it’s been a little bit eye-opening. I bought an iPad 1 from someone who had to rush out on Day 1 and get an iPad 2. I got a pretty good deal because I got a much better model than I would have as well as a lot of accessories, and he got a pretty good deal because I financed a large portion of his new one. Win-win.

It’s amusing to still even today read articles about how it’s nothing new and why should anyone bother getting one, but for me it’s been a game changer. I almost never use my laptop at home anymore for my “normal” computing activities, and in fact since I got the iPad my laptop’s not left the house. I go out of town maybe two weekends a month and a year ago could not have imagined not taking a computer with me for a weekend. Now my backpack’s 8 pounds lighter and I hardly have to worry about batteries for the whole weekend.

But this was supposed to be about music. Almost forgot.

My first thoughts were that the iPad would be a cool toy. I loves me some gadgets, personally, so I was really looking forward to playing with one. In fact, I had actually bought a few music apps before I even had one, thinking that if I had a reason to get an iPad beforehand I could more easily justify it. And I’ve gotten all sorts of cool music toy apps, and some more “serious” apps as well, and have had great fun with them. But there were two things that made me change my thinking about the “pro-ness” of the iPad. One was the iRig MIDI interface (still with the slightest whiff of vaporware about it) and the other was the Sunrizer synth app.

The iRig MIDI device, from IK Multimedia, is a large-matchbook sized device that lets you connect your iPad to your MIDI gear with full MIDI in/out connections. It also lets you connect power to your iPad at the same time, something that other devices I’m aware of don’t do at the moment. For me that’s pretty much a requirement. The last thing I’d want is to have my iPad run out of juice while waiting for the drummer to finish setting up. I said before that it’s a little vaporish because they’re only on pre-order at the moment.

But what really changed my mind about making music on the iPad is the Sunrizer app from BeepStreet. I was really bummed a few weeks ago because I powered up my Access Virus Indigo 2 and the backlight was dead, but one listen to the Sunrizer made me forget all about the Virus. OK, slight exaggeration, but still. The thing sounds amazing. I’ve played with other synth apps on the iPad/iPhone and the Sunrizer just blows them away for sheer sonic goodness. Will it replace my Indigo 2? No. But it comes darn close, and I’m hoping a future version 2 will bridge the gap between them. And besides, you can’t throw your Indigo 2 in a backpack, even if it *is* a small synth. And while the Virus definitely is more flexible and more full-featured, the Sunrizer can certainly give it a run for its money. It just sounds that good.

So I’ve had the iPad for a while now, but all of a sudden I can see myself using it live as a synth module. All I need is two more of them and I can go totally portable, and I’m only half joking about that. Think about it for a moment. When the iPad 3 comes out you’ll probably be able to pick up an iPad 1 for under $100 if you get a low end model.

I’ll write a more in-depth post about the Sunrizer synth soon as I truly want to cover it well and do it justice, but until then let me leave off by saying I find I just can’t seem to stop playing it lately.

The Piano

2010-04-22T14:10:00.001-04:00

This is my piano. Technically, I have six of them, but this is the only “real” one. It’s in my family’s house in upstate New York, where I spent my summers until I was 16. Unfortunately, the piano wasn’t there until after that, and in fact there wasn’t even a “real” house up there until I was 10 or so. (Hmmm. Too many quotes already, and I’m only up to the fourth sentence.) Anyway, I have three piano modules, a digital piano, a spinet, and this baby grand. It’s in decent shape, could use a good tuning/overhaul, but it still sounds pretty good if you don’t head too far out to the ends of the keyboard.

I’m not really a piano player, unfortunately not having been tormented with lessons from an early age. I wanted them, though, probably one of the few kids who did. I remember being very young and discovering open fifths, open fourths, augmented and diminished chords. Each discovery was eye-opening, felt like I had been the first to find some new thing. I remembering feeling the world open up to me after accidentally finding sus4 chords, just playing them in the empty apartment before my parents came home, letting them ring into silence, listening to the shifting overtones. It was magical.

All of this happened on the spinet in my New York City apartment. It’s from the 1940s and in pretty bad shape, long past the time it should have been put out to pasture. That’s why I got the digital piano, in fact, to replace it. Not the same, but I suppose it’s better to be in tune and not broken. But when I manage to get up to the too-far-away house upstate, I always look forward to trotting out my far-too-rusty piano skills. This past weekend felt more rusty and awkward than usual, but sometimes I can just sit down and play and it’s magical. And I still like to play a sus4 and let it ring into silence.

It’s been months since I’ve added to this blog. Things have happened, other things have not happened, I’ve let it slide. But I’m starting it up again, even after all this time. I’ve missed it. Writing this feels like wearing an old, comfortable shirt. It’s time to start it up again.

Chimera Synthesis bC16 handheld modular synthesizer

2009-09-12T19:13:00.008-04:00

In May of last year I bought a Chimera Synthesis bC16 synthesizer, and it finally arrived just the other day. The bC16 is a fully patchable synthesizer, nothing’s prewired for you. It’s not quite a modular because you can’t change the modules or move them around, but for all intents and purposes it may be the worlds smallest modular synth. It has sorta two VCOs, sorta two LFOs, a VCF, ADSR envelope generator, VCA, ring modulator, MIDI interface and an arpeggiator.

I say “sorta” because there aren’t really two fully accessible VCOs. Rather, there are two linked VCOs with one set of knobs and patch points. There’s a Difference knob (and control voltage input) to let you spread the two oscillators apart. They’re both really in there but you don’t exactly have individual access to them, and there’s just the one output jack. This isn’t a problem, it’s just something I felt I ought to point out. The LFOs are similar. There are two of them but knobs for only one. You’ve two less knobs for the LFO when compared to the VCO, and the VCO’s FM input jack is changed to a Ring Mod input for the LFOs.

The bC16 ships with 10 micro-sized banana-style patch cables. That will probably be more than enough for most purposes. It also comes with a patchable signal inverter so you can take a standard envelope, for example, and invert it before sending it to, say, the filter.

The envelope is loopable as well. If you set the sustain knob to 0 the envelope will repeatedly retrigger itself. You can get nice long drones that way. If you move the sustain knob up just a touch it functions in the normal one-shot way.

There’s still a million things I haven’t yet figured out. The manual is, shall we say, somewhat lacking still. For example, the VCO page simply says “work in progress” and nothing more. At least there is a manual, though. From what I can see in the forums there wasn’t one at all for quite some time. It’s freely downloadable from their web site, though, if you want to take a look at it.

The bC16 is not exactly your “normal” synthesizer (whatever that means!). For one, it uses the 0.586 volts per octave standard, according to the manual. I’m not 100% sure that that’s really a standard that I’ve ever heard of, but just because I’ve not heard of it doesn’t mean it isn’t one. Another oddity is the patch cables and jacks. The bC16 uses 2mm banana jacks, which are really small. There’s nothing wrong with that but it might make it difficult to find pre-made cables from sources other than Chimera. I’m not saying that’s a problem, but it’s something to keep in mind.

I’ve only had the bC16 for a day, but I have to say I’m pretty darn impressed. The build quality is amazing. The thing feels totally solid, and all the knobs and jacks are firm yet smooth. It’s a modular synthesizer that you can hold in the palm of your hand. It’s incredible flexible, sounds good and can make all sorts of noises. I may even hook it up to a MIDI keyboard one day and try to play some actual notes with it.

The piece below isn't really a tune but it's not really a demo either. About five minutes long, it's nothing but the bC16 recorded live into Ableton Live. No sequencers, arpeggiators, or overdubs.

Photo credit: bC16 front panel layout graphic was downloaded from the Chimera Synthesis web site as a PDF and formatted to fit this page.

OhmSound FM softsynth

2009-08-29T12:47:00.008-04:00

Just came across a new synthesizer today (or maybe more accurately, it came across me).

I have a Livid Instruments Ohm controller, designed specifically for VJing, but it's basically a MIDI controller that can be used for anything you'd like to use it for. You can use it quite easily with Ableton Live as it's USB plug-and-play. Mine is a beautiful wood and metal version, and it's just fun to touch let alone to use.

Livid recently updated the design of the Ohm and came out with the Ohm64. It's basically similar to mine except that it has a 64 button matrix rather than my 36 button version. What's new here is that I just got an email from Livid which aside from other software update announcements had an oh-by-the-way-here's-our-new-FM-soft-synth section. I've been putting off sending in my Ohm to take advantage of the Ohm Recycling Program, but now I almost have to do it just to have a go at the new synth.

It's called simply OhmSound, and it's a two operator FM synth. Two operators doesn't sound like a lot, but it's not limited to the "traditional" sine waves, you can change the waves to any number of waveshapes, complete with graphical LFO and envelope control of the operator levels as well. Tied to the Ohm64 controller, which lets you use knobs, buttons and sliders to control all the synth parameters, you end up with an easy to use and fun to play with synthesizer.

It's still in very early development apparently, and, Oh Yeah, they're also working on a sequencer as well!

This is totally cool, as Livid basically created a VJ controller but have now expanded its capabilities via software to turn it into something completely different from the original concept. I can't wait to see what else they come up with.

Update: Lived just posted three videos on the use of OhmSound.

Nine Inch Nails - Wave Goodbye

2009-08-27T10:20:00.004-04:00

Saw Nine Inch Nails last night, maybe their last ever New York show. They’re not my usual sort of topic here, but you have to love a rowdy “industrial” band that uses an incredibly cool modular synthesizer, has keyboards played live by all four band members and releases synth-heavy albums. Supposedly, they’re going to stop touring but still record new albums.

It was a great show, though. They played for almost two and a half hours, rocking hard the whole time although they did slow down for some tender moments as well. There were a few synth interludes, many of them sequences and rhythms to provide backgrounds for the rowdy guitars. It’s great to see a modular synth used live, and they actually tweak knobs and change sounds from time to time. It’s not just thrown in, they actually make good use of it, which is refreshing in a hard rocking band.

There are other bands I like who use synths for a bit flavoring. Dishwalla comes to mind right away, though they’re much more mainstream than NIN. Also Stabbing Westward, another industrial band from some years ago, had some great synth textures behind them. There are plenty of others out there as well, but those two are particular favorites of mine.

I probably shouldn’t write these at 2:00 am after getting home from a concert, but I just couldn’t help myself. I have more concerts coming up in the near future as well. There’s Todd Rundgren doing the A Wizard/A True Star album in its entirety, with Roger Powell and Greg Hawkes on synths. That’s in a week and a half. A couple of weeks after that is U2, although probably not so synth-heavy. I’ll most likely have things to say about both of those shows.

Update: I just posted some photos from the show on Flickr

Morton Subotnick live at the Issue Project Room

2009-08-01T01:35:00.005-04:00

I didn’t quite know what to expect as I made my way to Brooklyn to see Morton Subotnick play live. When I got there, sitting outside the room before they let us in, you could hear all sorts of bleeps and bloops coming through the closed door. Piles of synthesizers? The legendary Buchla? No way to tell from my side of the door. When we were let in, though, there was a small table with a Mac laptop and a Korg nanoKONTROL on it and not much else. Not what I expected, but then again since I didn’t know what to expect it seemed to fit.

The space was very interesting. PA speakers in four corners, seats in the center. It was small, too, maybe 50 seats if even that many. Hanging from the ceiling were 15 speaker pods, which I think had a separate computer controlling the sound going to them. We were surrounded.

Subotnick was introduced, and then still standing started to explain what he was going to play, what his near-term plans were, and several incredibly funny stories of things that happened in his career. He was very personable and very friendly, seemed quite at ease. My favorite quote, from when he was describing the record company exchanging his four-track reel-to-reel for a new, modern eight track version: “If heaven is anything like an eight-track tape recorder it’s a pretty good place.”

Then he sat down to play.

I don’t know. I was maybe expecting cacophony, maybe expecting “difficult” music. What I got was simply amazing. He started slowly, triggering sounds and bits of music, going back and forth between the nanoKONTROL and the Mac’s keyboard. He spent quite some time putting together complex rhythms and melodies, slowly building up steam, taking us along with him. It was fascinating, but more importantly it was good music. I guess I was expecting synthesized weirdness, but what he gave us was instead masterly. It was almost like an explosion of sound in reverse. It was the musical equivalent of an explosion on video played backwards. At first, all the parts are scattered and random, but over time they start to accelerate towards each other and then faster and faster they all coalesce into a recognizable whole. It was exhilarating, completely unexpected, amazing. And that was only his first piece, a bit of Silver Apples of the Moon.

His second piece was similar, but very different. He explained how he had Don Buchla build him an early envelope follower (if not the very first one). Subotnick would then sing into it, storing his voice on tape to use later to modify sounds from the Buchla. The second piece used this technique, and parts of it sounded eerily like heavenly choirs singing square waves. He also used the vocal-formed envelopes to start some long, evolving rhythmic patterns and the joint was rocking. He even took his hands off the keyboards a few times, sat back and raised his eyebrows when the rhythms turned into something interesting. Then he’d smile and reach for a knob on the nano and completely mangle it into something just as amazing but totally new, almost looking like an evil professor with a gleam in his eye as he did it. When the piece was done he got a tremendous ovation, and then it was over. It was fabulous.

It was bug music, it was slamming rhythms, it was synthesizers being thrown around among the 19 speakers above the audience. It was ethereal beauty, it was entertainment, it was mesmerizing. I saw in places where Tangerine Dream came from, where Robert Rich came from, and even where Moldover came from. And if they had been there at the end of the show, they would have eagerly joined in with the standing ovation.

Midnight Rain on Pavement Glistens

2009-07-26T13:49:00.009-04:00

New tune, in a bit of a different style. Not a different style of music, just made in a way I haven’t done in a while.

I have a lot of synthesizers nowadays, but in olden times when I only had a Minimoog and a Casio CZ-101 I had to stretch myself and my equipment when trying to make complex tracks. The CZ-101 was four-note polyphonic, but there was a mode you could put it in which would let you split each note out onto its own separate MIDI channel, basically giving you four individual monosynths. At first glance this may seem like a major bummer, removing any possibility of chords. However, what I usually did back in the day was to have a bass sound on one channel, some sort of “paddish” sound on two more with maybe a lead sound on the last channel. And, because I had to record each pad note one at a time I ended up playing things I maybe never would have if I had better equipment and more instruments. Necessity ended up mothering my invention.

Which brings me around to what I’ve been doing lately, which is going back to my roots, so to speak, and recording a few tunes mostly with monosynths. In this day and age of spectacularly powerful computerized synthesizers, sometimes it just feels good to lay your hands on a Minimoog and start turning knobs. Lay down a track, then lay down another one on top of it in harmony. Then lay down another one on top of that to maybe provide some contrast to that harmony. Lather, rinse, repeat and maybe end up with a new song full of textures made only (well, mostly) with monosynths.

Somehow it feels very comfortable. Waaaaaaay back in 1979 or ’80 my recording studio consisted of my Minimoog, a Space Echo and my Radio Shack answering machine, back when answering machines were new and somewhat expensive technology (and people didn't like to leave messages because it was weird and strange). I still have some of those tapes somewhere in fact. It was a great day when I got a Yamaha QX7, though, as I could record multiple tracks (two of them at a time, I think) and then bounce them down. Then I got my first Mac and a copy of Performer. Not Digital Performer, mind you. The sheer luxury of “unlimited” MIDI tracks was overpowering. We’ve certainly come a long way to get to Ableton Live and mixing and matching eight-bar clips to compose our tunes.

Which brings me around (finally!) to the new tune. Eight mono tracks, each one building on the next, with the lone exception of a pad track where I played fifths. I might still add a crowd of robot voices (or maybe human ones, or both) over the beginning build up and ending slow down, but I'm not 100% sure of that. It was great fun, composing one line at at a time, and I definitely ended up with things I would not have gotten if I had played them on a polysynth. If I had used a modular it would have come out differently. Same if I had used a Monomachine, or a Prophet ’08. They’re just such different mindsets, and it’s good to have a supply of different kinds of tools at hand. Heck, I even sat down at a grand piano a couple of weeks ago. It’s still me making the music, but the tools you use definitely have an effect on the music you produce.

<a href="http://music.boxoftextures.com/track/midnight-rain-on-pavement-glistens">Midnight Rain on Pavement Glistens by Seth Elgart</a>

Synplant

2009-06-19T13:55:00.009-04:00

Flying Through The Forest. Seven tracks in Ableton Live, all made using Synplant. I saw it on Matrixsynth maybe a couple of weeks ago and was intrigued. I downloaded the demo, and then purchased it more or less right away. Basically, there’s no knobs or buttons. To design your sounds you instead “grow” them. It’s a little bit hard to describe, but once you try it it just makes sense. There’s a seed in the center, and 12 branches, one for each note. What you do is grab hold of a branch and drag the tip in towards the seed in the center or out towards the edge of the circular window, thereby changing the sound. Remember, though, that there are the 12 branches, so you’re only really changing the sound of the note you’re working on. You can make all 12 notes completely different, just a little bit different, or, by cloning the branch, all the same. You can even automate a note/sound rotation, which ends up making each note play a different sound each time you play it. You can go crazy if you want to, or you can use it as a subtle effect to make your sounds move and change over time.

It’s very easy to get completely chaotic “sound effects” but you’re also able to get all sorts of “normal” synth patches, too. Also, it’s fast and very easy. I usually start with a random seed, drag the branches around until I have a bunch of sounds that interest me and then save the “plant” as a template of sorts. I can then go back and clone a branch and refine it until I have something I like. If you sit down and play with it for an hour or so, you can get a whole family of new patches. It feels completely organic somehow, more like making scrambled eggs than working with a synthesizer control panel. It’s also totally intuitive once you get used to the idea, not in the way that you would “know” what turning a knob on a synth would do, but more like the way you, well, scramble eggs. You don’t have to think about it, you can just do it.

And that’s what I did this morning. Actually, I started last night, with a completely different synthesizer. I just got the Waldorf Edition, mostly so I could finally have my PPG Wave. It’s amazing, great fun, and sounds, well, incredible. So I made a burbling texture, threw in some (G-Force) Mellotron and some (Arturia) Minimoog, and sprinkled over the top I put in some extra burbles from Synplant and recorded a tune. However, this morning I went back to my Synplant sound and worked on it for a little while. I ended up with a whole folder full of good sounds, taking special care to make “useful” types of patches. I then fired up Live and went to work. It all just sort of easily flowed together. I then decided I needed a new sound, not quite a lead synth sound, but more like something to add one more bit of texture. I went back to Synplant and was able to quickly make a new patch which fit in quite well.

It’s all so, well, organic. The sounds are simply grown, and they’re lively and in motion and never static. It’s like the thing’s alive. However, don’t be under the impression that you have no control over the sounds you make. If you need to, there’s a “DNA” button you can click to get to all the parameters. In fact, you don’t have to grow your sounds at all if you don’t want to, you can tweak sliders to your heart’s content. I generally use both techniques, however. I grow my sound, then often go in and manually mess with the synth engine, usually just refining but occasionally radically altering the sound. I’ve only had it a week or so but already I’m getting familiar with the controls, but even if you’re brand new to the synth there’s a totally helpful Help button. When you click it you get a good explanation of what the control does. There’s also a good manual that comes with the program as well, so it’s relatively easy to learn the ins and outs. I ended up buying it long before the three week evaluation period was up.

Synplant. It’s totally worth a try.

Synplant tune (seven tracks of nothing but Synplant)
<a href="http://music.boxoftextures.com/track/floating-through-the-forest">Floating Through The Forest by Seth Elgart</a>

Waldorf PPG Wave 2.V tune (with Synplant track)
<a href="http://music.boxoftextures.com/track/the-dawn-star">The Dawn Star by Seth Elgart</a>

Piano vs. Synthesizer

2009-06-08T16:46:00.003-04:00

I just read an interesting article on the cost of pianos and why you should maybe get a synthesizer instead (thanks @tarabusch for retweeting @podcasting_news). Most of the reactions are in the “good idea” category, but some have been in the “I’m never coming back to this site again” category. One in particular caught my eye, saying simply “They most definitely do not sound better than a real piano.”

Here’s my reply.

I think we have to define what we mean by a “real” piano, rather than simply throw out knee-jerk reactions. I’m a musician. I have probably 20 synthesizers, a couple of guitars, and three pianos (although the “three” might need an asterisk).

One piano is a baby grand in the family summer home (built by my parents in the 1960s), another piano is a spinet in my apartment, and the third is a Yamaha digital piano. Which sounds best? The Yamaha, by about a thousand miles. The spinet is old and almost at this point unmaintainable, and in fact I’m thinking of simply putting it on a couple of dollies and rolling it out to the dumpster as I can’t get anyone to take it from me, not even for free, and frankly I don’t blame them. It needs work, and hasn’t been in tune in decades. The baby grand is in slightly better shape, but as it’s 200 miles away from where I live and I might only see it every other year or so it’s just not worth putting the money and time into it to maintain it properly. In comparison, the Yamaha digital is small, fits in my living room, sounds great, and never goes out of tune or needs any sort of maintenance other than dusting.

As to “real” pianos sounding better, sure, a US$35,000 Steinway concert grand is going to be unbeatable. However, I don’t think I’ll be able to fit it into my apartment somehow let alone ever being able to afford one. I’ve had the immense privilege of being able to play them a few times in my life, and yes, they’re incredible, but that’s not the point here.

The point is that my Yamaha is in tune and can be played. It sounds good, too. Is it as good as a Steinway? No, but on the other hand the Yamaha is in my living room and the Steinway isn’t. It even has a hammer action, so in a blind taste test I’m not sure I’d be able to tell the difference.

But, my Yamaha is not a synthesizer (although that could be argued both ways). It’s more or less a piano. Some of my “real” synths have semi-weighted keyboards, though. The action of a semi-weighted keyboard is much lighter and faster than a piano. In fact, I prefer these to unweighted synth keyboards as I feel they have a better “feel” than a “regular” synth keyboard. (Sorry for all these double quotes. I’ll try to control myself from here on out.) While my Yamaha fits nicely into my living room, it simply won’t fit into a car. For playing out I need something much more portable. For that I use a rather old 1980s device from Roland called the P-330. Plug a MIDI keyboard into the P-330 and you’re ready to rock and roll. Nowadays, though, there are much better choices (although I still use the P-330 now and then).

But wait, I just got distracted. The P-330 isn’t a synth either. I’m more of an analog guy myself, but pretty much any modern digital synthesizer nowadays will have have a dozen or so onboard piano sounds. Even though I play the piano, I’m not a pianist, but it would be interesting to have someone who was play a short piece with both an acoustic piano and, say, a Korg Oasys and then play them back for a group of listeners without telling them which was which. Done well, I think the success rate for identifying the correct instrument would be around 50%, no better than a random guess. I admit that the Oasys is itself somewhat large and maybe a bit, uh, expensive, but I’m pretty sure the results would be the same with a more affordable synthesizer as well.

So here’s the bottom line. Is a synthesizer a piano? Nope. There’s no room acoustics, you need good speakers, and when designing one you need to pay attention to things like the sympathetic vibration of strings when pedaling. However, with a good synthesizer that’s well recorded, it’ll sound just as good for most purposes. Solo recital in Carnegie Hall? Well, no, I’d use a concert grand (as if!). Rock and roll fightin’ against two guitar players? Definitely. Your 10-year-old in your living room? Absolutely, and you’ll be thanking me later when they can practice with headphones on so you don’t have to listen to them.

The New Oberheim SEM

2009-06-05T21:02:00.003-04:00

Tom Oberheim has announced a new version of the Oberheim Synthesizer Expander Module (SEM). The basics are that it’s going to be almost exactly like the original SEM from the ’70s but with an included MIDI/CV interface. There’ll be a few differences, mostly because a few of the original’s odd switches and knobs are no longer being made. Also, most of the circuitry will be surface mount which will keep the cost down compared to through-hole. The new SEM should be available in six months or so and be under US$1000.

When I was just starting to get into synthesizers in the mid- to late-’70s, one of my favorite albums was Larry Fast’s first Synergy album. When listening to it, I had teenage visions of a giant Moog modular synth. However, when I re-read the liner notes a year or so ago I was surprised to rediscover he basically used only a Minimoog and an Oberheim SEM, and reading that reminded me of my teenage synth gear lust. I eventually got a Minimoog when I was 19 or 20, but I was never able to get an SEM, so to hear that Tom Oberheim is preparing to release a modern-yet-the-same SEM has made me pretty darn happy.

I wish I had some original information about this, but the announcement happened in a small show-and-tell session up in Boston. Fortunately, there’s a decent chunk of his presentation available on video on the Stretta blog, including an awesome sounding snippet of Tom playing a working SEM. There’s a good summary of all the news over on the Matrixsynth blog, of course, including links to Flickr sets and a pile of comments.

I wish there was more to say about the new SEM, but that’s pretty much all the info we have so far. I hope to get on a waiting list for one of these, but at the moment there isn’t one. In fact, Oberheim doesn’t even have a working website ready yet. Hopefully as the year goes on we’ll get more information, but I have to say that with only the little bit we know so far I’m incredibly excited about this.

MacBeth M5N Analog Synthesizer

2009-05-06T12:40:00.004-04:00

The MacBeth M5N. It’s darn cool. I don’t think you can ever realize how big the thing is until you see one in person. I have a 27" Sony TV. The MacBeth is bigger. (Although to be fair, it’s not as deep.) Also, this isn’t the first one I’ve seen. I attended the first annual Unwieldy Synthesizer Potluck in 2007 in Brooklyn (and sadly there was no second one) where Tim Love Lee brought his futuristic, ’60s psychedelic typeface, white and baby blue M5. It could indeed make some noise, and it was just beautiful.

The thing with the M5 is, you don’t necessarily buy it for it’s sound generation power, although it certainly has plenty. There are more flexible synths available in much smaller sizes. However, none can match the M5 for first impressions. You see one and immediately say, “Wow.” That’s it. There’s no other reaction. It’s simply massive. There’s no other way to describe it. You look at it and you just want to touch those long-throw sliders. No fiddly little knobs here, just those nice, large slider caps that you just want to move. Sliders also have a huge advantage over knobs in that you have an immediate graphical representation of the state of the synth in just a glance, even from across the room. And given the size of the M5, the front panel is 30" wide and 26" high, seeing it from across the room is no problem.

Sadly, the M5 is at the moment no longer in production. (And the reason I’m only writing this now is because I just saw a beautiful red orange M5N at Analog Heaven Northeast a few days ago.) Don’t lose hope, though, because there are several new synths coming from MacBeth in the near future. One is the X-Factor Analogue Synth, which might be what happens when a Minimoog mistakenly stumbles into a science lab on a dark and stormy night. Also, in the research leading up to the X-Factor, Ken decided to break out his X-Factor circuits into individual modules. Nothing definitive on the X-Series Modular Synthesizer yet, but there are artist’s renditions up on his web site and promises of more information to come shortly.

To admittedly be slightly unfair about it, I sometimes look at the new Yamahas and Rolands and just sort of yawn. “Yup, another new synth. Whatever.” Which is what makes me truly grateful that there are still people out there like Ken MacBeth who make interesting, unusual, delightful and powerful instruments, and who keep the analog “tradition” alive.

Analog Heaven Northeast 2009

2009-05-03T21:45:00.003-04:00

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

I’m on the bus home from Analog Heaven Northeast, with Takla Makan in my headphones appropriately enough. There were around 20 synth setups, almost all of them modulars, which was just a little surprising. I brought my Mattson Mini Modular, which generated a lot of interest. I could have fit my entire 22-module MMM synth inside of one of the SKB popup mixer cases someone brought that had “only” 10 MOTM modules in it. And I might have actually been able to fit a second MMM in the case as well. I’m a big fan of MOTM modulars, don’t get me wrong, and in fact I have around four SKB cases’ worth myself. However, there’s something to be said for being able to fit my entire modular synthesizer inside my suitcase.

There were all sorts of interesting things at AHNE this year. One of the standouts was Matthew Davidson demonstrating Mark of the Unicorn’s Volta. Volta is software which runs on a Mac and lets you control a modular synthesizer using your choice of sequencers on your Mac. It does this by using some of the ins and outs of your audio interface to transmit control voltages rather than the more usual audio. Before I saw his demo I was mildly interested, now I’m totally sold. Total computer control of your modular right from your Mac. I want one. It works in most of the currently available Mac sequencer programs, and hopefully in the future will work with Five12’s Numerology as well.

I’m uploading a Flickr set at the moment, so I won’t go into great detail on what was there. I enjoyed trying out the Harpejji, sort of a Chapman Stick for keyboard players. There was also a couple of synths which were redone by CustomSynth. I’ve seen loads of pictures, but seeing them in the flesh was something else entirely. They were absolutely stunning. In fact, with one of them I didn’t even realize it wasn’t stock that’s how good it looked. I was happy there was a recently restored Minimoog there as well. I have a Minimoog Model D which unfortunately needs some work, so it was good to see one in such good shape. No matter how many synths I play or own, there’s still nothing like a Minimoog.

It may take me a few days to match up names with photos in the Flickr set but I’ll get them all in. This year’s show was really well attended, and it looked like all had a good time. If you’re in the northeast US somewhere think about coming next year. I missed a few years, and was very glad I could make it this time.

If you do attend, be prepared for some noise, though. Just sayin’.

Mattson Mini Modular - Pre-AHNE Photos

2009-04-29T15:21:00.004-04:00

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

It’s AHNE time, and after several years I’m finally getting a chance to go again. AHNE stands for Analog Heaven Northeast, by the way, and it’s a synth geek gathering held annually around this time of year about 30 miles west of Boston. I’m going to bring my Mattson Mini Modular, possibly for its first public showing on the East coast. In my preparations for the trip I had the modular out and open, so I decided to take some photos, both of the whole thing and of each module. Once it’s set up at AHNE I’ll take a few more “action” shots. I’ll take photos of everyone else’s gear as well, so expect another post next week.

Bolero and Bionics

2009-04-18T21:47:00.004-04:00

So I’m innocently minding my own business, just sorta idly going through some Gizmodo posts, when I see one titled From the Archives: Wired’s Bionic Quest for Bolero. That’s just too darn intriguing on too many levels for me to possibly be able to ignore.

I’ve always loved Ravel’s Bolero (but according to the article he himself was always a bit dismayed by its popularity). I’ve seen it performed live a good number of times, but I have to admit that pretty much all of those were by Todd Rundgren’s Utopia in the early 1980s. The first time I saw them do it I had basically no warning, and I ended up being totally blown away. I’m a huge Todd fan, so it was a special treat to see him do Bolero. They first played classical instruments, then their rock ’n’ roll instruments. Completely amazing.

But I digress. This was supposed to be about bionic ears.

The Wired article was from maybe four or five years ago, which I didn’t realize at first, but that doesn’t matter so much. It was also filled with interesting science and technology, but that wasn’t so important either. What made it worth reading was the sheer amount of angst, hope, worry and joy. I cannot possibly imagine what it would be like to lose my hearing, and to then against all hope be able to use technology to fight to get my hearing back. I also can’t think of a more joyful thing to strive for in that regard than to hear Ravel’s Bolero. To keep trying different technologies, each with it’s successes and setbacks, to finally be able to hear a voice but to not have the capability of hearing music, and to keep on persevering through years of effort, that is a story worth knowing about.

I can hear music. I take it for granted. I have friends who don’t quite hear what I hear though. They can certainly hear a song but can’t separate the bass from the rhythm from the lead. It is almost beyond my ability, however, to imagine what it would be like to finally once again be able to tell the difference between two notes an octave apart, and to be able to call that a total victory. And then a year later to be able to get a software upgrade for your hearing which lets you distinguish five different notes in an octave instead of one is simply mind boggling.

We live in an age of miracles.

Photo: from the Wired article. CT scan: Valley Radiology; Matt Hoyle.

Mobius Music

2009-04-15T20:45:00.003-04:00

Mobius music. Such a simple idea, yet absolute genius.

It’s been a long time since I posted something, missed a whole month in fact. I’ve been somewhat busy, doing the occasional music thing but mostly with life in general. I have a bunch of posts lined up, just waiting to be written. However, there was just something that to me was completely mind-blowing about this mobius strip music box that compelled me to write about it.

It’s a simple music box, it’s a piano roll, it’s a little twisted. The notes sequence through the tines in all different directions; backwards, forwards, upside down and around and around.

Some of you may be scratching your head and saying, “eh, whateva, it’s a music box.” I have no problem with that. For me, however, it’s simply a thing of beauty.

It’s Escher’s music box.

Hmmm. Anyone have a spare player piano they don’t need? I suddenly have an idea…

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ranjit/3314000751/
Video: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ranjit/3313999451/

And a tip o’ the hat to Cikira on the synthsights mailing list for posting the link, thereby allowing me to be amazed this evening. Thanks!

Foxwoods and the Buddha Machines

2009-02-28T18:45:00.004-05:00

A number of weeks ago, I went to Foxwoods. I’m not a gambler, had never been to a casino, thought it would be a little odd and a little sleazy and didn’t think I’d like it at all, really. Executive summary: I had a really good time, and it wasn’t at all what I expected.

But this is not about gambling, it’s actually about Buddha Machines.

Foxwoods is somewhat hard to describe. It’s like the nicest shopping mall you’ve ever been to, except there’s no teenagers hanging out and no candle stores. There’s music everywhere, much of it live. People are working hard to make sure they’re having fun. There’s food, drinking and gaming, and Foxwoods works very hard to make sure it all looks elegant and sophisticated.

And there’s sound everywhere.

There’s echoes in the parking garage, muted footsteps on the carpet as you walk in, people talking everywhere you look. There are bars in the middle of walkways with really good bands playing. There’s music in the restaurants. You’re immersed in sound and music, but the wonder of it all is that it’s not a sensory overload situation. They seem to manage it very well, making sure the sound levels aren’t overwhelming. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have a team of acoustic engineers hidden away somewhere in the complex, working feverishly in some deeply hidden control center monitoring noise levels all over Foxwoods.

We went there to play the slot machines. You’re walking down long and very wide hallways, rooms of various types all around you. There’s a poker room like you’d see on TV, there’s “typical” gaming rooms with roulette wheels and craps tables somewhere around, but just to the left is a giant room full of slot machines. As you turn into the room, all you can see for what feels like miles are millions of sparkling LEDs on what seems like thousands of machines. There are blinking lights everywhere, and quiet people sitting at the machines pressing buttons to spin or stop the wheels. The machines are in short rows and aisles, but the layout is so well planned that it never feels crowded, you never bump into anyone, and there’s plenty of room. It’s almost eerie, being in that large a room with so many people and having it be so quiet.

But although it’s quite, it’s not silent. As you walk among the machines, maybe playing one here, one there, you realize that every machine in every row and aisle all make the same sound. There’s none of the old-fashioned ratchet of one-armed-bandit levers, there’s no thunk of wheels stopping. There’s only one muted but clear note, coming from every single machine. They’re not synchronized at all, of course, as each machine plays its tones to follow the actions of the players and the results they manage to infrequently earn. It’s like a quiet cacophony, thousand of the same notes playing at seemingly random times, all around you. It’s like being in the woods while surrounded by crickets and frogs at twilight, when you can’t really see anything but you’re enveloped in their sound.

It’s like being in the middle of a new age ambient music piece. All around you are machines, all playing more or less the same note, more or less at random. It was beautiful, and I would never have imagined so much beauty to exist in a gambling casino, of all places.

It was like being surrounded by a million Buddha Machines.

A Buddha Machine, if you don’t know, is a small plastic box, the size of a handheld transistor radio, for those of you old enough to remember those. They come in various fluorescent colors, and have chips in them with maybe nine different sound loops. There are only two controls, a wheel and a button, and a speaker. The wheel controls volume, and the button advances to the next loop. That’s it, nothing else. I have four of them. What I like to do is stand them up on a table, in a rough arc in front of me, and then turn them on one at a time. This creates a small “sound environment” around me, unsynchronized, semi-random, uncontrolled and unplanned. It can at times be quite beautiful, mesmerizing even.

I hadn’t played with them in years, in fact, but finding myself in Foxwoods, immersed in that amazing sound environment, instantly reminded me. Every person in that casino, pressing those buttons which made a quiet click sound followed shortly by those magical notes, was, although unaware, creating the soundspace of thousands of Buddha Machines around us all. It was a magical moment of collective musical creation, and I was grateful to have been a part of it.

FM3 Buddha Machine
Foxwoods
Buddha Machine - iPhone version

Patrick Moraz Live With Yes - 1974

2009-01-28T20:02:00.006-05:00

Last week I received my copy of Yes Live at QPR (stands for Queens Park Rangers, for those of you who don’t follow English football). I have to say, it was both surprising and very satisfying. In my earlier post on Moraz and his double-keyboard Minimoog, I talked about how I was a teenager when Relayer came out. 35 years ago and that album still resonates with me, those silky smooth synth lines, which at the time and in fact only until just recently seemed rather mysterious since I had no idea what he used to produce them. A few weeks ago I found out he played Minimoogs. Once I knew that, I had to see video of him live, which is where YouTube is your friend. Many of those videos were from the DVD of the QPR show, so after a bit of searching I went out and bought it.

So, a couple of observations. One is that the DVD does not have the entire show. There’s a separate DVD of part two of the show, but I don’t have it yet. Two is that it’s not an official release. I’m not quite sure if it’s 100% bootleg, but it’s also not quite official either. There were more than a few sound quality issues with the recording, which a Wikipedia article claims were actual problems with the sound at the show. It sounded a little implausible to me, but after reading a number of reviews of the two DVDs on Amazon, there apparently were sound issues and it’s not just a poor recording. The reviews of the second disc say the sound got much better at that point, though. So if you’re looking for a flawless recording, this ain’t it, but if you’re looking for documentation of a great show and can deal with some sound quality issues in the first half, this is definitely for you.

But aside from all that, what I really wanted to talk about was the show. Even all these years later, all the way back from 1974, it’s a standout. One of the biggest surprises for me, actually, was that Jon Anderson played electric guitar for much of the show, as well as a bit of drums. Looking back on it with 20/20 hindsight, there’s of course no way they could have played Gates of Delirium without that extra guitar. I was honestly quite impressed. Anderson did a fine job adding a rhythm guitar to the song, and that allowed Steve Howe to have the freedom to let loose and play. It would have been a much harder job to recreate such a complex and involved song without Anderson’s help (and besides, it kind of gave him something to do through all those long instrumental passages). I’ve seen Anderson play, uh, somewhat cheesy acoustic folky guitar at any number of Yes shows over the years, but to see him A) play electric and B) actually really play it was darn impressive.

Perhaps, though, the most amusing aspect of the show was Chris Squire’s poodle boots (barely visible as an odd puffiness as Moraz crosses behind Squire). Now, it’s probably not fair to criticize 1974 fashions 35 years down the road, but still...To compensate for any hurt feelings my statement may bring up, I have to say that Squire’s Doctor Who-style coat was pretty cool. So Chris, if you’re reading this, please, no hard feelings about the boot thing, OK?

As far as equipment goes, Moraz had four Minimoogs. Two of those were “regular” ones, although one was black, and the other two were in his custom-made double-Mini. He also had an organ, with a Fender-Rhodes on top of the organ and one of his Moogs on top of that. That was on his right if he were facing the audience. On his left was a Mellotron and the double Minimoog. In front of him was the black Mini. Behind him I believe was a Clavinet, but I don’t recall him playing it in the video so I’m not sure. He also had a grand piano on the other end of the stage as well. Lastly, it looked like Alan White also had a Minimoog, but I didn’t see that one get played either so I’m not sure what he was doing with it.

I’ve seen Moraz live a few times, playing acoustic piano with Bill Bruford at the Bottom Line in New York City. It was a real treat, though, to see him go wild on a pile of synths, even if it was only on DVD.

Photos are single frames from the Yes Live at QPR Part 1 DVD.

Eddie Jobson and UKZ

2009-01-26T19:37:00.004-05:00

Eddie Jobson proves that prog still lives.

UKZ rolled into New York last night for the final show of their One City World Tour. Uh, wait, I think that was the debut show of the tour. No, really, they meant that literally. The only show on the “tour” was in New York. One does have to wonder about the economics of a single-city tour, but I’m not complaining.

Let’s start again.

UKZ, Eddie Jobson’s return from retirement after more than 25 years, came to New York last night and blew the doors off of the rather elegant Town Hall. The show was incredibly interesting, and Jobson was fantastic. Thick swirling textures, incredible organ, and of course his trademark violin leads. It’s almost like I’d forgotten all about him in the 25+ years since he “retired” and have now been forcibly (and happily) reminded of his existence.

When my friend and I first walked into Town Hall we couldn’t quite figure out what keyboards he had with him. He had a what looked like a Goff-modified B3 straight out of the backpage ads of Keyboard magazine from the ’80s. It looked like galvanized aluminum side panels somehow miraculously supported by very thin legs at the back. On closer inspection it was revealed that those thin legs were actually metal tubes which held the wiring, and that really there were nearly invisible lucite panels holding up the keyboards. On even closer inspection, I was rather astonished to see that Jobson was playing two Prophet T8s! I would never in a million years have guessed that he would bring, here in the 21st century, some vintage synths to his debut show. I have no idea what MIDI gear if any he had in external racks offstage, but he played no other keyboards besides those T8s. I’m still shaking my head about it in a way, and am having a little trouble expressing my sheer wonder at and appreciation of his doing that, especially in the current times when even Tangerine Dream uses Moog Modular emulation software and large onstage video monitors rather than actual hardware.

But regardless of his equipment, what really counts is that he’s still got it, and pretty much tore it up all night long. This is what prog is all about; having chops, and knowing how to use them. I realize there are bands like Dream Theater out there, and while I’m certainly a fan of theirs and they can certainly play millions more notes per minute, the sheer power with tastefulness of Eddie Jobson just can’t be beat. With Jobson, it’s all about the music, not necessarily all about the players. I guess what I’m trying to say is that Jobson has the chops, but doesn’t really need to have the flash of, say, a Keith Emerson with his knives in the organ. He doesn’t have to show you he’s the star, but his playing certainly shows that he’s the foundation.

I don’t want it to seem that Jobson was alone out there, though. He had an incredible group of players with him, including Trey Gunn on Warr guitar, Marco Minnemann on drums (with a little guitar), Alex Machacek on guitar, and Aaron Lippart on vocals (with a little guitar). After the initial U.K. album with Bruford and Holdsworth, Jobson didn’t have a guitarist with him. It was interesting to have that extra bit of texture this time, allowing him the freedom to work less and play more in a sense. To top it all off, near the end of the show they added Pat Mastelotto and Tony Levin from the opening band Stick Men for a searing rendition of one of King Crimson’s Larks’ Tongues in Aspic Part 2. For me, this was almost the perfect King Crimson lineup. Double bass, double guitars, drums, all on top of Jobson’s incredible textures and violin. If only...

It was a fantastic show, and I hope they go on to extend their One City World Tour to other cities. UKZ has a four-song EP coming out soon, with hopefully a full album to follow.

Jobson’s back, and it feels great.

Guitar Hero

2009-01-21T19:27:00.005-05:00

Well, I finally got a chance to play Guitar Hero. Last year I got my teenage daughter a Nintendo Wii for Christmas. Nobody had them in stock at the time, of course, so while she did get it as a Christmas present we actually only got it sometime this Fall. It’s actually a lot of fun, and definitely different from the PS2 we had previously. The games are much more “body oriented” on the Wii because the controllers are much more physical than a “regular” video game controller. They take your movement into account and not just your finger dexterity. It adds a third physical dimension which other video games lack, bringing the games into the room with you rather than having them confined to the TV screen. It’s an interesting difference.

My daughter had wanted Guitar Hero for quite a while, and has played it often at friends’ houses. I hadn’t really pre-formed an opinion about it, but sort of assumed it was similar to Dance Dance Revolution but with guitars instead of feet. On the surface that’s somewhat true, but I found that the games do have important differences. While the gameplay is similar, DDR is not so much about the music as it is about your movement. I’m not saying it doesn’t matter which song you’re dancing to, but rather the difference is that for Guitar Hero the point is the music whereas in DDR the music is an adjunct. I don’t feel that I’m expressing this well enough to be understood by people who have played neither game, but I hope this will become clearer later on.

Before I talk more about Guitar Hero, let me put a few facts out there. First, I’m a musician. I’ve read that some musicians are very good at Guitar Hero, but also that some great musicians just can’t do it at all. This puzzled me before I had played the game, but it makes sense to me now (but I’ll get to that). Next, I’m not a guitar player. I can play guitar, and in fact many of my songs which have lyrics are written on an Ovation acoustic six-string, but really I’m a keyboard player, and in some ways it might be more accurate to say I’m a synthesist. I also have a Gibson SG, which is probably more in the spirit of Guitar Hero than my Ovation. Lastly, while my daughter can play a number of instruments, mainly flute and piano, she’s not really a musician. Also, she’s much more of a gamer than I am.

OK. I’ve now gotten all that out of the way.

And now we get to the “problem” with Guitar Hero. I said earlier that it’s about the music, but after playing the game a number of times I’ve found that may not be true. As a musician, I rarely play a song the same way twice. (I know this because bandmates have told me so.) It’s definitely recognizable as the same song, though, and while I do play it mostly the same, it’s never exactly the same. In fact, sometimes a song may be radically different when played at different times. As a musician, this is good. It’s called creativity, often with improvisation mixed in. And this is where the problem with Guitar Hero becomes apparent. The goal of the game is to play the songs as “accurately” as possible. While this is not a bad thing in music, it’s actually the entire goal of Guitar Hero. In music, you’re (hopefully) rewarded for improvising, but in Guitar Hero you actually get “punished” for improvising, mainly because the game console notices that you’re not playing exactly the right notes. It doesn’t matter that your notes may be very good ones, very musical ones, it only matters that they’re the correct ones, at least according to the programmer’s idea of the way the song should be played.

Now I have to say that this isn’t bad, but it also isn’t music. Once I had noticed it and figured it out, it made me very aware of the fact that I was playing a game rather than playing music. It didn’t matter if my “extra” notes were better than what I was supposed to be playing, it only mattered that I wasn’t supposed to be playing them.

One of the interesting things about the game is that if you play enough wrong notes in a row, or don’t play notes you should have played, the crowd starts to boo. It’s actually pretty funny, and adds a bit of tension and feedback to the game. I’m not nearly as good as my daughter is at the game, so I tend to experience this more than occasionally, shall we say. But this is one of the main ways I figured out what was wrong with the game. One time I played it, the song we were doing (maybe Eye of the Tiger?) had a long and somewhat boring intro section where you weren’t supposed to be doing anything. As a musician, I “naturally” started strumming the rhythm with what on a guitar would have been muted strings. Imagine my outrage when the crowd started booing! What I had played was perfectly correct and acceptable from a musician’s standpoint, but from the game’s standpoint I was playing illegal notes. I was never able to recover from my quickly accumulated negative rock meter levels, and eventually got booed off the stage. Imagine!

It was actually hilarious, but at that moment it was clear to me that the game had a fatal flaw. There’s nothing wrong with it as a game, but it definitely is not about making music.

Numerology 2.0

2008-12-26T12:33:00.011-05:00

Numerology, by Five12. It’s your typical modular Moog sequencer on steroids, capable of chugging away furiously in the background whilst you lay down those exquisite textures on top in sequenced heaven. Oh, did I mention it’s software?

There’s good things and bad things about that. The bad thing, of course, is that it requires a computer to make use of it, Mac OS X to be specific. You can’t just throw a MIDI hardware box in a backpack and then later hook it up with one wire. That’s about all of the bad stuff, however. The good stuff is that it’s incredibly flexible and extremely powerful, and that’s with me really only scratching the outer surface of it. The beauty of Numerology is that it’s modular. You can drag in a new module at any time to add further controls. It’s tough to do that with a hardware box.

You can also have presets. In the screenshot I have six different presets, ranging from 16 basic pulses all at C3 in preset number 1, going on to increasingly complex rhythms as you change to the higher numbered presets. (I think the name “preset” is the tiniest bit unfortunate as they’re really closer to drum machine patterns rather than synthesizer presets. I don’t want anyone to think the program comes with preset sequences that you’re stuck with.) Note that you’re not limited to 16-step sequences. You can have as many as 128 steps, and there are several sequencer modules to choose from, including a polyphonic sequencer, a drum sequencer, and a matrix-style (i.e., piano-roll style) sequencer and arpeggiator. Plus, you’re not limited to controlling only the pitch of notes. You can also control velocity, step length, accent and many other parameters, including three CV values. In the analog synth world, CV stands for control voltage, but since we’re in the software world CV stands here for control value. You can route any of these parameters to any other parameter via the port patching area. In all honesty this is not something I’ve done yet as I’ve only had version 2.0 for a couple of weeks, but the potential for powerful modulations of all sorts is there.

I find Numerology 2.0 to be a lot of fun to play with and incredibly musical. That’s 2.0, though. For me, version 1.0 was not quite so usable. I’m not sure what it was, but I never really “got” 1.0, whereas 2.0 just seems to be intuitive and to make sense to me. 1.0 seemed overly complicated and hard to patch up to get it to run, whereas 2.0 seems ready to go. It’s quite possibly me, although I have to say that there are several how-to videos on the Numerology web site that may have made all the difference. It’s a simple concept, really. Make a video to show people how to use your software. I can’t quite understand why software companies aren’t doing it more often. Kudos to Five12 for taking the time and putting in the effort to make these videos. As a user of their software, I can’t say enough how much of a difference that has made for me.

I’m including a sequence I made a week or so ago. It’s only the “raw” sequence, no textures or other flavorings just yet but they’re coming. I’ve only just now read the section in the manual on how to synchronize Numerology with Ableton Live, so this piece is so far a stand-alone sequence. I’ll be able to fully integrate it into Live in the near future. You also need to run a program to route the audio around your computer. I installed Soundflower, but there are others. Numerology is not a plug-in that runs in other software, rather it’s a stand alone sequencer. It’s not at all difficult to integrate it into your recording environment, but it is something you’ll have to think about a little bit rather than simply selecting it from a menu in Live

The sequence in six variations is running in Numerology and is playing an instance of Arturia’s Minimoog V. There’s also a carefully timed delay as well, which is what’s letting the pulses continue on and which makes it seem at times to be more than one sequence. Once I get all the MIDI and audio routings set up and tested, I’m going to replace the soft synth with a real synth. I’ll post again when I get that finished, hopefully sometime next week.

I didn’t intend for this to be a review of Numerology, nor did I intend for it to be this long. I was only going to post an example sequence along with a few words of explanation. I guess I once again got a little carried away with my enthusiasm. Now all I have to do is figure out how to do that Tangerine Dream-style ratcheting and I’ll be all set. (You can see right at the beginning that the sequencer is moving very slowly, but on every other step Froese makes it put out five notes. Another example is at 1:30. Before that moment, the sequencer is putting out sixteenth notes, but after 1:30 it's spitting out rapid-fire notes for each step. Classic Tangerine Dream.)

Numerology 2.0, from Five12. US$119, ~~but for a short time you can get it for $99~~. No, this is not a commercial or endorsement. I just happen to really like the software and find that it allows me to make music I could previously only imagine.

Update: the TD-style ratcheting is dead-simple to do. Just pick a note and set the Divide control for the number of fractional repeats you want.

The MMM Arrives

2008-12-19T18:33:00.004-05:00

Snowstorm in New York City, modular synth in a plastic bag on the subway, just another normal day.

My Mattson Mini Modular arrived today. An entire year since I ordered it, taking a lot on faith, trading emails with George and getting pretty regular updates. And now it’s sitting in my living room with blinkenlights and a spaghetti of patch cords. It’s hard to even think of it as finished. It’s been a process for so long that it’s hard to think of it as a product. I’m not criticizing or anything, far from it. Some things simply take time to design, build and test.

It’s hard to describe how small it is. It’s shockingly small. The modules are half the size of my MOTM modules. The whole thing, all 22 modules, could fit in a large-ish backpack. I don’t mean a camping trip backpack, I’m talking about an on-one-shoulder book bag type of backpack. A Minimoog has 10 or 11 modules, more or less. My MMM has 22, with room for two more, and it’s smaller than my Mini. I could put together two more cabinets for a total of 48 modules and it would still be smaller than my Minimoog. And, it’s a modular. I can hook things up any which way I want. I have SKB popup mixer cases filled with MOTM modules. Each one holds maybe a dozen modules (if you get a bunch of small ones). I could fit the entire MMM modular with its 24 modules inside the SKB case and still have room for plenty of other gear.

I can see getting plenty more modules. I’ve had it for two hours, and I can already see needing more. I know, it’s a sickness. I haven’t even hooked it up to a keyboard yet, just patched together a pile of modules and flipped the envelope generator switches to make them cycle. It sounds great, too. I’ll post some mp3s over the weekend, but I can’t right now because all my gear is 1/4" and the MMM is 1/8" (sheepish grin). I’ll have to get some conversion cables before I can plug it into my audio interface.

George has shipped the first batch of MMM systems. I hope plenty more people order them and he can spend the next bunch of years making more and more modules. If you’ve been on the fence about getting one, get off the fence. It’s totally worth it. I’ve been the guinea pig so you don’t have to. Go for it.

Too many b0xen

2008-12-13T21:39:00.007-05:00

I posted a note earlier today to the Analogue Heaven mailing list letting everyone know that I’m going to sell some of these, but I wanted to post some photos as well as a bit more information. Here’s what I’m going to sell:

x0xb0x

I put up a post on the x0xb0x a couple of months ago, so I won’t go into too many details about it except to say that’s it’s a really good machine. I’m selling it for US$850, exactly what I paid.

Future Retro Revolution

I bought this new less then six months ago. It’s in perfect condition, with the original box and manual. $650.

Korg ER-1/EA-1

These are a great pair of boxes, Korg’s first entry into the field. They’re unique in two interesting ways. One is that you can program several of the tracks to have a unique sound rather than having just the sounds the box comes with, and the other is that every knob is recordable, meaning that if you turn a knob, that movement is now part of the recorded sequence. Very powerful. $300 for the pair.

Future Retro 777 (NOT for sale)

This one’s why I’m selling the others. I’ve been interested in 303s, but they’re so darn expensive nowadays. Once I found out about the 777 that was it, I wanted one. The problem was that I was maybe a year too late and they had stopped making them. That’s why I got the Korgs, because they were good and they were affordable. A few years later when I had some money I got a Monomachine, mistakenly thinking it would be 303-ish. It’s an incredible box, but I view it as more of a “regular” synth than a 303. Earlier this year, I decided to get the Revolution. It’s another really good box, and it does the 303 thing. A few months later, I was a x0xb0x crossed my path, and even though I had the Revolution, I couldn’t pass the x0xb0x by. I was pretty happy with the state of affairs, but I did start to think about the fact that I was starting to accumulate the things. Then, just last week I came across a 777 on eBay which I won for a quite reasonable price. Finally, I had the one I had originally wanted, but in the meantime I had accumulated all these other boxes. That’s how I ended up here; I simply have too many of them. I have the 777, and that’s really all I need. So the others have to go to good homes where they’ll be played, with feeling. The 777 stays here, though, as do my Monomachine/Machinedrum.

The Patrick Moraz Double Minimoog

2008-12-11T21:01:00.003-05:00

It might take me a little while to get there, but give me a minute or two and I’ll make it. I promise.

It all started many years ago when I got Chris Squire’s solo album Fish out of Water. I’m a huge Squire fan, and I’ve always loved that album. The problem is, I only had it on vinyl so I couldn’t really play it anymore. I don’t really like re-buying the same albums again and again, except for a very few. (Some notable exceptions are Close to the Edge, of which I have far too many copies, mostly because I kept wearing them out from playing the LPs so often when I was a lad, and also 2001, which sorta counts and sorta doesn’t because it’s both a book and a movie and I have several copies of each. But I digress. Although I -did- warn you of that at the beginning.)

Anyway, I’ve never really loved buying music from iTunes because of the DRM, although I’ve bought a good amount of music there over the years, so I’ve recently started to buy mp3s from Amazon’s music store. No DRM, which is actually rather refreshing (but I digress again). The beauty of this is that it’s actually pretty inexpensive for many older albums. I got Fish Out Of Water and The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway for US$14 for both of them together. That’s not a bad deal.

I’m getting there. Trust me.

The point of this is that I just about a week ago got Fish Out of Water, and while I certainly remembered the album, I had more or less forgotten that Patrick Moraz plays most of the synthesizers on it. It was almost a revelation. After the first time I listened to it, I almost immediately played the Relayer album. And that brings me to Moraz’s incredible synth sound. I’ve had Relayer since the early ’70s when it came out, but despite having played many synths in my time I was never sure how Moraz got that “liquidy” in-motion kind of joyful sound out of his synths.

If you want to hear what I’m talking about, it’s in the middle of The Gates of Delirium, after the “war” section but before Soon, right after the drum bashing and right before Steve Howe’s slide guitar solo. The Moraz solo synth part comes in at 12:48 in the studio recording. It’s like he’s got a slow sweeping LFO on the cutoff frequency at the same time that he’s got a much faster frequency modulation going on for vibrato (which maybe he did with the pitch bend wheel). Incredible technique.

I was just a little too young to have seen him with Yes, being only around 13 or so when he was with them. I’ve seen him play with Bill Bruford several times on their piano and drums tours, though, so I don’t feel deprived too much. But ever since I got Relayer I’ve always wondered what he used to get those sounds.

So naturally, in order to find out I turned to the Analog Heaven mailing list, where I enjoyed a good discussion with several people who were there at some of those early ’70s Yes shows, and where I was also directed to various YouTube videos. It turns out that Moraz played a pile of Minimoogs! I was completely surprised when I found this out. I actually own four Moogs—two Minis, one a Model D and one a Voyager, a Little Phatty and a Multimoog. I would never have guessed in a million years that Moraz was playing a Minimoog. I’m going to have to try a few things now, such as a Harmonizer or my Moogerfooger phase shifter, to see if I can get something approaching that incredible sound. It just doesn’t sound like a Minimoog to me.

I’m almost there. I promise.

So, in my research I was directed to the Yes show at Queens Park, where I saw him playing some kind of odd keyboard thing that could do two notes at once. Not the one he played for the solo mentioned above, but a different one on the side facing the drums. Unfortunately, the only decent shot of it was from below him. You could only see that he was using both hands, but not what the instrument was. I couldn’t for the life of me think of a black duophonic synthesizer that existed at around that time. And now that brings me to the Cantos Music Foundation. Unbelievable! They actually have the very instrument Moraz was playing in the video. And guess what? It’s a Minimoog also! Apparently Moraz had the some custom work done on two Minis, one black and one natural wood. They took the electronics section out of one and the keyboard out of the other and swapped them, putting the electronics into the space the keyboard one occupied and vice versa. He ended up with a dual keyboard in one case and a dual Minimoog in the other, and those two-note synth lines I was hearing was Moraz playing both keyboards at once. In fact, you can see him doing that but using only one hand at times, leaving his other hand free to play something else. Another incredibly innovative technique and a sound that’s very hard to duplicate.

I feel like I’ve learned a lot this week. I’ve talked to a lot of people on the AH list, seen a lot of videos, and been to more than a few web sites. I was hoping to find a good photo taken from the audience so I could see exactly what Moraz was playing, but finding the Cantos Foundation photos was a huge stroke of luck. I’ve been to their web site before, and I’ve actually seen that photo before as well, but I never really made the connection between those early Minimoog photos and Patrick Moraz. True serendipity. I don’t often find myself in Calgary, but the next time I do I’ll be sure to drop by so I can see some of their amazing instruments in person.

Photo, number 79, used with the kind permission of the Cantos Music Foundation

Mattson Mini Modular - Almost Done

2008-12-09T08:27:00.004-05:00

A few shots of the Mattson Mini Modular. I hope to have it in my hands soon.

Mattson Mini Modular Under Construction

2008-11-30T18:55:00.003-05:00

Here’s a photo of my MMM modular synth, still under construction on George Mattson’s bench. It's basically complete and ready to go except for the filter, which you can see on the breadboard. Can’t wait to get my hands on it.

x0xb0x

2008-10-26T22:38:00.007-04:00

I just brought my new x0xb0x home, and all I can say is, “Wow!”

I have a few boxen of various types, some low-end, some high-end and some “middle-end.” The x0xb0x is the real deal, however. Not that the others aren’t good, but they’re not 303s. Some would say, “well, neither is the x0xb0x,” but it’s as close as I’m going to get without spending a zillion dollars (actual, genuine cost of a real 303 in 2008 US dollars).

The boxes I already had are a good assortment. I first got a Korg ER-1/EA-1 pair. They’re awesome, sound great, are fun to use and can do things a 303 can’t (such as recording every knob movement as part of the stored sequence). I was perfectly happy with them, but still, the EA-1 is not a 303, even though it sounds quite good.

I also have an Elektron Monomachine/Machinedrum pair. I wrote about the Monomachine in an earlier post, and have recorded several tunes with it. It’s awesome, sounds great, and is fun to use. When I first got it, I thought it would fulfill my 303 lust, but it’s not that sort of box. Well, maybe it is, but not in my hands. I think of it as another synthesizer in my arsenal, one that happens to have a 303-like interface.

Lastly, to fulfill my need for excessive squelchiness, I got a Future Retro Revolution. It worked. I finally had “that” sound.

But then, I had an opportunity to get the x0xb0x for a non-usurious price. I thought about for a day or three and decided I couldn’t pass it up. I brought it home this evening, and not counting a two hour break at Nevada Smith’s to watch Man City, my team, defeat Stoke 3-0, throughout which I could feel the presence of the x0xb0x in my backpack at my feet, I’ve been playing with it non-stop since I returned home. It’s the real thing.

Now admittedly I’ve only had it for a few hours, but there have already been a few bumps in the road. This is not a critique of the x0xb0x as it works more or less exactly the same way a 303 would as far as I know. However, and I could be wrong, but it seems to me that you can’t edit a sequence live while the machine’s running. I have a funny feeling that I’ve been totally spoiled by the Monomachine and the Revolution as both of those are completely editable while they’re chugging along.

It don’t matter though. The thing just sounds amazing. <grin>

Also, the x0xb0x came with a few mods on it. From right to left, top row, as you’re looking at the back of the unit are the bass boost, resonance boost, and unholy distortion, with an amount knob and an on/off switch. (The last switch on the left is the as-far-as-I-know “normal” on/off switch.)

Which brings me around to my original thoughts about whether or not I had to get the x0xb0x considering that I already had the Revolution. The jury’s still out on that one, but the large reason I decided to get it was that I couldn’t refuse the price I was offered. No, that doesn’t sound quite right. I got it because of the sound, but I’m still a little in shock at coming across a reasonable deal for a fair amount. In fact, I’m honestly not sure I could tell the two apart in a blind taste test. Also, I have a friend who has and actual TB-303. At some point in the near future I hope to get all three machines together in the same room along with a video camera and my laptop so I can record one of those which-fader-is-the-real-303 videos.

I’ve got to go now, there are hours of squelches I have to get to.

Live vs. Mostly Live

2008-10-19T00:20:00.003-04:00

I’ve thought a lot about this issue over the years, and during the past few days on the SynthSights mailing list there’s been a discussion on live music being performed on laptops (and note that this post is a slightly longer and mildly improved version of a post I put up there a day or so ago).

I’ve seen a few live shows where I wasn’t exactly sure how much of it was actually being performed live. The most disappointing one was Tangerine Dream. My heros. It was still a great show, but one would expect that when Edgar Froese comes out from behind the keyboards to play guitar there would be a noticeable change in the music behind him. I realize it’s only three guys, or nowadays several people, but it seemed more like they were tending the music rather than playing the music. I suppose I’d prefer six people playing rather then three people and a tape. I’m not saying I don’t enjoy their shows, but there’s always something about it that makes me wonder.

Another example is Peter Gabriel. His shows are amazing, and I’m a huge fan. The early “solo” shows were just great shows, almost as if he were finally getting to do things the way he wanted them done. Larry Fast playing keyboards didn’t hurt either since for me seeing Synergy live was a total bonus (and note that he did a solo show, presumably with much computer help, at NearFest X back in June). The more recent shows, however, sometimes make me question what I’m hearing. There are a lot people with him and there’s a lot going on, but fairly often I find that my ears perk up and I’m unable to figure out who, if anyone, is playing something. Gabriel has some large screened device on his keyboard table, which actually I’m now wondering what it is, so it’s a bit up in the air as to how much of the show is not actually being performed live. In some ways I feel a little cheated when I see him. The music is so good, but there’s always that little voice in the back of my head questioning the veracity of what I’m hearing.

Then there’s Todd Rundgren. He’s done all sorts of shows, some with bands that had three keyboard players so he could do it all live, and some solo shows where he would introduce his Roland sequencer as his bandmate. Totally up front, you always know what was live and what wasn’t. However, there have been times (such as when I saw him live last week) when there was a small bit of the show which was a slightly awkward bit of pre-recording. Last week there was a moment in the middle of a song where they had a short sequencer break that intro’d a different section of the song. You couldn’t leave it out, but you also couldn’t really play it live. Me, I would have preferred it if they had brought in one extra piece of equipment rather than having it be something done offstage. Even if it were done offstage, at least trigger it with a keypress onstage. That’s what MIDI is for, after all. It was pretty amusing to see them all mill about for a moment during that momentary break before they started to play again. This isn’t a critique at all, it was just a little surprising to see them all stop playing for a moment.

The other extreme is something like Jordan Rudess at Moogfest a year or so ago. An amazing performance, but it was just a bit distracting to hear an entire prog band blazing away but to only have one guy up on stage. Also at Moogfest, although at an earlier edition, was Thomas Dolby. Very entertaining and a good show, but it was obviously one guy with his computer. In fact, he was having a bit of trouble with the software. That wasn’t a bad thing, though, as he’s such a good performer and kept up his chatting with the audience throughout. The problem with both of those performances, though, is that they were accompanying their CDs or their computers. For me, seeing these two great performers just sort of “playing along” to their music was just the tiniest bit of a letdown.

And then there’s Robert Rich, also. I’ve only seem him live once (so far). It was a really good show in a really good venue with a really good MOTM modular behind him. I had a bunch of his records, but I was wondering how he’d do them by himself in a live situation. Well, it took him two laptops but he pulled it off. A substantial portion of the show had him playing “effected” guitar or PVC flutes whilst being accompanied by his own music. However, I believe he was using Ableton Live, which allowed him to mix and vary things as the mood struck. It was a bit more interesting than a simple recording with him playing along. Was it fully live? No, not really, but it was interesting and entertaining. I appreciated that while the show contained pre-recorded music it was also under the control of the performer rather than simply being a “tape recorder” playback.

I want to make it clear, though, that I am in no way trying to slam any of these artists. In fact, I'm a huge fan of most of them and the rest I “only” like a lot. We’re talking about fully live vs. partially live here, not whether the music is good or bad.

Anyway, this is starting get way too long. My vote: I prefer live. I’d rather bring in a couple of extra people to help me out if I have something I can’t fully play on my own in a live situation. I’d also rather start a sequence with my own two audience-visible hands on a hardware device than to click a mouse. Same music, different perception.

Music for Babies

2008-10-13T20:25:00.002-04:00

There’s been a thread going on on the Analog Heaven mailing list about music for babies, and that immediately reminded me of early 1994. Alice in Chains had just released their EP called Jar of Flies, which actually went to number 1 on the Billboard charts, and my second daughter was born. I really like Alice in Chains, but there’s just something about this EP which is magic. I thought maybe it was just me, but when I went onto Amazon a moment ago to get the link to the album, many of the reviews said the same thing.

This is what I posted on the mailing list earlier today:

When my daughter was a baby and was fussin’ late at night, I used to put her up on my shoulder and slowly walk her around the living room late at night with Alice in Chains’ Jar of Flies on the stereo. The first song, Rotten Apple, with that incredible liquid bass line and talkbox lead guitar to go along with the chime-y rhythm guitar and those amazing dual vocals and wah wah guitar at the end; my daughter, even at that age, was mesmerized. Chilled her out every time, she just listened to the music and relaxed.

That was a while ago as she’s now 14 years old (going on 24, of course).

Don’t ever underestimate the power of music, even with newborns. Humans, most of them at least, all react to music. Both my kids grew up with me playing synths and rock and roll and acoustic guitar and music all the time on the stereo.

Every time I hear Alice in Chains, it makes me remember those long, quiet nights of walking slowly around my living in the dark with my newborn daughter on my shoulder. I’ll never forget it.

Todd Rundgren at the Tarrytown Music Hall

2008-10-12T02:52:00.012-04:00

Just got back from seeing Todd Rundgren up in Tarrytown. For those of us from New York City, Tarrytown is best known for being at the eastern end of the Tappan Zee Bridge. It’s about 45 minutes north of New York by train, and I don’t recall ever going there before. It actually seemed like kind of a cool town, although all I actually saw of it was a few blocks of Main Street and the inside of the Tarrytown Music Hall.

I realize this blog is “supposed to” be about synthesizers and electronic music, but really it’s about music in general. And although I’m a total synth head, I have to say that Todd is utterly and completely my favorite musician. I’ve probably seen him a couple of hundred times since that first show back in 1977. In fact, in the past year I’ve seen him four times already: twice last December at the Blender Theater, once in the round at the Westbury Music Fair doing the Sgt. Pepper album and tonight in Tarrytown. He’s also doing another two shows at the Blender again this coming December which I’m going to.

Opening the show was Gillen and Turk. They’ve played all up and down the Hudson River Valley, doing both electric and acoustic shows. I hadn’t heard of them before, but I thoroughly enjoyed them and bought Backs to the Wall, their latest CD, in between their set and Todd’s. They played a relatively short acoustic set and were darn good.

Todd’s portion of the show was amazing. His latest album is called Arena, and he and the band played it from top to bottom (as Todd put it during the show). In some ways it was a bit of an odd show. They did six or so tunes, maybe more, and then did the entire Arena album after which came two encores. It wasn’t a bad kind of odd, but it was a bit different from his usual. The band was hot, too. With Todd was Jesse Gress on guitar, Prairie Prince on drums, Rachel Haden on bass (who’s birthday it was, by the way) and Kasim Sulton on keyboards and guitar. Rachel Haden’s new to the band this year, but the rest have played with him in various combinations for years.

It was a great show. For several years Todd did a “four man” power trio show. It started out with guitar, bass and drums, but they pretty quickly added a fourth in the person of Jesse Gress. Problem is, they still called it the power trio tour. It’s even worse now as Todd has added Rachel Haden on bass and in addition has brought Kaz back, not to play his usual bass, but to fill out the sound with keyboards and as the third guitar player. It’s still the incredibly powerful heavy rock of the power trio, except it’s a trio only in the same way as the Hitchhiker’s Guide is increasingly inaccurately still called a trilogy. Same spirit as the power trio, only it’s two people tastier!

For you Todd fans out there, he totally rocked from start to finish. Black Maria, the two covers he’s done lately, a golden oldie or two, all of Arena and then ending the show with Just One Victory. Unbelievable!

I’ve been somewhat under the weather for the past few weeks, but after this latest hit of Todd, I suddenly feel somewhat better.

(And, if you don’t happen to be a Todd-head please accept my apologies. We’ll return to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.)

And remember kids, when going to rock shows, don’t forget your earplugs.

(Sorry about the photo quality, but I forgot my camera at home and all I had was my iPhone. Also note that the iPhone mic can’t register higher than 105dB, so it was probably a bit louder than indicated.)

DSI Mopho 2

2008-10-02T01:30:00.005-04:00

My Mopho arrived today! I got mine from Sweetwater in the US. Serial number 39, bright yellow, and way smaller than I expected. It more or less fits in your hand, as you can see from the photo of it, uh, fitting in my hand. I haven’t played with it much yet, but I did want to put up a few photos.

I also downloaded the free Mopho editor from Sound Tower. Turns out it’s the LE version and there’ll also be a Pro version down the road. The LE version is free, the Pro version most likely won’t be. They’re not yet saying what the Pro version will have that the LE version does not, nor do they mention what the cost will be. Amusingly, the Mopho editor window is larger than the actual Mopho!

I’ll post on the Mopho again once I’ve recorded a few things with it, either this weekend or next week.

Jean-Jacques Perrey and Dana Countryman Live

2008-10-02T00:57:00.005-04:00

It’s almost midnight and I just got back from (Le) Poisson Rouge on Bleeker Street in New York City where I saw Jean-Jacques Perrey and Dana Countryman. I really didn’t have much of an idea of what to expect, but I thoroughly enjoyed the basically hilarious and interesting show.

Opening the show was Circuit Parade. Didn’t know who they were by the name of the band, but it turns out that I’ve seen Joe McGinty posting on mailing lists I read and I’ve also run across Leon Dewan’s Dewanatron page before. It was almost like seeing some old friends play in a club, even though I’ve never met them. Plus, how much more analog can you get than a live cello?

After their set came the main attraction, Jean-Jacques Perrey and Dana Countryman. Perrey was absolutely charming and totally hilarious! He introduced every song with a story, sometimes also pointing out some of his musical partners who were in the audience (Gershon Kingsley, for example). Perrey and Countryman played mostly analog equipment. Countryman had a Prophet ’08 as his main instrument, and Perrey had a Poly Evolver Keyboard, Minimoog Model D and an Ondioline. Countryman also had an Arp 2600, but it sounded like it was constantly playing a sample and hold pattern in the background while Perrey was talking, so Countryman leaned over and switched the 2600 off.

Most of the songs had CD backing tracks which Perrey and Countryman then accompanied. The tunes were short, happy, bleepy and bloopy and Perrey’s occasional conducting, singing along and/or silently mouthing synthesized or recorded sound effects was just too funny. It looked like he was having the time of his life and brought the whole audience along with him.

If you happen to be in the Montreal area on October 3rd, it’s worth catching their second and final show of the “tour.” It wasn’t deep or serious music, but it was certainly great fun.

DSI Mopho

2008-09-26T19:55:00.005-04:00

There’s a new synth called the Mopho, just announced by Dave Smith Instruments. It’s small, bright yellow, inexpensive and for me totally fascinating. It’s only 5" by 7.5" and contains one complete voice from the Prophet ’08. Sweetwater claims it will be available the week of October 5th and cost US$400.

It has four dedicated buttons for cutoff, resonance, attack and decay/release. It also have four assignable buttons under a two line display. That may not seem like much to program something as interesting as a Prophet ’08 voice, but DSI has two answers for that. One is that they’re including a free Mac and/or Windows editor, and the other is that if you happen to have one laying around you can use the front panel of a Prophet ’08 to access almost everything in the Mopho.

I say “almost” everything because there are a few nice additions built into the Mopho that the Prophet ’08 doesn’t have.

The first addition is a set of suboscillators. Each oscillator now has a sub. I’ve done some good basses on my ’08, but now with suboscillators I fully expect to be able to blow the roof off the joint. Next comes an audio input. You can process external audio with the Mopho. But it’s not only that as you can also gate the synth from the audio input. This means that the Mopho can be silent until it detects audio at its input, then once it does, all sorts of things can happen.

Now let me talk a moment about the awesomeness of the Push It button. I’ve been wondering how I could do some of my tunes live as I used multiple Prophet ’08 tracks on some of them. With a Mopho or two, I can simply push the button and have it latch the sequencers on. Instant performance backgrounds. Plus, you can use it in conjunction with the audio input to gate the Mopho so the sequencers play only when audio is sensed at the input. Can you think of any other synthesizer that can do that? And even if you can, can they do it for $400?

There’s been a bit of growsing on the Analog Heaven mailing list about the Mopho. Much of it is because it’s a super bright yellow, which for some reason has upset a few people. Personally, I have nothing against yellow as I’ve owned both a Waldorf microQ rack and a full Q rack in the past. (I sold the Micro Q so I could get the Q, then I sold the Q so I could get a black Q keyboard.) All consideration of color aside, the Mopho is arguably more powerful than a Minimoog, it’s the size of a large format paperback, it comes with free editing software, and, as if all that wasn’t enough, it’s friggin’ cheap.

I’ve already ordered mine from Sweetwater.

Photo credit:
Photo is from the manufacturer’s website
Dave Smith Instruments

Processing 2

2008-09-26T19:46:00.003-04:00

I haven’t posted for a few weeks, and I thought I should mention why that’s so. My last post was about Processing, and since I wrote that, it’s taken up pretty much all my spare time. I’m still learning the language, but it’s actually a good bit easier than I thought it would be. I’ve worked in a number of scripting languages before as well as flirted with “real” programming in C many years ago and RealBASIC more recently. This has given me a good headstart in learning Processing as I’m more or less familiar with the general concepts. Even for someone with no prior programming experience however, it should be easy enough to pick up if you start with a good book. I’m using Learning Processing, and I’ve found it to be clear and easy to understand, even if you’ve never had any previous programming experience.

The best part, though, is that as I’m working my way through the book, new ideas for interesting things to do constantly come to mind. I’m not advanced enough yet to be able to pull them off, but I can see that it won’t be long before I’ll be able to. Starting from zero a month ago, I can see possibilities now of what can be done. I don’t know yet how to generate sound or output MIDI, but I can see that once I get to that point there I’ll be able to have my sketches, what programs are called in Processing, make noise. It should be relatively “easy” to make a string module that drifts down the screen from the top to the bottom. Once that string moves past a certain point, a note could be triggered. Now make many instances of the string module fall at random times, or trigger random notes when they fall, and all of a sudden you’ve got programmatically generated music. Easy to do? Maybe not, but possible with a bit of sweat and hard work? Definitely. There are also possibilities opened up by doing a little programming for the Arduino board to make use of sensors to trigger things in Processing, or conversely, for taking the output of Processing sketches and making them do things in the physical world rather than just on a screen.

There’s also a Processing community forming. Earlier this week I went to the first meeting of the Processing Study Group at NYC Resistor. The room was pretty much filled to capacity with a wide range of people interested in visual and musical programming. There were a lot of beginners, which was good, and the atmosphere was pretty charged up with lots of enthusiasm. I’m totally looking forward to next month’s yet-to-be-scheduled meeting, and hopefully I’ll be ready with a few interesting code examples I’ve been able to cook up by then.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing for the past several weeks; diving into Processing. I’m going to resume my “normal” amount of posting about synths and music. In fact, I’m going to write a post about the new DSI Mopho as soon as I finish this one. I did, however, want to explain what I’ve been doing lately and why my posts may have seemed to taper off. I’ve got plenty to write about, though, so hang in there.

Processing

2008-09-05T23:09:00.004-04:00

It’s funny how things work out sometimes, bad things and good things. The bad thing is that my laptop died. The Firewire ports disappeared, which isn’t that big a deal except that I need them for my MOTU Ultralight audio interface. No complex recording in Ableton Live without it (although I did manage to record two Elektron Monomachine tunes in GarageBand on my iMac). The ports have been dead for several weeks now, but it just hadn’t been convenient for me to be without my laptop for a week or so, mainly because I had been scheduled to take a series of three Arduino classes at NYC Resistor. I’d become interested in the Arduino because I figured if I learned enough of the programming language I could do some interesting music stuff with it. Sadly, this was not to be as the iCal calendar links I downloaded were in the wrong time zone and I showed up for the first class four hours late.

So I missed the programming class, and was a little bummed as I was really looking forward to it. I’ve done a bunch of scripting over the years and have sorta dabbled in programming but not really gotten serious about it. That was on Saturday. On Monday I saw a post on CDMo (on my blogroll on the right) about a book called Learning Processing. I’ve been interested in the whole visualist/VJ thing for a while now and have looked at Processing a time or two, so a new book on Processing for beginners sounded just about right, especially with what happened with my Arduino class. It was good timing, so I ordered the book. It hasn’t arrived yet, but it’s on it’s way.

Then, on Thursday, first on CDMu, also on my blogroll, I started seeing talk of a new version of iTunes. The most interesting thing about it was rumors of the new visualizer, supposedly Magnetosphere, which apparently used to be downloadable but lately no longer available. Regardless of the truth of the rumors or the lack thereof, the demo movie of Magnetosphere is absolutely beautiful. What cemented this for me, however, was that the visuals were generated in Processing, so we’re now back around to the beginning, starting at programming for the Arduino (whose IDE is based on Processing, by the way!) through a series of incidents and and coincidences involving music and computers and ending up back at programming, in Processing.

But aside from the incredible visuals, the music, also, of the Magnetosphere video was hauntingly beautiful. Simple, interesting, calm, but also, just, compelling. Thankfully a link on the page took me to Trentemøller, where I more or less instantly bought and downloaded the album The Last Resort. Excellent, beautiful; calm but rhythmic, ambient but dance, simple but complex. Highly recommended.

So. I haven’t posted for a while, much longer than I wanted, as I’m without my usual computer. But because of that “impediment” I’ve been opened up to new possibilities through new music and upcoming new endeavors. I’m not deceiving myself that learning Processing will be easy, but I’m looking forward to it nonetheless. I’m not sure that I’ll ever be able to do incredible visuals (and music) like Richard Lainhart’s Lux, done in After Effects and then rendered, or the incredible generative visuals of Robert Hodgin’s Magnetosphere, hopefully on computers everywhere after next week’s iTunes announcement. I hope I’ll be able to use Processing to make visuals that evolve slowly and interact with my music, ideally in live performances. Maybe a lofty goal, but one I think well worth pursuing.

Does this post exactly reflect the stated purpose of this blog? Not exactly to the letter, but I feel it’s definitely following the spirit.

Weevil08

2008-08-21T13:26:00.007-04:00

Whoo hoo, I finally got one!

(Although this photo is from the BugBrand website.)

Uh, sorry about that, but I’ve tried to get a Weevil so many times now that I didn’t really think it was actually possible. The stars all aligned properly yesterday, apparently, as I happened to check my email while at work, which I’m not really supposed to be doing, of course, just after the Bug Brand email came in. Also, this time there were an unusually large number of Weevils available, 20 of them, rather then the usual 5 or 6. I jumped on it, and have just released a 24-hours-held breath as I checked my email, again from work, and found my congratulations note from Tom.

In my excitement, though, I’ve more or less started at the end, so let me start from the beginning as I’ve probably lost a few people along the way.

Tom Bugs of BugBrand makes all sorts of boxes which make all sorts of noises (and in fact some of them don’t even come in boxes). Here’s how he describes it on his website:

BugBrand offers a constantly expanding and mutating range of electronic sound & effect devices, all built by hand in Bristol, singly or in small batches. All designs mix experimental audio circuitry with ideas taken from the techniques of circuit bending, and bring together many different controls and playing methods to give intuitive and inspiring instruments.

Most of the boxes have small touch pads, nine of them in the case of the Weevil08, and a selection of knobs and switches. They’re not exactly a synthesizer because that implies full control, but they’re more than a Cracklebox because those have pretty much no controls at all.

Here’s BugBrand’s description of a Weevil:

Weevils are built around lofi squarewave oscillators which are quasi-ringmodulated together. Add on power starvation, body contacts and other features and you get versatile noise’n’drones, full of chaotic and analogue life.

There have been many incarnations of the Weevil, ranging from tiny postcard versions up to the latest AudioWeevil. ~~There’s a fascinating history of the Weevil with lots of photos on the BugBrand Sound Devices page.~~ The one that I’d really like to have is the Drone Machine, but unfortunately only five were ever made. There’s also a BugBrand modular, but they’re not available for purchase as there’s only one. Also, if you’re in Europe there’s an occasional BugBrand performance and/or installation.

I hope to have my Weevil08 in a week or so. Once it arrives I’ll post photos and maybe a video.

Update: Some of the Bugbrand links have changed since I wrote this. The current BugBrand Sound Devices page is more of a what's-currently-available page rather than a history. Also, unfortunately the Drone Machine page isn't there anymore. The BugBrand modular is actually being produced now, though. There are 12 being made as of mid 2009 (all of which are spoken for).

Synthesizers of the (Not-Too-Distant) Future

2008-08-18T22:38:00.010-04:00

It seems to me that this is an incredible time in the history of synthesizers. When I first started playing, the choice was basically between a Moog and an Arp. Nowadays, there are piles of interesting instruments to be had, many for (more or less) reasonable prices. That’s what’s available right now. This post, however, is about a few new synthesizers which are coming over the horizon, some nearer then others.

The first that comes to mind, maybe because it’s the closest to being released, is the Mattson Mini Modular (hereafter referred to as the MMM as it’s way easier to type). George Mattson, notable as the maker of the Syntar back around 30 years ago, has started up again to make what is possibly the worlds smallest “true” modular. I say “true” in quotes because it’s actually made up of individual modules which can be purchased and arranged in a cabinet in any order you like. There are other semi-modulars out there which are small, but many of them while possibly fully patchable have controls permanently mounted in a metal panel, meaning you can’t move them around.

And when I say small, I mean small.

No, that’s not one giant modular synthesizer. What you’re looking at is a wall of eight complete MMM synths. If I remember correctly, mine is the one in the middle row on the left.

I haven’t held one in person yet, but no matter how amazingly small it looks in the photographs, the size of two New York City phone books, I have a feeling it will feel shockingly small in real life. If you ignore the size, however, the MMM is a full featured and powerful modular synthesizer, regardless of the size of it. I’m hoping it will be ready this fall.

Another synth coming in the near future is the Solaris, by John Bowen Synth Design. John Bowen started at Moog in 1973 and a few years later was at Sequential Circuits and has done many things after that as well. While working with Creamware he designed the Solaris soft synth plug-in, which in a departure from the usual is now being converted to a hardware version. The Solaris, now in the prototype stage, looks to be a best-of-both-worlds merging of hardware and software.

There are a number of synths which have knobs linked to displays so they can use the same set of knobs to control many different functions. The Solaris is no different, except that it doesn’t have just one display/knob set, it has six of them! Add to that four oscillators, four filters, six envelope generators, five LFOs and a pile of effects and it starts to sound truly dangerous.

Last for today is the Waldorf Stromberg, mostly because to me this one seems the farthest away. Waldorf has made some incredible instruments in the past such as the XT and Q, and this latest incarnation of the company has designed the Blofeld, a tiny desktop synthesizer that sounds huge. I hope they sell tons of them so they can thrive and keep going until the Stromberg makes it out of the mock-up phase and into production. The Stromberg promises to encompass all of Waldorf’s previous synth engines in one sleek and silver package. While not holding my breath yet, I am definitely looking forward to it.

In writing this I’ve tried to not sound like a commercial for any of these companies. I’m not sure I’ve succeeded in doing that, but I hope I’ve conveyed my enthusiasm for these very different and very interesting new instruments. In the interests of full disclosure, I have already ordered both the MMM and the Solaris and am eagerly (and somewhat impatiently!) awaiting the actual delivery. They may not be scheduled to arrive immediately, but I’m pretty sure they’ll most definitely be worth the wait. The Stromberg may be further off, but I feel that one also will be an amazing instrument.

Photo credits:
All photos are from the manufacturers’ websites
Mattson Mini Modular
John Bowen Solaris
Waldorf Stromberg

Elektron Monomachine

2008-08-11T22:24:00.006-04:00

The Elektron Monomachine. I’m not sure what made me go out and get one, and even after several months I’m not completely sure how I feel about it and what it stands for. However, that being said, I have not been able to stop messing with it since I got it.

My original thought was something along the lines of, “Oooh, I’ll get this and now I’ll have my TB-303.” It’s nothing like that at all. In fact, now, looking back on it, I bought it on a rather large leap of faith. It didn’t turn out the way I expected, but I could not have asked for a better, uh, whatever the thing is.

Here’s what I’ve found so far:

It’s not a 303. You could fairly call it a beat box, but it’s not at all “limited” to that. What you get is basically five separate synthesizer engines (although they’ve just recently added two more via a downloadable update) and a six track sequencer, each track having up to 64 steps. It’s programmed like a drum machine: hold down one of the step buttons and enter your note (although you can record from a keyboard as well). I first thought that was a limiting approach. I’m a keyboard player, after all. However, it turns out that that’s simply not a problem. The interface is so beautifully designed that it just stays out of your way and lets you work quickly and easily. After an initial period of “what the heck am I doing?” I’ve grown quite comfortable with it.

In fact, getting around the “I’m a keyboard player, darn it” mindset has been one of the biggest problems for me with the Monomachine. I’ve written several pieces now but I’m left sitting there “performing” them rather than playing them. I feel more like a DJ than a musician at times because of that. It almost doesn’t feel legitimate somehow. (I don’t think I’d make a good composer because I can’t imagine not playing my own pieces.) One of the ones I’ve done is a drone-y, ambient, Frippertronics-ish piece. I’m not sure how I’ll go about playing it live, though, except to stand still as a statue for eight and a half minutes except for 10 or so button pushes (start button for the first track, push on the other five tracks in turn, push off the tracks in not-quite-reverse order). I’m almost tempted to do it as a performance art piece.

My “problem” with the Monomachine is more existential then musical. As a musical device the thing is amazing. However, it’s making me question what it means to be a musician. I went to college and majored in Radio (and Psychology, but I suppose that would be for a different post), thinking I’d be a DJ in the old-fashioned sense of the word (i.e., playing LPs on the radio). I more or less quickly lost interest in that as a career because I wanted the supposed purity of being a musician and playing my own music rather than someone else’s. In the past year or so, now, I’ve seen Moldover a few times and thought the performance was incredible but questioned whether he was or was not a “real” musician. Well, after playing my Monomachine for several months if I ever sit down and chat with Moldover for any length of time I’m going to have to apologize to him for ever doubting. My 10 minimalist button pushes are no less “true” than if I was furiously playing it all with two hands on a dozen keyboards. Basically, I’ve somehow realized, as my buddy and musical partner E. Doctor Smith would say, it’s all good.

I was originally intending this post to be about the instrument and not about the philosophy, but hey, sometimes you have to just go with it. I plan on posting more about the Monomachine in the near future, more about the hardware and its musical capabilities, less about the thought processes.

Anyway, here are three tracks I’ve done recently, entirely with the Monomachine and nothing else, for what I’m intending to be my next album. The first, called My Memories of You, My Dreams, was intended to have a bit of that “Berlin School” feel to it. It came out a bit too “happy-sounding” for my taste, so I made another version of it with the aim of having it be much darker. I ended up combining them into a single longer piece.

The next piece, Like Sparks in Smoke, started out life as a bass line I heard in my head and grew from there.

The last one, Saw No Signs of Madness, came seemingly out of nowhere. I had just loaded up the two new wavetable-ish synth engines and was experimenting with them. I made a long, slow sound so I could hear how one wave crossfaded into another and somehow it turned into this song.

I have plenty more patterns recorded, and several other songs made out of them. I could see doing an entire album out of just Monosynth tunes, although I’m not sure I’d really want to do that. In addition, though, I liked the Monosynth so much that I went out and got its twin, the Machinedrum. Unfortunately, the new Monosynth engines were released at almost the same time I got the Machinedrum, so I haven’t even had the chance to fire it up yet as I just had to dive into that new sonic potential. I can’t imagine how the two will of them together will affect me, given how only using the one so far has blown me away.

Two Kits Arrive

2008-08-01T20:03:00.009-04:00

Earlier this week two kits arrived in the mail. One requires a soldering iron, the other only some glue.The first, the soldering one, is a Thingamakit from Bleep Labs. I already have a couple of Thingamagoops, which are great fun, but the idea of making my own has a lot of appeal. I got the version of the kit that came with a case, but I’m considering building it into some other device/enclosure/box. I’ll have to look around the apartment to see what I’ve got available.

Here are some “unboxing” pictures:

I anticipate that the second kit will make far less noise than the first but will also be somewhat easier to assemble.

This came with a CD I got recently, Gas 0095. It’s some really good music, well worth checking out. Plus, as a complete bonus it came with this build-it-yourself Minimoog. Can’t argue with that. Highly recommended, although I believe they’ve sold out all of the Moog kits (but the CD’s certainly worth it even without the Moog). Note that the thing’s tiny, palm-sized. A US quarter would completely cover the manual.

Another source of papercraft synth kits is SDIYcut. They’ve no more left at the moment either, but the site says there may be more at some point. Not necessarily more of what’s already there, but possibly other models. There’s also some other papercraft synths over on Matrixsynth from about a year ago, a Korg MS-20 and an Arturia Moog Modular V.

Welcome to the Box of Textures

2008-07-27T14:53:00.005-04:00

First post.

I've sort of avoided the whole blogging thing. Not for reading as I’m subscribed to plenty of them, but I just wasn’t sure I wanted to “add to the noise.” However, I recently set up a MySpace Music page where I could post songs, performance dates and other music-related items. They also have a blog feature, so I thought I’d put up some posts just as more or less liner notes to the songs. Turns out I actually enjoyed writing those posts. I like to write but don’t really have much of an outlet for it (yeah, yeah, yeah, my novel someday, just like everybody else), so the MySpace blog was way more fun than I ever though it would be.

I’ll be posting liner-note types of things, as well as any occasional thoughts on music (what I was originally thinking of calling this) I might have. I have some hardware devices on the way, so I’ll definitely post on those as well (Chimera BC16 “modular” synth and SM16 Sequencer, Mattson Mini Modular, and a John Bowen Solaris). I don’t know when the MMM or the Solaris are due to arrive, but the Chimera gear should be here any day now. I also have a couple of kits to build, one a “Minimoog” and one from Bleep Labs. I’ll document those as well.

Thanks for reading, comments welcome.