MATRIXSYNTH: Thursday, July 3, 2008

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Bleep Labs Thing-a-ma-kits!

"Now noisy makers can assemble and modify their own light controlled analog noise friend!

All the sounds of Thingamagoop plus
Triangle wave LEDacle with shape and speed control.
Second photocell patchable to modulator and photocell rate.
Square and Triangle wave output.
The satisfaction for making an noise monster with your own soldering iron!

Comes with:
* detailed instructions
* fully labeled components
* simply layed out circuit board with minimal hand wiring.
* 2 ready to blink LEDacles
* control panel and face stickers

Find a box and make your own analog junk monster or use our "stompbox" style enclosure.

Movie coming july 4th. In the meantime, post your pics to the Thingamakit Flickr group!

The novice maker should read some basic soldering tips.

Note: Special prices through the weekend! On Monday the prices will change to $60 with the enclosure or $50 for the bare kit." Bleep Labs' Thing-a-ma-kits page. (previous post)

WALL∙E “A Space Journey in Sound”

YouTube via WallEMovie. The man that brought us R2D2 on the ARP 2600.
"In this behind-the-scenes clip, Andrew Stanton, Jim Morris, and Ben Burtt discuss the sound effects used in the film.

What if mankind had to leave Earth and somebody forgot to turn the last robot off? WALL∙E, a robot, spends every day doing what he was made for. But soon, he will discover what he was meant for. From Academy Award®-winning writer-director, Andrew Stanton (“Finding Nemo”), Disney∙Pixar’s WALL∙E is the story of one robot's comic adventures as he chases his dream across the galaxy.

WALL∙E comes to theaters on June 27, 2008! Visit www.wall-e.com for more information!"

Best Wedding Cake EVER!!!

This one in via Jeff:
"can you belive the groom cake I got at my wedding? Don't think i've seen a better synth cake. Someone even tried to play it! feel free to share as long as Kasha's Sugar Art gets credit and Ian "Capital I" says it's ok to share. But i'm sure he doesn't mind at all. But the baker sure deserves credit: www.kashassugarart.com/"

What's funny about this one is I actually saw it in my flickr feed yesterday. I was going to put a post up on how the gnome jumped off and broke that key. The funny thing is I didn't realize it was a cake until Jeff wrote in!!! Glancing at the image I just thought it was a mini with a wonky keyboard. This is definitely one of the best synth cakes I have ever seen. Click on the cake label below for more.

The Electronic Century Part I: Beginnings

This one in via brian c. EM (Electronic Musician) has a series up on the history of electronic musical instruments. You can find part 1 here. On the right of the site under the "Must Read" section you will find links to parts 1-4.

"The early years of electronic musical instruments set the tone for a century.

FIG. 1: Thaddeus Cahill's Telharmonium was installed in New York in 1906. It was transported from its home in Massachusetts in more than a dozen railway boxcars.

As we enter the 21st century, electronic music is fast approaching its 100th anniversary. This is a good time to look at our roots and get to know how we came to be where we are. This is the first in a series of four articles in which EM explores the instruments, artistic ideas, business concepts, musicians and entrepreneurs, and technical breakthroughs of the century—from the first technological achievements to the synthesizers of tomorrow.

The focus throughout the series is on the technologies that have been used by musicians to expand on the resources available in traditional, acoustic instruments. Where appropriate, each article will also document important musical compositions that have employed these technologies. There's a rich and deep tradition to uncover, so let's begin our journey!"

Recorder - Synth Bots

"We play live, using the following: Open Labs NeKo LX, Korg Radias, Roland Juno G, Akai MPC 1000, Theremin, and, occasionally, an Atari 2600 SynthCart. Nothing vintage, just good synthetic fun."

Recorder on MySpace
Recorder on YouTube

Recorder - Satellite
YouTube via recordermusic
"'Space Alone' animation by Ilias Sounas, used with permission"

cat prelude

YouTube via subtone
"My cat walking on midi synth"

Machinedrum Internal Delay (Stereo)

YouTube via bigcitymusic
"There's a great delay built in to both Elektron Machinedrums. It capable of robotic, dubby, modulated and super-long delay sounds. There's also a filter with adjustable width so you can shape the tone of the delay. Each instrument has it's own send to the delay (and reverb for that matter) so you can decide just how much you want."

sexy keyboards

YouTube via marcswadel
"Mark Duff and myself model some seriously hot keyboards in the mid 90's - Emulators.. Moogs, Sequential Circuits T-10 and T-8, Clavinets, Rhodes, And a dozen Rolands and Yamahas!"

Roland JD-800

via this auction

Roland GR-300

images via this auction

See this video for a bit of what the GR-300 can do.

Cluster Live

YouTube via lopemon. via sequencer.de.

Theremin comes it at 3:33.

"Cluster (Moebius & Roedelius) performing live at Dampfzentrale Bern 15. September 2007 feat. Dorit Chrysler on Theremin."

KORG MS10

images via this auction

ofxParamterUI scope

ofxParamterUI scope from stiwi on Vimeo.
"This is a very basic synth made with openframeworks just to demo the new scope control for ofxParamterUI. The audio is rendered in realtime with openframeworks. The sound recording is very bad because i had to use my build-in mic. :-( I could not figure out how to record openframeworks audio with the system output. Sorry."

Experimentalists Anonymous Mini-Optosynth demo 2, Vs. Amen Break

Experimentalists Anonymous Mini-Optosynth demo 2, Vs. Amen Break from Experimentalists Anonymous on Vimeo.
"The mini-optosynth is a pocketsized tone generator/distortion box, whose frequency can be controlled by a photocell, some buttons, or an external input. This video shows the optosynth with the classic amen break as an input. I turn the lights off mid-way to show what it's like with the built-in LED as a light source. For more information, please visit experimentalistsanonymous.com/"

Four Analog Delays

YouTube via thedeepelement
"I received my Electro-Harmonix Deluxe memory man today and thought I would get it used to the walls of sound it'll be a part of. I just send a single signal from the cwejman and tested feedback on all the units. The signal flow is as follows: Cwejman VM-1 (source) into Doepfer A-188-2 Tapped BBD Module into Ibanez AD9 into Moog MF104z into Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man"

Weather Report - Birdland

YouTube via Palle016. Spot the synths. via The Stetta Procedure.
"This is from the Stadthalle Offenbach Concert that took place 1978."

New TR-707

YouTube via underneath0skin. Pretty cool.
"Yes. That's my sister in the background. Sorry the sound quality is bad. The kick sounds crunchy."

Theremug

Theremug from Kyle McDonald on Vimeo.
"Instructions for turning a mug of tea into a Theremin:
1 Prepare some tea
2 Expose the L/R leads on an 1/8" cable
3 Immerse leads in tea
4 Plug cable into audio input
5 Start up max/pd/processing/etc. and average every 735 samples (882 if you're in Europe/running on 50Hz)
6 Scale value and drive oscillator

(The tea should not be neglected, be sure to drink it once you're done making noise.)

My camera's been acting funny, hence the jitter.
See the Max patch for a more in-depth explanation: flickr.com/photos/kylemcdonald/2126494098/"

HE ROLAND SYSTEM 100 - A SHORT(ISH) DEMO

YouTube via armalyte
"THIS SHORT(ISH) DEMONSTRATION OF THE ROLAND SYSTEM 100 SYNTHESIZER IS ACTUALLY SPREAD OUT OVER 4 PARTS (oops..hence "short-ish"), SO KEEP YOUR EYES PEELED FOR THE OTHER SECTIONS. ALL DEMOS CONTAIN THE 101(synthesizer), 102 (expnader) AND 104 (sequencer) COMPONENTS
Peace,
Shekhar
www.juicyaudio.com"

KORG Polysix Parts

The following are up for auction via loscha.

Pictured in the following order:
Voice Board
CPU Board
Buttons and Knobs PCBs with Buttons on

Inside a KORG Polysix

ETI 4600

via Rick. More images including some DIY synth circuit ideas here.

Moog Source

via this auction

"The Moog Source is a 2-VCO, micro-processor-controlled, programmable monophonic synthesizer, with 16 memory locations, and a 3-octave, 37-note (C-C) keyboard.

It features an arpeggiator and a digital sequencer with memory for two seqences of up to 64 notes.

The Source was one of the first to use digital parameter access for programming, a method now commonly found in today's synthesizers, using membrane switches, a two-digit LED display and a single data knob.

Both VCOs have three available waveforms (sawtooth, triangle, and pulse; with pulse width modulation) and three available octaves (32', 16', and 8'). VCO2 can be detuned at fixed intervals and it can be also synced to VCO1.

The mixer section features levels for VCO1, VCO2 and Noise.

The VCF (24dB/octave) has parameters for keyboard tracking (off, 1/2, and full), cutoff frequency, resonance, and contour (Moog's word for envelope) amount.

There are two ADSR envelope generators, one for the VCF and one for the VCA. The envelopes can be set in single or multi trigger modes. The LFO (triangle and square waveforms) can be routed to the VCOs and the VCF.

The Source also features a sample-and-hold which can be routed to the VCF. To the left of the keyboard is the pitch bend and the modulation wheel, along with two octave-switching buttons.

These and a volume knob are the only dedicated controls. On the back panel are the audio out, cassette interface, a pitch knob (for fine tuning), and CV and S-trigger inputs and outputs.

The 16 factory pre-sets are: Lead 1, Lead 2, Horn, Flute, Clav Bass, Vibes, String Bass, Harpsichord, Organ, Trill Voice, Taurus, Synthevox, Sax, Wind, Snare Drum, and Lead 1 (duplicated here so that if you wanted to, you could use this extra slot to move patches around). Programs are saved and loaded via a cassette interface."

Moog Minimoog

images via this auction

"Serial number is 6760 and it has the original version osc board. The date of manufacter is written on the metal plate behind the front panel as 1/29/75."

CORON DS7

via this auction

"An infinitely tweakable array of electronic percussion sounds are available from sub bass kicks to searing filter sweeps with seven knobs for LFO rate, decay length, Mode/timbre, VCO, sweep depth, intensity and volume. The synth is built into a sturdy enamelled metal box and features a clamp for mounting on the rim of a drum."