BBoT

YouTube via EA78751
"TR808 clone drums + original synths and sequencer. apologies for sound quality of this recording. visit the link to hear better examples.
http://ericarcher.net/devices/big-box...
thx: douglas ferguson for video help."

Electric Gongs - an experimental music installation

YouTube via EA78751. via Harry
"Three bronze gongs are activated with electromagnetic drivers. A touchscreen interface shows all available notes and guides users to consonant pitch relationships with a network of white lines.

At Austin Childrens Museum (Austin, TX) until September 2008.

more information and recordings:
http://ericarcher.net/devices/electri..."

DFW Synth Diy

flickr set by robstave

via the comments of this post

Dallas Fort Worth Synth DIY

Okkam-01 Demonstration

Okkam-01 Demonstration from yoctopus on Vimeo.
"An electronic musical instrument utilising Native Instruments Reaktor software and MIDIBox hardware.

Conceived, designed, programmed and constructed by Justin Shave for the purpose of creating music both in the studio and through live improvised performance.

for more explanation and tunes:

myspace.com/shaveosphere
info ... yoctopus.com"

Modular Synth: Chimera BC16 Inverter Card

Modular Synth: Chimera BC16 Inverter Card from Tom Whitwell on Vimeo.
"Cute little inverter card which reverses phase of control signals. 5v in = 0v out. 4v in = 1v out..."
That would be Tom of Music Thing.

Circuit bent box containing Musini, sampler and ELC piano

YouTube via thenervoussquirrel
"This box basically consists of three sections:

A modified Musini, which is a baby toy originally intended to get toddlers dancing around the living room. A sensor detects floor vibrations and matches the tempo accordingly, or as the manufacturer puts it:

"Musini's patented MusicSensor detects their every move and translates it into a totally unique musical response, teaching cause and effect."

New knobs and switches have been added to create strange new sounds that would probably frighten the previous small owner of the toy.

The second section is a simple lo-fi sampler that can record up to 20 seconds of audio, either as one long sound or four shorter ones. The sounds can then be looped and the pitch altered.

The third section is a modified Early Learning Centre 'animal piano', which can be used to create blips, crunches and bleeps which contrast nicely with the mellow sweeping sounds of the Musini. This section could also be useful for communicating with a pet dog, cat or bird.

The box was commissioned by Norman Fairbanks (www.normanfairbanks.com), after a few e-mails discussing the types of sounds he was looking for. There should be some higher-quality audio samples on my website at some point, and Norman is planning on creating some new music with the box, which is exciting."

Cats

flickr by Mouldfish

full size

MIDIBridge for AudioCubes Preset System Update

"The MIDIBridge software got an update today fixing a few minor bugs and adding support for all setup parameters to be stored and recalled using the preset system. You can read more about the update and download it here: http://forum.percussa.com/viewtopic.php?t=40.

The updated Max/MSP patches for MIDIBridge will be available in the next software release package for AudioCubes. As you probably already know, all host software for AudioCubes is freely available and open source, and built in Cycling 74’s Max/MSP software. So you can customize it easily to your own needs. Do you need OSC or some other protocol instead of MIDI communication? If it’s available in Max/MSP you can easily use it with AudioCubes and the freely available Max/MSP patches."
via the Percussa Audio Cubes blog

soundbite

YouTube via sduck409
"watch over my shoulder as I tweak some settings on this large modular synth patch. 3 different voices, using a motm 510 wavewarper as twisted mixer. Mostly synthtech MOTM modules, and a Blacet Binary Zone, Wogglebug, and a MusicFromOuterSpace sequencer. Sorry about the low audio quality, this was just a quickie job, otherwise it might never get done."

studio joo joo

That would definitely be some joo joo.

via mono-poly's public channel

I'm sure I missed some labels. Let me know what and I'll updated them.

Enter Shikari - Mothership performed on KORG DS-10

YouTube via Remon0347. This one shows you the triggering interface for different stored sequences.
"Enter Shikari - Mothership performed with KORG DS-10 on my Nintendo DS Lite. The sound or video is a little bit out of sync."

Buchla 249e double action

YouTube via blindoldfreak. "short random clip."
I'm not getting any audio on this one so this one is for the light show.

The Vermona Action Filter II Plus...

YouTube via bigcitymusic

"is a great sounding filter! It has Low, High, Band, and Notch filter capabilities and a very handy trigger switch for engaging or disengaging the filter momentarily. The sequence ran into the Action Filter is a combination of Elektron Machinedrum and the Cwejman S1 MkII.

http://www.bigcitymusic.com
http://www.myspace.com/bigcitymusicdo...
http://www.bigcitymusicblog.blogspot.com"

Sidbox v2 CV

YouTube via bluelantern320
"I connected the SIDBOX MATRIX TO a MOOG VCF CLONE and 3 VCO's. All were then controlled by the sidbox."

SX-150 Trill Machine!

YouTube via btpro
"Modify Gakken SX-150 Synthesizer. I made Trill control machine with Lego mindstorm."

Casio SK-1

images via this auction


with box

Roland MKS-80 with MPG-80

images via this auction
"The Roland MKS-80 Super Jupiter has become infamous as the Roland synth to own. It's often referred to as a rackmount Jupiter 8, although its voice card design is shared with the Jupiter 6. The MKS-80 has several advantages over the keyboard Jupiters, the least of which being size and weight, although the velocity response, RAM cart storage, and sysex implementation isn't anything to sneeze at either.

The MKS-80 features a similar voice architecture to the others in the Jupiter line: two oscillators, noise source, LFO, two invertable envelopes, resonant low pass filter, high pass filter, and chorus. The oscillators feature cross modulation in addition to several waveforms and pulse width modulation. The MKS-80 responds to velocity which can modulate envelope times and levels, and the envelopes feature more modulation destinations than the other Jupiters. The unit retains sixty-four tones in memory, which can be layered or split with tuning offsets and key ranges and stored in one of the sixty-four patch locations. An additional 128 patches and tones can be stored on an MC-64 RAM cartridge. One feature not found on the other synths in the MKS lineup is an auto-tune button - and you will need to hit this button often, as the MKS-80 features true analog oscillators. The MKS-80 has four voice modes: Poly 1, Poly 2, Unison 1, and Unison 2. Poly 2 is unique in that each voice board (four voices) operates in unison until more than two keys are pressed, and which time it reverts to normal poly mode. This is great for leads, retaining the mono unison sound but permitting overlapping notes and a chord here and there.

The MPG-80 is the dedicated programmer interface for the MKS-80. The connection from the programmer to the synth is unique to the Roland PG series. The MPG-80 features a MIDI in and thru like the PG-300 and PG-1000, but communicates with and is powered by the MKS-80 via a 6 pin DIN cable. The MKS-80 must be set via a rear panel switch to enable the programmer port, and the MIDI in and thru of the MKS-80 cannot be used in this mode. The PG-800 provides knobs and switches for all tone parameters such as VCO, VCA, VCF, envelopes, and LFO. Patch parameters are not well represented on the MPG-80, although poly and unison modes can be selected via a four position rotary switch.

Note: There are two revisions of the MKS-80. The rev 4 (serial numbers up to and including 511799) features CEM3340 oscillators, Roland IR3109 filters, and CEM3360 VCAs. The rev 5 (serial number 511800 and later) featured Roland IR3R03 oscillators and IR3R05 combination filter/VCAs."

Bend Matrix circuit bending detailed demo

YouTube via 4mspedals. follow-up to this post.
"Detailed Bend Matrix demonstrating circuit bending use. Connected to points on a kid's thrift store keyboard."

MIDI-NES demo

YouTube via modular77
"simple 8-note arpeggiator pattern. this is a demonstration of the MIDI NES cartridges video display effects that respond to incoming MIDI note data.. a better video demo is on the way.. stay tuned.. "

Acidlab Miami

via MaD:
"guess what Acilab plans to clone next? ;-) (to call this just a plan is understated as the prototype, the first one of the first batch of ten pieces, is already built up)

Best regards
MaD"

Roland CR-8000 Modded

via this auction

"Classic Roland drum machine from 1980 with 13 analogue drums including: kick, snare, lo/hi toms, open/closed hi-hats, cymbal, cowbell & lo/mid/hi congas. It sounds a little like a cross between a CR-78 and a TR-808. This unit has the full set of Analogue Solutions modifications - MIDI, tonal controls, individual outputs - at a cost of £300. (That was several years ago & I think Tom Carpenter has raised his prices since then!)...

The unit has also had the following mods fitted by Tom Carpenter of Analogue Solutions here in the UK:

- MIDI: note on/off of all drums except the 3 congas. Accent is available via velocity - high value on/low value off, amount set by the Accent pot. Accent is only available on the voices designed to respond to it in the original spec - not clap, cowbell, or clave. The mod does not support MIDI Clock or Time Code.

- Tonal: BD Tune 1/2, SD Tune/Decay/Snappy, Clap Snap/Filter, HH/CY Filter, HH Decay, CB Tune 1/2 & Decay, LT Tune, HT Tune. BD Tune 2 does nothing - a design flaw on Analogue Solutions behalf rather than a fault apparently.

- Individual Outs: 6 outputs on 3.5mm jacks corresponding to the 6 level pots with drums grouped together according to original design. The level pots do not affect the volume at the individual outs.

This unit has been in storage for 2 years and on testing, I have found the following problems with the mods:

- MIDI: accent via velocity is only audible over the Main output.

- Tonal: the Filter & Snap on the Clap voice do not function correctly - the noise component (the Snap) of the voice is louder than it should be and the Filter pot does not reduce the noise as it should. The pitch of LT & HT Tune mods can be unstable and can interact with each other.

- Individual Outs: at very high Tune or Filter settings there is some high frequency noise in the voice channels, particularly in the cowbell."

The War of Synthesis

via marcel

And more generic wall papers below.

CLICK FOR MORE »

RIP Isaak Hayes

Isaac Hayes - Shaft

YouTube via lastangelman.

As you know, posts have to be about the synth, well.. spot the synths in the beginning of this video.

"Isaac Lee Hayes, Jr. (August 20, 1942 -- August 10, 2008)[1] was an American soul and funk singer-songwriter, musician, record producer, arranger, composer and actor. Hayes was one of the main creative forces behind southern soul music label Stax Records, where he served as both an in-house songwriter and producer with partner David Porter during the mid-1960s. In the late 1960s, Hayes became a recording artist, and recorded successful soul albums such as Hot Buttered Soul (1969) and Black Moses (1971) as the Stax label's premier artist.

Alongside his work in popular music, Hayes was a film score composer for motion pictures. His best known work, for the 1971 blaxploitation film Shaft, earned Hayes an Academy Award for Best Original Song (the first Academy Award received by an African-American in a non-acting category) and two Grammy Awards. He received a third Grammy for the album Black Moses.

In 1992, in recognition of his humanitarian work, he was crowned an honorary king of Ghana's Ada district. From 1997 to 2006, he provided the voice for the character "Chef" on the Comedy Central animated TV series South Park.

Hayes was found dead in his Memphis home on August 10, 2008 as reported by the Shelby County sheriff's department. His death came 10 days before his 66th birthday.[1]
[2]Here is a complete slo-mo video clip of Isaac Hayes conducting the Theme from Shaft, which won an Oscar for best song."

Black Sunday Patch

via mono-poly's public channel

Synth.nl AtmoSphere Studio 1 (2008)

YouTube via Synthnl. synthnl.blogspot.com
"Here you see an overview of my current 'AtmoSphere' Studio. In the background you here some music coming from this setup that will on on my new 'AtmoSphere' album to be released in October 2008"

iZotope iDrum for the iPhone

"making beats is fun. for everyone!

iDrum© is the addictive app that lets you create your own beats, even if you have no musical experience! Start with iDrum’s selection of amazing kits and patterns, then customize them to make them your own. Build beats layer by layer by tapping the touch screen or create music with simple shapes and color combinations that let you visualize the rhythm.

making beats is fun. for everyone!

iDrum© is the addictive app that lets you create your own beats, even if you have no musical experience! Start with iDrum’s selection of amazing kits and patterns, then customize them to make them your own. Build beats layer by layer by tapping the touch screen or create music with simple shapes and color combinations that let you visualize the rhythm.

what is it?
- the fun and simple way to make music on your iPhone or iPod touch
- customize patterns to create your own unique beats
- includes extensive library of amazing sounds
- take control of the rhythm of every drum sound and sample
- tap the touch screen to play and record your own musical patterns
- Easily turn your beats into ringtones for your iPhone!*

*Note: requires free iDrum Ringtone Sync application for your Mac or PC. iDrum Ringtone Sync links iDrum to your iTunes Ringtones library to make the process simple."


You can get iDrum Hip Hop Edition here:

You can get iDrum Club Edition here: