Hartmann NEURON Survival Kit : Motherboard + 250GB HD

via this auction
" This Kit includes :
* One drop in replacement motherboard
* A new pristine Hard Drive breed ! This is your rare chances to get, for this powerful machine, an extended 250GB version of the original Hard Drive.

Original Hard Drives found in the NEURON were usually within the range of 20GB minimum up to 80GB maximum in some occasion. The provided Hard Drive in this auction is resulting of my intensive works to extend the last Linux partition while keeping all the original linux operating system information safe. The resulting Hard Drive is a 250GB unit from Western Digital, well know for it's silent and cool operation.

As a consequence, the available space for all your Models and Sounds comes up to 230GB. Here this noticeable improvement will relatively cost you as much as some 80GB hard drive clones that were sold here on ebay some months ago. Keep in mind that this is more than just a clone : All of the original NEURON hard drive has been analysed in details such as the Boot records (Mater and Extended ones) and allmost of the original partitions in the respect of the original information close to the byte ! Such an evolution could not be affordable using standard tools such as driveimage, partition magic, nor Acronis, but thanks to my own Linux know how.

Consequently, this auction is for you the occasion to provide your NEURON with a large significant space for your creation, models and sounds, but also the occasion to insure of a second 'Life' for your machine ! : NEURON users community has reported some of the original Hartmann motherboards going dead because a batch of bad components described as the 'Capacitors Plague' . It causes (we will see further occurences of this problem in the future, so it may hit your own neuron motherboard also....) a chemical decay of some of the inner PCB layers. A a consequence, I strived until I found out The motherboard type that fits exactly as the original design as well as its respective shape factor. This new motherboard will run exactly as your previous board. This new board may help you in fixing your Neuron if it's currently faulty, or represents a backup for the future. Keep your Ram, your processor, your Fan as they are since all of them will fit with this new board. Hence, No RAM or Processor upgrade of any sort on your side is needed. The provided motherboard in this auction has been tested and validated within the NEURON Synthesizer : It will run exactly as the original motherboard design (which was the Shuttle Spacewalker MV25). BIOS and Jumpers configuration have both been entirely pre-configured.

> It's a 'plug and play' combo , as soon as it reaches your door.

The hardware is provided with some instructions about how to install the motheraboard, what to connect and where, etc. The extended 250GB hard drive comes into your NEURON synthesizer as was your original drive the first day in, with ModelSet v4 , SoundSet v4 and OS 1.5 all installed."

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Motherboard TV: The Father of Circuit Bending: Reed Ghazala & NY Fest

via motherboard.tv

This is part of Motherboard’s Sound Builders series that they are running in celebration of Bent Festival's kick-off in Brooklyn today.

"This particular installment takes the Motherboard team to the 'Anti-Theory Workshop' of Reed Ghazala, the father of circuit bending. It’s a nice timely tease for this awesome New York electronic music and arts fest.

With Ghazala as our guide, we navigate the history of circuit-bending sound art from its accidental beginnings in his childhood bedroom to the discovery's lasting impact on electronic music and art. Host Jordan Redaelli even has a shot on the tinkered toys, creating a duet with the legendary circuit tweaker that is unique to say the least."

"In 1967, Reed Ghazala discovered something amazing just by sitting at his desk.

At the time he was a broke teenager, musician, and experimental artist known to friends for his magnetic sculptures and the sort of pyrotechnic displays that once sent him into emergency surgery. And then one day in 1967, his desk began to emit strange sounds. He recognized their sci-fi whirrs and electronic tones as something like the sound of the expensive synthesizers of the day, and he was sure he wasn’t imagining it.

The source turned out to be nothing more than a toy amplifier he had left in a desk drawer, its wires exposed due to a broken case, its power still switched on. The toy’s innards were short circuiting against the inside of the metal desk, and in so doing were making music that neither its creators nor its owner could ever have imagined. Circuit bending was born.

Today thousands of amateur electronics hackers around the planet follow Reed’s lead, customizing or simply breaking their synthesizers, children’s toys and other easy-to-crack-open gadgets with the hope of generating uncanny and wonderful cacophonies of sound..." Full post on motherboard.tv.

Update: I just created the Bent Fest label and added it to a ton of posts. Check it out for a trip back in time and to get a taste of some of what you can see at the event. Note there are a couple of general circuit bending fest posts as well.

Gavin Russom Interview

YouTube embed below. via Motherboard where you'll find the full write-up.
"In this episode of Electric Independence, Motherboard heads to Bed Stuy to visit Gavin Russom in his home studio.

Gavin Russom has been making and unmaking synths since a young age. He thinks of the analog machines as works of art in their own right, blending the aural, visual, and the sculptural."

(1/2)- Motherboard Electric Independence: Gavin Russom

YouTube Uploaded by VBSdotTV on Feb 24, 2010

(2/2)- Motherboard Electric Independence: Gavin Russom

YouTube Uploaded by VBSdotTV on Mar 2, 2010

"Gavin Russom is a wizard, and not just because his long red flowing mane is reminiscent of a medieval alchemist or because he was once a stage magician. The composer and former engineer for dance label DFA (where he earned the Wizard moniker) has been making and unmaking synths since a young age. Gavin thinks of the analog machines as works of art in their own right, blending the aural, visual, and the sculptural.

After living in Berlin, Gavin finally decided to come back stateside and get back to his roots. In this episode of Motherboards fantastical series Electric Independence, we sit down with Gavin and Black Dices Eric Copeland to talk about the state of dance music, 20th century composers and why the Wizards mystical, handcrafted electronic sound is a perfect substitute for controlled substances.

See more at Motherboard.tv"

*OBX Synthesizer Voice Expansion & Parts from Abstrakt Instruments on Kickstarter

On Kickstarter here.

"This is your chance to help fund and procure parts for the iconic Oberheim OB-X synthesizer. This is a passion project which came about through product development & engineering. We have built and tested numerous assemblies from our favorite vintage synths for the purpose of studying the intricacies of each design. After testing, these parts are generally used in our in-house machines or neatly stored away. In the case of the OB-X, employees & visitors alike were asking to remake these parts. Since we are not in the primary business of selling parts or kits it took some convincing. These designs are completely finished. We've established a goal of $10k to make sure we have enough quantity to hit our pricing targets. If the goal is reached at the end of the funding period we will immediately send out for the parts to be made. We do not anticipate offering these parts for sale in the future. This project is more of a give-back to the vintage synth community as opposed to a practical money-making venture.

Before getting into the details of the actual parts we'll clearly state what is being offered. We are offering various voice-related parts for the OB-X synthesizer, including bare PCB's, fully assembled PCB's, and fully assembled kits.

*OBX Voice Card PCB
*OBX Voice Card PCB Assembly
*OBX Motherboard PCB
*OBX Motherboard PCB Assembly
*OBX Motherboard Tray
*OBX 4-Voice Expansion Kit
*OBX 8-Voice Kit
*OBX Filter Control Board Assembly
Voice Card PCB
The *OBX Voice Card PCB is interchangeable with original parts. The layout is the same with the following improvements.

ENIG Gold surface finish.
Double-sided black soldermask.
Support for multi-mode filter. The 'Noise Half & Full' buttons can be used to select filter modes. This option requires our Motherboard PCB and Filter Control Board. No other modifications required.
Placements for 25-turn Bourns potentiometers for VCO adjustments
Placements for LM7815/7915 1.5A voltage regulators to upgrade the original 78L15/79L15 parts.
Placements for Panasonic FC radial capacitors to upgrade the original axial components."

Replacing Knobs on an SCI Drumtraks & Ballad of sin by lacedj

via Lace: "The sequential Drumtraks uses common B20k potentiometers (pots). You can buy a replacement pot from your local electronics/hobby store. In this case we used a B20k pot. You simply take off the black caps of the face side, then unscrew the top inside motherboard. The pots are bolted directly to the motherboard. Unbolt them first then de-solder them, their design makes it hard to use a solder sucker so you may need to heat all three pads by quickly passing your soldering iron over them, and wiggle out the pot while the lead is molten. Just be careful not to be too hard, take the time. You can clean the pads properly once the pot is removed. There's plenty of space between solder pads.

Bend the pins upward on the new pot then bolt in place and solder it once it is secured. Screw the motherboard back in, be careful to make it fit. Don't force anything. Close the lid and put the front screws back in. Put on the caps and you're done. Weee. Sequential knobs are tough to find. If you need sequential looking caps, Futurlec sells the closest approximation I have found so far. They have 4 sizes, black and silver aluminium and other styles like roland/boss 80's looking plastic caps, with colored tops. Good for DIY/repairs. On the final shot you see four of their black aluminium pots mounted on the drumtraks.

Drumtraks manage to always sit nicely in a mix. The sounds seem basic on their own, but when played against each other in a live pattern the result shines. It's definitely a machine you want to make a pattern with and record, rather than sample.

I made a down tempo track called "ballad of sin" for the b-side of my next 7" release with the drumtraks and the CZ5000, you can hear both dry together at the beginning. The pumping reverb and effects on my voice are the compressors in the tascam DM4800 being over driven. Regardless of what goes on around, the Drumtraks just sits in there and pushes the whole track through like a John Deere tractor. The beat I made is simple yet the machine's tone makes it very compelling. That's not an easy task for a 27 year old 8bit digital drum machine with no effects."

Ballad of sin by lacedj
"A chill out down tempo track I wrote after a shitty weekend of stress at the club. I used the Casio CZ 5000 with pitch modulation to get the wide moving chords, and the sequential drumtraks for the main basic beat. The beat sample is a reconstruction. The voice sample is my voice treated and detuned in ableton."

Also see:
Trouble by DJ Lace, early version
DJ Lace - This video tape

Electric Independence: Morton Subotnick

"In its early days, electronic music wasn’t very musical. Painstakingly put together with wave generators or tiny bits of tape spliced together on splicing blocks by music professors and hobbyists, it was often highly abstract, largely concerned with pitch and timbre, and lacked much rhythm or pattern.

Enter Morton Subotnick.

Back in the sixties, while Robert Moog was developing his pioneering keyboard on the East Coast, Subotnick, Ramon Sender and Don Buchla were toiling away in San Francisco on what would become possibly the world’s first analog synthesizer, the ‘electronic music easel’BUCHLA 100. Instead of a keyboard, it relied on pressure sensitive touch-plates, which controlled individually tuneable keys for limitless micro-tuning possibilities, analog sequencers, and complex waveforms beyond your basic sine, sawtooth, and square waves. You can now find it at the Smithsonian.

Check out more at Motherboard.

See the rest at VBS.TV: Electric Independence: Morton Subotnick - Motherboard | VBS.TV"

Click here for additional posts featuring Moton Subotnick including video of recent performances.
Click here for additional Motherboard TV posts.

Motherboard's Electric Independence: XXXChange

via Motherboard. via Seema:

"Here we get to see Upton's a spiffy vintage vocoder: the rare-as-hen’s-teeth EMS VCS3 monosynth. And all that time cooped up in the synth henhouse has made him eager to share some secrets: Most notably, the innovative use of umbrellas as acoustic design tool, and the magical weapon behind Dr. Dre’s super bass heavy productions." more details at Motherboard.

Eric Singer and Pat Metheny - Two Takes on DIY Mechanical Orchestration

Sound Builders: Eric Singer Turns Scrap Metal Into Human-Besting Robot Bands

"Eric Singer, founder of LEMUR (League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots)... Despite receiving his music degree from Phil Collins, Eric has gone on to create incredibly innovative music robots that have been used by the likes of Pat Metheny and Mari Kimura."

via Motherboard.tv. Be sure to check out the site for more including the full write-up for this video.
If you are into DIY, check out Motherboard's Sound Builders contest (also posted below).

You might recognize Eric Singer from these two previous posts:
LEMUR Slime-o-Tron: A Slimey Controller
dafnaLEMUR264 2 and The Riot Temple in Miami

Pat Metheny - The Orchestrion EPK

http://www.patmetheny.com/orchestrioninfo/
This one in via Gerard.

Pat Metheny flickr set by joelbrave

Motherboard TV: Morton Subotnick, Father of Electronic Music

via Motherboard.TV via Scott Sharon on The MATRIXSYNTH Lounge
"What kind of music would robots make? Blips and bloops, most likely, with a whole lot of abstract tones and soundwave manipulation. You know, droning stuff that sounds like auditory binary. I mean, come on. How musical could a robot be?

Such were the early days of electronic music, whose early proponents put much more emphasis on the “electronic” than the “music.” That’s not to denigrate the incredible complexity of wave generators or tiny bits of tape spliced together on splicing blocks. It’s just to point out that what we see as electronic music today was once well and truly the sound of electronics themselves.

So who’s responsible for turning the electro tide towards real music? Why, Morton Subotnick of course.

As is often the case in music, it was a bicoastal thing: Subotnick, Ramon Sender, and Don Buchla spent the 60s in San Francisco developing what may be the world’s first analog synthesizer, the ‘electronic music easel’ BUCHLA 100, while Robert Moog was putting together his incredible keyboard on the East Coast.

BUCHLA 100 was brilliant because, instead of a keyboard, it relied on pressure sensitive touch-plates. Those controlled keys that could be individually tuned, allowing for an unlimited number of sound-producing possibilities. It freed musicians from the sine, sawtooth, and square bonds of the past, and allowed electronic music to flourish.

Subotnick himself was the first to put his creation through its creative paces. Recorded over the span of a year in New York, his album Silver Apples of the Moon stands as the first all-electronic LP, and effectively declared the era of computer music dead. The album has since been inducted into the Library of Congress.

As part of our Electric Independence series, in 2011 we paid a visit to Subotnick at his Lower East Side studio to chat about the past and future of electronic music. Remember one thing the next time you’re in a club with some cyborg DJ poking away at a booth full of weird gadgets: If it wasn’t for Subotnick, you’d be stuck listening to robot chatter."

Circuit Bent Videonics MX- Pro Video Mixer by LoFi Future

video upload by LoFiFuture

"Available to order here: https://lofifuturestore.square.site/p...

This Videonics MX-PRO has been modified and circuit bent turning it into a powerful glitch tool kit with rock solid Time Base Correction that can be used anywhere in the world [PAL & NTSC]

PAL/NTSC MOD
One of the most functional modifications is the addition of a PAL/NTSC switch located on the back. See when Videonics produced these for different domestic markets they would use the same motherboard and chipset for all international units. They would simply include or omit one jumper on the motherboard that tells the MX-PRO what mode to boot into. I have wired this jumper up to a toggle switch on the rear of the console so you can select weather you boot into PAL or NTSC mode when you switch the unit on.

Analog Colorizer
I have integrated a 3 knob LoFi colorizer circuit that is hardwired to composite input one. It features a true bypass switch so the effect can be quickly enabled or disabled.

Arcade Buttons
There are six arcade buttons fitted to the palm rest of the unit for momentarily triggering effects. 3 control glitches for bus A and 3 control glitches for bus B. They are tied into the framebuffer RAM and the video decoders for each bus.

Toggle Switches for Bus A/B
In addition to the arcade buttons there are 4 toggle switches for each bus. These switches are all connected to a common buss allowing you to mix unsynchronised data between bus A and B resulting in scrolling artefacts.

Toggle switches for shape and edge corruption
There are 5 toggle switches located near the T-bar, these corrupt the shape and edge style transitions resulting in interesting patterns and variations of shapes.

The unit comes included with the original switching power supply (can be used anywhere in the world) and the original printed manual."

Sound Builders: "Cyborg" Inventor Steve Mann Builds Instruments Out of Water

via motherboard.tv
"In Episode 4 of Sound Builders, we travel to Toronto, Ontario to visit the amazing Steve Mann. While at MIT, where he earned a PhD in Media Arts & Sciences, Steve founded the Wearable Computers Group at the Media Lab, and built musical instruments using brainwaves and compressed hydraulic fluids. Lauded by some as the world’s first cyborg, and the initiator of the mobile blogging movement, Steve is now a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto.

For this episode, Steve volunteered to be both guest and host, using his human/cyborg first-person perspective to show us his studio, talk about his past inventions, and ask members of the circus to play the latest of his inventions: the hydraulophone, a highly tactile and mellifluous water-based instrument that Steve hopes can offer the blind and deaf a new method of music-creation.

To submit your own instrument idea, and win $1000, visit www.motherboard.tv/contest."

A Day at the Percussa AudioCubes Lab

A look at a day in the life of Percussa via their newsletter released on January 10.

"Today, Bert and I would like to take you to our AudioCubes Lab, where we work hard on developing new software and hardware features for the Percussa AudioCubes, a modular gestural audiovisual instrument."

"Living room Lab with fast customer service

Since we're a small company, we decided to transform our living room into a lab instead of spending too much money on renting office space. We turned each corner of our living room into a different work station, each focusing on a different aspect: electronics, software, and business operations :-)

Having our office/lab in our living enviroment makes it hard to ignore any incoming email from customers late at night or on the weekend :-) , but we're more than happy to respond to any customer inquiry or request very fast."

"Lab equipment to build high-quality products

In our lab, we have tools to test the electronics of the Percussa AudioCubes as well as equipment to debug the firmware of the AudioCubes.

For instance, today (picture on the left) we have soldered connectors of our logic analyzer onto the motherboard of the AudioCube, because we'd like to visualize the data which is being exchanged between the cube motherboard's processor and the wireless radio which is inside each new AudioCube shipped!

Data transmission inside AudioCubes and over the USB bus is very fast, so often the only way to debug something is by capturing data and then figuring out what went wrong :-) Did you know that AudioCubes sensor data updates at 1KHz?

Cool stuff is coming up

We have some new changes coming up from our AudioCubes lab very soon. So keep an eye on your inbox. Bert is working day and night on the new update of firmware and MIDIBridge, endlessly fretting over sensor data offsetting, scaling, resolution, etc ... this is important groundwork for the synthesizer we're working on, SYNTHOR. Check out some preliminary videos here.

Also make sure to register on our website in case you haven't done so. It gives you instant access to the download area where you can download software, including the upcoming firmware and MIDIBridge updates, and SYNTHOR, when it will be available!

Talk to you next week,
Bert & Celine"

MOTHERBOARD v2 rev7

video upload by Ghost In Translation

"This is revision 7 of Motherboard v2. I added an op amp in buffer mode in this one to solve an issue I found in previous prototype, a resistor divider ratio was being altered in some situations... The op amp is the tiny SMD chip at the beginning.

Follow me
https://www.instagram.com/ghostintran...
https://ghostintranslation.bandcamp.com"

The Trimaxion Logic Listener sonifies a Commodore 64 motherboard.

YouTube Uploaded by crudface on Mar 30, 2011

"The T.L.L. is a device I built to convert raw high speed digital logic into gates and CV for use with modular synthesizers. In this video the TLL is hooked up to a Commodore C64 motherboard. The digital logic is sonified in real-time"

Motherboard Sound Builders Contest

via Motherboard:
"Have you ever had an idea of how to improve a musical instrument, or invent a new one altogether? And did you let that dream die? Well here is your chance to revive that potential creation of yours, and let the world truly understand your musical inventiveness. Take a moment below to describe your instrument, upload a photo, or a sketch, and submit it to the Sound Builders Contest.

The top 10 submissions win $250.

The top three submissions will win $1,000 and their own episode of Sound Builders."

Original Rev1 Prophet-10 in Prophet-5 Case

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

via this auction

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Sound Builders: In 1967, This Guy Invented Circuit Bending

"'Anything Can Happen'

In this episode of Sound Builders, we travel to Cincinnati, Ohio, to meet with Reed Ghazala, the founder and father of circuit bending. Reed takes us into his workshop where we get a glimpse into his world of circuit bending, exploring the history and evolution of this art. Reed bends our minds by walking us through the struggles and triumphs he endured while establishing the art of circuit bending.

“The wires fall upon the circuit like the paint on Pollack’s canvas,” he says, rhapsodically.

We tinker with several of Reed’s machines, manipulating sound and opening our minds to this fascinating art form. He works on a project for Motherboard while explaining the method to this music madness, his process, his teachings, as well as the different inventions he has created over the years.

See more Sound Builders episodes – and enter to win our contest for $1,000 – and don’t miss our documentary on New York’s circuit bending Bent Festival."

You can find all Motherboard synth vids here.

Electric Independence: Ulrich Schnauss

via motherboard.tv

"When post-shoegaze magician – the peerless electronic wunderkind – Ulrich Schnauss invited us to his apartment in London, he specified it would have to be at night due to his predilection for ‘nocturnal’ activities.

We thought that seemed mostly normal for a musician until he came to the door (clad in leather jeans) and dragged us up to his pitch-black attic.

Thankfully all of our Warhol-period Udo Kier fantasy/nightmares were unwarranted the moment we walked into his studio: an impressive collection of synthesizers and effects units used to layer hundreds of manipulated sounds and craft some of the most breathtaking, bombastic records released in recent years.

Ulrich was kind enough to show us some of his favorite instruments and demo the tasty tones from his forthcoming album."

You can find more synth centric Electric Independence posts here. See motherboard.tv for more.

Update via Sonicstate in the comments: "Hi folks, in case your interested in more of Ulrich, he was a guest on our podcast a couple of weeks ago - hope you dont mind me posting the link." Not at all!

New Yamaha CS80 Rackmount Clone In the Works

DECKARD'S DREAM - 8-VOICE ANALOGUE SYNTHESIZER

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Oberheim OB-8 61-Key 8-Voice Synthesizer

Note: Auction links are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.
video upload by Borish Electronics

via this auction

"Everything has been looked over on this synth and there are no issues with it at all. The ribbon cable connecting the voice boards to the motherboard has been replaced. The potentiometers have been lubricated, a substantial amount of ICs have been replaced to prevent failures in the future, the power supply has been upgraded, and a few CEM ICs have been replaced that were somewhat problematic. The synth passes auto tune and has been fully calibrated. All features are demonstrated in the video I uploaded to YouTube."

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