Synthesizers

Circuit bending is like the EverReady bunny, it just keeps going and going. Just when I thought I had seen it all. This franken-synth shows up on Ebay that makes what is a worthless POS Casio into a mini-modular monstrosity that I would to like to lay my paws on. Complete with a horizontal patch panel and knob arrays, Ebay seller celestial_lifeform has posted the bent Casio MT-240 that sports 72 patch points, 16 rout-able pots, diode array, 16 point mixer, square wave LFO with 4 outputs, pitch control oscillator, tempo control knob with stereo delay and more. Pretty crazy looking.

"Too satanic for Christians, too Christian for Satanists, loved by none, hated by all..." reads one caption describing Magnetic Stripper aka as a guy named Jim. Who has spent quite a lot building this modular rig as welll as name in the music scene for himself. Check out his music pages and performances at http://www.myspace.com/magne... See some of his performances over the years below.

A fast and dirty run through of the awesomely handsome Z8000 sequencer from Tiptop Audio. Many patchable points to modulate and sequence notes with. Let the video do the playing. http://www.tiptopaudio.com/z...

Still got a Roland Juno Series synth or MKS 50 perhaps. Now you can fly it in with your MAC OSX as an Audio Unit in your favorite host sequencer. tOSC has released this fine plugin to bring your analog synth from roland into the modern DAW. http://www.au300.de/ Price is good and it's donationware so be generous.

A full in depth interview is posted up at KVR. http://www.kvraudio.com/inte... The candid interview covers most of the history of Roger and Linn and his company Roger Linn Design. It's past accomplishments, and how he came to develop certain products, and some future talk as well. Some of the gear discussed is the Adrenalinn product line and his ideas and views on software versus hardware, and the necessary evil of copyright protection.

Sometimes all we need is a little dark energy to get in touch with our dark side and deal with. That's not necessarily what Doepfer had in mind when creating their latest small standalone analog synthesizer "Dark Energy". The unit features USB and MIDI connections. Encased between 2 wooden side panels the unit is a your basic "meat and potatoes" synth with a generous panel that includes 1/4" connections for the VCO, PW, LFO, VCF, as well as CV Gate control. Nice. http://www.doepfer.de/Dark_E...

This videos documents the origin's of Porpellerheads the company and it's sucessful products namely Rebirth and Reason. Footage of the original buildings that housed their studio and offices where Reason and Rebirth software was developed. All the key founders and creators of the company enthusiastically discuss their past, present, and future including the soon to be released Reason 5.

Interesting take and twist on the idea of a synth gadget. Though still in it's trial error phase of development and available now, the Velosynth is a bike mounted synthesizer that is designed to interact with the cyclist's environment including making musical sounds as well as utilizing it's internal sounds to let your presence know to someone or something as you round a corner for example. The unit can make odd whooshing noises that go high up in pitch the faster you pedal. All this and more reportedly can set and to top it off the Velosynth is customizable ie. hackable by the user. This is probably the most interesting aspect of it's use and may make the product live or die from. http://velosynth.com/

Darmok is the Modular Synthesizer created by Scott Juskiw. These pics depict Darmok's progress from it's beginning in 2001-2006. Darmok consists of 3 upper cabinets and 3 lower cabinets. A spreadsheet was made to determine power distribution for the many modules installed in the synth as well as modules currently under design and revision. Each cabinet is powered by a MOTM 900 power supply, +/-15V and +5V, newer 6-pin connectors.The upper cabinets have a 24 point connector offered by 2 MOTM-900-PCB power distribution boards. Further details on this vast undertaking visit Scott at http://www.tellun.com/motm/d...

Meet Darmok

Built built to a 2U MOTM format Jürgen Haible Frequency Shifter. According to Haible it is connection and calibration intensive. Indeed just a glance of the final PCB will show why.
To fit a compact unit there 9 small knobs that center around 1 large manual knob. A second input was added that is normalled to a feedback switch. A mix out mixes the sumout and diffout. Definitely worth the effort if need or want a Frequency Shifter in your Mod rig. http://modularsynthesis.com/...

Stuff that was quite literally junk in the 80s was a modern marvel in the 1960s. If you've done some reading about the early computers being used in music through the years, you have no doubt heard about the PDP series of computers by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) being used for all kinds of things. The PDP-1 mini-computer and subsequent models were smaller, cheaper and open ended to interface with things like D to A converters. Here we have an example from of the Computer History Museum, Mountain View, California of a 1960 PDP-1 computer playing music it generates sounds and plays notes read from a paper tape.

My how time slips by. The makers of sampling hardware greats like the Emulator and SP-12 are getting ready to celebrate 40 years in the business. From to DEVO to Yellow Magic Orchestra, their Emulator samplers changed the way music sounded. The German company is till going strong and has announced plans to offer a release a special new product or maybe the reissue one of their legacy products. Perhaps we will get a Micro-Emultor or something follwing the small but classic trend that is so popular right now. E-MU wants your help deciding what they will choose. They are asking people use Facebook to post your new product sugguestions at http://www.facebook.com/EMUS...

In the stone knives and bear skins days of product promotion outside of TV and word of mouth one was limited in options for spreading the word about your new product. No You Tube, no Podcasting, no website banners, certainly no social networking as we know now on overkill. The vinyl demo record was a big option for many companies to promote their new products. Definitely in the realm of Hi-Tech Audio and Musical Instrument business. Get some really talented and perhaps not so well known musicians to take your gear to a higher level of playing and hopefully offer all the potential your item offered. Though the pic within the video shows a 2600 the record also features the various synths available from ARP in 1971 which weren't many but included the 2002, 2500, and the Soloist, and allegedly the soon to be released Odyssey.

Photosounder is a one-of-a-kind image-sound editing program. It is unique in that it opens images and sounds indiscriminately, treats and processes them as images, and synthesizes them as sounds. Sounds, once turned into images, can be powerfully modified to achieve effects and results that couldn't be obtained in any other way, while images of all sorts reveal the infinite kinds of otherworldly sounds they contain. Ultimately, knowing how sounds look and how images sound, you'll be able to create images that sound like what you want to hear, or like what you couldn't imagine to hear.

The new 2.6 version of Renoise has stepping into the DAW / compostion tool ring with some new offerings that take the application race to a new level. Built to run like an application, they've unleashed the beat within to hackers coders who want roll their own. Renoise 2.6 opens a scripting engine that can being used to configure the tools and the interface. Allowing coders to make their own custom layouts as well. The system works stand along as well for people who don't want to code. Soon enough, there will be apps from other Renoise hackers for them to use. Check out more information in the article at http://createdigitalmusic.com/

A decidedly easy to use Granular Sample player using Granular synthesis in concept written as a Java application. Version o.1 was released in April 2010 and now Jeremy Wentworth the creator of the program is offering update 0.2. Conceptually the user records and resamples first then records and playback mouse movemements. Visit http://www.jeremywentworth.c...

Now as then Bob Moog didn't have to sell anything made by him. His creations sold themselves if you were in the market. In this video promoting the recent release of the Minimoog Voyager he is so geekly charming to be entertained by. The video below is taken from a BBC documentary in 1980. Moog madness forever!

Sosnowski standalone/VSTi Synthesizer created by David Sosnowski. A Classical Composer and programmer. It was designed from the bottom up to be easy yet versatile for the demanding pro as well. The goal in making the instrument was not to burn a hole in your pocket. The synth is an analog style synthesizer with 4 oscillators, 2 LFO's, onboard transposition, Master envelope control, 128 sounds loaded, and more. The unit can be used in standalone mode or VSTi. Download a full unlimited working copy with an exception 2 minute pause with silence. http://www.ssynth.com/?hop=p...

Probably Roland's answer to the ARP Omni like their earlier offering of the RS-202. The RS-505 is strictly preset synth with it's main appeal being it's stunning synth and string sections running through the ensmble effects which is none other than Roland's wide chorus effect. There are 3 settings on the unit for the ensemble effect. 49 key keyboard split down in the middle so you can assign different sounds to the left and right of the keyboard. Nice vinttage Roland controller section with pitch and glide controls and volume.

Fans of the Yamama FM synthesizers like the DX7 and all its many carnations will enjoy this. While reading up on the DX200, the last FM produced by Yamaha, I symbled upon a fascinating post at chipcollection.com. They found an AD posted on the New York Craigslist offering a "Rare Yamaha Prototype Synth DX-2000" that was said to be a prototype product that was never produced. The post also included this picture of the said DX-2000.