It's times like these I seriously wish my phone had a video camera on it

I have a really shitty bait and switch cellphone I got to replace my far superior one when its obsolete battery crapped out (what gives making a battery that doesn't last as long as the warrenty or the cellphone contract?) Anyway I've been running the vostok like a mad scientist and tomorrow I might be picking up an SH 101 to add an extra oscillator and all the rest of that old school Roland synth goodness. I can only continue to appologise for the lack of the goods on this blog. Like it's said on some synth forums I've been on "Pics or it never happened" well if that were the case nothing would ever happen over here. I've got to get my hands on a camera and a vimeo account so that you an get the modular goods from me.

A little of what I've been cooking up:

I've been really taken by this notion of signal attenuation. It all started after reading an interview with Peter Grenadier. I thought to myself... attenuation eh? I've got that! I've got two ancient microphone mixers that attenuate, shit that's all they do!

lucky for me Sony used to do a lot of stuff with 1/8 inch jacks back when my parents were my age because my two mic mixers fit seemlessly into the signal path. I've got one almost always mixing/attenuating audio signals and a second one doing Voltage. There's this really beautiful thing about the Vostok that I think must have been an incidental thing particular to it's design because when something is patched on the matrix board and then a cable is patched from the corresponding output jack and into a mixer the knobs will do very surprising things with the resulting cross-talk. I've been able to use these attenuators to control oscillator pitch, sequencer speed, randomness and reset, lfo rates and sample and hold, intensity, character and the master volume without it ever being wired directly to the VCA! This cross talk thing works even when the mixer isn't output back into the signal path. so one of these bad boys will control parameters without mixing any kind of output. There's a lot of bleed through though which makes things more interesting if less precise.

Yesterday I bought a third microphone mixer from Radio Shack it was on clearance and the dude had to get it from the back room of the store. it runs 1/4 inch so I plan on using it to mix the vostok, Evolver and SH 101 together before they go to the amp.

Also I wish every synth had a real spring reverb.

I've been using an Epiphone tube amp with a reverb spring to amplify my synth and seriously wish more things had reverb springs inside them. I have lots of digital effects which have reverb settings but nothing quite compares to the real thing.

Electro-accoustics, that's the ticket.

This is really exciting.

I've got to hand t to the folks at makenoise they know how to make videos for modules


Introducing...the QMMG from MAKE NOISE on Vimeo.

Suffice it to say that once I've got enough to start my expansion plans I'll want these to be in there.

Mastering Guitar

I loves me some good synth jam part 2

midi guitars...
...drool...

I love me some good synth jam

taking this from Matrixsynth



go to the original here

I think I'm going to buy a TR 707 that's what's making the beats in this clip. Every time I've heard one it's sounded good and playing the virtual one on hobnox has been very persuasive... maybe with Christmas coming?

By the way. Hobnox is a lot of fun and if you are into techno and don't have a lot of cash either for the gear or the softsynths they could be a handy resource.

Catching up on posts

Like a lot of music bloggers I don't pay as much attention to my blog as I do to my synths. The Vostok has been cranky in the midi-to-CV module and I finally got the replacement parts in the mail. I'm working up the nerve to open it up and replace it and it's been easy to put off because lately it's been doing what it's suposed to be doing (converting midi note and velocity information into control voltages) and so the replacement parts have been sitting in my studio surrounded by bubble wrap as I drag my heels about doing things.

I also said once uppon a time that I was going to post the rest of those midi tutorials I found so here they are in order. check out This post for the introduction

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Part 5


Part 6 a


Part 6 b


Part 7

And in more current news!!!

Buchla and Associates have updated their website!!!

and the rumours were true they have come out with a new incarnation of the Balanced Modulator. I can't wait for the footage from the 2009 winter NAMM show to hit the web it's my favourite trade show. So many goodies!

The Buchla in Victoria

Times Colonist
June 01, 2008

As well as being a University of Victoria music professor, Andrew Schloss is a musician who has played with everyone from Laurie Anderson to Jimmy Page.

At the university, he teaches students to play a rare vintage Buchla modular synthesizer. The California instrument produces the classic bleeps, whirs and blips one associates with early synthesizers. Inventor Don Buchla and Robert Moog each invented modular synthesizers in 1963.

Schloss, a computer music whiz who plays (and co-designed) the high-tech Radiodrum, knows Don Buchla. He once invited the legendary synthesizer guru to be a keynote speaker at a new music conference in Vancouver.

read the rest here

My vostok has a gremlin

it lives in the midi-cv module and only comes out when it wants to. I can't explain what is up with it sometimes it won't work no matter what I do, sometimes it will work but only intermittently sometimes it works fine for a few weeks but the gremlin always comes back.

I've been talking with Tom Carpenter about it and he's going to send me replacement parts I'll get to crack it open and fix it soon. It's a good thing this instrument has its own sequencer. if it was out of commission and I was left with an expensive box of wires I'd probably be very sad. As it is I've got a gig coming up in December the Vostok will be there if I can replace it's midi-guts you should be too.

I'll post more info on that soon

Also to the maybe five people who read this blog I'm sorry I havn't uploaded the rest of that midi documentary I've been busy more will be coming soon.

trick or treat!

Untangling Midi embedded

here's the intro to Untangling Midi

I'll make with the regular embeds of this there's 7 parts I'll embed them as I've finished watching them, might take a couple of days. if you are impatient and cant get the above link to work for you you can watch the whole thing on youtube.

becoming part of the rumor mill

I have been writing to Buchla and Associates trying to learn as much as I can about the 200e and in the course of conversation I was told by Don that they are going to be re-issuing the 285 Frequency Shifter/Balanced Modulator

A modern version is due to go up on their site next month.

here's a link to some movies

I found this instructional video called "Untangling Midi" by following links on matrixsynth. Damn but the narrator's glasses are huge.

The whole thing is painfully retro but that's all part of its charm.

go here to download the film in segments I wish I could just embed it here. It's late right now so I'm going to bed but maybe tomorrow I can find it on youtube. if I can find this in an embeddable format I will be posting it here.

in the meantime here's a link to Barry Truax

getting the most from my modular

A couple of days ago I had a thought and it went something like this: my Evolver has four 16 step sequencers on it and only one will play on the vostok at a time. However because the Evolver can remember midi sequences I can program a 16 step melody and recall it when I like and the Vostok will play it... My modular's got memory.

So if my modular has memory and there are for sequencers then in theory I can save four different melodys for each one Evolver preset... that means I've got potentially four times as much memory if I wanted it.

It's not as sophisticated as say a Buchla 200e which can save all the knob settings to be recalled but knobs are meant to be tweaked anyway, I can compose and recall!

I've been tying with it and it does work though not always well. At least not with the internal sequencer. The Vostok's 8 step internal cv gate sequencer has to be re-programmed every time and I'm still working on how to accurately take notes for step sequencers. So Buchla has one more up on me in that the knob settings on an Arbitrary Function Generator can be saved in the 200e preset memory. But hey, knobs are meant to be tweaked.

re-mixing the Apocalypse

Late at night when my wife is in bed and I'm up doing work sometimes I plug in my computer to my synth and play video news clips through the ring modulator. As I write this I've got a good idea for an installment someplace if I could ever get the space and time. These passive mixers give me way more control over the vostok and with the Evolver's incredible amount of memory I can create midi-note sequences which the Vostok plays while it's internal clock drives the Evolver's sequencer adding an extra eight steps to play with.... Beautiful.

Any way, like I was saying. ring modulating Sarah Palin and Bill Moyers is freaking awsome and the Evolver/Vostok/mixers trio realy lets me do some great stuff.

It's got me thinking about how many tape loops I could make if I just sat down to do it and how great it would be to do some live music concrete... though technically that's impossible so would it be music wet-concrete? I don't know but I'm going to need to find some places to take this shit it's too good to leave in my living room.

Also I need a web cam so I can put this up on the intra-web... (fingers crossed) I'll have to figure that out.

In other news my CD is Finished! Finally after two and a half years I'll be getting it from Jeremy Enkel (who produced it) and then it's all about pimping my tunes! I'll need to find a way to get them onto the web, I'd like to make them available to download here for free and I hope to be making copies to leave around the city maybe if I'm lucky someone will offer me a gig.

ok no pics tonight it's coming time for bed. just want to do one more headline.

photos of my gear

Finally I took a bunch of pictures and re-sized them for you, I guess this would be my first official gear-porn post. It's a humble beginning but this is basically my main set up and it's out in the living room because there's a bit more space to stretch out. my studio shares that room with my wife's sewing space consequently neither of us uses that room much. Please ignore the laundry I didn't straighten up before taking these and don't feel like taking new ones, this is a music blog not better homes and gardens.

and while you browse might I suggest listening to this song by 23 Skidoo.



Here's my studio: in front of you is my very first keyboard, the one I got in trade for a David Icke book. It's got my midi interface resting on it, I'm not really sure if this works any more, it was out in my mom's garage for a while and I havn't tested it out yet the yamaha is great, once I get the tools I'm going to try my hand at bending it:


Now here you have pictures of my MS 20 and SQ 10, I got them for my birthday last year thus kicking off an obsession with analogue synthesis and synthesizers.

Above you can see my Nova and my X Station I really like the X Station as a polysynth it's got some very nice presets and as far as a combination between a midi keyboard and synth it's well worth the money, and cheap too only about 300 new. I still havn't really pushed the Nova so I'm undecided on wether I like it as much as I had thought I would. it's for sale if you are interested.

The little guy below the MS 20 is a Cassio SK1 that I got from Craigslist. The dude who sold it to me got it from some asshole named Jesse Mesa Savage, I guess he's a famous circuit bender but he treats his patrons like shit, good keyboard though, the bends in it are great.

Here's my livingroom set up. The black in the corner is hiding undergarments.

That guitar is my baby it's been with me since I was 12 and the only place it hasn't visited with me is Ecuador.

I got two of these three channel mixers for two dollars at a thrift store, they are really useful for attenuating and mixing tape loops and as an extra set of inputs on the modular I have a second one I'm not presently using, they are indispensable.

I got this at a thrift store in preparation for Halloween I wanted to go about shouting "Merry Christmas" and pelting stuff with other things but it's also really handy as a cheap-o amplifier, it does some nifty feedback and distorted echoing on it's high settings and it's got two inputs, the mike it comes with makes sound effects too and I mean it's called the "Sing n' Jam" it doesn't get much better. One day maybe I'll see what kinds of bends I can get from the mic.

And here's the baby of my instrument family, the Vostok of my dreams. This is so freaking great to have and together with the Evolver it's one bad ass synth.

So there it is folks... photos of my synthesizers. Presently my favourite configuration is to have the Vostok's VCA output running through the Evolver and also sepratley through the little mixer I have there and then both going into my amp.

Lots of fun... more when I've got it.

it's been quiet here for too long.

I recently got the vostok back from Front Line Assembly and have started playing it again experimenting with combinations of cables and pins and figuring out the attack decay envelopes. I wrote to Tom Carpenter tonight to get some more information on just how simmilar they are to the EMS trapezoid generator.

I've also come into a Novation Supernova rack which I bought from my friend in FLA who just came back from an aborted tour with his other band to find some very urgent debts.

I don't know how long I'll have it for. Honestly it's a great instrument but I think it's the wrong sort for what I'm in to. Besides that I've fallen in love with the Buchla 200e (as far as it's possible to be in love with a musical instrument). I've decided that I'm going to try and save enough to buy a 12 panel system and keep my fingers crossed that one comes up for sale used because the price tag for a new one is head-spinning. My plan basically is to save and save and save, and if one comes up for sale used and I can afford it I'll buy that one, and if I have to save until I can get one new, well I'll have to wait a long time but it will be worth it and the time between then and now will give me the opportunity to bone up.

I followed some links a while ago and found this gem by Bary Truax The Handbook for Accoustic Ecology

I've also beel listening to this a lot. Particularly the track Round Rolling Mirror, I think that one's beautiful.

here are a picture of my new Supernova. I'll post some more pictures tomorrow while I do my laundry.

as soon as I can I'll try and have some audio and video up but for now chances are if you read this blog you already know me so just give me a call and we'll hang out if you'd like to hear some of my modular noise.

he's back!

I'm back from my honeymoon. We didn't end up going as long as I had originally thought because of money issues but it's just as well, we've been having a great time just resting up before work starts for my wife. I'm starting this blog up again officially as of tonight. We took some good video and as soon as I figure out how to get it up on youtube or vimeo there will be some here. Also, learning how to take video with our camera means that as soon as I get my modular back from Chris Peterson there will be some vostok'in In the mean time here's a clip of someone playing the shit out of an old and un-bent Yamaha Portasound.

Hey Guess What...

AMPLIFIED & EFFECTED SKATEBOARD LEDGE/ RAILING

Matrixsynth
August 27, 2008

I just found this and thought it was more than worth re-posting. Skateboarders, noise, and all the rest. watch, read, and go visit Matrixsynth and maybe also Devi Ever's website too.



"The skateboarder has become one of the significant examples of dynamic movement and interpretation of the urban landscape. The skateboard has also become synonymous with public destruction and noise - always a calling card for social / public complaint and public control. Mixing the elements of the skateboard and its interpretation of something abstract like a handrail can also be highlighted via the media arts to recognize the audio elements within the relationship between the skateboard, the railing, and the physicality of the skateboarder.

This performance was planned for the Project Sound Wave Series (3) Sound Festival June 27th 2008 in San Francisco CA. We were denied entry into the States and Homeland Security fingerprinted and blackmarked Nicolay. The result was this video performance done in Vancouver which was screened at the festival on the 27th in San Francisco."

The original is right here

long time coming

So I've been taken up by the hectic stress of getting married and moving at the same time. I've also had little new to say and I've been stalling on taking or putting up any pictures here because when I'm stressed out I procrastinate. I know it's a wonderful way to give yourself a brain embolism.

Anyway my home studio is looking pretty sparse as I've loaned the Vostok to Front Line Assembly.

Remember I said something like that might happen?

Here's some back story...

I've been friends with Jeremy Enkel (their keyboardist) for years, we used to go to all ages punk shows together and raise hell in North Vancouver. We both flunked out of the same electronic music program in college, He's also recorded me and is one of the principle influences in me getting into electronic music in the first place.

Ok so I was showing him pictures of the vostok on analogue solutions and he told me he wanted to take a look at it when it arrived, Chris Peterson from FLA has a Doepfer system and Jeremy told me they might want to use my synth on their forthcoming album. I naturally told them that they were welcome to borrow my instrument after I'd had some quality time with it and that's where things were until last week when I was talking with Jeremy and mentioned the vostok and asked if his band still wanted to use it, he said yes so I packed it up and took it down to his work with me.

I'm expecting I'll get it back in a couple of weeks and I get credit on their album.

They're also doing a photo shoot with it in their gear-pile. Jeremy told me they would give me copies of the pictures once he has some, I'll put them up here when I get them.

For now I'm sort of missing the modular.

Playing on my MS-20 is a good panacea but that vostok+evolver combination was just deadly.

I got my FB01 working again and have been playing it using my crummy old midi keyboard in unison mode it behaves a little like the Vostok, I want to chain them all together and slave them to my keyboard that would sound deadly. I really like the cheap fm sounds that the FB01 can make but it's really frustrating how impossible it is to program.

I don't just mean impossible like trying to create sounds on a DX7 or something, no I mean imossible in the sense that there are no on-board parameters for creating new patches and the only way to program new sounds in to use a sys-ex application and your computer (or so I'm given to understand). This leaves me at a dissadvantage because my midi-interface is probably as junked out as my keyboard after a few years in storage, probably I fear in my mom's garage.

uggh.

I've tried using the knobs on my midi controller to influence the FB01 but it is really tough to get it to do anything other than keyboard portamento and the simplest scrolling up and down through the presets even that has to be done partially using the buttons on the module I can't figure out how to get it to work using only the keyboard.

Speaking of my most loathed of all busted keyboards. I'm going to be buying a Novation X Station soon to replace my midi jalopy... I mean keyboard...

This means I'll have a full four octaves, an actually good sounding digital synth, a full midi keyboard and it also means I'll be able to take my yamaha portasound and circuit bend it because I'll finally have decent polyphony in my studio.


I know it's kind of silly to build an analogue workspace around a toy keyboard from 1986 but the portasound rocks. Also I got it in trade for a David Icke Book about 9/11 how much cooler does it get? Try running it through guitar effects...

moving moving moving

Today was the day I moved all my gear into my new place. I still don't have it all connected, I'm missing a few important patch cables and I need a new midi cable but my live rig (modular, evolver, and sk1) are off the kitchen table and on the desk where they belong. needless to say my fiancee is happy to have a kitchen table again. Next step after procuring the needed cables is getting another chair.

I have to find my digital camera and put some things up on this blog asap, it's looking sparse up here and I've been promising videos... I have to get on that.

for now here's a short list of hypertext links that will take you to gear porn.

http://www.sonicstate.com/news/shownews.cfm?newsid=6047

http://www.deviever.com/fx/

http://www.theharvestman.org/9791.htm

http://www.access-music.de/events/11-2004/virusti_specifications.php4?product=virustipolar

some errata from the review.

I sent Tom Carpenter the links to my review last night after I wrote it. I suppose this is learning through trial and error. It occurred to me after that I should have written him and asked a bunch of questions related to my experiences using his instrument before writing my review, at least that's how I've seen it done in places like Sound on Sound. That being said, he wrote me back today and offered a few words about the jack problems I mentioned and caught a mistake I'd made in describing the midi-to-CV converter. The unique features on the midi converter I mentioned are Accent and Legato outputs not Allegro and Legato inputs as I had written. Accent turns on when you play over velocity 80, Legato turns on when you overlaps notes.

here are a couple of excerpts from his e-mail speaking to the jacks

"Jacks are generally good; I don’t hear about problems.

A little history. There is only one make of those jack sockets; Cliff electronics. Same as Integrator and Doepfer use.

Since my modules where to be compatible, I used the same sockets. Perhaps a mistake since I am stuck with them and the price keeps going up and up.

For years there was a problem with those sockets; documented by doepfer themselves on their web site.

I buy a more expensive version of the socket which cures contact problems (at least it seems to, I am certainly happy with the improved sockets).

Cliff state that the problem (with their older design) is not created by them, but by slight variations in jack plug design. They seem to think the Japanese ones are slightly different from the European ones, or something.

When you point out that no problems exist with any other jack socket manufacturer they can offer no comment."

and the matrix

"‘signal attenuation on the matrix’ is normal, since this panel is ‘unbuffered’, like the EMS synths and many others. Buffering is possible, but I believe the big increase that will add to the price out weighs the benefit. (no one has complained about attenuation, so why remove it at a cost of around $300!)"

let's get modular! Vostok Review part 2.

Matrix patching pros and cons:

So this is my first fully modular instrument and also my first music review so I'm kind of doing this by the seat of my pants but I want to talk more about the matrix panel and the external patchability of this synth. Having only had it a few weeks I think this is its best feature. If it had only the matrix panel it would be harder to figure out for a beginner (at least this beginner). From months playing an MS20 I'm used to seeing cords and having a good idea of where the current is going right in my face, with the matrix panel I've got a steeper learning curve. However the fact that each module also has patch points I've been able to experiment with cables and try to re-create the effect in the matrix. On the other hand I have also become sort of reliant on those outputs and inputs and perhaps it's slowed down my learning process, another con of this particular instrument is that the external ins and outs are sort of spotty, particularly on the upper half of the mult where I've regularly had to jiggle the cable a few times to re-establish a connection. I've also come up against some other bugs in the instrument which I'm not yet certain are fault of the synth or my cheap, old, midi keyboard. So for now the only major glitch I've found is the sometimes uncertain wiring in some of the jacks.

These relatively minor issues aside I want to address the best feature on the whole synth the combination between matrix and external jacks means that every module is capable of redundant patching. For instance I can put a sample and hold into the CV input on the filter, create an envelope on the same part of the filter and control that same parameter with the joystick and only use one patch cord (and a lot of pins) Basically, everything that is accessible on the matrix is also externally controllable with cables so everything can multi-task. There can be some signal attenuation when too many things are patched into the same place and some pins do this more than others because of the way the two types are designed. But over all the signal loss is minimal, it probably won't ruin your night.

I wanted to go through each module individually and be really comprehensive about it all but seeing as how I'm reviewing the instrument as a whole and how I've already had to break it into two parts I think I'll give you a run down of the basic features and their highlights most of these aren't on the matrix panel.

I've already talked about the matrix so let's start from the top (literally): The midi to CV converter has two inputs one for "Allegro" and one for "Legato". I've never heard of this before but basically what these do is give you keyboard control over the sequencer, you can trigger it to play, stop or step through it's cycle based on how fast or slow you play when the sequencer is patched into this, kind of a cool idea but I haven't used it much yet.

VCO 1 has a ring modulator on the bottom corner and it also has a triangle wave output, it's pitch is higher than the other two and it's sub octave is built into the tuning knob. And speaking of the knobs many of them perform two functions when pulled out, I think this is a great feature because it gives you as many parameters as possible within the limited space.

VCO 2 and 3 are identical in construction, saw and pulse outputs as well as three sub octave outputs, the lowest one is almost LFO speed. and they are good for frequency modulation.

LFO 1 and 2 are pretty standard, saw, ramp, triangle and sine outputs controlled by two of those knobs that you can pull out. An 8 step CV/Gate sequencer (all with push/pull knobs) it's fun to play and with an led for each step it's nice to look at too.

The joystick is really sturdy and it's not spring loaded. It does a good job of staying in its place as well, I've left it over night at an angle and come back the next evening to find it in the same place as I left it, this is a very nice feature. The joystick is also controllable via the matrix and patch outputs simultaneously allowing for nicely complicated blends of sound and filter sweeps. There are more complex and ornate joystick controllers on the market but this one does really well and I use it a lot.

Voltometer: There's a voltometer below the joystick, I haven't found a really practical use for this yet and the manual clearly states that it's not a precision device however it's nice eye-candy and it suits the old-school soviet aesthetic that the design is aiming for.

Envelope Generators, there are two of them each with a repeat function (go knobs!) The repeat setting is fun, last night I fluked on a patch that sounded very much like the Dr Who theme and I owe it to the repeating envelope. I have had some difficulty getting them to work on the matrix and with patch cords but this may be due to those aforementioned wiring glitches.

Sample and Hold/noise generator: I love sample and hold. I think the sound this module makes is one of the reasons I first got into making electronic music with analog synthesizers. I was disappointed when I was reading the specs on this instrument and under "noise generator" it only had white noise listed, sure it makes a better sample and hold sound but I like the chunky gritty pink noise output on my MS20 and I was worried that the Vostok would let me down with only white noise available.

It hasn't let me down.

The noise level is controllable and really ballsy, turned all the way up it will almost drown everything else out in the mix, that's a good noise generator.

the mixer is a standard 6 in 2 out mixer, one of the outputs is polarized voltages and it will mix both CV and Pitch (though not at the same time), for the size (it's only 4hp wide) it's probably the best and most basic mixer commercially available, if you want it done with no special features and you want it done easily this is a good mixer to have. These, like everything else in this suitcase, are available as stand-alone modules. If and when I start to build my expansion I will be using these mixers again.

I've already talked about the mult, but the Filter is something to rave about, it's based on the MS20's filter, it has a resonant highpass and resonant lowpass, both love being driven into oscillation and there are even knobs which only control the resonance/oscillation (that's one up on the korg).

The sound is very similar to the MS20 though I think the Vostok has a slightly thinner tone when oscillating. I'd have to break them both out and do a comparison but it's close enough that I have trouble telling them apart in use. The MS20 filter section is one of my favourite filters and if this synth didn't have one I'd be tracking down a good clone (and I might still).

This is a really great filter.

There's not really much one can say about a voltage controlled amplifier, it's got two outputs one for mini jack and one for 1/4 inch patch cords, and the Vostok also has two more external outputs and inputs so you can theoretically play external sounds through it's filter but not as elaborately as the ESP section on the MS20.

All in all I'm pleased that I bought it, and it was well worth the price. I think it's a great instrument for learning with and it has some very valuable features which make it both distinct and more complex than you would guess, I'm going to have to take it over to a friend's place and get a second opinion about whether it needs to be sent back to Big City Music under warranty to get the kinks ironed out but over all I am really happy with it and with the company which makes them, I was able to talk at length with Tom Carpenter at Analogue Solutions and his advice and help. If you are looking for a basic system to start out with, and you like the sound dirty and harsh this is the sort of thing you might want to consider. It's got a softer side as well but it really excels at at metal/industrial and heavy bass riffs that will break your heart to pieces.

Luckily that's just what I was looking for.

let's get modular! Vostok Review part 1.

So this is my review of the Vostok suitcase synth from Analogue Solutions.


I've never spent so much money on one thing in my life. It took me months to save the thirty-five hundred to buy this instrument and enough patch cords to make patching more intricate. That said, the world of analog synth's in general is an expensive world and after looking around I decided on this one because it looked like a good entry-level modular synth, it has three VCOs two Envelopes, a multimode filter mased on the Korg MS 20, a ring modulator, joystick, eight step sequencer, two lfo's, and the basic utility components that every synth needs: multiples and a mixer. It also has midi which is pretty much standard for anything these days, and I'm glad it's there. The Vostok also has one other feature which sets it apart from all the other standard modular systems and all but a few of the old ones: a pin matrix for creating patches without the use of patch cords.

I think this is the place to begin because it was this along with the sequencer and joystick which first got me hooked.

I was already sprung on getting a fully modular synth some months ago as I watched my ill-fated experiment with a prophet 600 I bought off of Craigslist came to an expensive and depressing end, but as a friend of mine said to me about Craigslist: the odds are good but the goods are odd.

Matrix patching has a long though obscure life that traces itself back through the British synth company Electronic Music Studios (EMS for short) Who started manufacturing electronic instruments for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop back in the 1950's and 60's. EMS is really legendary for two products which are still commercially available and much sought after: the VCS3 and the Synthi AKS (also a suitcase synth) the AKS was made famous by prog rock bands like Pink Floyd who used it to program the sounds on Dark Side of the Moon (it's the instrument they used to make On the Run with). And everyone from Jean Michelle Jarre and Cabaret Voltaire used the AKS.

The EMS instruments were all patchable internally by these tiny peg-boards, called pin matrices. The internal components (Filter, Oscillators etc...) were all normaled to this board and you'd put a slender metal pin inside to create the sound or rout the voltage to other parts of the instrument. it was very neat, very tidy and very useful. A few other, smaller British synth makers also incorporated this design scheme but it never caught on like the patch cord, probably due to the price and relative fragility of the pins and the fact that tiny hols fill with dust over time and if you don't or can't keep the instrument covered it may start doing odd things on its own after a long time.

Ok so enough history for now.



This guy Tom Carpenter, who is the man behind a new synth company in the UK Analogue Solutions he brought it back and put it on this synth.

Probably sensing that he couldn't make a Synthi clone easily or affordably, or perhaps wanting to move forward taking the good ideas and leaving the past where it was, he decided to make an instrument that doesn't even look like an AKS and makes it very clear on his site that it's not supposed to be.

I really need to post some demos of this thing someplace because most of them on youtube aren't my cup of tea and where sometimes these things can be really helpful in making up ones mind to buy something these didn't, not at first any way....

oh fuck yah!

This might just be the coolest damn organ solo I've ever seen. I need to listen to more old Emerson Lake and Palmer.

Delia Derbyshire overdrive

Lost tapes of the Dr Who composer

Nigel Wrench
BBC Radio 4
July 18 2008

A hidden hoard of recordings made by the electronic music pioneer behind the Doctor Who theme has been revealed - including a dance track 20 years ahead of its time.

read the rest here

Archivist Responds: Yes, Virginia, Delia Derbyshire Really Was That Awesome

Peter Kirn
Create Digital Music.com
July 29 2008

It came as no surprise to me that Delia Derbyshire, composer and BBC Radiophonic Workshop maestra, would have created incredibly forward-thinking music in the 60s. But when one track seemed to predict IDM and modern electronica, the story of Derbyshire’s vintage “dance” track spread over the Interwebs, and even aroused suspicion of fakery.

Delia Derbyshire Recordings Found, Including Ahead-of-its-Time Dance Track

David Butler of the University of Manchester was one of two archivists who started undertaking the work of assembling a library of Derbyshire’s ground-breaking work. He writes in CDM’s comments that this is no BBC special effect: the recordings are very much real. He also clears up some of the confusion about their discovery, and offers more on the tantalizing cut “NOAH’s dance.”

read the rest here

WHITE NOISE, The Black Mass: An Electric Storm in Hell

A video of my Vostok at Big City Music two weeks ago

A couple of days ago I got my Vostok in the mail! This video was on Analog Suicide about two weeks ago right before I ordered it. I'm still getting familiar with it but soon I hope to have some specific things to say about it for now all I'm going to say is that I'm not disappointed.

I make very different music from what's in the video above.

welcome to my stomach

uggh.

I left work early and went home. I ate a bunch of stuff and hoped I'd throw up and instead I made some music with my bent cassio and my evolver, and played some guitar and then when I thought maybe I was getting a bit better I realised that I hadn't improved I'd just been distracted and now my stomach feels worse than before. I'm going to try and make myself sick in a little while but I thought I'd share a couple of links with you here first as well as a reflection on the fact that most if not all of what I've posted about here might be old news to whomever it is that actually reads these posts. Ever since I started this blog I've become more aware of the large culture of music bloggers than I had previously been and there are a lot of blogs out there like trash audio, matrixsynth, muff wiggler, and analog suicide who are all doing this but better than me and with much better connections to information resources and "the scene" than I've got.

I can't compete with them and so I'm not even going to try, that's not what this blog is about to me and it never was.

This is really more of a note-pad and place where I can share things I'm discovering many for the first time...

I'm enthralled by this whole process of making music out of electrical currents and since the people closest to me have all had their ears talked off by me and my obsession with synthesis I thought I'd inflict my interest on everyone else within ear/eyeshot.

So if you heard it here last then, well I guess that's how it's played out.

All that said I want to share a couple of links that were given to me today by a friend at work.

x0xb0x Opensource synth and sequencer



Why do I get the feeling that if I do end up doing reviews I'm going to be doing a lot of soldering...

My friend Joe went to the Last HOPE confrence in NYC recently and when he told me about it I decided to post this Citizen Engineer is a group of people working on anarchistic expressions of technology.

they have videos...

chinese beef jerkey is always a bad idea

No but seriously I ate this bag of beef jerkey I bought from an asian grocery store on my way to work and now I've got some foul smelling burps and my stomach is feeling kind of gross. Also I've concluded that I'm drinking way too much cafine and it's having adverse effects on my mood and physiology... I'm going to have to limit my consumption to coffee or yerba mate in the morning and cut out the red bull and hyper cafinated sodas they are not good in any meaningful sense of the word.

I've got some things to post about later I'm at work right now and feeling like ass I think I'm going to need to go home early and lay down for a bit. ugh..

In less intestinal news I'm geting my vostok tomorrow! Also I was telling my friend Jeremy about the vostok and I think Front Line Assembly want to use it on their new album.

more on this as it unfolds.

my other piece of gear porn for you all

I often think to myself "damn but I have too many keyboards in my rig. I think I have about five. Who needs that many??? I do apparently. So I'm often reluctant to salivate over new keyboards no matter how badass the features attached to them are then today while goofing off at work I found this:







fucking microtonal synthesizer! fucking too many notes between an octave to believe! this thing sounds amazing to me. I know that microtonal and a-tonal music is not a staple of everybody's sound pallate much in the way that a haggis is repulsive to the imagination of a lifelong vegan but I suppose if I were to follow that analogy further I'd be eating some oatmeal out of a sheep's stomach with a grin. The only problem is that with that many keys there are an equally infinite number of ways to make it sound like crap, and learning it well enough to have proficiency would probably take the rest a person's life... still I would buy one had I the funds, I'm certainly thinking about it... they have a totally midi version which re-tunes regular keyboards too.

go to their website and marvel at the musical Lego looking keyboards!

h pi.com

more on mellotron

do you remember a few posts ago I was musing about the possibilities of making some kind of agro-tron out of an old mellotron and a whole new set of home made tape loops?

Well thanks to Tara Busch and Analog Suicide I've discovered a neat instrument which will do just that if you wanted it to.

some guy made a mellotron with tape recorders!

I know it's too fucking cool tape recorders and mellotron!

here's a link to the analog suicide post about it.

and here's a link to some homemade mellotron jams

oooh goody!

I got an e-mail from Big City Music tonight. My Vostok synth is in the mail, I should be getting it in the 31st of the month! Expect some sort of video and review up here in August.

Moving is going to start happening soon. I'll be packing before work and stuff will begin to be moved over to my new place. The vintage parts of the studio will come last (naturally) I'll still have to work out how it will all fit in the space we've got here.

Should be interesting.


I'll post more in a couple of days when I've got the synth!

excitement!

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I wanted to embed this but that's been disabled on this clip sadly
but go here
seriously go there and watch it's a trip down memory lane. Instead I 'will leave you with this:



and also this



have an awesome day, I know I will :)

watch this 20 minute documentary about a 6 second drum loop

Seriously, it seems like it should be absurd that someone could make a 20 minute documentary about a 6 second sound clip but it's really interesting.

from the youtube summary:

This sample was used extensively in early hiphop and sample-based music, and became the basis for drum-and-bass and jungle music -- a six-second clip that spawned several entire subcultures. Nate Harrison's 2004 video is a meditation on the ownership of culture, the nature of art and creativity, and the history of a remarkable music clip.

The Telharmonium

It was 1906. "Get Music on Tap Like Gas or Water" promised the headlines, and soon the public was enchanted with inventor Thaddeus Cahill's (1867-1934) electrical music by wire.

The Telharmonium was a 200-ton behemoth that created numerous musical timbres and could flood many rooms with sound.

Beginning with the first instrument, constructed in the 1890's, and continuing with the installation of the second instrument at Telharmonic Hall in New York, the rise and fall of commercial service, the attempted comeback of the third Telharmonium, and ending with efforts to find a home for the only surviving instrument in 1951, this documentary provides a definitive account of the first comprehensive music synthesizer.

You can get a full DVD of this documentary: here

Tape Mayhem Appendix:

I've always been attracted to tape manipulation, at least as long as I've been into electronic music. One of my very first positive introductions to experimental music was the pieces made by Hugh LeCaine, the Canadian physicist and Music Concrete artist. A friend and I were doing this project called The Empire of Crime which was an outlet for my craving to make experimental tape noise. I played one of our sessions to a friend who told me a bit about LeCaine and sent me an MP3 of Dripsody and another longer piece of his called The Burning Desk. LeCaine was really into additive synthesis; creating varied sounds by introducing new sound waves as opposed to subtractive synthesis which alters the quality of sound by stripping off different harmonic and tonal layers (what most analogue gear functions on).

Hugh LeCaine designed a massive synthesizer called the Sonde which he used to create very complex sounds by adding hundreds of different sine waves together. But much earlier than that he was one of the pioneers of synthesizer technology, before Moog and Buchla but not by much, he invented things like the Electronic Sackbut Organ and something called The Special Purpose Tape Recorder which was an instrument designed to play a variety of tape loops and was triggered by a piano style keyboard.

I fell in love with the special purpose tape recorder.

I was watching old Analogue Suicide videos and there's this one featuring the newly re-released Mellotron. The Mellotron is sort of like a special purpose tape recorder in that they both work on the same principle: a mellotron plays strings and flute sounds which are recorded on different loops of tape and played back at varying speeds.

If a person were to get their hands on an old (but working) mellotron and decided to replace the tape loops underneath the keyboard you could have it play whatever sound you liked. I was thinking about this on my way home today. It would be almost like blasphemy to take apart an instrument like that and change it's innards, on the one hand a working mellotron would play all of those beautiful sounds you hear on the later Beatles records like Abby Road but if you were really methodical about it you could customize it to play anything you liked, car horns, ocean noise, screams, guitar or samples you recorded off of a modular rig. Of course to make a really functional and customized mellotron using new tape loops scaled for pitch and tracking properly on the keyboard would be a real undertaking and would involve more knowlege resources and time than most people have.

still it's a nice idea

here's a link to the Analogue Suicide post abut mellotrons

tape mayhem!

How to make a tape loop



also some tape looping technique using a tascam four track tape recorder



and a different person using similar equipment to achieve very different sounds

The Ondes Martenot

This is an oldschool version of an instrument I just discovered for sale at Noisebug


From their website:
The Persephone is a fingerboard analogue synthesizer with CV and MIDI in and out. At the first sight, the Persephone reminds of the first electronic fingerboard instruments developed in the 1920s. But beyond this vintage look, the Persephone allies sensors technology and digital controls to a pure analogue generation of sound. The Persephone musicality will be determined by the way it is played. The Persephone respects the traditional play of the first non-keyboard electronic instruments with the right hand controlling the pitch and the left hand controlling the velocity. The ribbon zone can allow all kinds of play. When scaled, the Persephone can be played like a regular keyboard. Though there are no fixed preset notes with the ribbon, keyboard players will easily find their way. Guitars and bass players will certainly play it like a chord instrument and get sounds that are closed to cello or violin, especially when using vibratos. Jazz players will enjoy slapping the Persephone's ribbon to get wonderful sonorities.

So many instruments, so little cash.

No es del meu gust

That Theramin demo was way better on the Youtube site. I showed it to my fiancee today hoping that it would have all the captions that the filmmakers inserted about how you should NEVER open vacuum tube devices when they are on, but for whatever reason the captions didn't appear on my blog. If you thought it was lackluster I suggest you try watching it on youtube. I'm going to right now...


Yup, it's on the youtube page it's pretty cool like if your highschool science teacher directed pop-up video... with theramins!

Also I've been playing with this I'm sure that most everyone who is into eurorack modular gear has already heard of this site but I've found it both useful and entertaining.

I feel like some kid in the Great Depression cutting out pictures from the Sears Roebuck Catalog and dreaming of the badass suits and guns and... cows... they sold through the mail back then.

I've actually been designing a modular system and I hope to begin doing reviews when my vostok arrives I'll try and get some thing(s) up about it on youtube when I can get one. I'm waiting for AH to get theirs because I've been talking with Shawn Cleary there on and off for the past month and even though Big City Music has a Vostok in their store right now for sale at a comparable price I want to wait for AH because their customer service has really made all the difference to me and it seems pretty lame to get all my info from Shawn who's been nothing but helpful only to go and buy the thing someplace else. for earlier reviews I've done go to here and look up FB01, Evolver, and Tablebeast. Shit, just scroll down for a few pages, it's all there and then some.

The Music of the Spheres!

Alien Voices of Saturn. NASA Radio Recordings from the Rings

I came across this looking for footage of the Voice of Saturn Synth Kit all I can say is Holy Shit I need my tape recorder!!!

wiresource youtube find of the day... maybe the week?

I say that only partially because I've not been updating here much right now. I'm waiting on Analogue Heaven they're due to get a shipment of Vostok Synths in soon but I'm not sure how soon yet.

Also I'm moving in with the woman I'm going to marry and kind of hesitant to get anything filmed before then. Though that could change.

I really like this dude's demo, I think he should be wearing a lab coat.

I want a theramin.

I like tape recorders

Inaugural Post

Hi, so this is my new blog. I created it after much thought and consideration since my previous blog has become a defacto music blog and I think that's a good place to leave it and begin a new actual music blog. It would sem that for me I have blogs which mark stages in my life this is the start of a new one.

I was thinking about waiting to create this until I had some new gear to review. I'm presently waiting on an Analogue Solutions Vostok suitcase synth. It'll be the first piece of fully modular gear in my growing studio. Currently I have a Korg MS20, an SQ10 sequencer, DSI Evolver desktop module, Yamaha Portasound, a circuit-bent Cassio SK1, a Yamaha Rex50 effects processor, a Yamaha FB01 FM synth, numerous tape recorders, and various effects pedals my favourites of which are my Electro-Harmonix 16 Second Delay, my Roland DD3 Delay and my MXR Phaser pedal. I've also got some old school audio mixers which I found at a thrift store and a bunch of guitars and stuff but presently the electronic music has been taking up most of my time.

I'm finishing studio work on a mostly folk influenced CD called Desolation Sound and I'm working on a primarily electronic album on my own under the name "Chris and the Machines"

I don't know how often this is going to be updated I plan on it being pretty casual I've already got two blogs I try and update daily and that's a lot more work than you might imagine. I also co-edit a monthly zine called The Christian Radical and work as a bookseller and hopefully soon as a part-time office assistant. I need a new job because I'm getting married at the end of August so my presently modest-yet-comfortable-as-long-as-I-don't-save-anything income will probably need a boost and because modular synthesizers cost money over time and saving for this Vostok has hit me where I live.

I hope to get some pictures and videos up here soon and also a sidebar where I'll have links to music blogs I like, bands I like, gear I like or want and my other projects both current and defunct. For now enjoy the spartan atmosphere of my brand new blog!