One of the most tantalising websites in the world is ems-synthi. demon.co.uk. It's the official page of EMS, the company co-founded by Tristram Cary, makers of the VCS3, and - at the very least - the British Moog. Anyway, that demon.co.uk page is tantalising because it says "Original Synthi As, VCS3s and Vocoders are still in production", and offers a price list quoting £1800 for a brand new VCS3. Unfortunately, it also says "Last updated: 8th August 1998". I've never heard of anyone actually buying one. Now I've got a mail from Chris: "You might be interested to know I had an email from Robin at EMS. I was after a vocoder and wanted to know if he still had any lying around. He said that EMS has lain dormant for the past 6 years but that he was considering getting things going again and that email inquiries like mine served to propel things along a bit. I for one would love it if they started churning out the old gear again. He's a way off yet but I will keep you posted." Robin is Robin Wood, who was recruited to EMS as back in the late '60s and has been with the company ever since. Those prices are very unlikely to stick, given that - for starters - VCS3-style pin matrixes are made in Switzerland and cost around £300 each wholesale...
Tristram Cary and his cake reminded me of this page on the strange, lost-in-time website for EMS (it hasn't been updated since 1998). It's a collection of ads for various EMS synths. A few are missing, but look out for the Christmas special, and the picture of EMS founder Peter Zinovieff in a rustic idyll, synthesizing on batteries. Then there's the picture above, which is truly wonderful.
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The suitcase-mounted EMS Synthi is one of the coolest synths ever made. Brian Eno used it to create lots of the weird noises on David Bowie's 'Heroes', and the Chemical Brothers use theirs for loads of the big analog noises (full Chems' gear list). Now, a german company called EMS, who seem to use the same logo as the original EMS, are selling a Virtual Synthi. I haven't had a chance to download the windows only demo yet, but it's very unusual to see a VST plugin approved by the original manufacturer, so it might be good. They're not the first with a Synthi emulation: these guys with their really badly designed website will sell you one for $14.95, and I'm sure I downloaded a really cranky one from KVR a while back. EMS are still making and selling original Synthi's Here - selling them for £1600 - £1800, although an original one sold for £2,550 on Ebay two weeks ago. Alternatively, for $2, you can buy a Fridge Magnet, or for $9.99, a slightly rubbish T-Shirt.
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If you've ever lusted after a EMS Synthi, then this is the big daddy. It's got 12 oscillators, two enormous matrix-board patch panels, and more knobs than... (insert crude joke here). It's being sold for $60,000, which isn't great considering that EMS Germany say they'll build you a new one for 55,000 Euros. Dave suggests that he and 364 other Music Thing readers could club together and buy $175 timeshares in it - so you'd get 1 day each year to play. So long as it's stored at MT headquarters in London, I think it's a great idea.
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"Hey Tom, don't you ever get bored of posting eBay auctions of old and ludicrously expensive EMS gear?" Nope. Item #7380071548 is a great looking Synthi E - the slightly cruddy cut-down version of the Synthi A. This one is already $1,174 with five days to go... (Thanks, ScotStorch)
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Item 7338442083 is a very rare and culty Ionic Performer, which is - roughly speaking - a EMS VCS3 built into a huge keyboard for the American market (it seems to have been a rip-off produced by EMS' former US dealership). So, Britain got a tiny, beautiful, wood-encased thing with a fantastically complicated matrix patchbay, and America got a big keyboard covered in red buttons and a manual which declared 'no talent required'. This one is apparently not in perfect condition ("It hisses like a Madagascan cockroach most of the time"), but is currently just $71. To learn more about the Performer, or download a VST emulation, visit this fantastic page. (Thanks Blake)
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Thanks to Peter for discovering this - undoubtedly the coolest synth cake ever made (unless you know better). It's a EMS VCS3 (check out the silver Vernier dials, the joystick and the matrix panel full of candles!), that was made for the 80th birthday of Tristram Cary, one of the founders of EMS, who helped invent the VCS3. He's had a very cool career. He was a naval radar officer in WWII, when he started thinking about music made with tapes and electronics.
After the war, he studied and made a living as a composer. He did music for film & tv, working on early Dr Who episodes and Quatermass and the Pit. In 1967 he founded the Electronic Music Studio at the Royal College of Music. In the '80s he moved to Australia and continued composing and wrote the great-sounding-but-very-expensive Illustrated Compendium of Musical Technology. He's now 80, and his neice has a blog, which is why we can all see his cool birthday cake... More on Tristram here. (And more synth cakes here)
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So, CDM has a clever roundup of music-making experimental clothing stuff. At MT, we present: Some neat-o T-Shirts (thanks, Mikey):
Over on EM411.com, minisystem wrote a post asking "Is this the world's coolest looking synth?" about Modcan's 'B Series' modular synths (above) from Toronto. He's got a point, but the truth is white synths always look cool:
Who could not love a piece of software that comes with a safety warning? When you install EMS' Synthi Emulator, a disclaimer comes up warning that it can produce very high and very low frequencies, and to be careful of your speakers. In other words "Watch yer bass bins, I'm tellin' ya". I spent about an hour last night playing with the demo, and it's ace. All those spazz-out synth sounds the Chemical Brothers use - particularly on 'Come With Us' come straight out of the Synthi. Using it is simple: Load up any of the patches (they all sound pretty much the same), tweak out any annoying noises, and start wiggling the joystick. I was using it in Tobybear's Minihost to record a load of pretty-much-random audio, which I then chopped into loops in Ableton Live (avoiding the hisses that the demo version of Synthi inserts every so often). Instant Chems! Still, one thing I forgot to mention yesterday. EMS want €350 for the software. It's awesome, but €350 for one noise seems a little bit steep...
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also includes the whole thing in 3D, which you watch using old-fashioned red/blue paper glasses. I couldn't make much sense of the 3D, and the music is fairly ponderous but the DVD is the finest synth porn I've ever seen. I want to see it in HD, to better watch the tape loops spooling up the back of the two-manual Mellotron or read the patches on the numerous EMS Synthis scattered over the stage. There's also a wonderful seven minute film with Jean Michel talking you through the gear, strapping on his Moog Liberation, showing off his Arp 2500 modular and playing an old 1920s theremin.
After a week with the Chimera BC16, here's what I'm thinking...
Peter Forrest's latest Vemia synth auction is about to finish. Good news: He's finally fixed the website, which now works properly and relatively smoothly. Bad news: It's not the biggest Vemia ever, but there 's still more cool things here than in a month of eBay (unless you're in this category, of course). Highlights include a crazy rackmounted TR-808 (euww - blue LEDs), an EMS VCS3 for 'only' £900, a beautiful Electrocomp sequencer, a rare Technics monosynth and a tonne of weird bits.
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You may have heard about the Japanese magazine Science for Adults (Otonanokagaku), which recently came with a $30 analog synth kit. I'm now completely in love with the magazine, whose Japanese only website is full of wonders. There's a great little pipe organ - be sure to watch the video at the bottom of the page. The magazine itself looks great - page after page of stuff about organs, waveforms, and building the kit (you can even download extra punch cards). Admittedly it's not quite as elegant as this all-paper pipe organ, but it looks a bit more practical.
Good old Amos - he's the Moog tech support guy (and robot builder and musician) who first mentioned the Little Phatty on a message board. Now, in this interview on an official Moog website, he says:
Just got back from Synth DIY 2006 in Cambridge, and posted this Flickr Set. Highlights for me were playing with and drooling over Alan McKerchar's incredible EMS Synthi-style Soundlab Mini Synth here, and Paul Maddox's nice digital/analog Defender synth here. Plus, I won an Akai S2000 in the raffle!
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Steve writes with exciting news: "I got an email today from Ray White, a old friend from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Ray was an engineer there for many years and has had this in-depth technical history of the Workshop up on the web for some time now. However, he has just added a gallery of pictures. As with so many unexplained phenomena, there are very few photos of the Radiophonic Workshop, but Ray’s collection is the most comprehensive to date. All the pics have notes, which are also very good." The pictures are fantastic and incredibly exotic. On a similar note, here has a great old clip of Liz Parker tweaking the enormous EMS Delaware (which people outside the workshop call a Synthi 100).
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Synch is a music/arts festival in Athens on July 6-8. Along the way, they're producing "A series of bags and accessories inspired by electronic music's most acclaimed gear." First up is this MPC2000 bag, but I guess the possibilities are endless... A Cracklebox wallet, a EMS Synthi record bag, a Moog Modular rucksack for backpackers? No price or availability on this yet, it looks like a special order from the designer. (Thanks, Cory)
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Jun writes: "So the Japanese government has changed its mind again and now we have the world first vintage musical instruments list certified by the government in Japan." He's talking about equipment which (presumably) is excempt PSE law which bans the resale of old electronics gear. The 34-page full list is here (it's a PDF link, and you might need to download a japanese language pack for acrobat). Obviousy, it's a strange list. A Speak and Spell is on there, but the EMS Synthi (which has a power output on the front panel making it not strictly legal to resell in the UK) isn't. The Waldorf Pulse is missing, but the Analogue Systems FB-3MkII is there.
It's Vemia auction time again. It's a kind of cool private eBay for music geeks. Brian Eno is selling off his beloved (and battered) DX-7, which was presumably used to compose the Microsoft Sound, among one or two other pieces of music. He's also selling a Prophet VS, Jellinghaus DX-7 Programmer and a couple of Mackie Mixers. The DX7 is already at almost £2,000. Other delights include Tim Simenon (Bomb The Bass) selling his 303 and a load of other gear. The auction ends on the 12th November. The Vemia Website is still an absolute nightmare to use and navigate (try to ignore the javascript faults and popups), but it's well worth the effort. There was even a EMS Synthi with a starting bid of £20, but it's already up to £1660...