With evenings drawing in and the festive season approaching, our thoughts turn to epic semi-legal compilations of '60s & '70s funky synth music. Sonic Reclamation Industries have put together a fantastic free downloadable collection called 'Moog Break Beats', which is full of synth-led cover versions, square-wave solos and really excessive effects use (some nice full-track flanging on Sounds Galactic's 'Spinning Wheel'). My own personal favourite is Claude Denjean's awesome version of 'Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye).' (via J-Chot)
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"iMic allows you to connect virtually any microphone or sound input device to your iBook, PowerBook, PowerMac or other Mac or PC systems with a USB port." Hmm... Apart from, say,
any microphone or sound input device you might possibly want to use (i.e. one that doesn't end in a 1/8th inch plug, or one that needs phantom power). The website goes on to say the iMic is "the perfect solution for almost any audio need, including... Reason" That might be Propellerhead Reason, the music software well known for not recording or processing any form of external audio? Pffffffftt!
Every week or two, I get an email from someone saying: 'You should post about Bhaji's Loops for Palm PDAs, it's awesome'. I mentioned it in an Engadget column a while back, but it's probably worth another go. It's a bit like Reason for your PDA - sample playback, virtual instruments, effects, wavetable synthesis, and a special mode for live performance. Reader Carl has composed 8 mini-albums with it. It works on a Zire 31 (about £50 on eBay) or any other recent Palm handheld, and the full version only costs $26.99. (Thanks to Kevin, Anonymous, ACB, and everyone else)
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Ektopia posts about the Buddha Machine, a transistor radio-sized device with a loudspeaker which plays ambient-ish music by the band FM3. It's very cool for $23, but seems to be just an audio playback device. I'm sure this idea will develop to the point where people can release boxes that generate music by themselves, within the parameters set by the artist. That was the idea behind the Chiclet DSP music box.
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Harmony Central report on a new book from the Indy Guitarist site: "How to Build Your own Effect Pedals...a step by step guide". Looks good (you can see a few spreads here) and it's certainly from a good source, but $49 for a 92 page book? Product page.
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Cementimental writes: "I was randomly looking at very expensive Japanese metal robots on ToyboxDX.com when I found this". It's Compoboy, a 16inch tall toy robot made from the 80s hi-fi essentials: Reel-to-reels, graphic equalizers, vertical record players, smoked glass doors. The reel-to-reels launch rockets. Best of all: "There is also a strange, inexplicable feature that involves shoving little strips of white cardboard into the main component of the toy."
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I just got this email from the Patrick, AKA 'jett7470', who last week sold a new-in-box TB303 worth at least $1,000 for $150:
From Ray Wilson, inventor of the Soundlab Mini Synth comes the Wacky Electronic Noise Maker Thingy. It's a much simpler circuit, which produces surprisingly cool pulsing, bleeping type noises. You can hear sound clips here. It's made with a handful of components, a few pots and switches and a 9v battery. There's a very clear schematic, a PCB design and a stripboard layout. If anyone is making a PCB for this kit, could you make me one, too? (thanks, CleanROOM)
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16th October, 1:07pm. A seller called 'jett7470' puts a mint, new-in-box Roland TB303 on eBay, with a 'buy it now' price of $150. It's item
#7358601753.
Jean Baudin collects really, really fat basses. He has a pacman themed 9 string bass, with ghost/pacman machine heads. He's getting a 12 string bass made. What does he do with these monstrous things? He plays the Super Mario Bros. theme music [mov]. I'm speechless.
More crazy-ass guitar playing here and here. (Thanks Matthew)
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Analog Industries is leading an exciting revival of the SpecDrum - a £29 hardware sampled drum machine that interfaced with the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and used 8 bit (or, according to some reports, 3 bit) samples. I had one at the time, and samefully, I only remember getting bored of it very quickly. Listening to it now, it sounds like a lofi Linn, with a reasonably workable programming system that looks a bit like Fairlight's Page R (complete with 'Peow' sound). Analog Industries have links to Spectrum Emulators, the original files, and various kits, loops and tracks made with the thing. Next up: The Currah µSpeech Spectrum Speech synthesizer, which is also available on emulators.
A mastering house in Krefeld, Germany, has a very good quality Studer two-track ½inch tape recorder. For €7.50 a minute (or €12.50 for the first minute), they'll take your digital file, record it on the machine, play it back, re-digitise it, and send it back to you. Product page (via GearSlutz)
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Greg writes to tell me about the Sonopak: "I checked this out at the AES convention. It's a pair of electret condensers hidden in a leather fannypack[That's a bum bag, English readers]. Okay, it's mighty lame looking, (who's going to a concert wearing a leather fannypack and expecting that they might get laid?) but it seems to work nicely from the demos I heard and no cables to tangle with." It's $89. There are various recordings on the site. The 'Mozart Mass in C min', apparently recorded with the Sonopak dangling from the railings of the choir loft, is incredible.
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Hottie Amps: They're made from toasters, with 9v batteries, 6 inch speakers, outputs to drive an external speaker cab, solid state amp. $149, $99 if you supply your own toaster, $299 for the custom airbrushed flame-finish version. Sample review quote: "The Hottie distorts quickly, spreading its transitory grind at home-approved volume through the two toast slots." (Thanks Britul)
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Renault have tuned one of their Formula One engines to sing: "making an engine “sing” is a fairly simple matter of finding the engine rpm that generates an exhaust sound of the right frequency for each musical note. The engine management system of the dyno is then programmed to manage engine rpm and duration to 'sing the song.'" There's a sound sample at Autoblog. (Thanks Jason Theremin)
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GearJunkies (why are they always first with the news?) report that the new head of product development at Moog Music is Cyril Lance, a musician and engineer. The story contains the intriguing line: "A great deal of Cyril’s technical experience has been involved in developing optical electronics used for upper-atmospheric experiments, work that has taken him around the globe including a one-year stint in Antarctica at the South Pole." A quick bit of Googling reveals that Cyril also worked on HAARP, the US military project which zaps the Ionosphere with radio waves, causing a small section of it to heat up. In the mid '90s, HAARP was very popular among conspiracy theorists. Even then Secretary of Defence William Cohen suggested the technology could be used to "alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves". The real crazies put it like this: "HAARP Boils the Upper Atmosphere... Electromagnetic waves then bounce back onto earth and penetrate everything - living and dead."
Item #7355437696 is a Mojobow, a single string guitar made by eBay trader Chickenbone John. He tells a good story: "The origins of slide guitar lie back on the plantation farms when a piece of baling wire was nailed to the side of a shack or barn, wedged tight to create tension, and then plucked and played with a slide. This was called a DIDDLEY BOW, and many famous musicians got started this way. THE MOJOBOW has got all the old time MOJO, but it’s a lot easier to handle than carrying around the side of a shack - it’s compact, lightweight and ULTRA-simple. Play it lap style or regular guitar position with a strap (better yet use a piece of binder twine for full-on primitive effect)" With a single strat pickup sideways along the string and wired direct to the output jack, this thing must sound cool. I can't think of a better way to spend £35... UPDATE: Here's Chickenbone John's shop
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Behringer just announced a new firewire interface. $99, metal box, tiny, looks quite nice, 1/4 inch line-level stereo ins and outs, no preamps, headphone socket with volume knob, 24/96 recording, comes with freebie version of Ableton Live. Could be useful if you're playing live with a laptop or already have a hardware mixer, perhaps. Half the price of the new Presonus Inspire, but probably less than half the spec. (via GearJunkies)
Dimitre writes with news of Tony da Gatorra, an avant-garde musician from the south of Brazil, who developed the 'Gatorra' instrument. "It is all in one thing," says Dimitre. "Mixes an electronic drum and a synth with some few notes, in a guitar shaped instrument he play it with both hands and foot." There are several music samples at Tony's website, along with a photograph of him and several multimeters. The music is... challenging. Tony also has a political blog (in Portugese).
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Diana Deutsch is a Professor of Psychology who specialises in perception of sound and music. For example, she's studied how left and right-handed people hear sound differently. If you listen to the sound files on this page, and you're right handed, she would expect you to hear most of the higher-pitched bleeps in the right ear. Flip your headphones round, and see if the higher pitches move. Listen to the two channels seperately, and they're identical arpeggios. Apparently if you're left handed, you'll hear the higher notes on the left. Worked for me, anyway. This, she suggests, is why the more high-pitched instruments are on the right hand side of the orchestra (and the piano keyboard). More like this on her albums. (Thanks, Mikey)
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And people say there are no bargains left on eBay. Item #7359649845 is an incredible thing. Six seventies electric pianos in a huge beige case that folds up like a table tennis table. It's in Tampa, currently $75 with a day to go. Why is it a bargain? Well, Musitronic is a pretty cool company - they're the people who made the Mutron Biphase. But more importantly, Musitronic seem to have licensed their piano mechanisms from Wurlitzer (there was at least a Wurlitzer/Musitronic Model 101). So, possibly, what you're bidding on in this auction is six Wurlitzer electric pianos in a big ugly box. Why would you care about that? The last Wurlitzer EP200a piano on British eBay went for... £821! So, if you buy this, rip out the pianos and put them in boxes and sell 'em on for $400 each, be sure to post me one for giving you the idea... Alternatively, you could form a cool six-piano band, or... this stuff could be junk. (Thanks, Randel)
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"While putting up flyers for the International Chiptune Resistance show at The Tank this coming Saturday, Nullsleep and Bit Shifter were approached by two plainclothes police officers, arrested, handcuffed, informed that "a cleaner New York is a safer New York," and taken to the NYPD 9th Precinct police station for processing and a nice stay in the NYPD's luxurious high-security accommodations. Stripped of belts and shoelaces (to prevent suicide by hanging), the police missed Bit Shifter's camera/web-phone, allowing exploitation of some irresistible photo-op moments, as well as an unique opportunity to set Bit Shifter's AIM away message to 'I'm in jail'." Shocking jail pictures here (via FFWD)
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Taking geekiness to a whole new level, this page from the University of Vienna contains a spreadsheet in various windows formats which does realtime additive Fourier synthesis with sound output, a waveform and spectrogram. I can't get it working (I'm on a Mac today). Anyone have any luck? Next up, a 303 emulator coded in Powerpoint... (via Bodmas)
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Isn't it refreshing when national stereotypes come true? While English -speaking synthy websites are filled with a chiptune controversy, a new DJ control surface and a 1940s electronic pioneer, the French do it differently. The Groovy Babes special on Oldschool-Sound.com is a lengthy flash slideshow which collects every picture they can find of (mainly) attractive women with synths, ranging from #1 MT pinup Cynthia Webster (left) to Kate Bush suggestively fondling her Fairlight (centre) to... well, I really don't know what that picure on the right is. It's very mildly NSFW, including a strange picture of a '60s topless girl group and what looks like a '70s Playboy shoot featuring a Moog Prodigy. (via Matrix Synth, which has recently moved to: matrixsynth.blogspot.com, and is still updated every, like, six minutes with an unstoppable stream of cool things)
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FVF Drums make built-to-order custom drums. Recently, an anonymous drummer contacted them about making a Baywatch/David Hasslehof themed snare drum. With blue powdercoated hardware. At the moment it's just a render, but one day soon, this hideous thing will exist for real. (Thanks Kate)
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Lastplak writes from Rotterdam, Holland about his series of Bob Moog tributes: "When I'm not fiddlin' around with music stuff, I'm often out painting oil rigs (my favorite) or synths (also my favorite). Since our synth-guru died I've
been painting some memorials here and there." He also specialises in fake doorbells, and modular synths on canvas, if you're looking for something for the studio wall (I prefer the spraypaint, myself).
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Reader/contributor/desktop trebuchet manufacturer Kaden writes with news of his latest invention, a superfly electric kalimba called Peacock. "In my parallel universe, where electric kalimba players are revered as rockstars, and their personal instruments are the stuff of legend. In the parallel universe, Peacock is behind a plexi wall in the Montego Bay Hard Rock Cafe, with a signed picture of Jimmy 'Badthumb' Wilson."
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So, there's this guy Rob MacEachern, who was in a band called SvenGali. He's so rock that he has a flash animated picture of himself on his website. You know, like in Harry Potter. Anyway, he's now invented Cool Claws, which are drum head clamps shaped like little tiny hands. Lovely. (Thanks, HipCola)
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Mike Walters has built the Melloman, a 25 key mellotron, which gets its sounds from 13 Walkmans (Walkmen?), using one stereo channel for each key, plus stereo beats from the 14th Walkman. It is a thing of wonder and beauty. Mike has created many other things of wonder, most of which have been bought by Mark Mothersbaugh from Devo. (Thanks to Boing Boing, Analog Industries, Mikey, Krome, Ron, Lyle, Ben, and anyone else who sent me this)
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If you buy the new Prodigy Best-of from Amazon UK, you're entered into a draw to win Liam Howlett's old Moog Prodigy (or, to be precise, " There will be one(1) Moog Prodigy synthesizer, once owned by Liam Howlett and used by The Prodigy", which may or may not not be the same thing). Link. (Thanks, Mikey)
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So, last week I completed operation flog-all-my-hardware- and-buy-a-Nord-Modular-G2. It's a pesky time-absorber (you build synths out of lego-style modules on the computer, then play and tweak them in the hardware). Here [1.7mb mp3] is my first creation, a very basic beatbox (just two sounds) surrounded by delays and pitch shifters and feedback loops. There's a great forum at Electro-Music, where really clever people do geeky-but-cool things like recreating the 'Funky Drummer' loop without using any samples. This [85k mp3] is what they arrived at.
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Thanks to Marco for spotting that, hidden down near the bottom of the iPod tech specs page, is news that the new iPod records in 44.1khz stereo. No word yet on formats (presumably it's compressed, rather than raw aiff files), but it's certainly good news. Expect a rash of all-in one XLR port/phantom power/preamps in matching white and black. If you're looking to get started, Giant Squid Labs sell minature stereo microphones with powered preamps for $80, which are perfect for
Larry Hendry was one of those guys you see in pictures from Analogue Heaven meetings. He had a big MOTM modular system, sold fine custom patch cables, maintained a busy website, once sourced a huge Frankenstein-style power switch for a friend's studio, and people who knew him say he was a good guy. He also loved to ride his Harley with his wife Anne. On the 9th October, they were enjoying an autumn afternoon ride when they crashed and were both killed. As this site set explains: "it is important to remember they were enjoying a nice fall day, having fun, and being together when they died". Read more about Larry at Analogue Heaven. (via Matrix Synth)
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Bent Pedals is a nice, self-explanatory site. A few for sale (the one on the left of this pic is $150), plus helpful schematics if you want to do it yourself.
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Will you just look at that. It's a flash recorder. It has built in stereo condenser mics. It records 24/96 wav files on 4gb internal, or memory sticks. It has analog VU meters. It runs off four AA batteries. It's made by Sony. Out of titanium. It looks like it was designed by Dieter Rams and Captain Nemo. Truly, it is the coolest thing I've ever seen. And at $2,000, it's a lot cheaper than the previous Best Thing Ever. If it was April 1st, I'd have made this up. Link to Harmony Central page. But of course, you might want to stick with your M-Audio Microtrack...
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Thanks to Kevin for pointing me towards the freaky-looking PD Audio system, which uses Windows CE PDAs with various add-ons to record at up to 24/96 quality onto SD cards. It seems to be a well thought-out system, and the site is useful, with what you really need lists. Unfortunately, it's not cheap. When you include their $549 digital mic preamp (but no mics), the top-of-the-line system costs $1,200+, with their 16/44 budget package at around $750. And of course, if you're on Windows CE, you won't even be able to run Bahji's Loops or Microbe software...
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What's cooler than a strap-on keyboard? A Soviet made, sort-of polyphonic analog strap-on keyboard which only costs €325. #7356549970 is a Yunost-21, which looks like a cross between a SH-101 and a Juno-60. The description is in German, but Babelfish seems to suggest that is uses a frequency divider circuit to be polyphonic (like the Moog Liberation and countless cheapo organs). According to A-Z of Analogue Synths: "While the instrument is very limited, the sound is surprisingly nice."
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Ben from Australia sends this lovely picture of a chimp and a modular synth. He knows nothing about it. Anyone know more? (Captions also welcome...)
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Native Instruments have announced Guitar Rig 2, with this great looking controller. Explains why IK Multimedia resorted to rough birds to promote their mingin' purple Amplitube controller.
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So, many of you are probably in NYC, hanging with the geeks, while I'm in London looking at the clouds. Here's what I'm missing at the AES conference:
A tale of two eBay auctions:
SSL have just released a free (if you register)mac only plugin version of their 'Listen Mic Compressor'. The LMC is the compressor that accidentally created the drum sound on Phil Collins' 'In The Air Tonight', which appeared in the pilot episode of Miami Vice, and so gave birth to: 1) The Eighties. 2) Hit songs appearing in films and TV shows. 3) The popular pastime of driving around in your shiny black sports car while unhappy, listening to Phil Collins.
Music Thing reader Daniel is in a great Brazilian band called Esquadro Atari (Atari Squadron). I found this [800k QT] very funny video on the site. I won't say too much about it, because it will spoil the surprise. But if you've ever sat at a computer trying to make music, I think you'll sympathise. Here is an archive.org mirror, which you might use if you don't want to clobber Daniel's bandwidth (Just make sure you go back to the band site afterwards!).
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MixMeister BPM is a free bulk BPM counter (Windows Only): Point it at a folder of mp3s, and it will churn out a list of BPMs, which is handy for any kind of sampling/remixing stuff. I've only tried it very briefly, and wasn't 100% convinced about the accuracy. Anyone else had any luck with it? (via Worship The Glitch)
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Remember Jp22, the confused and angry sound engineer from this post? I'm wondering if he's got a job writing press releases for the Boostaroo Revolution iPod amplifier. Apparently it "touts a 'decompression enhancer circuit' that the manufacturer says provides a fuller-richer sound for MP3 audio. The circuitry also splits stereo signals into individual channels and provides 'spatial enhancing' and 'surround sound.'" It even runs on AAAA batteries, which must be really, really tiny. (via Gizmodo) (Image created by Voidoid Surrealist)
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It looks pretty hot, like the runty offspring of this, and the Superscope PSD340 has interesting spec - it's a CD recorder, with a second built-in CD player, XLR mic inputs, phantom power, pitch shift etc. Only a couple of problems: It doesn't seem to work on batteries, and it costs $999. (via Red Ferret. Thanks, Mikey)
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From The Independent yesterday: "Those who watched Sky One's footage of Kate Moss hoofing cocaine - broadcast last night - were not shown footage of the "horseplay" that preceded it. During the now-infamous evening, at a West London studio where boyfriend Pete Doherty was recording a new album, I gather that the skinny beauty, right, spilled her drink across the mixing desk.
It's certainly tempting to suggest that, just six week's after Bob Moog's death, the launch of the $99 Moog Tracksuit is evidence of his company jumping the shark in a quite spectacular fashion. But I won't say that. I, for one, love the image of the entire Moog corporation all running round their new factory building cool stuff while wearing matching black trackies. Like B-Boy munchkins.
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Sure, it probably doesn't sound so great, but it's hard not to love this Bontempi Pop 3 organ. The German ebay page seems to suggest it was designed by Verner Panton, but I haven't been able to corroborate it. It's currently just €22 with a day to go, item #7353602866. ps: Yes, there are lots of shopping-related bits at the moment, because I'm currently selling my Microwave XT, and hunting for a used Nord Modular G2. Please do get in touch if you can help with either...
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Just $2.99 from Get Lofi's Make Synths Not War shop.
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