Joe does well to get past the spam filter by sending an email with the title 'mosrite crutch lapsteel', pointing me towards this wonderful one-off guitar built by Semie Moseley for his friend Barbara Mandrell, who was injured in a car crash in 1984. "When Moseley delivered the instrument, he fitted the instrument to her height in Mandrell’s husband’s basement workshop." It's now in the National Music Museum in South Dakota. More about Semie's life here.
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There's something wonderful about a new, knob-covered mono synth, and the first big leak from NAMM is this (from the Harmony Central forums), the DSI Mono Evolver keyboard. $1199 gets you an Evolver in a steel box, 37 keys, 58 knobs, lots and lots of blue LEDs and, most important of all, wooden end panels. It's very expensive, but... Damn! Dave Bryce, who works for DSI, posted the pictures on the forum, and said they really wanted to sell the synth for under $1,000, but couldn't make the sums add up. Watch the DSI Website for updates.
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Take ten minutes to watch this wonderful video (via Get LoFi) of a Terry Brown, an eccentric geek from Denton, Texas, playing tapes really really slowly through a homemade PA system on his porch. There's very little information about Terry with the video, on the interwebs, or in newspaper cuttngs, which is a shame in itself. I think that Make Synths Not War should start selling t-shirts bearing Terry's immortal words: "We're not going to need a tweeter for what we're doing today"
Thanks to everyone (Spanish Harlem, Marc, Ezeh from Uruguay...) who sent me links to this incredible eBay auction - a huge archive of vintage modular synths and other sexy dusty gear. There's been some discussion on Analogue Heaven about who the seller might be, although they didn't get further than him being a nice guy, possibly called Ed. A full week left on the sale, so you've got plenty of time to save the $24k opening price for the ARP2500...
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UVA Instruments are asking $10,000 for "The darkest and most daring guitar ever made...", named after some dude from the Da Vinci Code. The Baphomet is a bat-shaped monstrosity with 150 pieces of hand-cut inlay and EMG pickups. On the website, they ask "Why It Is This Guitar So Great? First of all, you cannot describe the sound of Baphomet anything other than pure evil." I particularly like this shot, which I assume shows the guitar being injected with the blood of virgins during manufacturing. I guess now Dan Brown has something to spend his millions on. (Thanks Derek)
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My family were slightly bemused by my excitement on Xmas morning when I opened a parcel to find a copy of the Illustrated Compendium of Musical Technology by Tristram Cary, co-inventor of the VCS3 synth. I'd asked my mother for a copy, and she found one second-hand. It's my new geek bible, a 542-page encyclopedia of lore, full of diagrams and flowcharts. It's great because Tristram Cary really, really knows what he's talking about. The ten pages on oscillators don't just explain what they do, but how they do it. And because he came into electronic music from a classical, avant-garde angle (he founded the Royal College of Music's Electronic Music Studio in 1967), there are no endless chapters on 303s, 808s, SL-1200s and those same old stories from Detroit and Chicago. Instead, there are entries on things like magnetic hysteresis, Helmholz resonators, graceful degradation and swarf (the little ribbons of plastic spat out by a vinyl cutting head). I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys this site. I suspect Faber and Faber were expecting something with a bit more popular appeal when they published it in 1992, and perhaps it failed to find many buyers at £45 so fell out of print. Fortunately, it's not too hard to find - UK Amazon
have a few copies second hand. Thanks, Mum!
Thanks to the Guardian Guide for mentioning Music Thing on Saturday, and welcome to any new readers!
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Nerve.com have a pretty-much safe for work Holiday Gift Guide. Among the experimental kitchenware and fancy pants is the Roland MC-303 - the cheap, elderly groovebox which is often reviled by right-thinking musos, not least for demeaning the heritage of the numbers 3,0 and 3. Nerve like it because Peaches and M.I.A used it; "Watch as they and their friends gaze in rapture at the manual and then reach over and push a few buttons, generating various clever, throbbing beats." It's a mark of my endless shallowness that I wanted to buy a MC303 for almost 20 seconds after reading the piece... (Yes, that's a MC505 in the picture. I guess it matched the boots better)
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Shaduz is a 24 year-old computer engineering graduate and musician from Bologna, Italy. He's developed the 3DID wireless MIDI glove, with 5 bend sensors (I'm guessing that's fingers), 3 gyroscopes, 3 accelerometers and 18 hours of battery life. As he says: "The most exciting thing is that the cost of the actual prototype (the glove shown in the video) together with the wireless receiver is about 150 euros."
Reboot Stereophonic is a non-profit record label specialising in space-age Jewish music from the past, including Gershon Kingsley's album 'God is a Moog' - "Kingsley is most proud of his work with an African American choir in 1968 who helped him convert the traditional Jewish Sabbath service into a Moog rock opera." As well as selling the album, they're selling great t-shirts for $20 ("Will take pounds off you if need be, and make you able to compose an electronic masterpiece of your very own or your money back.") While we're on the subject, here is Bob Moog interviewing Gershon Kingsley. (via Boing Boing)
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Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, this is the Hughes & Kettner tube clock. It's a nice idea - a tube-amp inspired clock stuffed with real nixie display tubes, mounted in a tolex case. Unfortunately, the designer at H&K decided to add a layer of engraved perspex, and backlit the whole thing in baby blue neon. It looks like the specials board from a yuppie wine bar that went bankrupt in 1987. For a real Nixie clock, try Resonant Instruments. (via Harmony Central)
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Peter Kirn, who edits the wonderful Create Digital Music blog, has just published his first book - Real World Digital Audio. It looks great, a big fat tome (640 pages) which comes with a DVD full of software and samples. The Real World Digital Audio site has more details, Amazon links etc.
eBay item #7373643779 is covered in "mad person" warning signs. The description is written in block capitals, underlined, in italics, in green. Here's what it says: “This guitar has no strings or frets but little buttons to replace them and a synthesizer in the base to change the sound to anything you want." Apparently it was built in 1970 and is the only one in the world. No bids yet at $5,000 (Thanks, Monster Movie)
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Thomas writes: "I'm sure most of your readers have money and technical skill to buy real samplers and v-drum kits, but I'm poor and desperately grasping for indie cred, so I've built my own sampler in Excel (of all things). It's controlled with a wireless xBox pad that I converted to USB, and I'm going to hand it out to audience members at shows to let them play the drums for me (I'm a solo bassist). In case you're interested, you can find the alpha HERE" Thomas' creation is impressive, in a distinctly lo-fi way, although it will be a whole lot cooler when he announces an all-Microsoft Office band with several Excel Synth players. Thomas is also a fan of Electroplankton, the cult Japan-only Nintendo DS music game.
'Woedodger' from Montana has a plan. His buddy Paul bought this drum kit, covered in porn photos, from Orange County Drums and Percussion (No relation to Orange County Choppers). Then... "I got them from him hoping to make a little dough selling them on eBay" Now here they are, item #7373840632 with no interest yet at $4,500. Good luck with that, Woedodger! (Thanks, Kaden)
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Ever wanted to buy a cheap Flying V with a sporty red-and-check paint job and chrome exhaust pipes? Now, the Stagg G-Force is here. There's on on eBay (item #7373041260) for £169. (Thanks, GLW)
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Aaron writes: "My daughter likes the volume and tempo knobs and buttons on her 1980 Yamaha Portasound better than the mini keys, but she tends to pull the knobs off. Same with my electric piano, though its few knobs are more tug-resistant. I'm reluctant to let her play my relatively fragile X-Station, so I am looking for a synth keyboard that will let her tweak away without choking hazard.
Ebay item #7370817866 is an amazing haul of vintage British microphones, collected by the seller's father, who was an engineer at the Royal Albert Hall from 1958-1991. The auction tells a wonderful little slice of the father's life, which included setting up microphones for Frank Sinatra, Last Night of the Proms and events at Buckingham Palace. Bidding is currently £2,300 with 4 days to go. (Thanks, Pete)
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Labels: xmas2007
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This is a great little piece from the New Yorker about hanging out with Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top, in which he pays a visit to Telecaster prototype #0009 and drinks beer through a straw (to keep his beard dry). Billy's book: Rock'n'Roll Gearhead looks very cool (Does that link work? Hmm...) And yes, that guy on the left looking like a composite of all the members of Supergrass was Billy in the early '70s. (via Rock Star Photos). While we're on the subject, check out this page which has a picture of a very young Billy with Jimi Hendrix.
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Bill Clements is a Michigan bass player with one arm (or at least one hand). Fortunately, it's his left arm, and he's exceptionally good at playing jazz bass with that it (and a bandanna tied around the neck to stop notes ringing on). Unfortunately, as this pretty awesome video [wmv} shows, he can't resist playing far, far, far too many notes. At least he hasn't got, like, 18 strings on his bass. More on Bill and the Kalamazoo Music Group. (Via Audio Mastermind)
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