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| Friday July 4, 2008. 02:26 PM |
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Ben writes: "Here's a story you should write about on ur blog. Oscar advertised for 500 quid in Sound on Sound. I emailed the bloke. Reply below."
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From: XXXX@aol.com
Date: Fri, Jul 4, 2008 at 11:15 AM
Subject: Re: Enquiry re mono synth in Sound On Sound Readers' Ads
To: XXXXX@XXX.net
Some bloke who works in Sound On Sound bought it before ad was even published.
------ MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
Last year's most covetable boutique synth was probably the Flame Talking Synth - a little tweakable Midi speech synthesizer. For 2008/9, Flame have just announced two more beautiful little switch & knob-covered boxes (click on 'Preview 2008'). The Echometer seems to be a live-oriented sequencer, triggering loops from three red buttons, while Six-in-a-row is a bank of backlit, sequence-able buttons, like a self-contained Monome, or a boutique, midi-only Tenori-On. No word on prices or availability yet, but be sure to look at the Flame 'Projekte' page to see a whole mass of awesome handmade instruments. (via Matrix Synth) MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
Thanks to everyone who participated in the great Mac or PC for Music? debate a couple of weeks back. The result was 22 votes for Mac, and 13 votes for PC, so I ended up buying a bottom-of-the-range 2.4ghz iMac, which works nicely (after a bit of messing about with DNS addresses). Assuming that cheap Logic Studio from Amazon isn't an ebay-style con, that should be arriving soon, together with a pile of non-Apple Ram. I'll probably get a used Motu 828 mk 2 firewire, unless that's a terrible idea (I need a few inputs, so won't be buying an Apogee Duet, before you mention it).Now, MT-reading Mac enthusiasts, you got me into this position, what do I need to know next? Essential freebies? Good ways to learn Logic? Nice ways to integrate hardware into the system? Brain training to understand why they have the ALT and CTRL keys swapped round? MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
The strangest stand at the London Music Show was Amazing Nails 4 Guitarists, a tiny company run by "international celebrity manicurist" Midge Killen. She does Paul Simon's nails when he's in London, is a technical advisor for the London International Guitar Festival and holds a regular nail clinic in California for her US clients...More than you ever wanted to know about guitarists fingernails:1. The four basic methods2. Many pages of The Guitarist's guide to fingernails3. A 1969 patent for Method and apparatus for filing fingernails of guitarists, banjo players and the like4. The history of guitarist fingernails 1554 - present5. Creepy guitarist manicure masterclass on YouTube. MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
Jason Nicholls is a jeweller and guitarist, whose company Endless Knobbing specialises in knobs from music gear cast in silver (he'll do them in platinum or gold too, if you like). Boutique British valve amp makers Audio Kitchen are using his knobs, but he'll make you a keyring for £55 and up. Now I'm going to have to get a full set of platinum fader caps for my Flickinger... MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
As you've probably already read, if you follow that kind of thing, Michel Waisvisz of Dutch sound lab STEIM died last week. Here's a rather wonderful clip of him in action at the NIME conference in 2003 - stick with it, the last minute or so is kind of awesome. In the interest of fairness, I should also link to this clip, from 1994, which looks like a Saturday Night Live sketch. In case you missed it, STEIM's funding troubles inspired a long and interesting debate over at Analog Industries. MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
Raymond Scott's son Stan Warnow is making a documentary about his father's live, and it looks wonderful. The Raymond Scott Documentary will be called 'On to something', although my favourite line is: "Putting notes together is fun". (Via Matrix Synth) MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
Mike from LA writes to tell me about his multimedia thesis (kids these days...) "I chose to look at the history of music technology through Radiohead's "Everything in its Right Place", attempting to show how Radiohead showcases some of music's most important technologies, then back tracking to show just how these things came to be and how they affected music along the way." The site is K-i-d-a.com* and full of stuff about Kaoss Pads, Prophet 5s, Fender Rhodes' and the like. Nostalgically, the interface reminds me of one of those mid-90s interactive CDs developed by Coldcut or Peter Gabriel and released on CD-i.*Has a tiresome intro screen - if you mouseover the bottom right hand side, you'll find a 'Go' button... MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
Not much more to add to this crazy theremin / plasma globe video, really. Made by SF band The Bad Hand. MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
Beavis Audio, makers of the Most Awesome Fuzzbox In The World Ever, are now selling the Beavis Board, an effects pedal developers kit for no-mark electronic beginners like me. The whole kit costs $249, including a breadboard/psu/switch combo, a decent multimeter, a manual and a huge stash of parts. It's designed to solve three familiar problems: "Problem 1: Learning Soldering Sucks! Problem 2: Breadboards can be a hassle! Problem 3: Parts Sourcing Blows!... Frustrated Newbie? I guarantee that you will be successful with the beavis board, even if you been frustrated by building in the past.". As a newbie who's barely even got to the frustrated stage, I LOVE this idea - I'm sure you could get the bits cheaper elsewhere, but who has the time?On the subject of Beavis... interesting times in the world of boutique pedals. Ooh La La is a new company set up by a former Zvex employee to mass-produce beautiful-looking pedals designed by other companies. They do various Devi Ever / Effector 13 pedals, have taken over the whole of Black Box Effects (previously here), and are apparently planning to work with Beavis next. MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
Lurking on the Gig Rig / Vintage & Rare Guitars stand at the London Music Show (Ooh La La Synth Mangler FTW!) was this - Electro Harmonix' brand-new Bass Blogger pedal. If you're thinking 'ick, crappy name', then it only gets worse. It's described on the EHX site as "Ultra subtle and perfect distortion creates the perfect dialog with your drummer." Geddit? It's like you're blogging to your drummer! Sending him irregular and poorly spelt updates about your latest, er, notes. In return, he can let you know that, actually, your notes would be better if you'd played them on a Mac. 2/10, Mr Harmonix. Must try harder. MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
I've never had a problem tuning guitars. I own a simple £15 tuner and use that. But people love solving the problem, over and over again, whether it's the Korg Pitchjack, or the (now heavily reduced) String Master 'Robotic' Guitar Tuner. Now the N-Tune is a $70 DIY kit to add a tuner with a ring of LEDs which sits underneath the volume knob on your guitar. There's a Fender version and a Gibson version, and they both come with a few coloured rings to match to your guitar. Or you could use a little pedal or whatnot... MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
The Plectrum Box is a nice looking heavy wood (maple or rosewood) box, the shape of a plectrum and the size of an outstretched hand. Inside, it's lined with velvet like a jewellery box, with room for plectrums, slides, capos and, well, anything else that a guitarist might want to keep safe in a small box. They're not cheap - £50 for black, £65 for the nicer wood finishes - but they're a pretty good gift for an impossible-to-buy-for guitarist. MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
Just back from the London International Music Show - two huge rooms of the same stuff you've seen everywhere before. The only new synth I noticed was the snoresome Juno Stage (big ugly muzak keyboard) and... well, that was it from the big companies, apart from the Korg Nano range of tiny little USB MIDI controllers. They were at the show but not plugged into anything. They are incredibly small, light and flimsy. Fortunately, they're also absurdly cheap. Even at just £49, the NanoKey is certainly the lamest - obviously built using clicky, rattly laptop keyboard technology. From the way it feels, it seems unlikely to have much velocity sensivity. You might be better off with something like this £50 Miditech Control 25, unless you're really stuck for space. At £59, the NanoPad is worth considering. The pads are a reasonable size, and the touchpad (from the PadKontrol) will be fun. The £59 NanoKontrol looks great, with a good number of knobs, buttons and sliders, useful (if rubbery) transport controls.It's hard to overstate how cheap and plasticky these things are. The faders are tiny and toy-like, the cases would need to be taped down to stop them moving across the table. The Kaosscilators on the next stand felt sturdy and chunky by comparison, and they will certainly not survive the Mackie Mixbusters. BUT at £60, the price seems right. The NanoKontrol undercuts anything in the market - as Peter says, the closest comparison is the Novation Nocturn, a weird DJ-oriented thing. It's probably more sturdy, but does much less. To sum up: try to see them in the flesh rather than just ordering them online, but if you're prepared for something tiny, cheap and plastic, they could be perfect...UPDATE: More pictures from the London Show over at Guitar Blog. MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
The International Noise Conference has an admirable manifesto: "15 minutes or less per act / no lap tops / no mixers / no droning" and the acts on their recently finished US tour have the best band names I've ever seen. They're coming to Japan/Korea in September, and Europe in April 2009, so you've got time to get a set together. (via Sendling) MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
I am constantly in awe of real musicians. This clip (wait a mo while it winds forward to 44:20) is 'The Grid' from Koyaanisqatsi, which could be the greatest music video ever made - certainly the most copied. Anyway, listening to the score the other morning, wondering how it was played - it starts out slow, then gets absurdly fast (at 47:40), and carries on for about 16 minutes without drawing breath. In search of visual evidence, I found this awesome clip of Philip Glass rocking the Prophet 5 in 1982, and this college band playing something from Glassworks. I can't imagine being able to do that. Don't your fingers really hurt? Doesn't your brain melt? MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
The Wire recently featured Sasu Ripatti / Vladislav Delay on their cover. I'd never heard of him, but his studio is phenomally hot, from the lovely minimal white racks full of analogue gear (a Cwejman S1, Moogs, Vermona, Sherman etc) to the Japanese-style low-level desk, to the... well, what is that on his desk on the cover? (Answers, courtesy of Joker, Anon and Aaron, are that the little screen is an RTW Vectorscope, the green knob is a Crane Song Avocet monitor controller, and the wood-sided knob box is an Ursa Major Space Station reverb.) Lots more to read about Sasu at Swim Industries and The Music of Sound. MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
Watching this great demo video with Lou Reed and others playing Moog's new guitar, which can sustain or mute notes at will using some kind of mechanical feedback loop, I'm left thinking 'wow, that's pretty cool' and 'what kind of douche would stand up on stage with a gruesome, cheap, generic looking thing like that?' Oh yes, and it's $6,500. (There are NSFW shots of orange finishes, 80s body shapes and 50¢ gold knobs at Matrix Synth)Moog's last guitar experiment was the Gibson RD Guitar, which was also kind of ugly, but in a 'holy crap, the guitarist just beamed in from Neptune' way. And if you're thinking of going into the comments and saying 'It's not about how it looks, ladies', please don't. Electric guitars have always been 80% look, 20% sound. If you don't believe that, you haven't been paying attention. (Thanks to Tyler and everyone else who sent this in) MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
I'm delighted to discover 3D Thing, the fourth member of the (not actually real) Thing Network, along with the excellent Video Thing and my better looking, more successful younger brother Retro Thing. Chris is covering all kinds of 3D, from the latest 3D projectors to ghetto 3D scanners to super-ghetto DIY renderfarms built from Ikea furniture. Proud to have you along, unlike the black sheep of the family. MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
After a week with the Chimera BC16, here's what I'm thinking...
The good bits:
1. Looks great, and feels fantastically well made.
2. Intuitive, fun, educational interface. You'll learn more about how synths work in a few hours with this than with years of VST plugins. My 5 yr-old son immeditately fell in love with it, making helicopters and sirens and turning the sound down, randomly turning knobs, then turning it up to see what came out. Nothing is labelled, so you have to listen.
3. It makes a huge range of noises. The digital multi-waveform oscillator will annoy purists, but it's versatile. A reasonably effective two-oscs-in-one system can sound pretty fat.
4. It's a quirky, unique synth, hand made in Britain and absolutely in the lineage of EMS, EDP, OSCar.
5. The sound is immediate, ballsy and gritty. Huge bass, huge brightness.
6. It's absolutely a real synth, not a toy. Compared with the Tenori On, this is a real (if simple) instrument. It makes any sound you can patch, not a bunch of presets.
6. It has no blue LEDs, but several red and green ones.
7. It's totally self contained - 6xAAA batteries last a few evenings. There is a power supply on the way (soon).
8. In theory, they can make these in any colour, including clear. That will be hot.
9. It's £136 shipped - the price of a Squier strat or an effects pedal, cheaper than many soft synths. The price is crucial, because it makes most of the other issues irrelevant.
The bad bits:
1. It's really hardware in Beta (track the updates on their blog). If you can wait a year, I think Chimera will either be out of business (and BC16s worth a fortune on eBay), or shipping a more refined version.
2. The output from the 1/8th inch headphone output is super hot, and fairly noisy. To get the best sound for recording, you need to make a mini banana plug -> 1/4 inch cable and take the sound direct. (They gave me one for this review and will be selling them soon)
3. The MIDI is being debugged as I write - barely works on mine, but should be much improved on the models being shipped now. If you can't imagine using it without midi, it's possibly not for you (yet).
4. There are a tonne of digital artefacts from the oscillators. I think it's cool, but if you're looking for silky analogue tone, buy a Moog Voyager at 14 times the price. Similarly, you're unlikely to write a love sonnet about the filter.
5. Delivery is flaky at the moment.
6. It's a perfect portable synth, but if you pull one out on a bus (let alone a 'plane), someone will call the bomb squad.
My recent computer woes mean I can't post any new sound samples, but the tried and tested 'loop random squiggles and add breakbeats' method was fun while it lasted. MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
Hard drive is fine, motherboard/psu/something has died enough to be boring. What should I get next? I'm completely open to suggestions: Mac/PC/laptop/desktop. My only critera: 1) It should be surprisingly cheap. 2) If it works with an Emu 1820m interface, that means I don't have to buy a new one. 3) It doesn't need to be ultra quiet or ultra powerful, it just has to work. I'm not running 50 convolution reverbs.And yes, I need to clean the lens on my camera. Tip: Don't let a 2 year-old eating churros take photos. MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
Yes, these Gravis Soundcheck flip flops are supposed to look like acoustic foam. Shame they're not actually made of old egg boxes, with a chap from Sound on Sound explaining why they don't really work.
I couldn't find a picture, but Paul Smith make a business suit with a mixing desk printed all over the lining - the same print used on this bag. Got any even lamer clothing inspired by studio gear? (Eventide t-shirts not included...) MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
Goldbaby, the New Zealand retro perfectionists behind the Tape 808 sample set, just released Tape Drum Machines Volume 1, with a bunch of fantastically kitsch vintage gear like MPC's The Kit, Companion's Four In The Floor and the very cute Yamaha MR-10. All of these are then recorded on four different vintage reel-to-reel machines and sampled. For $24. If you're too cheap, the free samples page has a lot of goodness. MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
I spotted a copy of John Engel's book Uncommon Sound in Andys on Denmark Street, and couldn't believe it: two volumes, 19lbs, 920 pages, 2,500 photos. Entirely about left-handed guitarists. Unfortunately, I didn't have £140 ($299) to spare, and - being right-handed - I felt slightly opressed by the whole thing... MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
RozzoBianca is a Swiss "Robotical Freak Show" - a band with 4 different robots playing guitar, drums, megaphone and accordion made out of old industrial parts, controlled by MIDI, plus a singing skeleton. All RozzoBianca's videos are worth watching. This one has a great performance by the robotic megaphone, and a particularly scary bit from the drummer, Fredy Fantastico, who is way cooler than PEART, or even Yellow Drum Machine. More robot action. (Thanks, George) MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
This could be a wind up, but it has a terrible ring of truth to it...
"Offered. NW London music equipment (old but good) + other 80's stuff I am moving across the pond shortly, therefore need to get rid of quite a bit of equipment suitable for budding musicans who do not mind if the stuff is quite old. I'm not too sure if anyone wants this antiqueted stuff... quite bashed yamaha CS-80 (though in need of a bit of restoration it works)minimoog, which seems better preserved, a full size cello case... " (Thanks, Tim) MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
Remember Jake Mandell, the musician, medical student and Flash developer who created the Am I Tone Deaf? test? He's back with a new test to see how well you can relate sounds to shapes: "It attempts to measure one's ability to associate musical phrases with abstract shapes and symbols." Incredibly, I got 93%. How about you?Since the Tone Deaf test, Jake has also done an Adaptive Pitch Test, and a Rhythm Test, which really tests musical memory - my sense of rhythm is abysmal, and I still got 83%. (Picture: Rodolfo Chikilicuatre) MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
Bored? Go to Tag Galaxy, type in 'synthesizer' and wonder at the bonkers-ness of it all. For a better use of your time, read Chris's post about downloading raw NASA telemetry data and turning it into music. MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
Steim is the Amsterdam-based electronic music lab best known around here for inventing the Cracklebox. They've done a great deal more - lots of work on experimental interfaces, touch, gesture etc. And now, Steim is in trouble: "Things are not well at STEIM. We are in the danger of losing our structural funding from the government, based on a review from the advisor board which called us 'closed and only appealing to a niche audience'. The outlook isn't exactly bleak, but at the moment our future is unclear."
If you're part of the 'niche audience' for Steim (i.e. you enjoy doing interesting musical things with electricity) then please click here and spend two minutes filling out an email form to write a letter to the Dutch government. Thanks! (Image via Mikest) MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
Andy Baio has been writing about The Whitburn Project - a vast spreadsheet with data about the 37,000 songs that have been hits on the Billboard Chart since 1890. Those 37,000 song titles use a vocabulary of fewer than 9,000 different words, and here are the top hundred most frequently used:
ain't alone angel arms around away baby bad beautiful believe blue boy change christmas comes crazy cry dance days dear dream ever everybody everything eyes fall feel fire fool forever girl gone gonna goodbye happy heart heaven hey hold kiss la lady leave life light lonely love lover mama man mind mine miss moon moonlight morning mr music night nobody oh people play please rain red remember river rock roll rose sing smile somebody something song soul star stay stop street summer sun sweet sweetheart talk tears theme things think tonight town true walk wanna wish woman wonderful world young created at TagCrowd.com
MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
Essential.Via Boing Boing Gadgets. MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
Fairlight inventor Peter Vogel (who owns the domain name anerd.com) has posted a huge archive of audio clips - demo tapes, interviews and strange things sent in by users. If you're a historian of naff sounds and clunky drum programming, you'll be in heaven. There are a few strange delights, like a bizarre section recorded by David Vorhaus, friend of Delia Derbyshire and the man who recorded Orch 4, the most famous preset ever. (Picture: Ulrich Rutzel at the Fairlight) (Via DVDBorn) MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
OK. Next, I'm going to post about something else... Sound on this clip of the Chimera BC16 is just edited clips of five minutes of fairly random fiddling about - direct from the synth into a line input, with just a bit of compression. More Chimera BC16 bits... MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
With the BC16 mini synth shipping (probably - has anyone else got one?) here are the first pictures of the follow up - Chimera's SM16 sequencer, taken from a PDF factsheet on the Chimera Synthesis site. It has a tonne of features - CV & Midi outs, 16 steps or 2x8 steps, Midi sync/control. And it looks great. It certainly didn't ship on 31st March, as the PDF claims, but it should ship sometime, and it's £136. It would be nice if Chimera could deliver existing orders rather than developing new products... although, when I met him, Ben also told me more about the ph303 bassline synth, which has the most bonkers-sounding hardware interface I've ever heard of - not just knobs in a funny shape, but something completely different. Lets hope it appears sometime. MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
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...
Then there's EMS Rehberg, a German spin-off founded by Ludwig Rehberg, who assisted with the Synthi AKS on Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. EMS Rehberg sell the Virtual Synthi for ?350, but also claim they can make a new/reconditioned Synthi 100 for ?55,000.
The full story of the decline and fall of EMS is told in this wonderful piece by Gordon Reid from Sound on Sound. (Image via Easement) MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
If you're still using an old sampler (from an MPC60 to an Ensoniq EPS to an EMU Emax) and wrestling with floppies or zip drives, you might want this: The MCDISK-2 is a $110 external flash drive that plugs into your SCSI interface and is reliable and completely silent. More than this actual product, it's great that companies like SCSI for Samplers exist to support and develop machines that were long since abandoned by their manufacturers... MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
Ben from Chimera Synthesis just popped round with one of the first production batch of BC16 mini synths. I'll write more in a few days, but first thoughts: It looks incredible. It's tiny (exactly the same size as a CD) and heavy, made from three slices of computer-carved white plexiglass bolted together with 7 hex bolts. It feels extremely robust (the patch leads are as sturdy as any tiny silicone cable with gold-plated plugs on each end can be). It excels at making VCS3-style strange noises. This isn't a bedroom operation with one guy and a soldering iron - these things are made (by machine and hand) in a factory. There have been lots of delays in shipping the first batches, and many unhappy early buyers still waiting. If they get that sorted out and these things are reliable, then I'd be hard pressed to think of a better way for a music geek to spend £136. More: My Chimera BC16 pics on Flickr, and previously on Music Thing. MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
Cameron writes: "I've been working on a bit of DIY I think you'll find interesting; I built a little analog amp/feedback system and I'm using electrodes attached to my forearms to control the thing. The feedback path runs through my body and creates the oscillations you hear. It sounds a bit like a theremin but I would say it already has a broader sound palette, though keeping it under control can prove to be a challenge." My favourite line from the video: "Immediately, you will hear the sounds of my muscles." So. Is this BS, old science, or something new? MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
Keith writes: "Hi, I've been reading your blog for years now and took a break from the internet for about 10-12 months. I'm back on and I noticed you've redesigned the page but it loads really slow and crashes Internet Explorer for me every time. Firefox loads it fine but, again, really slowly."
[FORM REMOVED - THANKS FOR ALL YOUR HELP]
UPDATE:Based on the first handful of results, just over 10% are complaining of slow loading. I've cut the number of posts on the homepage from 20 to 10. Might also move that huge Google map. A couple of people asked whether the ads make any money. The Google ones make a bit (about £4k a year, hopefully) but the others are struggling to pay their way, so I'll look again at them. Thanks, by the way, for all the compliments. MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
I'm always talking about my name and citysake Tom Bugs, but his cool stuff always sells out within hours of being announced. Meanwhile, Squarewave Parade have a shop full of cool-looking things, like the Safeplace - a $59 handmade metal shaker with a contact mic inside it and a tone control on the outside, the Mole - a $229 filter based on the MS20, Downgrade - an analog pseudo bit reducer and Parade - a $44 kit with a circuit board and various pots, which is six squarewave oscillators to tweak together. MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
Here's the first clip of the Chimera BC-16 mini synth in action (covered previously). The synth messageboards have been all over the BC-16, starting with "this is awesome", moving on to "I've ordered mine", then "It hasn't arrived yet", then "It's a hoax" and finally "It's a scam." I don't see any reason to think it's a scam (I can think of about a million easier scams that don't involve designing a tiny circular modular synths) but they're obviously having a hard time meeting customer orders. Still, after seeing this video, I just ordered one myself for £136. Lets see if it turns up... MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
Remember Clari-Fi? The $50 passive gadget which makes lots of big claims about improving the sound of MP3? Despite my scepticism, the inventor has kindly sent me one to try. Before I get to cracking it open and posting pictures of the guts, what experiments would you like me to perform? My initial thoughts after five minutes of listening via those fancy Sony PFR-V1 headphones:
1. Quality control = fail. My one has a loose connection so one channel cuts out unless you hold the wire in.
2. It's certainly cutting off a bit of top end, but much more subtly than the 'treble reducer' EQ preset on the ipod. I also felt I was getting a rather different midrange but I have ears of clay and wool, so who knows?
3. I feel I can hear a bit of distortion at high levels - fairly warm, soft distortion that isn't there when the module is absent. The module cuts a lot of volume (maybe 10% of the travel of the iPod volume control), so that could account for this. It certainly overdrives when placed after the headphone booster that comes with the PFR-V1s, but that's probably not a fair test. MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
This clip left me laughing so much I was almost unable to breathe at work today. It's Julian Barratt from The Mighty Boosh, in The Pod, a short-lived series from a few years back: "The Pod are a late eighties electronic dance outfit trying to cope with the mid nineties post rave come down." There's a lot more goodness on YouTube, including Techno is not a Joke, a three part animated series, and this bizarre interview with Donna Air. (Thanks Michael) MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
View the map at Google (it's much easier than scrolling round this littlewindow. Zoom right in - there are loads more spots than in this view)The most common question asked by Music Thing readers is "I'm visiting London/Tokyo/Doncaster. Can you tell me if there are any good music gear shops?" With the recent demise of Sound Control it's increasingly hard to find real-world shops where you can see and play with music gear, let alone see vintage or boutique stuff. So, here's an editable Google Map. I've started by plotting a (very) few shops around the world - just tiny placeholders, because I haven't been to most of these shops.How to get edit the map yourself: Click to the Music Gear Shops map. If you're logged into a Google account, you should be able to click 'EDIT' and change text, add new points, add pictures, links etc (remember to hit 'Save'!). The 'Edit Rich Text' option lets you add pictures, enliven links etc. Let me know at Music Thing Tips if you have trouble, or add something particularly cool.UPDATE: 150 entries in the first 12 hours - wow!
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MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
Man takes five metronomes ticking randomly. Puts them on a slightly mobile plank held on two tin cans. Metronomes run in sync. Magic. Now I'd like to see someone really mess up György Ligeti's Poème Symphonique For 100 Metronomes... (via Kottke) MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
Sad (-ish) news for British music gear buyers - Sound Control group, who own a string of enormo-shops and Turnkey, the UK distributors for Moog, DSI, Jomox and more, have appointed administrators after failing to find a buyer: "Following a review of the Group?s operations the Administrators have today made the difficult decision to close 10 of the Group?s trading locations and bring to an end its telesales and internet sales activities. These changes to the Group?s operations have resulted in 163 redundancies with immediate effect." The group has a turnover of £50m and employed 338 people across Britain. Obviously their competitors, like Dolphin Music and Digital Village are delighted. There's a very well informed thread over at the Sound on Sound forum which includes comments from various former staff. MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
As Create Digital Music reports, Tristram Cary died this week. Here's the first third of the wonderful Australian documentary What The Future Sounded Like, which does more than I ever could to explain why Tristram was important. For me, aside from all the pioneering and inventing and explaining and pipe-smoking and knob-twiddling and making the modern world a little bit more interesting, he'll always be best remembered as the recipient of the world's greatest ever synth-shaped birthday cake. MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
These days, I imagine that all musical instruments are made in one Chinese factory the size of Texas, so I was delighted to get an email from Waqas Yaqoob, sales manager of M. Basharat Dolit Maker. The company is based in Sialkot, Pakistan: "We Proudly inform you that M. Basharat Dolik Maker is family owned business, our family is in manufacturing business since last 50 years since our forefathers. Established by late Mr. Mohammed Hussain, who received the woodcraft of making music instruments from his father M M Khuon. Mohammed Hussain had devoted his life in the field of making music instruments and delivered his manufacturing craft to his son, M. Basharat, who is owner of M. Basharat Dolik Maker. We are manufacturers of fine quality Scottish highland bagpipes, smallpipes, harps, pipe chanters, reeds, congas, bongos, Scottish kilts, sporrans and other music instruments." Sialkot was a British army base from 1849 to independence, so perhaps that's where the sporran connection comes from. MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
Clari-Fi is a little passive $50 gadget which goes between your iPod and your headphones, and makes some huge claims about digital music: "This technology allows for real-time compression of digital audio, removing harmful digital artifacts and 'spikey-ness,'... Clari-fi's semiconductor was developed with custom silicon with the sole purpose of quasi-logarithmically compressing audio sources having earphone load impedances of 25 to 50?. The compression algorithm continuously limits digital artifact peaks." There's a whole page of what looks to me like long words for the purpose of confusing customers, but I'm not an expert. Can someone who understands sound technology better than me explain what this thing is, what it's doing, and why we don't have them built into everything already? Here's a positive review that doesn't tell me anything, with some extremely snakey comments: "It allows ?good? high frequencies to be heard and only compresses highs that are peaking...this thing flat out eliminates hearing fatigue." (via Palm Sounds)
MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
It's bad form to mock the advertisers (or bass players), but... seriously.
MUSIC THING SHOPWaldorf Blofeld £349 / $699 Korg Kaoscillator £99 / $199Moog Little Phatty £875 / $1249 Pod X3 £243 / $399
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