I just paid the rent for another year today and that officially brings us to two total years online! Since last year the readership has nearly doubled along with the number of posts, coverage and other crazy stuff! We brought Tarekith on board, pumped out a good number of feature articles and tried to put the spot light on you, the community.

We hoping this next year is going to be just as exciting! We’ve now got a twitter account so you can read our feed that way if you please and new for this year, we just signed up for Sound Cloud! That means once the new studio PC is finished, we’ll be doing some podcasting as we play around with whatever new toys come our way!

Thanks for hanging in there with us! It’s been a great year and we’re looking for to an even greater next one!

CMG on Twitter

CMG on Sound Cloud

This DIY synth inspired by Buchla’s (I always want to say Count before I say Buchla for some reason) Music Easel popped up over on Matrix synth and it just struck me as a really nice looking synth. The layout looks clean and highly functional as well.

I’ve always wondered why people tend to overlook the aluminium styled front paneled gear from the late 70′s and early 80′s in favor of the rose or cherry wood side paneled Moog inspired DIY synths. I tend to lean towards the former myself, there’s something shiny and nostalgically futuristic I like about it. Indeed, this synth could easily be envisioned sitting on a table in the back of Dr. Huer’s office, right next to the book magnifier they made into some sort of futuristic gadget.

Here’s some commentary about the synth from the builder:

The heart’s of this design are my two Oakley VCO’s that I am going to take apart and give a new life as complex VCO’s. Jörgen Bergfors has designed a beautiful Complex VCO here. The core of my Complex VCO is Oakley VCO. Waveshaping is by Bergfors and Ian Fritz. Two waveshapes can be selected by voltage and mixed to MIX-OUT. The second VCO is simpler with just basic waveforms and Buchla’s timbre generator from Music Easel. Timbre can be modulated by voltage.

8-step VCP sequencer is from Fonitronik. It is an interesting design where you can select Gray code patterns (256 patterns) with voltage.There are three options for every step; normal 8-step sequence, skipped, ADC-controlled gray code. I am going to integrate Electric Druids TAP-tempo clock to this sequencer so that you can choose the tempos on fly.

There are two LFO’s that use the same PIC-chip as in the sequencers TAP-tempo clock. This is a very versatile digital LFO-chip with TAP-tempo/external clock, six waveforms, wave distort and tempo multiplier. More information is here.

To save time I decided to order Doepfer-modules that I am going to adapt in my own design. A-149-1 and A-149-2 generate random quantized and stored voltages as in Buchla’s Source of Uncertainty. Two A-101-2 LPG’s as Buchla’s Low Pass Gates. A-134 PAN can do voltage controlled panning or two signal morphing.

See this post @ Matrixsynth for more info and audio samples.

Since I first blogged about these almost two years ago, they’ve been the #1 search term on the blog until the Casio XW-P1 was announced. Unfortunately though, they’ve passed every US release date promised.

But still, the iCon iStage controller has some neat features such as velocity sensitivity and their 4×12 grid make a helluva lot of sense for controlling Ableton Live. So it’s quite understandable for people to remain interested in these controllers. If you want one, I’m afraid the best thing to do at this point is to use Google and find a European or UK based retailer that will ship to the US.

Via Matrixsynth

Yamaha Cs10 sound samples by abertronix

I need to track down a few of these Yamaha CS series synths. I’ve always been interested in the CS-01 and way back when I was in Junior High, I took a music class where they had a CS-15 and a blue faced ARP 2600 in a backroom somewhere. I used to call the ARP a “scoreboard” since I had no clue what it was back then. The music teacher didn’t know how to use it and it was missing the controller keyboard, but I had tons of fun messing around on the CS-15. From what I recall, they were in brand new condition and the best I can figure is that they were donated by a music store that closed or something as a tax write off.

via Matrixsynth

Granted it’s a couple years old, but I still think it’s a valid overview and rundown on some of the most popular mastering plugins. Sound On Sound has an entire page’s worth of plugins reviewed by their staff that would consider taking with them if they were ever forced to walk the plank and survive on a lonely, Caribbean isle.

If you’ve ever wondered what the difference was in all those plugins, or just how sponge worthy they are, you can take a look for yourself here and see what the fuss is all about.

This is the first track of a conceptual album I’m working on that would take place in or be something you’d hear if you were visiting a planetarium. From out of darkness was written completely on the Korg TR rack with just a bit of external compression from Korg’s MDEX plugin in Ableton Live 8.

Via Chris Gunn on BandCamp

“All of the synth sounds were my eurorack modular, except the pad. That is the Korg M3 (obviously, it’s the only polyphonic part). The pinging percussion loop at the opening is a Harvestman Hertz Donut modulated by my Doepfer Dark Time sequencer. The Synth arpeggio that comes in is a sequence created by my Noise Ring, which is going through a quantizer (Intelijel uScale) and controlling a Harvestman Piston Honda. The Honda is going through an Abstact Data Reactive Shaper (brillian module). My uLFO and Vulcan modulator are slowly animating the shaping. The drum loop is NI Maschine playing some of the stock sounds. I also recorded a low bass pulse and the synth sound at the end, which was the Piston Honda through the Intellijel Corgasmatron filter. The pad sound from the M3 was my own custom patch.

This track was assembled by recording multiple passes of the modular and then comping together the best bits. The Ping track and the Arpeggio track are each a single take without looping (this keeps the track feeling less static than it is). The pad track was done in one take with no MIDI editing before I tracked it. It was put together using Ableton Live 8 and all the FX you here are stock devices included. The only exception is the Korg M3 which is using its own internal effects. Recording was done using a MOTU 828mkIII.”

Via Noise Theorem on G+

After completing an MA in music composition, Ciani was introduced to synth designer Don Buchla, whose Buchla 200 synthesizer would come to define much of her work for the next two decades. She counted the likes of synth maverick Vangelis and electronic music pioneer Harold Bode among her close friends and would set up Ciani Musica Inc. to publish her commercial endeavours for companies such as Coca Cola and Atari, while constantly working at the cutting edge of advances in electronic music and amassing an expansive vault of underexposed music which has remained untouched for over 30 years… until now..

The release includes a booklet with intro by Andy Votel and track notes by Suzanne Ciani.

Available from Amazon.com. Via MatrixSynth & Synthtopia on Facebook.

You name.

Computer Controlled

Tell us what type or style of music you mainly produce.

Acid.

List your gear both hardware and software.

OK, here we go… =o]
Hardware;
Roland SH-101
Roland TR-707
Roland R-70
x0xb0x
Future Retro XS
Eurorack Modular Synthesizer
Oberheim SEM Patch Panel
Analogue Solutions Oberkorn Sequencer v3
Novation UltraNova
DSI Mopho
Korg Monotribe
Korg Monotron
E-mu Procussion
Alesis Quadraverb GT
Ibanez DM1000 Digital Delay
Presonus Firepod
16 Channel Ramsa Mixer

Software;
Rob Papen Punch
Rob Papen Delay
Rob Papen Distort
Rob Papen Reverb
D16 Drumazon
D16 Nepheton
D16 Nithonat
D16 Devastor
D16 Syntorus
D16 Toraverb
D16 Redoptor
D16 Decimort
D16 Fazortan
Audio Damage Tattoo
Audio Damage Axon
Audio Damage Automaton
Audio Damage Dub Station
Audio Damage Ricochet
Ableton Live
Cakewalk Sonar

Briefly describe your workflow.

Its all pattern based, on the fly recording. Ableton is the master clock and also serves as a mixer. All my gear is run through an old Ramsa 16 channel mixer for its EQ only, its then run out into a Presonus Firepod that is Firewired into my PC.

Take your favorite 1 or 2 pieces of gear and tell us why it’s your favorite.

Probably the Modular and a tie between the x0xb0x and Future Retro XS. The modular is obviously extremely flexible and tailored to however i might want it to sound at a particular point in time. And the XS is just an astoundingly great sounding synthesizer. Semi-modular and a killer filter make for a unique sounding instrument. It can be brutal or smooth in a turn of a knob. And of course, the x0xb0x is the modern 303, and also make a great CV/Gate sequencer for other analogue gear. I actually sold off my 303 recently just because you don’t really need one if you have the x0xb0x.

Briefly tell us any neat things about you or your studio that you want to.

I’ve recently gotten into photography, and would like to expand on that as well as my music. They both have similar paths and addictions =o]