Create Digital Music » April Fool’s? Bah, Humbug!

Mar 31 2009

April Fool’s? Bah, Humbug!

April Fool’s, San Francisco style – with a parade. Now that’s more fun than sitting in front of blogs. Photo: Patrick Boury.

Here’s a cruel joke for you: the first day of Frankfurt’s Musikmesse trade show? The date on which all the music tech press releases for the show have dated their embargo? April First.

Now, to me, the whole point of April Fool’s is surprise, or at least humor. April Fool’s has become so obligatory that everything from faux press releases to blog posts are dedicated to the topic whether they were inspired or not. So, you know what? No April Fool’s Day here. Anything covered on this site tomorrow will be – to the best of my knowledge, anyway – real. (Or as near reality as we ever get.)

Ironically, news in our world is so unsurprising, any interesting news is immediately suspected of being fake. Teenage Engineering’s Operator-1 is so cool looking that, aside from concerns it may not ship, some of you have gone so far to worry the whole thing is an elaborate April Fool’s prank. (One clue that that’s nonsense: it was announced on March 30. It even missed the Ides of March.)

But there you go: case in point. Reality actually can be cool. So we’ll stay away from the pranks this year, and any foolery will be of the technological kind. Enjoy.

High-Density Screens Due; OP-1’s Gorgeous Display

Strap on Gloves, Play Two-Handed Spatial Theremin

13 Comments

peter

Wait so moog isnt making Moog Filter on a chip boxes via china for $99?

March 31, 2009 @ 10:05 am

Mudo

…
Ableton Serato link patch (with handshaking)

You could control Ableton from Serato timecode, ITCH or twice.

Remember it!

…

March 31, 2009 @ 10:16 am

Rex Rhino

Of course, this post could all be part of an elaborate ruse to give your April 1 joke stories credibility! :)

March 31, 2009 @ 10:39 am

Peter Kirn

You’re absolutely right. I have only one choice: post inconsequential news tomorrow. ;)

March 31, 2009 @ 10:43 am

synthetic

Music Thing won April Fools with their Behringer Minimoog and AKS a few years back. Every one since then has been disappointing.

March 31, 2009 @ 12:02 pm

Cosmonaut

Well, there’s nothing wrong with not getting your hopes up until it appears at your favorite retail outfit. Vaporware or Stromberg lol.

I’m just disappointed at the way this sort of thing divides us as community. The shoe has been on the other foot and lessons of old seem to have been forgotten.

March 31, 2009 @ 1:42 pm

Peter Kirn

Not sure I follow you, Cosmonaut. The way what divides us how? :)

I mean, hey, anyone wants to celebrate April Fool’s on their own, that’s their prerogative. ;)

March 31, 2009 @ 1:45 pm

Cosmonaut

not whether it’s real or not, but i suppose it’s just me in that i would rather wait for the hard facts on a number of fronts to come along. sure it looks cool and it’s exciting, but that’s not enough (to me) to hang an expectation on; not even considering how many high profile hoaxes, flops, false starts and over ambitious projects we’ve seen. I guess it was sort of spooling off of the previous comment I made about how it seems people are getting hung up on form over function.

I suppose if someone were to ask what the frequency response on the filter was I’d feel appeased lol

March 31, 2009 @ 3:23 pm

IT CROWDED

Of course we KNOW that all the Akai/Alesis announcements are Real because they are just repackagings of things they’ve done before.

Frikkin typical.

March 31, 2009 @ 7:08 pm

wi_ngo

As someone who was born on April Fool’s day (yeah, really), I have probably been the butt of more jokes on that day than the average person.

I’ve basically been trained to never believe a single thing told to me on my birthday. It’s an odd state of affairs sometimes.

But – on a totally unrelated note – did you see Moog has figured out how to compress time by reversing their analog delay, so you can hear a sound before you even play it? Amazing!! ;)