I’m saddened to learn of the death of Richard Lainhart, the New York-based composer and artist who has been inseparable from the experimental electronic scene for many years. I knew Richard to be a gentle and imaginative soul, an inventive technologist, someone capable of dreaming up endless soundscapes and auditory worlds. He was also a great contributor to the CDM community, including playing one of the early installments of Handmade Music at Etsy Labs in Brooklyn. (Photo above; full video at bottom.)

I think it’s fitting to illustrate Richard with a terrific self-portrait on Polaroid, one that illustrates his sense of humor and artistic adventurousness:

Richard’s wife Caroline posted a note with the news, which most of us found via Facebook:

Richard Lainhart February 14, 1953 – December 30, 2011

Dear friends of Richard,
It is with a heavy heart that I that I must tell you Richard Lainhart, composer, musician, technologist, filmmaker, and digital artisan died Friday, December 30, 2011.

On December 17, Richard complained of pains in his side and was admitted to the hospital for tests which showed an intestinal cancer. He was operated on on December 21. After the surgery (which showed the cancer had not spread), there were infectious complications which took his life on December 30.

He struggled valiantly to overcome his infection, but it was not to be. We are all in shock and cannot grasp the idea of his not making music, talking music, teaching, posting and playing.

Caroline Meyers
Richard Lainhart’s wife

Richard leaves behind a massive body of work and digital footprints; I’ve selected some of those below, including music, a wonderful set of images working with digital manipulation and Polaroids via Flickr, and his series on creative sound design tutorials.

Playing Messiaen:

Audiovisual work:

Richard’s most recent album, via Bandcamp:

Most recent SoundCloud contributions, including the winds after Tropical Storm Irene (that sound certainly is part of my sonic memory of 2011)

Sounds of my World – Post-Irene Winds 8-28-11 by rlainhart

200e-Continuum Percussive Study 2 by rlainhart

Sounds of my world – Rainforest V, New York Electronic Art Festival, 7-30-11 by rlainhart

I adore his photographic work:

A bio:

Richard Lainhart is an award-winning composer, author, and filmmaker – a digital artisan who works with sonic and visual data. Since childhood, he’s been interested in natural processes such as waves, flames and clouds, in harmonics and harmony, and in creative interactions with machines, using them as compositional methods to present sounds and images that are as beautiful as he can make them.

Lainhart studied composition and electronic music with Joel Chadabe at the State University of New York at Albany. He has composed music for film, television, CD-ROMs, interactive applications, and the Web. His compositions have been performed in the US, England, Sweden, Germany, Australia, and Japan. Recordings of his music have appeared on the Periodic Music, Vacant Lot, XI Records, Airglow Music, Tobira Records, and ExOvo labels. As an active performer, Lainhart has appeared in public approximately 2000 times. Besides performing his own work, he has worked and performed with John Cage, David Tudor, Steve Reich, Phill Niblock, David Berhman, and Jordan Rudess, among many others. He has composed over 100 electronic and acoustic works. In 2008, he was commissioned by the Electronic Music Foundation to contribute a work to New York Soundscape.

Lainhart’s animations and short films have been shown at festivals in the US, the UK, Canada, Germany, and Korea, and online at ResFest, The New Venue, The Bitscreen, and Streaming Cinema 2.0. His film “A Haiku Setting” won awards in several categories at the 2002 International Festival of Cinema and Technology in Toronto. In 2009, he was awarded a Film & Media grant by the New York State Council on the Arts for “No Other Time”, full-length intermedia performance designed for a large reverberant space, combining live analog electronics with four-channel playback, and high-definition computer-animated film projection.

quotes

“Lainhart crafts sounds in a tonal, musical fashion – sustained tones, drones, melodic fragments – and electronically manipulates them into beautiful tapestries of sound.” (Waterfront Week)

[His] “music reflects the spirit of possibility that once defined electronic music, bringing with it a sense of past, present and future that transcends time, technology and cultural assumptions. The spell- binding music seemed to evoke feelings that can’t quite be named, and suggest music I might rather imagine for myself in silence than trust most composers to compose.” (The Village Voice).

“He’s evolved a singular vision as a composer, performer and engineer of darkly seductive minimalism.” (Peter Marsh, BBC)

And here is Richard’s performance for us at Handmade Music on the Buchla 200e synth and Continuum Fingerboard, from 2007:

http://www.otownmedia.com
http://www.vimeo.com/rlainhart
http://www.youtube.com/rlainhart
http://richardlainhart.bandcamp.com/
http://soundcloud.com/rlainhart
http://twitter.com/rlainhart
http://www.facebook.com/rlainhart
http://www.downloadplatform.com/richard_lainhart

CDM guest and photographer Marsha Vdovin joins us for a photo essay. Given free reign to choose what she wanted to do, she visits a Buchla module maker. Photos can speak volumes, and here the beauty of Don Buchla’s synth designs come through, a decades-long legacy of open-ended, eminently-musical sound possibilities. So, too, does the craft of the custom Eardrill modules. Disclosure: while we loved both, a number of us preferred the Buchla 100-series modular to the Moog modular we had, learning synthesis for the first time back at my alma mater Sarah Lawrence. I’d love to see a Buchla versus Moog patch-off at Moogfest this year. Oh, and while I cheekily add this to our “Create Analog Music” series, the 200e is in fact a hybrid system. Analog and digital come together. It’s fitting.

I recently visited my friend Chris Muir, a musician, engineer and all-around super-smart and fun person. Chris has a company called Eardrill and he handcrafts custom modules for Buchla 200 or 200e modular synths.

What was your first analog synth?

I learned on an ARP 2600, although the first one that I could call my own was an Oberheim SEM that I drilled out to bring out all the internal patch points. A band mate had a Minimoog in the dim, dark past, so I got to play with that quite a bit.

In college, I got introduced to the Buchla, and it was love at first sight. At the time, I couldn’t afford Buchla so I went with a Serge Modular, which at the time was known as the poor man’s Buchla.

I worked for Salamander Music Systems (SMS) in the late 1970s-1984, and really enjoyed working on making advanced synthesizers. I sold my Serge and got into a good-sized SMS system.

Why did you start making modules?

I worked in and out of the musical instrument industry for many years, then while waiting for a consulting gig to materialize, I thought it would be fun to get back into module making.

When I worked for Salamander, it was really fun seeing something go from an idea to reality. I love having a design on paper become three-dimensional “just” by working at it relentlessly. There’s something very satisfying about that.

Why do you use a Buchla 200?

To me, the Buchla represents the road not taken. The question “what is a synthesizer” was largely answered in the marketplace by something resembling a Minimoog. Buchla was there at the beginning, following his own vision of what electronic instruments should be. The Buchla instruments emphasize workflow, and put a lot of musically interesting controls under your fingers. Most parameters on a Buchla can be voltage- controlled, so large-scale control structures can be realized. I resonate with the ideas behind it.

Eardrill.com

Buchla Love

Some more Buchla love seems an appropriate way to close this story. -Ed.

Software can easily enough emulate, down to each knob and patch cord, a vintage synthesizer. But can a genuinely new software synth incorporate the ideas about instrument design beloved in a classic synth like the Buchla modular? How do you balance open-ended sound design with the sorts of limitations that give an instrument personality, limitations that inspire?

And could all of this be meaningful even for someone first discovering synthesis, who may never have seen or heard of a Buchla? (If that’s you, please don’t bail on us just yet!)

It’d be pretty pointless to celebrate the legacy of designers like Don Buchla or Bob Moog if you didn’t think that legacy would be carried on. Randy Jones, of Madrona Labs, is just the kind of person to watch. He’s the creator of the innovative multi-touch, tactile Soundplane hardware, as well as the semi-modular Aalto soft synth, updated this month. Madrona has just released Aalto 1.2. The banner feature: Windows support, meaning you now have full 64-bit (or 32-bit) support on Mac and Windows alike. There’s now really no reason not to try out the instrument, with free demos on each.

What makes Aalto special? It has a unique interface that focuses on sound, and semi-modular design that allows you to produce the sort of sounds a Buchla modular would – without trying slavishly to emulate that hardware in software. It’s something new. As Randy puts it:

The main UI element is a combination oscilloscope + dial that is totally new. It’s inspired by the Max/MSP multislider, as well as the idea “computers are so fast now, and promise so many new possibilities for visualizing sonic systems, why are we still making virtual knobs?”

Randy is reflective as well as inventive, so here are his thoughts on designing the instrument – as well as the most unique approach to copy protection (and cookie-cutter soft synths) I’ve ever heard. (And I do mean heard.)

Aalto, a Tool for Sound Designers; No Two Are Alike

I had two basic ideas: one was to build a softsynth that really encouraged people to make their own sounds, made it fun and easy. Also I wanted to make software that could duplicate some of the Buchla sounds programmed by Morton Subotnik– those wonderful Vactrol / LPG plunks, because I’d never heard that done in software before.

So I picked the Music Easel as an inspiration, not just in sound but in UI, making a small set of modules that would lead to a surprising variety of results.

Limitations are really key, and while Max/MSP and other general environments that try to do everything are very useful, I think musically there’s a lot to be said for making fixed instruments that you learn and don’t mess with. That way you don’t have this situation where everyone ends up with their own instrument. This idea goes for hardware as well as software…

I think good instruments are style-agnostic… hardware as well as software. Making something for a particular genre is just reacting to fashion, which is the enemy of expression.

It’s depressing how popular sample sets are. There are so many possibilities for making your own sounds—recording sounds well, processing and synthesizing them are all easier and cheaper than ever before. If you do electronic music, timbre is a crucial element– how can you buy a sound from someone else? That’s like a poet buying words from someone else.

Aalto is designed to be unhyped. Sit well in a mix. Good music makers have their own compressors, they don’t want a synth to decide to compress itself. Good music makers have their own effects, they don’t want a ton of reverb and delay slathered over every preset.

A precise tool that’s good for learning is also good for using. Knobs are marked with actual time and pitch units. It’s harder to learn synthesis if your knobs all just go from 0-1.

Nothing that affects the sound is hidden. Everything is one click away. Aalto has no menus. I think this makes it a softsynth actually good enough to perform with, not just playing notes but moving through patch space.

It’s easy to go off the rails. Enough rope to hang yourself. A whole world of bad sounds is available at the touch of a dial. Because without them, the surprising good ones wouldn’t be there, only the boring good ones.

The signal scaling to oscillator pitch is a handy knob– one turn of it totally messes up the musical intervals if you want. It’s also easy to get back to a default.

As a composer and performer I’ve been burned time and time again by copy protection, so Aalto doesn’t have any. You can make as many copies as you want, but only run one of them at a time. The registration is embedded in the plugin itself, so there’s no keyfile to worry about. Want to use Aalto at a friend’s studio? Copy it to your zip drive and use it.

Because of the embedded license info being available, I went and did something a little weird: each copy of Aalto makes a slightly different sound. No more than different units of a Prophet-5, but the filter cutoff and oscillator detune and some other parameters are slightly affected by your unique user data. So the sound of the synth is in a way made very personal to the license holder.

Though it’s not so easy to make a good one, it’s a lot easier to make a new softsynth than a new hardware synth. So why are softsynths mostly so boring? Why so little experimentation? I think more interesting things are happening on tablets, with weird audio-visual toys people wouldn’t have made without the interface being available. But the sound quality is not there yet with the tablets. We still have these desktop and laptop computers of amazing power that everyone is using for production… but where is the spirit of innovation that we see in the tablet space?

Being a Small Company

Little companies can do stuff unimaginable a decade ago, thanks to the internet for research and promotion, and the open source community for access to tools. There’s this big area of possibilities with companies like ours that have more of a craftsman than a startup vibe, are not in it to get bought out but to make things of value and beauty over the long haul. Certainly the monome folks are a huge inspiration to me here.

You don’t need a big team to make and promote cutting edge tech anymore, you just need a few really good people. What that means is that companies like ours can innovate and make a product for an audience of a few thousand, something that a Roland or Korg would never bother with, and have a sustainable business model doing that.

Hopefully, this gets the conversation started. Randy’s very open with his ideas, so we’ll be in touch; if you have other questions for him, let us know. And, of course, we should look at Aalto very soon.

http://madronalabs.com/aalto

Call it cable addiction. Italian-born musician Alessandro Cortini, known for his live keyboard work with Nine Inch Nails, retreated into the studio with classic and contemporary Buchla modular synths to make “SONOIO.” Guided by his uniquely personal compositional style, he was able to wrangle that mess of chords and layers of analog sound into a genuine collection of beautifully-written songs, stacked high with Buchla timbral goodness.

The first four songs are free, with downloads starting at US$7.99 and physical records with bundled music at US$9.99 and up.

But SONOIO isn’t just a record release. The album itself is accompanied by a a portable synthesizer called the SuONOIO, custom-designed for the record by legendary synth maker The Harvestman (Scott Jaeger). I don’t think this is the first album release to have hardware alongside, but the SuONOIO itself is something special. Not just some toy or player, the creators endeavored both to incorporate the sounds of the album (via pitch-controlled sample players) as well as advanced features that allow you to make your own sounds. The synth, then, becomes a kind of art object reinterpretation of Alessandro’s own working method and tastes, building into an affordable, portable package his love of patch cords and sound tweaking.

All of this might be a stunt anywhere else. But quality and intent interferes: the album and synth alike could be major highlights of 2010. Via email, I talked to Alessandro about his creative process, his rig and how he attacked an all-modular album, and how he made the self-release and synth release work.

Yes, yes, “Create Analog Music.” (I’ve tried to go back and time to tell myself I should include a less literal name for the site, but my past self didn’t believe me.) But that’s the funny thing about it — this is a digital album. It’s also proof that the working techniques from the analog age — from doing recordings in a single take to treating the arrangement as a multitrack tape to patching sounds with chords — are just as relevant today in the world of the eight-core Mac Pro that did the final mix. And without the instinct to write songs, one Alessandro carries from childhood, it’s all just noise. Let’s let the artist explain.

http://www.sonoio.org/ [All purchases, from album to t-shirts to synth, plus free downloads]

On musical creation…

The sound world I think is what people will encounter first in this music, and generally in electronic music, so let’s begin there. How do you tend to think about timbre as you work?

I never know what I am going to write or create. That’s probably the main thing, to begin with.

I usually sit in front of an instrument to fiddle, to play with it like it’s a toy of some sort, hoping to come up with a sound unique enough to trigger an idea.

The idea can develop into a full composition, or stay as a simple two-hour time waster. Both results are very welcome, at all times!

The sense of the songwriting on the album to me is really strong. What’s your approach to assembling the songs, compositionally, particularly as many people tend not to associate sitting behind a Buchla modular with something like songwriting?

I have been writing songs since I was 7 years old. I started recording on a small boom box, with my voice only, making these tapes of songs I wrote for my grandparents to listen to on their way back home (they lived out of town).

I have been thinking of music in a song format as long as i can remember making music. Even the less song0based, more experimental work I released (i.e. blindoldfreak) still retains a song structure, even though it’s less obvious and instrumental, so to speak.

The thing is, I don’t really think about writing them. Each song comes from playing around with the instrument, in this case the Buchla. Sometimes it’s a sequence triggering a chord progression; other times, it’s a drone patch which triggers a melody in my mind.

For the SONOIO album, I tried to let the instrument dictate the structure. A song like “Just Me” doesn’t really have a repeating chorus, and it evolves through quite a few sections in the few minutes it lasts. I forced myself not to cut and paste anything. Everything in songs such as “Just Me,” “Not Worth Remembering,” and “Hold On Let Go” are one-takes, with the Buchla being multitracked and vocals/vocoder overdubbed.

How did that grow into the album, or what was the conception for the whole release?

The album started as soon as i realized that most of my “fiddling” with the modular was taking me into song territory, as opposed to more experimental [ground].

It took me a bit to realize that it would be great to try and write a whole collection of songs strictly on the modular, as opposed to layering instruments as I usually do, but when I committed to this process, things became challenging and refreshing at the same time.

The bulk of the album was written in January ’10, with most of the remainder of the time spent learning to mix it!
the “story” is really not that clear to me either, to be honest. I’ve always been attached to music that , even with a clear lyrical content, lends itself to personal interpretation, so i hope the listeners will take what they want from it.

What did you take away from your time with Nine Inch Nails? Did it impact your sound or the way you approach playing?

Of course it did — especially the time in the studio working on Ghosts. It was revelatory to see how much can come out of a single sound, if nurtured the right way. Also, those sessions taught me not to spend too much time over-thinking: if it sounds good, it’s time to move on.

I also learned that I don’t enjoy playing shows as much as I like being in a studio environment. There is something about the repetitivity of a live show that slowly erodes the magic of the songs. And while there are things you can do to keep it interesting for yourself — look at the spaceship that was my rig with NIN! — it eventually becomes a race to finish and get to the bus to sleep. It becomes the most feared thing: a real job.

What artists are inspiring you currently?

I don’t listen to a lot of commercial music these days, but here are a few of my current favorites: Belong, the last Telefon Tel Aviv album (amazing), Tim Hecker, BigBlackDelta, HEALTH, HowardAmb, Christopher Bissonette and pretty much anything on Kranky and Raster Noton.

Tools and Techniques

What’s your rig like in the the studio for this work?

The creative rig for this album (and for most of my work these days) is based around a Buchla 200 and a Buchla 200e More recently, I have been spending time with a keyboard version of the Monomachine [the SFX-6], which i use as an alternative writing tool.

The recording rig is a Mac Pro 2.26 octo [8-core], Logic Studio + [Apogee] Symphony system and a [Universal Audio] UAD card. It’s been the most stable and powerful rig I have ever had. Not one single crash during the sessions!

There’s a richly-layered, fat analog sound to the whole the mix. How do you balance all of these textures in a mix, and get everything to sit right?

Mixing was what took the longest to complete, and mostly because of the lack of experience/skills on my part. For a series of reasons, I decided to mix the album myself as opposed to outsourcing it, and I figured I would learn from the process, too.

I was lucky to have friends helping with suggestions and advice, including Jon from Big Black Delta who helped me when I got stuck in the vicious circle of “does this sound good enough?” Joshua Eustis from Telefon Tel Aviv was very helpful, too, in giving his feedback. His work on “Immolate yourself” is amazing … that album was a huge inspiration.

Another thing to keep in mind is that there aren’t many layers in each song. I would be surprised if I have more than 16 tracks running, total, including FX buses.

I usually stem out 8 outputs to my mini console, where I can mix the single elements as groups (1/2: effects, pads, drones, 3/4 vocoder, bkvox, 5: main vox, 6: bass, 7/8: drums/rhythmic elements).

An Independent Release, and Releasing a Whole Synth, Not Just a Record

What about the decision to self-release? How has the response been?

I didn’t [rule out] releasing through a label, in the beginning. The album was sent to various places I thought I would have liked to hear feedback from, but even the ones that were receptive were tied to a working schedule which turns days into months. The last thing I wanted to do is to release an album that was a year old, when I am ready to move onto new stuff the moment I master it.

I do miss the feeling of being part of family and some sort of financial support (which would have been limited, regardless, considering I am a newcomer), but I think I made the right decision to release it this way.

The album came out with the aid of the Topspin platform (http://www.topspinmedia.com/)

I took an online course at Berklee Music, since the tool itself didn’t make too much sense to me on its own, in the long run, without a proper marketing campaign and plan of action.

It’s something anybody can do, and not necessarily with Topspin. I chose them because I knew them as real music lovers, and great people I could communicate with and exchange ideas.

The audio player widgets, store buttons and email list/analytics are all their software, which I have learned to integrate in my own site, with the aid of a webmaster. (Phillip Farmer, http://crosshatch.net/)

And then you decide to release a full synthesizer to accompany the album. How did that come about?

I always wanted to release something that wasn’t necessarily a CD, vinyl, or similar, along with my music. I thought about it for a long time, and the synthesizer answer came quite naturally, a few months back.

My priority was to offer something that was unique (and a “first”, if possible), yet relates to who I am and what I do, not simply a publicity stunt of some sort.

How did you and Scott (The Harvestman) work together on the design?

Scott came to mind as the ideal candidate to solve my main problem with designing a synth (besides the fact that i don’t know how to design anything, of course…). How do I create something that is both related to the album AND allows [users] to create new and independent sounds and textures?

I contacted Scott and asked him if he’d be interested…we had a long and fruitful conversation over the phone and that’s how it began.

We then opened an email communication, exchanging ideas and concepts,which in no time led to a prototype.

What went into some of the design features of the synth? How did it evolve? I really like the cross-modulation capabilities and miniature patch cables.

The patch cable implementation idea came from Mike Brown of Livewire, who is a great friend of mine and Scott’s.
He suggested it, knowing it’d be a great way to extend my cable addiction to this instrument…and he was right!

The initial idea was to utilize carefully-selected sounds from the album and find a way to modulate them and make the, interesting with the minimal amount of controls. Scott’s knowledge in the field has allowed the instrument to evolve from this rather simple design to a much more expanded array of options, while retaining the “make sound immediately, no manual required” attitude.

We both wanted the instrument to be:

• Affordable: It’s roughly 160 $ (and even less if bought in the bundle with music, CD, poster, and shirt). We decided to skip the enclosure since it’s the most expensive part of the instrument, usually. BugBrand has pioneered this sort of design, I believe, and it was definitely an inspiration (I own a few of his clever instruments).
• Great looking: The final version’s colors will recall the album artwork, to a certain extent, so it’ll definitely belong to this particular release. In addition, we will create templates for paper/cardboard faceplates that the user can download, print and mount on the instrument. We both thought it’d be a great way to start a community to share designs, but mostly, I wanted mine to have cats on it so that’s why… There is also going to be an option to design aluminum faceplates and get them custom ordered somewhere else. We’ll provide the design and manufacturer’s contact info, if needed.
• Easy to play: There’s no keyboard (yet) for it, only 7 knobs and patch points. Even without patching, you can really mangle the built-in samples and turn them into something creative and different. If and when that will become obsolete, the user can take advantage of the 16 patchable points and add functions such as distortion, delay, FM destination and more. We wanted the instrument to be appealing to seasoned electronic musicians as well as people who had no idea of what it is, but are curious enough to pick it up and make noise.
• Easy to interface: It comes with a battery holder, 9V Boss AC connector, built-in speaker and 1/4″ audio output. It can also be connected to another SuONOIO instrument for further manipulation or to create more complex sounds.

How do you hope this instrument will be used, or what do you hope may come out of getting this in the hands of listeners? What does that mean for the listener/maker relationship? And could you see this idea catching on?

I hope to see people making music with it, or just using it as a hobby tool of some sort — as something you keep on the coffee table and play every now and then, or something you integrate in your state-of-the-art electronica rig.

I think it can be several things except a normal-sounding instrument, because that it is not!

The response has been overwhelming so far, both for the album and the instrument, thanks to the word of mouth of the online community and Trent Reznor who has been very supportive with spreading the word about SONOIO.

Thanks to Alessandro for sharing so much. More shots of his studio environment below.

http://www.sonoio.org/

Here’s the one and only Facebook app you’ll ever hear me get enthusiastic about. You know the Facebook apps, of course – this overhyped “platform” generally involves time-wasting, spam-like “Someone you barely know just sent you a cupcake” emails. But I like this one:

Analog Synths

Thanks to CDM’s Liz for being so generous:

And personally, all email should work this way:

I’m waiting for Star Trek’s replicator technology to become reality so we can send around real synths. Anyone? Want to win a Nobel Prize?

If you want to catch up with Buchla’s various innovations, I suspect you’ll need to drink a lot of Red Bull. So it’s fitting that Red Bull, sponsors of the Red Bull Music Academy international educational programs, are interviewing Buchla for their series on musical innovators. Sit back in your recliner, because they’ve got two full hours of Buchla reflecting on music technology:

Red Bull Music Academy Interview

Via the excellent ambient/electronica blog Disquiet

Earlier this week:

Vintage Buchla Easel Action, and Inspiration for Modern Tangible Interfaces

Photo by fr1zz, via Flickr.

CHARLES COHEN AT THE BUCHLA MUSIC EASEL from ALEX on Vimeo.

Alex writes:

This colorful video features sound artist Charles Cohen improvising on a 1970′s Buchla Music Easel. This extremely rare instrument is one of Don Buchla’s 200 series. Buchla (a pioneer of audio synthesis) only manufactured 14 of these units. The entire film was edited from an hour-long set of free improvisation, with audio was taken directly from Charles’ mixing board.

All of the photography and editing was produced by Alex Tyson, a sound and video artist from Pennsylvania. The film was shot in 16:9 720p High Definition format, with only a 35mm LensBaby 3GPL.

Mmmmm… LensBaby. Yeah, this is motional porn as well as musical. (Update – looks like Tom at Music Thing is enjoying as well.)

For more Buchla improv action on a newer generation of hardware, check out Richard Lainhart on his Buchla 200e and Continuum setup, playing at our Handmade Music event hosted with Make Magazine and Etsy Labs. (Side note: if you’re using YouTube for documentation, don’t miss the latest tips for getting better quality — with help from Richard — over on Create Digital Motion. Got some clips myself I’ll be uploading with that information in hand.)

That’s not Richard’s video as he was busy playing; his vids — employing those YouTube tricks — are available on Richard’s YouTube channel.

For many, the notion of producing sound by patching spaghetti-like nests of cords in hardware is a historical curiosity. Even among those who appreciate this hardware for what it is, conventional wisdom says such instruments aren’t really modern. (Don’t even ask the various universities who gave up on using and maintaining the gear entirely, relegating them to dusty closets — or much worse.) Modular synths are under pressure in 2007 to compete with lots of new technologies. Is it worth making music with them?

Composer/musician Richard Lainhart has taken up what is perhaps the most modern of modular analog synths — the Buchla 200e — not because of historic interest, but because “I’ve come to miss the immediacy and organic sound of analog modular synthesizers.” He’s not planning to lock himself in a room and make archaic, hours-long compositions with it, either; he chose it because its patch memory is “ideal for live performance.” And, as a person trained as a composer myself, that seems like the ultimate test of an instrument — if you can actually play it live.

Even if you’re not ready to shell out the money required to buy your own 200e (they cost about as much as a pickup truck), if you have any interest in synthesis at all, it’s worth joining Richard on his explorations. Get started by checking out the Introduction video for a look at his rig and how he uses it, then check out expressive applications like the video entitled “Chorale.” It’s immediately inspiring as a way of thinking about sound and performance. I certainly can’t afford this setup myself, but then that’s not the point. Once you see an exciting performance, you’ll find a way to do something of your own on what you can afford; that’s part of the grand tradition of music.

This happens to be an excellent demonstration of the potential of the Haken Continuum Fingerboard controller, as well.

We’ll be watching, Richard.

O-Town Media: Buchla

Recently:
Buchla 200e + Haken Continuum Photo Teaser: Modern Classics?
Haken Continuum Fingerboard, Alternative Music Controller, in Action

Electronic musicians are used to getting their gear on the cheap, and there’s something beautiful about that. But that doesn’t take away from some of the short-run, brilliant instruments out there. Topping the list: Buchla’s 200e, which continues the stories tradition of the Buchla modular synths, and the Haken Continuum Fingerboard, which provides continuous control far exceeding the accuracy and expressiveness of almost any controller out there. Our friend Richard Lainhart just took deliver of his 200e, and captures it moving into the studio with the Haken.

18 unit modular + Haken Continuum + quad sound — it’s a beautiful thing.

I singled out the Buchla modulars as an underrated synth. They might also be on the “misunderstood” list. Conventional wisdom goes that the Moog Modular synth became more popular because it was more friendly to musicians. The design of the Buchla itself, though, is often equally exceptional in comparison to the Moog Modulars. In fact, what’s remarkable about these two modulars is that they each evolved in parallel, on opposite coasts, sometimes with similar ideas — and both are incredibly sophisticated sound production instruments. Looking at the Buchla is a reminder that none of the design decisions on the Moog were inevitable, and visa versa. I spent a couple of years in the studio at Sarah Lawrence College looking at the two side by side, so I had plenty of time to reflect on this (especially since I screwed up my patches half the time).

One bit of conventional wisdom that is true is that Don Buchla favored alternatives to the standard piano/organ-style keyboard added early to the Moog — though even for those working on the Moog, this was a controversial issue. That makes the Continuum the perfect modern controller for a Buchla. What’s interesting to me — keeping in mind, I love keyboards and always will — is that the world has gradually come full circle. Maybe in the 60s, people weren’t quite ready to absorb new sounds and new controllers (though Keith Emerson sure loved his ribbon controller). Now, in the age of Wii, that has unquestionably changed.

Stay tuned; I hope to catch up with Richard and take a closer look at these instruments. There’s plenty to be learned there, even for those of us who might not be able to afford this combination.

Thanks, Richard!

“This Week in Synths” by Matrix is on a short holiday; in the meantime, you can page through the archived stories. In its place, it’s worth considering two “top xx lists” for synths. Sonic State has done a Top 20 Greatest Synths List, featuring a quite nice video and rather high-end production values. The list itself is perhaps better read as a Top 20 Most Popular Synths, though, so you’ll be gratified to know our friend Matrixsynth responded with a list of the Most Underrated Synths.

Top 20 Greatest Synths at Sonic State, complete with extensive information, links, top-notch videos … good stuff.

Most Underrated Synths at Matrixsynth, complete with more of the obscure instruments we love.

As terrific as the list at Sonic State is, presumably because it’s based on voting, it skews in a certain direction. The omission of modular Moog and Buchlas, the lack of important moments in synthesis (like Yamaha first commercializing physical modeling), and the general emphasis on ROMplers tilts the list in a certain direction. There’s a decent argument for the keyboards that made the list, but I am curious what CDMers would compile.

Hard to argue with the #1 spot, though. See what you think:

1. Moog Minimoog. (Warning: pronunciation in the video rhymes with the sound cows make, instead of properly rhyming with “brogue.”)
2. ARP Odyssey
3. Sequential Circuits Prophet 5
4. Yamaha DX7
5. Korg M1
6. Roland D50
7. Korg MS20
8. Roland JV-1080
9. Access Virus
10. ARP 2600. (Interesting bit of trivia: Sonic State’s readers are right that there’s an ARP 2500, not 2600, in Close Encounters, though the 2600 is often erroneously connected to the film. But something I didn’t know — Wikipedia says in the entry on the film that “Phil Dodds, a tech from ARP Instruments Inc., is the man playing the keyboard.”)
11. Oberheim OB8
12. Roland Juno 60
13. Mellotron (Hey, do tapes count?)
14. Yamaha CS-80
15. Roland Jupiter 8
16. E-MU PROteus 1
17. Clavia Nord Lead
18. VCS3
19. Roland SH-101
20. ARP Solina

Of course, part of the reason lists have become so popular online is because they’re easy to argue with. And this list illustrates, as much as ‘boards like the Minimoog get love, how other synths just never do.

So for those unloved synths, here are Matrix’s picks (in no particular order):

1. Oberheim Matrix-6
2. Rhodes/ARP Chroma
3. Elka Synthex
4. Korg Mono/Poly
5. Crumar Performer
6. Roland JX-3P
7. Sequential Circuits MAX
8. Casio HT-700
9. Yamaha FS1R
10. Akai vx600
11. EML 101
12. Kawai SX-240
13. Alesis Andromeda
14. Sequential Six-Trak
15. Akai AX-60
16. Korg M-500 Micropreset
17. Waldorf Microwave 1
18. Yamaha VL70m
19. Korg DS8
20. Ensoniq EPS16+
21. SCI Multitrack
22. Korg DSS-1 and Technics WSA-1

You’ll have to go actually read up just to remember which these are, huh?

I’m happy Matrix included the Yamaha VL70m, for introducing physical modeling to a mass-market. While not much of a success at the time, it did win some critical acclaim for pushing synths in a different direction. And now, years later, we’ve seen the success of Korg’s OASYS-PCI system and more recent OASYS synth flagship, Apple’s Sculpture, the whole product line from Applied Acoustics, and various other waveguide modeling implementations (some commercial, some DIY). I think it’s a synthesis technique we’ll see more of in the future.

Maybe modulars aren’t supposed to be included, but my #1 Underrated Synth of All Time is the legendary Buchla 100. It has suffered from the assumption that Moog’s modular was the superior design. I think the real reason, aside from Moog’s well-deserved reputation in design, is that Moog managed to sell to more popular artists — and went on to innovate in keyboards. Now that the history of synthesis in the 60s has been written with Moog as the hero, it’s too easy to overlook the various design innovations in the Buchla. In fact, put the two side by side, and you’re struck by the fact that nothing that the Moog does is necessarily self-evident — you realize that every design feature we now take for granted was up for grabs, and each design winds up looking more ingenious. The fact that Don Buchla and Bob Moog were each developing modular systems in relative isolation is all the more impressive. All due respect for the new Buchla 200e, though, the day I have money and room for a modular, I’d like a Buchla 100 series.

Also, UK readers are surely unhappy about the fact that EMS isn’t on the list, right?

Anyway, I list these here partly because I’d love your nominations for greatest synths of all time.

And this being a software site, I certainly wouldn’t exclude software. Which soft synths deserve to stand alongside some of the greatest hardware of all time? Reaktor? Sculpture? Reaon’s Malström? Koblo?