Modular music making is a throwback to the early days of electronic music, in which a spaghetti of patch cords is the price of open-ended sound creation. Fairly or unfairly, it has often been viewed as the domain of the eccentric wealthy musician. You needed cash, endless patience, and lots of space – well, unless you happened to be lucky enough to pick up a vintage modular as people were getting rid of them.

But something has happened: modules have become more practical and accessible. Like any music technology, they can become a rabbit hole into which time and money fall and no music escapes. But also like any music technology, there are ways of bending these tools to your will, applying fiscal and creative discipline to make them musically productive.

Enter the “desktop modular” revolution. Modules are cheaper and more usable. It’s easier than ever to assemble a rig of modular that coexists with your digital gear, be it MIDI hardware or computers. That means just a select set of modules within your budget (and available physical space) could find a place. And modules are more innovative and fun than they’ve been in the past, too. They merge digital and analog tech – just as this site has loved doing (despite our name) over the years.

And just as suddenly, that spaghetti entree starts to look delicious.

I can’t say I’ve personally found room for this kind of gear, but I’ve enjoyed watching the evolution of new equipment. And over the past few months, I’ve witnessed a bumper crop of terrific new modules. It’s time to survey some of that fertile landscape, as 2011 winds to a close. Here are a few of my favorites, sure to inspire other nominees from readers. And I imagine this adds fresh cause to venture into the basement stalls of the Winter NAMM music manufacturer trade show in Anaheim next month, where these sorts of less-mainstream devices flourish.

Notably, these modules all work with the ‘small’ Eurorack (A100) format. German maker Doepfer Musikelektronik popularized this format, and it has since taken off. In fact, that puzzled quite a few readers when Moog’s re-entry in modular eschewed that format. (That may be their loss.) But Moog ladder filters aside, there has been plenty of action in the Eurorack space.

Utility: Kenton MIDI-to-CV and More

Kenton’s Modular Solo is about as nice a utility knife as you could add to a modular rig, for integrating lots of different gear. Plug it in via ribbon cable, and you get:

• MIDI in and out
• SYNC 24 (“DIN SYNC” – think 808 and 606 drum machine sync)
• CV analog and gate output
• Two clock outs, four aux outs (think assigning MIDI to filter cutoff, etc., says Kenton)
• And an LFO – triangle, saw up and down, square, S&H pulse width with several fixed widths

£195.00, though all the extras there easily could make it worth it.

Utility: Expert Sleepers ES-4 Modules

Expert Sleepers’ ES-4 is the latest of their modules, turning a standard S/PDIF signal into five channels of control voltage. Coupled with their Silent Way software, you can also use it for MIDI, only with sample-accurate timing. That makes it a sample-accurate MIDI interface, if you like. (See video at top for a MIDI demo.) You can turn three of those five outputs into any signal you like – gate, envelope, LFO, and so on.

Where do you get that S/PDIF output? Well, lots of audio interfaces have them, and many computers – including recent MacBooks – do, as well.

There’s also an ES-4 Gate Expander add-on for additional 8 on/off gates, triggers, clocks, and so on. The unit is £151, or £64 for the Gate Expander, not including VAT.

http://www.expert-sleepers.co.uk/es4.html

More demos:

Sound Sculpting: ADE-10 Reactive Shaper

Justin Owen of Abstract Data sends us this creation. It’s an all-analog waveshaper, wavefolder, feedback unit, with audio to LFO range. That means you can use it as an LFO or design sounds or manipulate synth pads or … any number of things. In fact, it’s nice enough that I could see using it alone, sort of Moogerfooger / stomp style. This is the same nice gentleman who created the Kicker, a synth focused on bass drums.

Loads of sound samples on SoundCloud, in addition to the video tutorial and demo above. It’s yours for £135.00, which I think is quite a bargain.

http://www.abstractdata.biz/ade10/

ADE-10 Reactive Shaper Eurorack Module (2011) by abstractjuz

Synthesis: Monotron in a Eurorack

A bit more left-field, but you can even get Korg’s simple-but-fun Monotron synth in a Eurorack module. Skip ahead in the video below to hear it in action. (Well, unless you prefer field recording crinkly wrapping sounds, in which case the unboxing portion of the video will be your favorite. Toddlers, dogs, and gear lovers agree: unboxing is the best part.)

US$249 puts the Monotron in a rack format. Of course, there, you can do quite a lot more with the Monotron than you can with the original, with both full CV and MIDI control and very, very nice knobs, in place of the awful-feeling (though stunningly inexpensive) controls on the original. All together, that makes a very playable, very fine synth.

http://erthenvar.com/store/monotrone, as seen on Synthtopia

Synthesis: Triangle Core Oscillators

Just when you think you can’t innovate in something as simple as an oscillator — you can.

Synthesist Danjel van Tijn sends news of the Dixie VCO, which, named for its creator, reimagines how to do a triangle oscillator:

It is a triangle core oscillator in Eurorack format that utilises a brand new method of implementing a triangle core oscillator using a design by professor David G. Dixon.

Side note: Trianglecore would make a great genre name.

Professor Dixon co-designed the module and collaborated on its construction. In the video at top, you can see what those waveforms look like. Below, you can see how this might work in a musical context:

Melodic demo of the Dixie VCO. Two Dixies are used (only one at first) along with a Z8000 for sequencing, a uScale for quantizing, uStep for step sequencing and everything is filtered through the new Dr. Octature VCF/VCO.

The uScale is used to help demonstrate the extremely wide and accurate range of tracking of both VCOs. The sequence spans many octaves but the intervals of the two Dixies stay in tune.

PWM, LIN FM and Sync are all played with along with different combinations of waveforms to explore just some of the timbre possibilities.

And here’s what happens when you reverse sync:

We seem to lack purchase info on this particular module for now, but there are loads of other great modules from this Vancouver, Canada-based builder – and yes, they work with Max/MSP and computers, too, not just modules:

http://www.intellijel.com/

Roundup of Other Great Picks

Knowing I could never keep up with all that’s happening on the Eurorack scene, I asked Danjel aka Intellijel to give us some of his picks for some of the coolest modules. He obliged with a drool-worthy – and I dare say genuinely musical – list. Here are his favorites:

There is so much stuff! Eurorack has obviously tried to update or recreate most of the classic synthesis blocks from various manufacturers (Buchla, Moog, Roland etc. etc.) but the past couple of years very interesting developments have been made incoporating brand new designs not found anywhere else. Some of these are completely DSP based, some are hybrids and some like the Dixie VCO are %100 analog.

Other stuff I have put out that is unique (and actually has decent video) would include:

uScale: CV quantizer but it also does intelligent interval generation

Corgasmatron:
This is a dual multimode filter with the same transfer function as classic Korg MS20 but it is a completely new circuit design (nothing related to the original at all) using all modern components.

On the analoghaven page there is a list of about 40 manufacturers each with many modules:
http://www.analoguehaven.com/what/

The Muffwiggler.com forum is extremely active with all things to do with modular synthesis (and synths in general).

Stuff worth noting form other manufacturers (there is so much more from each of these groups):

Cylonix Cyclebox:
FPGA based extremely deep triple VCO with through zero FM and massive amount of synthesis and waveshaping options
http://www.cylonix.com/cyclebox.html

TipTop Audio matrix sequencer:
http://www.tiptopaudio.com/z8k.php?goto=features

Tiptop Audio Z-DSP (user programmable DSP fx processor)
http://www.tiptopaudio.com/zdsp.php?goto=features

Expert Sleepers ES-3 (all their products really) control your analog gear via a plugin in Ableton/DAW and their lightpipe/spdif/db25 connector
http://www.expert-sleepers.co.uk/es3.html

Kilpatrick Audio K4815 Pattern Generator
http://www.kilpatrickaudio.com/?p=K4815

Makenoise Phonogene: digital tape recorder re-visioned
http://www.makenoisemusic.com/Phonogene.html

Makenoise Rene: cartesian sequencer
http://www.makenoisemusic.com/RENE.html

Synthesis Technology Morphing Terrarium: morphing wavetable synthesis
http://www.analoguehaven.com/synthesistechnology/e350/

Synthesis Technology Deflector Shield: thru-zero frequency shifter, phaser and ring mod
http://www.analoguehaven.com/synthesistechnology/e560/

The Harvestman Double Andore: dual a-d envelope generator and 2-channel vca with digital curve shaping and vca law selection
http://www.theharvestman.org/2017.php

The Harvestman Bionic Lester: dual 12db/oct switched capacitor multimode filter with mode selction and clock disruption.
http://www.theharvestman.org/1873.php

Toppobrillo Sport Modulator: Dual VC Lag and CV processor
http://www.analoguehaven.com/toppobrillo/sportmodulator/

Thanks, Danjel! This looks fantastic – plenty to consider as inspiration.

It all makes me wish for a holiday on which some supernatural being, against all rules of material consumption and the conservation of physics, flies around the Earth leaving, for free, the things you desire as gifts. If someone can make this happen, let me know. Also, I’ll need the contract to a flat in which I can house said materializing goods. Until then, I’ll have to hack something together for free in Pd and run it on a netbook.

Dream On: Modular, The Movie, and the Planner

Modular remains such a cultural phenomenon, it has inspired its own movie project, as seen on IndieGogo (trailer above):

I Dream of Wires: The Modular Synthesizer Documentary

If we’ve sold you on this whole idea, Danjel also points us to this:

There is a pretty cool online interactive virtual modular for planning out a system
It contains pretty much every module available.

http://www.modularplanner.co.uk/

More analog…

By the way, if you appreciate this sort of analog coverage and would like a domain at which you can see it, you should complain to Trash Audio. They cheekily registered the createanalogmusic.com domain and redirected it to their site, and they haven’t responded to offers to buy it from them them. I suggest you flood their inbox with complaints until they aquiesce. Alternatively, perhaps you can think of a word that means analog but begins with the letter ‘D,’ as that’d fit nicely with the ‘CDM’ acronym. Or we could come up with something in another language – German, for instance.

I’ve registered createanalogmusic.de for now; I’ll point it at something later this week. And as for how we can get back at TRASH_AUDIO — I’m open to suggestions. Can’t crash their NAMM party; I’ll be on a flight back to Berlin. (Seriously, that crew held a great synth meetup in LA in September I was lucky enough to catch – at least briefly.)

We’ll continue to happily bring you judgment-free electronic music making on a variety of platforms, from the Apple II to a discarded, broken cell phone to analog circuitry you wired up yourself, because that’s how we roll.

Global availability of music may not have silenced the usual gripes about musical quality and diversity, even if they should. But the Web is providing a place for people to share music with other music-making enthusiasts, sharing the craft of constructing it with the relish of chefs talking over drinks at the end of a long day.

Anyway, that’s my excuse for mentioning fellow blogger, music software developer and musician Chris Randall, again. I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the meticulously-concocted sounds of his new micronaut EP, Particulate. Ticking away leisurely, with thick alphaSyntauri pads set against cool, understated metrical rhythms, it’s the as though the machines themselves are enjoying a calm weekend afternoon.

On the Analog Industries blog, more description

Chris admits something I’ve been hearing increasingly in whispers among producers from a wide variety of genres – he’s getting away from the DAW. The dominant computer software model, even in more restrained incarnations like Ableton Live, still involves an overwhelming set of tools and sequencing apparatus that can get you away from, you know, actually playing your machines like instruments. Instead, Chris uses “good old-fashioned playing,” and gating from analog outputs from an Apple IIe-based sequencer. It’s nothing new (quite literally so, as the gear is from the 80s), but it’s a discipline to which I hear many producers return again and again. (I got to read them talking about it in the 80s and 90s, too, as I edited old Keyboard stories for an upcoming book – sometimes you have to turn the sequencers off and focus on really playing the machines. Think that bit in Star Wars with the flight computer.)

The gear:
Roland CMU-800R + Apple IIe (kids, ask your parents)

alphaSyntauri, also based on the Apple II

Korg 770, which has the best vintagesynth.com description ever: “Aside from being very old, there isn’t much else to say about the 770.” Assuming I take care of myself and survive to be a senior, this is I hope what I can someday make my epitaph.

Korg MS20, about which much could be said

Euro-Rack modular

Korg Monotribe

iPad running Curtis (granular app) + Alesis iO Dock

Lexicon M300 (now-discontinued hardware reverb), and ValhallaRoom and Chris’ own Eos, as reverb

I love the polish of the EP, but it’s also revealing to watch Chris tinker with his rack of gear, as in this more recent image:

By the way, for my part, I’m also enjoying not sequencing materials. If you don’t want to go to tape, you can take the same approach in any software. Hanging out with King Britt in his studio, he tracked live playing and CV-gated sequences into Ableton Live; I’ve taken to using Propellerhead Reason (formerly Record) for the same purpose. (Hint: that absence of MIDI output? It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.)

All of this is relevant, as there’s a big Synth Meet tomorrow in Los Angeles put on by those connoisseurs of analog, the blog (and sometimes-artists’-collective TRASH_AUDIO. And certainly the idea of investing in all this shiny is, eventually, to actually make something resembling music with it. Chris, look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

Also, fans of alphaSyntauri — I’ve been watching this growing, open group on Facebook devoted to that instrument:
The Alpha Syntauri Group

They point to a big load of documentation someone has collected.

Now I’m nervous, because typically when I ramble on about something like this, commenters get angry. It’s a Friday. Don’t hurt me. Go listen, and if you don’t like it, it’s a Big, Wide Internet. In fact, go make something.

Amidst renewed conversation about what drum machines should be – see heated comments – it’s enlightening to revisit the drum machine as marketed in 1982. This vintage Linn Electronics LM-1 “Drum Computer” ad captures a moment in the birth of the modern drum machine. Some of what’s desirable then remains desirable today. Others – “Real Drum Sounds” – are amusingly far less novel, looking back from far deeper into the digital age.

Real time programming, mixing functions, and friendly design, though, remain important – and you can thank designer Roger Linn and his LM-1 for the profound influence they’ve had on drum machine design. In fact, quite a bit of the personality of the LM-1′s front panel and programming approach remain in the imminent Dave Smith – Roger Linn collaboration, the Tempest.

What I find interesting is that the economy of the LM-1′s front panel could still offer something to someone making a new drum machine, whether it’s your humble Pd or Max for Live patch, an iPad/tablet app, or DIY hardware.

Looping back on another impassioned discussion from last week, it’s worth noting Roger’s background: in 1978, as he began the LM-1 design, he was – and is – a guitarist. It took a guitarist to help create the modern sampling and drum programming revolution. (Well, you wouldn’t have expected a drummer to do it, would you?)

At first, it seemed like it might be just a blip: amidst generally declining sales of physical music, down sharply from their 1990s boom, vinyl sales were trending up. The reversal started with a slight uptick in 2007 – already noticeable as the CD had begun its collapse. That slight uptick has turned into a small boom. From a tiny 300,000 units in US sales in 1993, the vinyl record is projected to do some 3.6 million units in sales. Source:

Vinyl Projected to Grow More Than 25 Percent In 2011…

Let’s put some of this in perspective. Even with explosive growth, vinyl remains at the margins, representing 1.6% of physical sales in the US. In fact, part of the fetish around vinyl is evidenced by the fact that people would make this headline news – fans of the vinyl record are understandably eager to hear their format of choice is doing well. As a point of comparison, in the last 30 days, just one independent band website, Bandcamp, has done US$640,513 in profit for its members. That’s profit, not revenue, and it’s often going directly to artists.

You can also, via Digital Music News, compare to vinyl’s years as the dominant format, which makes this all look very niche:
The Vinyl Comeback, In Historical Perspective…. (Thanks, JP in comments.) That graph doesn’t show per-unit cost, and anecdotally, artists seem closer to the record release process than they once were.

That said, vinyl’s significance in the new world order is arguably more about its cultural meaning than its numbers. (Getting away from numbers – cough, digital – is the point.) Cutting a vinyl record today is about making a physical artefact of a release. It carries with it prestige. Its scarcity is part of its value, with exclusive 12″ releases again returning to the days when DJs were judged by the obscure gems in their collection, not the disposable digital hits.

And I can see any number of benefits to vinyl’s reemergence:

• Bringing tactile back. Records as objects are a pleasure; I’m the last person to argue there. There’s a ritual to putting on a record that changes how you feel about the music, versus the seemingly-infinite, ephemeral digital jukebox.
• Keeping vinyl DJing alive. At this point, it seems more about preserving the record and mixing rather than scratching, but vinyl remains essential for people DJing with turntables. Notably, unlike faking it with digital control vinyl, using actual records is also more reliable – a slight flaw or vibration won’t bring the whole mix to a standstill. (Analog most definitely fails more gracefully than digital.) That makes the presence of vinyl releases doubly important to getting to hear traditional DJ technique.
• Keeping the cutters, and players, in business. The demand for vinyl records, whatever may motivate it, means everything from turntable repair to disk lathe shops remain healthy.
• The sound is unique. I’m leaving perhaps the most significant point for last. The sound of vinyl does remain unique, precisely because of some of its limitations, and I don’t think any amount of fetishization would please some of its consumers if it didn’t sound good.

When I spoke to Anika earlier this year, she brought up the economic point, too – that vinyl keeps things physical, and supports artists. Now, financially, it may be a tenuous point – look at those Bandcamp numbers – but “support” for artists is more than financials alone. And viewed in a larger effort to express the value of music in tangible form, vinyl makes sense.

Vinyl, incidentally, doesn’t have a monopoly on tangible music. Even digital has made various plays on the concept – one of the most unique being Ghostly International’s effort last year to produce “totems” for Matthew Dear, physical objects that represented the spirit of the intangible music.

Sound, above all, is cited as the primary rationalization for vinyl’s resurgence, but that’s where I feel a bit more conflicted:

• Mastering digital for vinyl isn’t the same as a “direct-to-analog” process. Here’s where things get weird. Remember in the early days of CDs, seeing the letters “DDD” and hearing about fully digital signal flow? Now, we have an oddly inverted situation. People are making music almost entirely inside computers, with software like Ableton Live, doing a digital master, and then printing the whole thing to … vinyl. There’s nothing to say that can’t work, but it seems to me a potential mismatch of source material and recording medium. (More on that in a moment.)
• Psuedo-science, go! Let’s face it: there’s plenty of voodoo around “digital,” and plenty of voodoo around “analog.” In the digital domain, the faux science tends to manifest itself as unsupported claims about the value of absurdly-high bit rates and sample rates, or, if you’re really unlucky, gold-plated digital interconnects. In analog, you’ll routinely hear people claim that analog captures “more” sound, because digital leaves “gaps” between samples, missing that both are constrained first and foremost by the transducers. Analog or digital, these are based on misunderstandings about fundamental characteristics of how sound is reproduced and heard from recording media. I think it’d be unfortunate if the genuine value of vinyl and the unique characteristics of its sound were obscured by claims about recording that simply aren’t true.

Vinyl itself is surely not to blame here; it should just raise some questions. Presumably, not all digitally-produced music really fits vinyl as a medium. And the right way to make that fit work is to really listen and apply some scientific understanding of the process.

Vinyl is that it is a unique medium, one with imperfect recording characteristics. That means whatever the source, you do need to mix differently, which makes a recent piece in Electronic Musician very admirable, indeed. (Disclosure: I have never mixed and mastered for vinyl, so I can only look upon this as an enthusiastic listener and interested observer. I welcome feedback from those out there who are more qualified to investigate the questions I’m asking.)

Learn Mixing | Tips for Mixing for Vinyl [Electronic Musician]

Gino Robair, one of my favorite EM writers over the years, goes through some detail about preparing mixes for vinyl as the delivery medium. Part of what you’ll find is a reminder of why engineers were excited about digital in the first place: there’s a greater ability in digital recordings to capture certain details of the high and low end that would distort in an analog recording. So long as you go into the reality of these limitations with your eyes (or make that ears) open, it can be a good experience as a producer, and for your listeners.

This raises still more scientific and perceptual questions, though. I’m not entirely convinced – I haven’t seen evidence in either direction – that it’s in any way necessary to use a 24-bit, 96kHz master for a vinyl release. (Gino points to the example of Arcade Fire using that as the master.) It certainly can’t hurt, especially in the era of cheap storage. But as in direct-digital delivery, the question is whether you really gain from the higher-resolution file. The only way to know for sure would be to do lab-style experimentation and find out, and as readers have lamented on this site before, there’s not a whole lot of that going on.

Vinyl’s good; vinyl’s unique. (So, too, are cassette tapes and other media with which music producers have been re-discovering of late.) It just means that any claims about vinyl’s resurgence should be scaled against the growth of other distribution outlets, and that we should ask honest questions about sound, not just accept either digital or analog claims of “quality” without evaluation.

So, I purposely raise the points above more as a question than a statement. I’m curious to hear from people who are producing and consuming vinyl records, in terms of what they’ve found satisfying and what they’ve found disappointing. (I mean that, in particular, in regards to certain releases – I’m sure some are better than others.)

And I also wonder whether it’s possible to begin to appreciate digital recording with foresight as much as it is vinyl with hindsight. How can we make the most of the format we have today? How can we understand it, in virtual form, as physical object?

At the end of the day, “analog” is not real. (Hence the name.) A recording is an artificial and imperfect snapshot of an event that occurred in the past, frozen in time in an impossible way. It’s what is beautiful about recording, and what terrified, or at least confused, some of those who first heard it. It is a technology conceived as a precursor to email, as a kind of business memo. It has become to many what music is, rather than the reflection of musical performance. It has had a devastating impact on many forms of live performance, emptying bandstands and causing live players their livelihood before anyone became concerned about whether the record industry that was left would lose its financial well-being.

The “record,” whether it’s a cassette tape or a FLAC download, is strange and unnatural, with the ability to bring to life dead musicians and performances that never existed in one place.

And yes, we do really love it.

Is there anything genuinely new in digital instruments? Isn’t it just a load of repeated novelty, without the ability to actually make useful musical noises? Hasn’t the technology just gotten in the way of the music? Isn’t … (sigh) .. all you see … all you get … (repeat ad infinitum)

Even among technologist futurists, skepticism about the iterative process of new digital design runs rampant. But if you yearn for a bit more optimism, here are four strong counter-examples, projects that, building upon previous research, begin to reach a level of maturity and expressivity that could inspire. They’re inventions that you might want to pick up and spend time learning, play into late evenings for the joy of the challenge of them, creations with which you’d build a relationship. They’re not alone, but you can catch all four in the Bay Area starting today through this weekend, and I hope that they help kick-start a new conversation about what instruments can be. In place of the novelty of new invention, they might just start to raise questions about what could really last.

None other than our friend Roger Linn, creator of the LinnDrum, MPC, and new designs, is hosting the event. Geert Bevin of Eigenlabs fills CDM in on the details, and has some reflections on what’s special about these four examples:

One thing that makes these instruments so uniquely expressive is their ability to sense the precise movements of each finger in 3-dimensional space (for example, pressure for note expression, left/right for pitch, and forward/backward for timbre), and to do that for all fingers simultaneously. But each instrument also presents many other innovative ideas and improvements over the limitations of traditional mechanical-age instruments.

The instruments:

The Eigenharp, demonstrated by Geert Bevin, Senior Software Developer from UK-based Eigenlabs.
http://www.eigenlabs.com

The Continuum from Haken Audio, demonstrated by Bay Area pianist Ed Goldfarb.
http://www.hakenaudio.com

SLABS, a new instrument designed by David Wessel, director of Cal Berkeley’s CNMAT computer music department.

SLABS: Arrays of Pressure Sensitive Touch Pads

The LinnStrument prototype by Roger Linn.

http://www.rogerlinndesign.com/products/linnstrument

If You’re Going to (Be Near) San Francisco…

Live event details, from Geert – if you make it and can help document for CDM, we’d be hugely grateful (hello from, for the moment, Montreal)

Here are the events:

Thursday, May 5 from 7 to 9 p.m.
Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Audio (CCRMA)
660 Lomita Dr. Stanford, CA 94305
Directions: https://ccrma.stanford.edu/about/directions
At this event, the Eigenharp, Continuum and LinnStrument will be demonstrated and discussed.

Friday, May 6 from 7 to 9 p.m.
University of California Berkeley’s Center For New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT)
1750 Arch Street, Berkeley, CA 94709

http://cnmat.berkeley.edu/

At this event, the Eigenharp. SLABS and LinnStrument will be demonstrated and discussed.

Saturday, May 7 from 2 to 4 p.m.
Guitar Center San Francisco, Pro Audio Department
1645 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94109
At this event, the Eigenharp and LinnStrument will be demonstrated and discussed.

Monday, May 9 from 4:45 to 5:45 p.m.
SF Music Tech Conference
Hotel Kabuki, 1625 Post Street, San Francisco, CA 94115
At this event, the Eigenharp, Continuum and LinnStrument will be demonstrated and discussed.
Note: Conference entry fee is required–see www.sfmusictech.com

Please join us to see, learn about ~ and even try out for yourself ~ these radical new instruments that are changing the way music is made.

Please note that these instruments are not otherwise available in the bay area to see or try out.

Additional events might still be added, keep an eye on http://eigenzone.org/events

Enjoy if you make it. Aside from these four, what new instruments would make your short list?

How do you build a new flagship synthesizer — and how do you make it live up to a beloved past name?

That’s the question Roland has taken on once again with the Jupiter-80. Shown to a select few starting at NAMM, then (very) non-intentionally leaked in the past few days, there’s a good chance you’ve seen it. But here, I’ll try to provide some technical details you may not know – thanks to ongoing conversations with Roland and the help of our friends at Keyboard – and also look back to the original Jupiter-8. Whether the resulting keyboard is for you, I think that reveals something of the path of one of the world’s great synth makers, and perhaps explains some of the impassioned reactions (positive and negative) to a new Roland.

1981 to 2011: The First Jupiter’s Legacy

Let’s get this out of the way: the Jupiter-80 isn’t directly based on the landmark 1981 Jupiter-8. And full disclosure: in the past, I’ve questioned whether Roland’s past monikers always fit the new models, as with their Juno-G.

But let’s consider the original Jupiter-8 for a moment. To most of us today, it’s the Jupiter as analog synth (technically, analog-digital hybrid synth) that we love. But that’s not the only story on the Jupiter. If it were, the Jupiter might be lost among other synths of the era.

Gordon Reid has written terrific histories of the Roland company and the Jupiter line. The opening section of his 1994 history of the company for Sound on Sound (“What have the Rolands ever done for us?”) is a must-read.

Reid in 1998 writes about the Jupiter-8 that its ability to sit transparently and clearly in a mix, and its all-around playability and feature set, are what set it apart. Ironically, part of what differentiated the Jupiter series was that it was a step toward the digital age. The JP8A was a precursor of MIDI and – more importantly – digital musical composition and polyphonic sequencing. You’ll see in coming days plenty of complaints that Roland isn’t doing an “analog” synth. But I agree to at least some extent with Roland’s leadership that analog alone is not the only essence of the Jupiter. (*See the endnote to this article below before you accuse me of a terrible heresy.) [1]

SynthMania has a wonderful selection of sounds, including the original factory patches and extensive patch sheets:
http://www.synthmania.com/jupiter-8.htm

Looking back through the original factory patch sheets, it’s also clear that the Jupiter-8 was intended as an device to simulate real instruments – a “synthesizer” in the truest sense. Remember that Roland’s history was intertwined with organ history. The Jupiter line was even designed in ways that could replace or augment organs, and certain features – attempting push-button access to the full range of acoustic instruments – owe their legacy to organs. They also were focused on economy and playability. Fortunately for us, the results – particularly Jupiter strings and brass – were idiomatic. Aiming for old sounds, Roland created new ones.

Below, Jupiter-8 demo videos — and notice the emphasis on the splits and layers. (More on that element and its relation to the JP-80 below.)

And that brings us to the Jupiter-80. The question is, what makes a Jupiter? Do you make a new synthesizer in the sense of synthesizing real instruments, or do you make something that’s a programmable electronic instrument in the sense of what analog synths mean to us now? The JP-80 does both, and that means the question of how well it meets those two goals will likely be high on the list as it is completed, shipped, and fully reviewed.

A Tale of Two Synths: The New Jupiter-80

The Jupiter-80 is really two instruments. It focuses on being two things:
1. A live performance synth, focused on live playing (not being a studio-style workstation)
2. A big pile of sounds

A comparison is way out of the scope of this first-look article, but the Jupiter-80 contrasts with Korg’s KRONOS. The KRONOS is sold as “nine” keyboards in one, and it really is as much full-blown workstation as live keyboard. The Jupiter-80 is more about playing live. The KRONOS is built on an Intel Atom architecture similar to the OASYS distinct from any other Korg product; the Jupiter-80 has more in common with other new Roland synths.

But – and this is where you’ll see some mixed reactions – the new JP is two synths in another way. It has tones that emulate real instruments and articulations, and then the sort of synth sounds that you’d expect for something that says Jupiter on it.

Roland tells CDM that they view the original mission of the Jupiter-8 as being expressive, so to them the SuperNATURAL engine is a perfect fit for the Jupiter – even as synth purists and programmers may feel otherwise.

But before you dismiss it, the interesting element is the way in which you can combine the two tones on keyboards. That isn’t hard to do on a computer, but if you prefer to play an all-in-one synth – or to do this on a single, integrated instrument – it’s compelling.

And what the Jupiter isn’t – whatever you may have heard on the forums – is a ROMpler. The derivative term “ROMpler” refers to instruments that more or less play stock sampled sounds from internal memory with little live control or synthesis. The Jupiter-80′s architecture isn’t that, on either the simulation or synthesis sides.

SuperNATURAL

The SuperNATURAL engine has already appeared on new Roland organs and the V-Piano. The basic model is to provide sound content that’s pre-programmed to emulate real instrumental articulations from a keyboard. That’s always been a challenge to sampler designers. In big computer sample libraries, you’ll find all sorts of tricks for key switching and sample variations and other ways of providing the full range of instrumental articulations on a keyboard. (The piano, after all, was never intended to do what a violin or erhu can.) The SuperNATURAL engine attempts to make those more immediately playable.

Unlike a conventional PCM synth, you also avoid issues like sample looping and phase issues. Vince LaDuca, Product Manager, Keyboards for Roland US, explains the concept:

What happens when a keyboardist is trying to reproduce sounds other than a traditional keyboard instrument on the synthesizer? This is where synthesizers today really fall short because the typical sound engine inside cannot truly “interpret” an expressive keyboard performance done on keys into an authentic guitar, trumpet, or violin performance – a guitarist plucks or strums strings, a trumpet player uses his breath, lips and trumpet valves, and a violinist plucks or uses a bow on strings. All the keyboardist can do is trigger a static digital sonic picture of sound he is trying to recreate, and each time a key is pressed, the same sonic picture is repeated, but at different pitches as played on the keyboard.

The Jupiter-80 solves this problem by using Roland’s newly developed Behavior Modeling technology. It takes care of the “interpretation” by constantly analyzing the keyboardist normal, natural keyboard performance, and instructs the ultra-realistic SuperNATURAL sound engines inside the Jupiter-80 to “play” and constantly “articulate” the reproduced sound just as the “real” performer would based on the keyboardists timing and interval between notes, the strength at which the various keys are struck, or if the keyboardist is pressing a pedal to sustain notes. These actions, among others available to the keyboardist, are translated by the behavior model for the selected sound being reproduced into an authentic plucked or strummed performance in the case of a guitar, aggressive or smooth bowing in the case of a violin, and the sharp or smooth pitch changes created by the valves on a trumpet and the pressure of the trumpet player’s breath. These are but a few of the articulations possible with Behavior Modeling.

Vince tells CDM that he likes the analogy of the keyboardist in this case as akin to the conductor of an orchestra. There is a certain suspension of disbelief.

There’s a reason I mentioned organs earlier – it’s not derogatory. Whether you deem it entirely successful or not, the Jupiter-80 is an attempt in the modern, digital age to stun audiences the way organs once did.

But for Creative Sound Design Lovers…

Okay, so you can have a really “magical” experience and play a keyboard and have it sound like an instrument. But for creative sound designers and synth lovers, does that mean you’re completely left in the dark?

Well, the Jupiter-80 isn’t entirely focused on synthesis, to be sure. You don’t get the terrific physical controls for programming Roland has sometimes introduced over the years. A touchscreen takes its place, but as some of the screenshots show, it’s not as programmable as a virtual analog synth today can be. (See the almost ridiculous range of options on the Korg Kronos.)

But one promising element – still in active development as I’ve been talking to Roland over the past weeks – is very much in the spirit of the original Jupiter-8, and that’s an emphasis on combining tones.

The JP-80′s architecture allows the use of four tones, each with its own effects block, each with independent controls, on each of two layers – upper and lower – plus solo and percussion voices. That 2 x 4 + 1 + 1 in the architecture, which are then mixed together. The upper and lower voices each have reverb; solo and percussion have compressor, EQ, and delay. Touch-button access looks to make it very easy to mix sounds.

Starting with splits and layers, you’re already able to use the massive sound content on the JP to produce big hybrid textures. A Tone Blender function then allows you to work more with movement.

The best way to understand what I mean is to look at the screen shots – these are prototype shots, so the final version may differ, but they give you a sense of what’s going on. And there’s no lack of sound design possibilities here. The Tone Blender mode, top, gives you some of these morphing possibilities. Below that image, registration and effects routings make complex, layered, playable sounds.

Vince at Roland has sent some hands-on impressions. (Yes, he works for Roland and he’s getting hands-on time with it himself – welcome to the synth development process, something I’ve recently discovered first-hand!) This is effectively unofficial — Vince’s own personal reaction to playing the thing. He writes:

It will allow one controller in, then map it to parameters of all 4 tones in a Live Set. I’m not sure how that works when you stack an upper and lower (8 tones), but will dig in more tomorrow. Also there is some extensive controller routing for each MFX used in a live set, of which I think can be addressed with the tone blender.

Another cool thing is how you can stack 27 oscillators, each with independent filter, amp, and LFO. Each “synth” tone has 3 oscillators (called “partials” with independent filter, amp, and LFO), and if you use Upper, Lower, and Solo parts, that’s 9 tones. 9×3=27. We’ve also modeled the JUPITER-8s UNISON mode, so if that get’s dropped into the equation, you’re up in the 70s! Can you say thick?!

While Roland isn’t introducing the 21st Century polyphonic analog synth of our dreams, what they tell CDM they are doing is modeling a wide variety of classic synthesis sounds, meaning this should still provide plenty of sound content for those tastes. Exactly how they’re modeling it and how the architecture works is something I expect to learn in coming weeks.

You Might Still Hate or Love It

Based on comments I’ve seen and heard, this may not be your cup of tea. The visual look, borrowing heavily from the original, is more of an acquired taste when placed into a modern context. And yes, of course, from sampled instruments to flexible sound design, the JP-80 really does have to compete now with software. That, combined with the cost of any of these keyboards, may mean that for hardware purposes many will prefer more focused designs to these sorts of flagship monsters.

But different as those audiences may be, I do think everything from simple soft synths to big keyboards deserve to be compared on their merits, and compared to each other. So I look forward to seeing what the JP-80 has done, and playing a finished version.

And as for whether you’d still want a Jupiter-8, perhaps in place of this newer Jupiter-80? Well, that remains an interesting question. It’s not easy being Roland: they company has a legacy with which to compete, too.

Stay tuned, and let us know questions – Roland folk are standing by to deal with us harassing them answer our questions.

Videos, Notes

From Sonic State, a session with Howard Jones, who worked on sound design with this instrument.

Keyboard Magazine shoots some footage of the engineers from Japan; typically these folks don’t talk to English-language press, so I do find it interesting when we get to hear from them.

[1] People are saying they want more “analog,” but they’re also saying they want “cheap.” I suspect what people may really want is not a new Jupiter-8, but a new Jupiter 6 – or a new version of the Curtis CEM that powered it. These brilliant, economical, musical chips were the sound of a generation of instruments. It was the combination of inexpensive digital technology (which Roland helped promote) and this chip that made synthesis accessible. James Grahame, designer of our own MeeBlip synth, has even suggested this could be a DIY project, which would be very exciting, indeed. I would love to believe there’s a next Doug Curtis – the engineer for which the chip is named – out there somewhere.

The point is that it’s the economical analog synth that people are imagining. Right now, polyphonic analog just isn’t economical – and given the capabilities of digital synthesis, it’s tough to make that choice. But if someone wants to imagine a new replacement for the Curtis CEM, that could change.

Updated: Roland tells CDM tentative pricing is set at US$3999.

We introduced the MeeBlip, an open source, hackable synthesizer, back in early November. Designed by James Grahame of Reflex Audio (and blog Retro Thing) and co-produced with CDM, we placed the hardware and software of the MeeBlip under an open source hardware license, and it was something of an experiment for us. Affordability was paramount – you can get everything you need for $140 US; less if you’re willing to do a little DIY work. Now, the MeeBlip has made its way out into the world and into hands other than just our own, and we’re thrilled to see what people are doing with it.

Here’s a full update on how the MeeBlip project has evolved, the lessons we’ve learned, and how people are assembling, modifying, and – most importantly – playing music with the instrument.

First, I think one of the lovelier things anyone has done is SineSquareSaw’s MeeBlip timelapse construction video – especially with that terrific soundtrack. (He tries the more ambitious route, soldering the DIY kit; we also offer Quick Build versions that require little more than some screws.)

See the really beautiful site, too, http://sinesquaresaw.com/. (We really had nothing to do with this site, so, wow — thanks!)

People Making MeeBlips

Folks building their own MeeBlips did some terrific timelapse video footage of their work as they went. First up, the DIY Kit – the one that actually requires soldering:

Marcos has a great timelapse up of the MeeBlip DIY, too, and writes, “Me he hecho un sinte de meeblip con los componentes pre-programados y una placa que he pedido por internet a canadá y la verdad es que el resultado es cojonudo.” I’ve now learned the word cojonudo.

Cane Creek, above, has a terrific soundtrack and video in his build, which demonstrates the Quick Build kit – no soldering. Since that process is quicker, it leaves him time to fiddle around with making some nice noises!

Michael Roebbeling, embarking on what he describes as his first electronics project ever, managed nonetheless to build a breathtakingly-pretty case for his MeeBlip. (To my mind, this is the best-looking MeeBlip on Earth, presently. Kudos, Michael!) He describes the whole process on his blog.

Because it’s open source, some people are making, not buying, their MeeBlips. It’s definitely the hard way to go (and not necessarily cheaper), but it’s nonetheless gratifying to see people braving it! Oh, and it makes for some really pretty circuit boards.

Two examples from the Noisepages group, which also link to some documentation:
Building myself a MeeBlip – the hard way by Krzysztof Konatowicz

made a meeblip (Charlie also has some tips on through-hole plating!)

People Playing MeeBlips

I think when people see kits and hear the words “open source” or “hackable,” they may imagine that this is just a project for tinkerers, not musicians. On the contrary, I think part of why James and I were enthusiastic about trying this at all was that we wanted to make something we could play, and that others could pick up and play — better.

Early videos, naturally, are generally of the “fiddling about” variety, but we have even had some genuine performances. Either way, you get to hear some noises.

gex0008 makes some deliciously raunchy, lo-fi videos with the Yamaha QY10, itself a quite-nice mobile Yamaha sequencer workstation. (Ever get the feeling that some of the most useful music gear is now discontinued?)

James Veeder does some extensive experimentation with the MeeBlip. He intentionally pushes it to some noisy places, but for the record, yes, the noise you hear when there aren’t any notes is USB power. (And James has what has to be the noisiest USB source I’ve ever heard! If you like this sort of thing, you can still hook up USB on the DIY kit; we’ve since switched to 9V and now offer that both on all currently-shipping MeeBlips and as a retrofit if you have a USB MeeBlip Quick Build and want to switch. See below…)

Johan Larsby got a MeeBlip and a Rock Band 3 “keytar” controller, so naturally put them together; see below. (As it happens, the Rock band keyboard has been a favorite for both James and myself working with the MeeBlip; the scale relates nicely.)

Hands-on impressions

We’ve had a number of blog reviews, including:

All Hail the Meeblip [wildfreshness]
Quick Look: MEEBLIP Mono Digital Synth Module [Technobrains]

The one person I’ve seen really incorporate the MeeBlip into a performance is Chris Randall of Analog Industries / micronaut / Audio Damage. Here’s a first test of a MeeBlip and RE-201.
Micronaut v MeeBlip by Chris Randall

(The noise issue heard in the sample we’ve resolved.)

Aside from writing a (fair, I think) review, he’s got the MeeBlip as part of a hardware rig that includes some much pricier gear. In this video, he creates a really gorgeous jam soloing on the MeeBlip via a Manta touch controller. Oh, and there’s an Apple II. Seriously.

As with the previous video, the Apple //e with Roland CMU-800R is in the driver’s seat. It is providing the drums with its internal sounds, and is controlling the modular synth, the Korg MS-20, and the Yamaha CS-5 (out of frame underneath the MS-20) via CV/Gate.

The main melody line that comes in after a bit is coming from a Reflex MeeBlip, which you can just see sitting on the desk. I’m controlling it with a Snyderphonics Manta controller.

Effects used: Roland RE-201 Space Echo, Eventide TimeFactor delay, Realistic Electronic Reverb delay, Audio Damage Eos reverb, Lexicon 300 reverb.

Chris incorporates this into a very nice and tidy performance rig, which in turn he used live in LA for a live PA set. Documentation:

[Another] Science Project
The rig: Great Taste, Less Filling…

The MeeBlip is somewhere on the resulting live set, which Chris has released. I’m not really concerned about where it is, though; at that point, I’m more interested in the music, which in this case I find terrific. I wish I could’ve seen it live.

This has honestly been what’s been most exciting to me, is the bigger picture beyond the MeeBlip. We’re seeing people embrace all sorts of affordable hardware. The MeeBlip has already been found alongside the Shruthi-1 from Mutable instruments, another open-leaning project. (While not open source hardware, the Shruthi does include open source firmware.)

However they happen to do it – MeeBlip or otherwise – the idea of more people using affordable synths, exploring synthesis, and getting a taste of customizing hardware and software or building their own makes me very happy indeed.

Of course, I’m also really happy to have a MeeBlip to play with in my own home. One recent example, for which I shared a patch via our “hipster preset storage” (i.e., writing with a pen):
MeeBlip Landscape by peterkirn

Hint: adding effects is a good idea with this kind of synth. (It’s true of many vintage synths, as well.)

The Softer, Pad-ier Side of MeeBlip: A Patch, Some Music

Here’s a bassline made by James (see details from the blog):
Meeblip bassline demo by cdm

Updates to the Project

With any new launch, there will be some bumps and improvements. I told James early on that one goal I had was sharing everything we learned, knowing that there are CDM readers also working on making their own hardware and other creations. (And yes, we still want to support you, too.)

We’ve made some adjustments as we go, and – as planned – kept a steady diet of firmware updates:

Manufacturing start-up and shipping initially lagged sales, but MeeBlips are now shipping more quickly. James wrote a detailed post on the MeeBlip blog that’s a must-read if you’re mulling open-source hardware, but the short version is this: unanticipated high demand for the MeeBlip, case-machining delays, and slow, by-hand, micro-manufacturing meant we didn’t ship the MeeBlip as quickly as we would have liked. As the project is growing, though, we’re gradually improving the production workflow. It’s a good read if you’re making – well, anything, not just synths. See also Michael Una, Beep-It’s maker, and drum machine and guitar effect legend Roger Linn on DIY manufacture and its risks. It’s important to me to see the MeeBlip continue to grow, because it means we can do more with the project.

USB power sucks. USB power is too noisy in most of the ways you’d normally get it. Long story short: we’re switching to 9V power. Existing Quick Build MeeBlips can be easily retrofitted, DIY MeeBlips already have 9V power (as well as USB), and all currently-shipping MeeBlips now have 9V power.

We’ve got new firmware with new features. The January update added a PWM waveform with dedicated LFO sweep, better performance, and fixes; the February update improved knob function and added full auto-save of knob settings. I wrote a tutorial on how to update your firmware, and we added an option to let you buy a chip with the work done for you.

But the next big improvement could come from you. Next on our plate is making it easier to use the open source software part of the MeeBlip, by providing tutorials for how to make firmware modifications yourself.

Of course, modding the MeeBlip isn’t at all essential to enjoying the thing. I’m equally excited about those features as I am the way in which people use the MeeBlip in their music.

And naturally, if you’re doing interesting things with synths – any synths – we’d love to hear about it.

Elektron’s Octatrack sampler is shipping to producer’s hands, bringing this multitrack, time-stretching, step-sequenced, modulation-packing digital sampling hardware to real-world music-making. The results make comparisons like “Ableton in a box” seem pretty fair – and give you more an idea of what the thing does than Elektron’s bizarre (and wonderful) short science fiction film, which seemed to suggest the box would incite revolutions and make you grow tentacles and change into a tortured alien. (See below)

Two of the people I’d most want to see work the device are featured in the videos above – at top, Richard Devine, and at bottom, Matthew Dear. Devine, for his part, makes use of re-triggering features:

Just triggering single shot samples of nord percussion and analogue drum sounds. Using the three stages of LFO’s for each track to control effects animation and various other parameters. Making some use of the re-trigger sample functions spanned across 4 patterns.

Matthew Dear plays live on a New York public radio station program, Beats In Space on WNYU 89.1FM. (Listen to the whole show.)

It’s a story focused on the drum sample library, not the Octatrack, but there’s also a good example of how far you can stretch a single samples in Surachai’s recent hands-on for TRASH_AUDIO.

Elektron have also in the last couple of months shared sound samples via their very, very active SoundCloud account; examples below.

Octatrack DPS-1 Site Sounds by Elektron

Octatrack DPS-1 | Sampling by Elektron

So, what’s really going on inside the Octatrack? That to me is the interesting element of the design. As Roger Linn and Dave Smith focus on analog synthesis and no digital sampling (at least in Dave’s machine) on the Tempest, the Octatrack takes digital features previous seen in software workflows and builds an integrated hardware design around them.

The heart and soul is an 8-track sequencer, with multiple patterns, arrangements, parts, and scenes for putting together a full performance (or performance set), which connects to “machines” for sample playback or external input machines. The combination of those basic modules is where things get a little crazy, with re-triggering, chaining of tracks, and the like, and Elektron promises to add more in future OS updates.

The other side of the machine is a whole heck of a lot of effects: multi-mode filter, parametric and DJ-style EQs, phaser, flanger, chorus, delay with repeat, plate reverb, compressor, and lo-fi distortion.

The most ingenious addition is a single optical crossfader, which allows DJ-style moves amidst all these digital layers, ideal for making sense of live performance.

Live sampling is a big draw; one of the better walkthroughs of how that works is in this video by darenager (who stresses this is not a musical performance, but a demo – I can appreciate that):

Elektron isn’t assuming you’re going to toss your computer in a bin; there’s a USB2 port for connecting to a computer workflow. But it occurs to me that the likely retort of dedicated computer users – that they can do all this and more – is likely the reason others will choose to use this device. It does less, but focuses entirely on what you might want to do most.

I could go further with that, but I suspect we’ll carry on with this balancing act between digital hardware and software until the last human consumes the last flicker of electricity on earth, so, uh, fill in a zillion already-hashed-out debates here. In fact, let’s imagine them all at once, as a mysterious buzzing sound.

Bzzzz.

There. Done.

But yes, at the same time as someone who’s reconfiguring my own live software rig, you have to admit that which features they chose – and how you see them mapped to hardware above – is interesting even if you can’t afford a new don’t want to buy a new Octatrack.

Mostly what makes me happy is knowing that this machine is making other people happy, and then in turn will make some of them make very good music and performances that I get to enjoy.

And yes, I really do love the bizarre short movie Elektron created to promote their device. It’s nothing if not creative.

What do you make of this new design?

In particular, I’d love to hear from those of you who just got new machines. How are you using it musically so far?

Also, if you’re in Sweden, can you tell me what’s in your water that makes you engineer all this insane stuff? Should I wish I had the benefit of your education system? Should I just eat more herring? Both? Or will the herring, at least, make me regret less that I’m not a product of your education system?

The Gallolizer is a handmade multi-effects sound mangler, an array of dirty, delicious sound-destroying effects in a single handcrafted box. It’s the work of a Spanish engineering and art collective called MP19, an Arduino-loving, free software-using, open source group of artists who turn those platforms into the kind of grungy sounds that make them happy. (And that, of course, is what it’s really all about.)

But before we talk specifics, check out the video. We long ago departed the world of high-fidelity sound; this is digging your toes straight into the mud. I’ll wait.

Got it?

Good – now onto technical details. Part of what allows the various dimensions of sound in the Gallolizer’s repertoire is the sharing of schematics. Long before open source was even a term or fully-formed idea, hardware makers routinely borrowed ideas from schematics – it was hard not to – and apart from cases of gross abuse, the process was more or less a fact of life. Open source hardware and Internet sharing has since formalized that process, and made it a whole lot easier for beginners to try out making projects, thanks to ample and friendly documentation.

As a result, the Gallolizer is a window into a whole world of electronic sound ideas a tinkerer can try out. Here’s how designer Gonzalo Garcia describes the ingredients:

An Arduino Bitcrusher based on Kyle McDonald’s design (http://www.instructables.com/id/Lo-fi-Arduino-Guitar-Pedal/). We had improved the output for line level on all modes and a bit of warm in overall sound with some transistors in the output.

Ampeg Scrambler clone, based on 2n5306 darlington transistors for adding some darkness to bass and bass drums. You can transform hi-hats and snares in a more crispy sound.

Germanium fuzz is basically a NPN germanium transistors fuzzface for process sounds and add some germanium hiss.
LP Filter is based on Diego el de León’s design (http://esquemasnoise.blogspot.com/2008/12/wilson-low-pass-filter.html) for a low pass filter and based himself on a Ray Wilson’s design. Incredible resonance and a bit of analog distortion.
LoFi Delay, based on Rebote Delay from tonepad (http://www.tonepad.com/project.asp?id=51), with the infinite feedback mod and improved output for a bit of warm. We are planning to add a modulation mod to this nice delay.
Arduino Reverb based on lab3′s design (http://interface.khm.de/index.php/lab/experiments/arduino-realtime-audio-processing/), with an improved output for less noise and more warmth, based on transistors . We also add a mix control for controlling the amount of effect.

You can’t buy a Gallolizer – it’s a one-off design, unless you want to try to make them an offer. But the effects unit component will be released as a PCB and as open source hardware. It’s funny, as I had also just been looking at Kyle’s design (Kyle is such a Renaissance visual and sonic inventor, it kind of makes my head hurt), so this could be ripe for exploration. And there’s no saying this is only for those who want to become avant-garde noise artists – everyone can use a little grunge sometimes, regardless of musical idiom.

Not open source hardware, but as it happens our friend Tom Whitwell (of the sorely-missed Music Thing blog) is doing beautiful DIY work of his own based on a project from musicpcb.com. He’s also exploring techniques for housing and is making some lovely, tasteful decals, too, as you can see in the picture. I’m hoping Tom will share some of his work.

Echo Base PT2399 delay pedal on Hohner Pianet T by MusicThing

Got DIY effects projects of your own, or requests? I’ll also see if we can’t find a good beginner project for everybody. I wouldn’t mind an effects box to go with my MeeBlips.

Other wonderful projects:
http://mp19.wordpress.com/

Genuinely new drum machines don’t come along very often, but that’s precisely what the Tempest is. It has the analog soul of a classic Dave Smith synthesizer, with the user design of a modern drum machine conceived by Roger Linn, the man who many believe fathered the genre. After fits and starts in this collaboration, most importantly, it’s real – not an early, non-working prototype . A finished version will ship mid-year, with an expected list price of US$2000. (That’s steep, perhaps, for a drum machine in a recession, but it’s a very fair price indeed for one with six analog voices.)

The Tempest will actually be the first of two new drum machines this year, the fruits of the Linn-Smith collaboration. That collaboration started four years ago, as the Dave Smith booth at NAMM teased a concept they called the BoomChik. A non-functional prototype followed a year later, but the project stalled.

Dave Smith called for a reboot, and the result will be not one but two drum machines. One will be released by Dave Smith Instruments, and another by Roger Linn Design. The designers each called the shots on the instrument that will bear their name, but they also worked on the other’s creation – a bit like musicians trading remixes.

Dave and Roger walked CDM through their creation and provided details of the design. The specs, in short:

• Six analog voices, each with two analog oscillators and two digital oscillators provide deep, rich sound capabilities.
• Dave’s lowpass filter, a new highpass filter, analog VCA (voltage-controlled amplifier) with feedback, five envelopes, two LFOs, various analog modulation routings.
• In addition to percussion, you can tune sounds and play scales from the pads, or connect a MIDI keyboard and use it as a 6-voice analog keyboard synth.
• There’s a small display – 256×64 OLED – but onboard controls are designed for real-time music making (a topic Roger covered with me in more detail, along with his philosophy for how to make drum machines instruments).
• 2×8 pads, each pressure- and velocity-sensing. Roll function, which doubles as “stutter” when a beat is assigned to a pad.
• Two touch sliders, each with pressure sensitivity, for more real-time control.
• Pure analog signal path, but without skimping on effects – stereo analog compressor and distortion, beat-synced delay that actually uses note effects, and beat-synced stutter.
• Real-time swing controls.

The design could be, for many, the best of all possible drum machines. The 2×8 drum pads are eminently practical. The workflow is really Linn-conceived, but with Smith-style control of analog synthesis that will please synth enthusiasts. The layout is clean and Linn-like, but with fit and finish that makes it look at home with other Dave Smith instruments. You get a rich range of analog voices, but coupled with digital oscillators. (Details are forthcoming, but those digital oscillators should provide a range of wavetables for even more sounds.)

In short, it looks like the sound and fun-to-play aspects have been merged into something that I think will have immediate appeal. My prediction is, a lot of folks will be working on how they can set aside two grand.

I’ve spoken extensively to Dave and Roger, and will post that separately, because even if you won’t get one of these, seeing into their minds is a great treat.