We’re calling it: on Thursday, January 19, the soft synth age, and synth polyphony, officially came to an end. Also, Arturia, the people who make virtual analog soft synths, are now making analog hardware. And I just saw Roger Linn, and he was sporting a new goatee and had an agonizer in his sash, and he’s working for Akai again but calls them the Terran Empire. So it’s possible something very odd is going on.

Yes, Arturia has a “100% analog,” two oscillator synth with CV, MIDI, and USB, plus an arpeggiator. Price: US$549 / €499, April 2012.

I wanted to bring something special to our coverage, so we’ll see how the Arturia Minibrute compares to the brand new 1981 Moog Rogue.

First, the features from Arturia:

Monophonic synthesizer
100% Analog Audio Signal Path
Steiner-Parker Multimode Filter (LP, BP, HP and Notch)
Voltage Controlled Oscillator with Sub-Osc
Oscillator Mixer (Sub, Sawtooth, Square, Triangle, White Noise, Audio In)
LFO1 with 6 waveforms and bi-polar modulation destinations
LFO2 with 3 vibrato modes
Brute Factor™ delivering saturation and rich harmonics
Ultrasaw generating shimmering sawtooth waveforms
Metalizer bringing extreme triangle harmonics
Two ADSR Envelope Generators
25 note Keyboard with Aftertouch
Rugged Aluminium Enclosure
External Analog Audio Input
External Analog Audio Input
CV In/Out controls: Pitch, Gate, Filter, Amp
MIDI In/Out with 5-Pin DIN connectors
USB MIDI In/Out
1/4” Audio Output and 1/4” Headphone Output
Gate Source Selection: Audio Input, Hold, Keyboard
Arpeggiator:
4 Modes of Arpeggiation
4 Octave Range Control
6 Time Divisions
Swing Control

The Moog Rogue has a similar form factor, and some might argue a cleaner control layout. (It’s certainly simpler and more approachable.) And like the Minibrute, the Rogue is a 2-oscillator analog synth. But there are some significant advantages of the Minibrute over the Rogue.

The Rogue is limited to saw and either rectangle or square waves, and lacks the sub, triangle, and white noise sources. Both the Rogue and Minibrute work with external audio, though.

The filter on the Moog is 24dB/oct lowpass, whereas the Minibrute has a multimode filter; I’m eager to hear that Steiner-Parker filter in action, but the Rogue’s filter works pretty nicely.

Both do CV and gate.

You get 32 keys on the Moog, which I prefer to the 25 on the Arturia, but the Moog keyboard isn’t velocity sensitive. The Arturia keys are, and add channel aftertouch.

And then the Arturia starts piling on the extras: you get an arpeggiator, easy selection of how the gate is routed, some unusual effects that manipulate harmonics on the waveforms, and USB, which I’m told stands for Universal Serial Bus. I’m hoping I can connect that to my TRS-80′s RS-232 port, perhaps via an adapter.

So, there you have it. I need to get some hands on time, but I think I’d probably choose the Arturia Minibrute over the Moog Rogue.

What? You wanted to compare to the new Moog Minitaur, or synths by Dave Smith Instruments?

Well, I don’t know that Sequential Circuits has anything at this show that comp– okay, I’ll stop. And yeah, we’ll do that more serious comparison later, but Arturia, I think you should get compared to eBay offerings, too. Sounds like a challenge.

Since it’s really a single oscillator synth with blendable waveforms, I’d compare it to an SH101.
Updated: Jesse Mejia makes a great argument in comments for why my somewhat glib Rogue comparison is actually reasonably apt here. (And I was really somewhat serious, amidst a pre-coffee ramble.) But among various arguments against the Rogue in favor of Roland’s SH-101, Francis Preve offers this line of thinking: “Since it’s really a single oscillator synth with blendable waveforms, I’d compare it to an SH-101.” Good point.

In all seriousness, a serious comparison of vintage synths to recent monosynths sounds like a great idea.

http://www.arturia.com/evolution/en/products/minibrute/intro.html

Videos

Augh, Arturia, what the heck are you doing in my bedroom? And when did my hair get that curly?

Tour:

Via Synthtopia, here’s Passion Pit with ProAudioStar.com on the new synth.

People still find heroes – imperfect as they may be, people who provide inspiration. I’ve been talking a lot this year about the impact of Max Mathews; more on that soon. But in the aftermath of Steve Jobs’ death, it’s touching to see some of the reactions. French Rock band Bravery in Battle write CDM to share their music video homage to the Apple leader. They’ve gotten quite a lot of attention in French, as well (French-language links):

«Ayez faim, soyez fous»… les bonnes paroles de Steve jobs mises en musique [Liberation]
Un bel hommage à Steve Jobs en musique (vidéo) [stevejobs.fr]

We are Bravery in Battle, a French rock band. When we heard of Steve Jobs’s death, on October the 5th, we decided at once to write some music to pay him homage.
We have been using the Mac to make music for almost 15 years now and it’s completely part of our creative process. We also have been using
the iPad on stage since the very first days of its launching to trigger samples and play instruments too cumbersome to carry.
Without Apple and its products, we wouldn’t the artists we are today.
But we didn’t want to write a song, we wanted to use Steve’s very words and hear his own voice. That’s why we used his memorable 2005 Stanford Commencement Address. We have chosen the words which seemed the most meaningful for us and for the occasion.
As an additional homage, we played all the music on an iPad, with GarageBand : a Steve Jobs Tribute using only his devices and softwares.
To make a video; we used the same Stanford Address (made on a Mac, too, with Final Cut Pro X).
The original speech was very widely consulted on the Net in the hours following Steve Jobs’s death but our video tells something else. It focuses on a single point and increases its emotion.
For Bravery in Battle
Paul Malinowski

When a brainy, abstract audiovisual act can elicit some laughs and cheers, you know something is going right.

Euphorie, the live music and projection act by François Wunschel, Fernando Favier, and stage designer Pier Schneider of the collectives 1024 Architecture and EXYZT, isn’t brand new. But in the cavernous, packed Usine C at Montreal’s Elektra Festival earlier this month, it surely shone. Inside that booming rehabilitated factory, sound and video elements seemed to just click, the happy result of months of development, practice, and iteration meeting a highly appreciative crowd. Projectors and software, props and vocals, laptops and electric sounds were all jamming together like a band should. Part inventors, part musical performers, the duo are finding the sweet spot between technological magic and live jam.

The French duo of François and Fernando start slow, with a somewhat timid doodle on a projection screen. But that doodle grows into squares and boxes, as monochromatic projection across multiple scrims immerse the performers in electric-light scaffolds or showers of pixellated sparks. And then the neon guitars come out, and it’s on.

Conceived as a set of individual songs, each set piece couples simple musical compositions with visual elements, mindful in each of an inventive sound-to-image relationship. The pairings are traditional, but performed with a conviction and charm that’s irresistible.

The projector-and-laptop, doodle-and-geometry combinations might be as familiar as the instrumentation of a rock quartet; the achievement of 1024 Architecture is making them actually rock. A couple of darker numbers get into some strange lyrics and a creepy talking head, but in more spare, economical moment, the duo manage to hit upon something elusive: wit. There’s a sense of humor and liveness to the whole act, a sense that the artists are comfortable poking fun at themselves, or at least in being ceaselessly sincere and unpretentious. There’s even a sequence that takes on a game mechanic; the silliness paradoxically completes the illusion of being immersed onstage. Tron-style, Daft Punk-like EL wire suits seem slightly tongue in cheek, but in the midst of all this drawing and playing and screaming solos on guitars, you really do get the sense that the players have lept into the computer. It’s a real entry into the digital world, too, minus any Disney Hollywood trickery.

The duo and their set designer are also extremely clever in their use of minimal stage dressings to get a maximal immersive effect. Using three translucent scrims spaced across the stage, combined with basic translation and rotation effects in the 3D software, they produce surprisingly-convincing illusions of onstage depth. It’s not even really quite projection mapping: rather, it takes advantage of fairly conventional stage effects that, thanks to human perception, are also highly effective.

In a late number, shouting the names of programming languages and software tools (Objective-C! MySQL!), the duo almost goes a bit nerdcore – or at least would top my list of “bands to write a theme song for CDM.”

None of this really comes across in the videos, which to me is partially satisfying. It really feels like a live act; something happens between audience and performer. That said, it’s worth looking through their documentation and exploring their other, impressively-prolific collaborations.

1024 Blog
Euphorie Project [FR]
1024 Architecture Cite

Here’s a great behind-the-scenes / interview video by Le Cube (French-only):

These videos are rougher, but come closer to the performance I saw:

Tests, early performance documentation, and rehearsal videos get you a bit closer to the work, including this fascinating neon-guitar which I think really stole the whole show. (They’ve obviously been practicing, as they were far better at playing these at the Elektra show than they were in the early test videos or even some of the performance videos online. Touring, practicing, and audiences make a huge difference – it’s a good thing.)

Stay tuned to Create Digital Motion for more on the mechanics behind the projection techniques here. The goal of CDM for me is to have in-depth technical information on music and motion – each of which are fundamentally specific by nature – while the actual artwork straddles the two media.

Updated: Lyrics The lyrics to the song in their set:

We’re the Knights
Of the Lambda Calculus
Members of the Teraflop Club
Some call it bogus but its just
a computer Virus

Google Apple Adobe
Facebook of death
Evil company
HTML CSS PHP
MySql Objective C
Z++ my philosophy

Ebola Pixel
Digital Virus
Network Collapse
Computer Crash

We wanna byte
Your net economy
Its gonna be a binary tragedy
because …

OTO Machines’ BISCUIT is new 8-bit effect processing hardware from a boutique design firm in Paris. The essential effect is all 8-bit: using 8-bit converters and processing, you can add crunchy, digital waveshaping, delay, pitch shift, and step filter effects. But because those processes produce distortion and aliasing, BISCUIT combines its 8-bit effects with an analog resonant filter. (It’s switchable, so if you want to retain all the artifacts, you can – but you also have a filter at the ready.)

The whole design is a lovely exercise in reducing a set of sound capabilities to their most essential elements. The appearance of the front panel, though, is deceptively simple. Multifunctional uses, all provided within the eight buttons at bottom and the parameter controls at top, allow effects from filtering and basic bit reduction to wild, radical bit destruction, step-sequenced filtering, delay, and even a little synthesis.

The BISCUIT is also fully MIDI-enabled: every control sends MIDI, and every function receives MIDI CC. Critical to its step-sequenced and delay functions, BISCUIT receives MIDI clock, as well, or you can use tap tempo.

Finally, quality and local production figure prominently in the OTO: the company advertises that they don’t outsource production and work entirely with local companies in France.

Price: EUR529 including VAT (so 442,30 if you’re outside Europe). Available now:
http://www.otomachines.com

That’s pricey, I know, but it also packs as much sonic power as a collection of several Moog effects – and likewise might be the only effects box you need.

And, oh yeah – the future of BISCUIT may provide more than it does now.

I got to look more closely at the BISCUIT (think “bis-QWEE” as in French), at least on paper. I’ve also had the chance to talk to one of the creators about the evolution of this box, which reveals something of the process of hardware creation in general.

First, let’s take a closer look at the hardware.

Inside the Hardware

Onboard controls include:

• Drive: Input gain, up to +15 dB (which can clip your sound prior to conversion)
• Naked: dry signal
• Dressed: 8-bit (wet) signal
• Filter controls: set to green (low-pass), yellow (band-pass), or orange (hi-pass), then adjust cutoff (20-15kHz) and Q
• Brain: changes the function of the rectangular switches at the bottom, between selecting parameters and muting/inverting the 8-bit signal
• Clock: 250-30kHz sample clock frequency
• Bypass: a true relay bypass
• Switches 1-8: mute or invert your 8-bits, select effects and parameters, and recall presets/snapshots

The main issue is that it’s using the 8 rectangular switches along the bottom of the unit that most directly shapes the sound, by allowing you to set each bit independently – literally, the eight bits of the signal itself. Switch off “Brain” mode, and you can directly manipulate the bits of the signal, then mix that signal with your dry source.

The presets portion can incorporate all of your own presets, with 16 slots and SysEx dump functions for storage and recall on your computer. (Hmmm, may be time to dig up an editor/librarian tool, or make a new, simpler one.)

I/O:
Unbalanced 1/4″ inputs (2x mono L+R)
Unbalanced 1/4″ outputs (2x mono L+R)
MIDI in, MIDI out
9V AC adapter

Form factor:
Metal case
1.27 lb (580g)
7.48″ x 2.36″ x 4.60″ (190mm x 60mm x 117mm)

Interview with the Founder/Creator

I talked to Denis Cazajeux, creator of BISCUIT, about his work.

It took time to design this device. I started by building stompboxes in my kitchen under the name Cazatronics (http://www.myspace.com/cazatronics). I built some MIDI controllers, SID and FM Midibox synths (I lover [MIDIBox creator] Ucapps !), analog reverb stompboxes…

Few years ago, I built a box in a plastic butterdish, to simulate the sound of an old Fairlight CMI, but without have to sample through this machine.

The idea was simple: use an 8-bit AD converter with a parrallel output, and connect these 8 outputs to an 8-bit parrallel input DA converter. The sampling frequency was controlled by a special pot. You could pass sounds from a modern hardware or sofware sampler through this box to get an old-school 8-bit sampler sound.

I discovered that I could get some very harsh and radical digital distortion by simply mute (always 0) or invert (a 0 becomes a 1 and the opposite) one or several of the 8 lines between AD and DA converters. The initial box was then upgraded with 8 toggle switches, each with 3 positions (on, mute and invert).

As the sound can become very strong and aggressive, I added a 12db/octave low-pass filter with a Q control.

I forget a little bit this box in my kitchen for some years. One day, I met an engineer/producer in a vintage studio near Paris, where I worked as a sound engineer and maintenance tech. We shared the same passion for music, electronics, lo-fi, 8-bits,… (Thanks for your blog, we really love CDM and have a look on it few times a week!).

He loved the 8-bit box and we started the idea to sell this thing, as there were no other things like that on the market (except Frostwave Sonic Alienator). It took me 2 years to set the company, find the money, improve the initial design (MIDI, stereo, FX, multimode filter, pads instead of toggle switches,…), find subcontractors…

I wanted a strong box, with soft switches similar to a monome, customs knobs…

There’s more than 350 components inside BISCUIT, most of them are SMD (Surface Mount Devices) to keep the product small and not too much expensive. This is small and local economy: all parts (electronics boards, metalwork, pad and knobs design, packaging…) are made in french factories (most of them are in Normandy). Each Biscuit is assembled by our hands and tested by our ears in our workshop.

Input gain (Drive pot), little mixer (Naked and Dressed pots) and filter are analog, but with digital control (using Maxim digital pots IC’s), so you can memorize some presets and have a MIDI control.
I choose to use hi-quality parts (Panasonic low signal relay for bypass, Polypro Caps for filter, Neutrik jacks, linear -8v/+8v power supply…).

Digital processing (waveshapers, delay, pitch, bit manipulations) is pure 8-bits, using a simple Microchip PIC microcontroller. Delay and pitchshifter use the internal PIC RAM (3kB !).

The PIC microcontroller can upgrade its firmware, using a MIDI SysEx utility (SysEx Librarian for MAC users or MIDI OX for PCs).

All firmware upgrades are for free, as a simple SysEx file to download from our website.

In case it wasn’t evident from the gorgeous design of the case and associated graphics, yes, there was a significant design collaboration behind all of this, says Denis:

We worked with graphic artists H5 (http://www.h5.fr/).

They design the:

OTO and BISCUIT logo,
Knob design,
Silkscreen drawing,
User Manual layout.

They work in advertisment for companies such as Dior, Yves St Laurent, Audi…but also for music (record cover and videoclip) : Air, Royksopp (“Remind Me” videoclip), Massive Attack, Goldfrapp, Etienne de Crécy, Alex Gopher,…

They did a very nice job for us so I wanted to talk about them!

Producer/engineer Stéphane Alf Briat is the partner with Denis, and the man who prompted actually releasing BISCUIT as a product.

Let us know if you have further questions for Denis. This is far more information than I usually do for a product preview, but it’s fantastic, of course, to be provided with this much detail. It looks like a fascinating design, and I can think of a couple of friends I expect will want one. More coming soon.

http://www.otomachines.com

BIRDY NAM NAM – THE PARACHUTE ENDING from Steve Scott on Vimeo.

This is the music video you’ve always dreamed of getting when your track gets a music video. It’s been round the Web a few months ago, but I only discovered it today via the lovely 8-bit punk Anamanaguchi (see our interview), on their Twitter feed. It’s like what you worked out when bored in grade school Chemistry class with your best friend who planned to become a comic book artist for a career, scrawled in the margins of your notebook. There’s an evil Egyptian alien sarcophagus shooting what appears to be evil sugar cubes from orbit. There’s a crazy space alien superhero who’s all Shriner and Freemason and gets special powers when he replaces his hand with a vegetable squid … thing. And good triumphs over evil, which is what we all root for. It’s the sort of trippy album art we don’t get any more, but animated.

The animation, creative direction, and concept are by Will Sweeney, who under the name Alakazam Label makes fantastic, far-out illustrations, toys, and animations with edible acid-neon colors, and hamburgers for heads, and organic tendrils like pasta or vines or tentacles wrapped through the dreamscapes. You can see more of Sweeney’s work:

http://alakazamlabel.com/

Steve Scott directed the video, did concept design, and did his own compositing, which shows you he knows his stuff. Scott, based in Australia, has his own brilliantly wonderful stuff.

Birdy Nam Nam are a French DJ crew, cool enough to name drop Peter Sellers references in their actual name. They’re proper turntablists in a world in which that has become a rarity, with the prizes to match. Remix did a good write-up of their work in 2006; the best way to keep up with them now is to follow MySpace and, unfortunately for the world’s other continents, to live in Europe.

Justice did the production, in case that wasn’t evident; the marriage works.

And, seriously, special squid vegetable hands?

Credits:

Will Sweeney – Concept designer and Illustrator
Steve Scott – Director, Concept designer and compositor

James Littlemore – Editor / Compositor
Geoff McDowall – Animator
Ed Willmore – Animator
Roland Edwards – Animator
Dele Nuga – Digital Painter

Lottie Hope – Producer
Dan O’Rourke – Executive Producer

Not To Scale – production

Thanks to Big Active

Theoretically, all of this could have gone on Create Digital Motion, but I love watching a video that makes me feel differently about the music. Having that experience, to me, is what it’s all about.

I wish my inbox were more like Tom's at Music Thing. The latest news from France via MT:
a super-digital-modular synth control surface virtual instrument. As if
that weren't weird enough, the thing looks like Don Buchla teamed with Playskool Toys, and this may be the only device on the planet that claims to be suitable for toddlers, schoolchildren, teenagers, schoolteachers, and professionals.
That's right: this modern digital device has a heritage going back to
the early 1970s (when it was analog, naturally), and it was originally
geared for using as a way of teaching about synthesis, music, and
memory. [PDF with full specs, history, and description]

30 years of development by the International Institute of Electroacoustic Music of Bourges (IMEB)
has turned it into a hybrid monster. Sure, it may look like an analog
synth, but the two consoles, combined with a Mac G5 running Max/MSP,
pack:

• Sound sources: line/mic input, analog oscillators, scratch in, and multiple samplers
• Multiple effects processors (filter, envelope, pitch shift, delay, EQ, reverb)
• Mixer
• Recording, live audio editing and looping
• Motion capture devices and graphic pad input — no screen required

A software version is supposed to be available now, though I
couldn't find it on the site. But what makes this so unusual (aside
from its use with preschoolers!) is the creation of a hardware
interface with faders that mimics traditional modular synthesis
interface layout, but using digital techniques. It seems the instrument
just naturally evolved from analog to digital, something rare in
instrument evolution. Something to chew on if you're a would-be
interface designer.

And if you don't already wish you went to school in France, watch these kids learning about electronic music. Now that's what I call "no child left behind."

Boing boing (you know, the site where I'm picking fights with Star Trek TNG veterans — more on that soon) gets the scoop on a disco club for toddlers (4 to 6 year olds). The velvet rope is in full force: the installation is at upscale Paris clothing shop Colette (makes Bergdorf look as un-hip as TJ Maxx), and only 10-12 kids are allowed by appointment only.

If you can make it in, though, this place has what must be the best
dance scene I've ever seen — to say nothing of the DJ dressed as a
panda (see the video on the project site). Older club kids, watch closely: these kids get it. Created by the crew at D-I-R-T-Y.com.

Now, of course, CDM continues to cover installations for grownups, so here's your challenge: make us feel 4. Um, without drugs.