Adam Dworak aka DJ Destruction writes to let us know he’s finished a video review of the ZERO8:

Via the DJ Destruction blog.

About halfway through, he gets to some hands-on demos with the internal effects and controllers, which demonstrates some of what makes the ZERO8 unique. Thanks for sharing this one, Adam!

Adam’s rig — the mixer, a DJ app (Virtual DJ), and use of the internal mixer and effects — qualify him as what is likely the target audience for the ZERO8. And you can see he’s pretty happy using it in that way.

We have heard some dissent, though, from people who wanted to use the ZERO8 for live laptop performance with Ableton Live, or with DJ sets that push the envelope a bit into the live performance area. In fairness, that may not have been the ZERO’s target audience, but as it is a target audience for CDM, I’ll be interested to see what gear can fit the bill.

Also, I don’t like to bring up anecdotal evidence, but do any ZERO owners out there know if Korg was able to resolve the “hiss problem” we heard readers complaining about?

What about the alternatives?

For various reasons I remain interested in the Ecler line. I don’t think it’s immediately comparable to the ZERO, but its focus on combining MIDI control and mixing features make it very interesting to the Ableton crowd. That’s nothing against the Korg kit, but in this emerging category, it may be closer to what this niche wants. I hope to look more at that soon. See our previous story (which also includes commentary on the Korg, so I’m not the only one making the comparison):

MIDI + Mixing: Ecler EVO4 DJ Mixer Specs, EVO5 Update

Before I start talking about the fact that there’s a full-featured, stylus-controlled, vintage-gear sampling, officially-sanctioned, drool-inducing Nintendo DS synth plus drum machine plus sequencer reimagining of the classic Korg MS-10 analog synth, I have three words you really don’t want to hear:

“FOR JAPAN ONLY”

Correction: Despite what the website says, the DS-10 is in fact getting an international release!

Product info, specs, samples [AQ Interactive; English]

Blog [Japanese only]

Music sample

Via Music Thing and CDM comments (thanks, Thomas)

Features:

• Dual dual synths: Two patchable virtual synths, with two oscillators each
• Drum machine: Four-part drum machines loaded with samples of the virtual synth
• Sequencer: 2 synth tracks, 4 drum machine tracks, 16 steps
• Effects: Delay, chorus, flanger
• Input methods: Touch-control screen with real-time sound control, a keyboard screen, and matrix screen

Free, odd soundware keeps on coming — hot on the heels of faux bent instruments and a tape-recorded Roland 606 and 808, here are more sounds to satisfy your need for unusual sounds.

Stephen Haunts was inspired by the cassette-recorded 808, and writes to tell us he’s decided to give something back. He’s uploaded 22 kits from a Korg ElecTribe ER-1, a kit from a Yamaha DD-10 (pictured amusing the awkward fellow at right from the manual), and a Yamaha PSS-80. The Yamahas steal the show: they’re little toy keyboards with a decidedly lo-fi sound. I always admired the Japanese sound designers for their minimalism on these low-end hardware units. You almost don’t need to circuit bend this.

Free Drum Machine Samples by Creature [Haunted House Records]

Stephen, aka Creature, used these samples for his Distant Horizon album featured in Mike Una’s round-up of music from the forums.

Toy drums not to your liking? How about a toy music box instead?

Our friend Tom at Music Thing has repaired and sampled his Fisher Price record player music box, then uploaded the results to the open source soundware site Freesound:

Sampling a Fisher Price Music Box Record Player [Music Thing]

You may remember said Fisher Price kit from the tongue-in-cheek Fisher Price turntable “review” by DJ Tech Tool’s Ean Golden.

What’s great about both these sound collections is they’re actually different enough to give you some real inspiration musically. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think it’s time to take my handheld recorder around the house and grab some other sounds.

We’ve heard from DJ Chinkial — and via several of you — that he’s working on a way of turning Korg’s KP3 KAOSS Pad into a step sequencer, by way of Reaktor. Each step lights up, causing him and others to use the phrase “Monome-like.” Monome as an adjective? Congrats to the Monome designers for that! The KP3 is a cool device on its own, so it looks fascinating to me.

Just be prepared to try to read chinkial’s massive run-on sentence describing the project. He writes:

just thought id let youse know im making a reaktor ensemble at the moment to utilize the korg kp3s 8×8 grid as a seq its going pretty well managed to get the kp3 to trigger the steps on an 8×8 event table and ouput them im also getting visual feed back from the kp3 aswell so u can make beats and not look at the screen just like the monome this is just a test to c if it could b done as i plan on porting it to a vst plugin in sythedit somehow that was my initial idea as not everybody uses reaktor that has a kp3 u know so let me know what youse think about my project

More power to you, man — I think you’ve learned to speak better to the Reaktor than to us, but keep on rocking the KP3. The project looks really cool, from what I can see through blurry cameraphone footage. Anyone in the UK who wants to go shoot this with a real camera, let us know!

It’s like a spy video. And 69 views, plus two tips from CDMers, which means basically you guys see everything before the rest of the universe, even if it’s barely capable of being seen.

chinkial also wins bonus points for plastering his MySpace page with marijuana leaves, being the first and only person to create a stoner mystique for Reaktor. (As opposed to, you know, basement club in Berlin and Red Bull or, maybe more like a lineup of espressos and cigarettes.)

The project looks great, though, so you can bet we’ll stay tuned to the chinkial YouTube channel.

You’ve seen the “top picks” lists elsewhere online for the NAMM show, that massive Californian convergence of musical instruments and music-making gear. Add together the knobs and faders from such lists, and you could probably build a synthesizer Death Star and destroy Daft Punk’s hidden Rebel base. Of course, you’d only have a marginally larger Death Star than the identical one you could have built from last year’s gear.

We’re doing things a little differently: picking out entirely random stuff that managed to reach for the sublime — including the sublimely absurd. Bad is better than boring. We’ve seen strange things that simply failed, or at least substantially creeped us out.

Now, those moments of victory, of supreme revelation, of –

Yeah, that’s Roger Linn, the LM-1 and former MPC designer without whom drum machines as we know them today wouldn’t exist, holding the “Drum Machines Have No Soul” bumper sticker he acquired. That’s why we were in Anaheim.

We’re still waiting on Barry Wood’s legendary NAMM Oddities, so we’ll focus on our own sense of the exceptional.

Other standout moments and products for reflection:

You liked Gary Kibler’s all-Korg KAOSSilator album just a little too much, and his bandwidth is gone. So, if you’ve had any trouble getting at the music, we’ve got a brand new link on ReverbNation.

But that raises another question. As it happens, CDM community member FauxAudio was just asking about hosting music files on our forums:

online audio host - reccomendations?

So far, in the running:

• Amazon S3 (and as I noted, Yahoo just opened up their player tool)
• musicane.com (also sells albums)
• payloadz.com (ditto)
• Twango, which also hosts video and still images but supports an embeddable audio player (thank you, Nokia)

Interestingly, Amazon S3 seems to be the current favorite.

What would you want from a music host? I guess that’s the first question. Other experiences / preferences?

Data center photo: skreuzer, via Flickr.

All Kaoss, All the Time: In a world of endless choices, what happens to the creative power of limitations? Back in November, we saw Norman Fairbanks make an album entirely on Tenori-On, Yamaha’s interactive blinking-lights button pad.

“Ah,” you said. “But that sounds suspiciously like the music of Toshio Iwai, the Tenori-On’s composer-inventor. And it costs a lot of dough. And I have to live in the UK to buy it.”

Enter our friend Gary Kibler. He’s also a huge fan of the Tenori-On — he did cover the UK launch event for us, and then lauded its innovative design. But his creation uses a decidedly more accessible instrument: the Korg Kaossilator, which can be yours for a mere US$200 street — about US$1000 less than the Tenori-On.

Here’s the surprise: the sound-packed Kaossilator can do just as much as the Tenori-On, arguably more. And Gary really didn’t need anything else. The Yellow Album is –

Produced and performed exclusively on the Korg Kaossilator. No other effects, EQ or sounds were added other than those incorporated in the original device. Audio was recorded directly off the unit and the only edits performed externally were simple volume balancing.

The Yellow Album (free MP3 album from Gary Kibler) Updated: New link from ReverbNation, to save Gary’s bandwidth!

There you go. All you need is a Kaossilator. You can now cease lusting after anything else.

Okay, that wore off fast.

All Monome, All The Time With Something Else: Meanwhile, while I got distracted by turkey and stuffing and neglected to post this back at Thanksgiving, the Monome got an album of its own. Matthew Davidson, aka Stretta, did an “all-Monome album” called Grids, and made it fully free and Creative Commons-licensed. Like Kibler, Davidson has some significant credits as a composer (Davidson did the only-ever live performance of Switched-On Bach with Wendy Carlos — that being the original and greatest “entirely made on xx” synth album.)

So, what is the sound of one Monome playing?

You got it: silence. Yes, unlike the Korg and Yamaha instruments, the Monome has no sound generation facility of its own, meaning Matthew “limited” himself to a Doepfer modular, Prophet 5, and MOTU’s MachFive 2. In other words, it’s not really an all-Monome album. But it is quite good, and the Max patches used to make it are available free. (Wait, that’s yet another thing that’s not a Monome used on this album, if you’re still bothering to count.) Matthew, to his credit, admits “the notion of an all Monome album is somewhat of a misnomer.” But he does put forward the idea of a Monomist quite effectively.

Grids - The All-Monome Album (also on Audio News Room, LadyC]

I’m waiting for someone to hack some internal sounds into the Monome. Get back to us if you have. In the meantime, yes, the whole appeal of the Monome over something like a Kaossilator is that it’s just a controller, ready to be connected to whatever you desire — even visuals, or robots, or a giant space laser that blasts pretty patterns into the moon.

Monome, Unplugged — Erm, Live: Part of the cult popularity of the Monome phenomenon can be chalked up to the fact that the talented electronic artist Daedalus was playing out with an early prototype before anyone had even heard of a Monome. Daedalus has an album of his own — live at the Low End Theory event in LA. His live show is simply fantastic, so an album version sounds great to me — and it helps bolster the cause of genuine live electronic performance. I’m very much looking forward to this one. It won’t be free, but I like paying for music. On January 22, you can pay for his music, too.

Daedelus Readies Live Album [XLR8R]

Alpha Pup Records

Estesvan Carlos Benson sends along this film score he created for Godard’s Vivre sa Vie. Keep watching — he’s got a fantastic sense of picking up the rhythm of the actress. He explains:

It was basically produced with a Korg N364 and Sonar, back in 2004. Conceptually I just felt drawn to this scene. The original music created a stark irony (it was swing jazz I think). Additionally, and for whatever reasons, Anna Karina wasn’t quite dancing to the original rhythm. I was aiming for a tone that dealt with the larger aspect of the movie and her character, within the scene and outside of it.

Note to self: if I ever become one of the greatest directors of all time, be sure to get someone like Anna Karina in my movies.

Project details and lots more at his site:
estevancarlos.com

Estevan Carlos will hopefully be contributing some items to CDM in the future, so welcome him onboard!

“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):