Our friends at the Spanish-language site Hispasonic.com are streaming Theremin music live for free worldwide from the Ethermusic Festival in Moog country, North Carolina. (Pictured, right: Randy George.)

Hispasonic TV

When it’s not live, the previous recording plays on continuous loop. From Hispasonic’s Xabier:

Now we are just replaying the yesterday concert. The next live webcast will be at 2:30 AM (GMT+2) - 08:30 PM (GMT-4).

And speaking of Moog, here’s an update from Frank Schubert, who played at the show, regarding Moog’s new guitar:

The show was great.  We opened up and then did a piece with Justin from Moog who was playing the guitar.  Then they did the formal announcement, described the guitar and then Justin and his band played a 25 minute set with the guitar.  Kevin Kissinger played a great set and then was joined by Justin on the Moog guitar as well.  There were a bunch of people shooting video and photos.  They will most likely make them available – I will let you know when they are posted.  We did not take any video.

I did get to play the guitar for a minute.  It felt great.  It also sounded great when played.  So I think it is official….

In comments — a correction to Frank’s description:

Jason Daniello from MoogMusic demonstrated the new Moog Guitar and his band’s name is The Broomstars

Okay, so that bit where I thought it was an April Fool’s joke — sorry! (Yeah, my April record hasn’t been so fantastic, since the Ableton Vocoder also appears to be in development.)

If anyone has other photos/video, drop us a line!

There’s a simply insane amount of electrified music happening here in the US this week:

• Bent Festival NY: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights are concerts at the Bent Festival in NY, not only of circuit bending but other DIY sound, as well. Stop by Saturday during the day for a day full of workshops. (also on Facebook)
• Thursday, Bent NY sponsor The Tank will be hosting Warper Vs. Splice, a 2-floor audiovisual collision in downtown NYC; I’ll be on music + eyethings in the middle of the evening. (See Facebook)
• Saturday, The Tank hosts the 8-bit crowd, also concurrent with Bent, at the regular Pulsewave, in case at that point you’ve had your fill of bending and higher bit depths
• Bent Festival Minneapolis does it all again next weekend (Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights) for the middle of America, with workshops during the day. Don’t miss our friends Beatrix*Jar (above) and CDM’s Mike Una giving a free workshop — get there early for one of 12 MIDI-to-relay kits to use.
• Ethermusic Festival in North Carolina won’t just have a lineup of all the world’s great Theremin players, with people like Dorit Chrysler (below), Lydia Kavina, Sheuh-Li Ong, and other important people, plus CDM readers Scott Burland and Frank Shultz doing a Theremin + lap steel duet. (Thanks to Frank for the heads-up!) It’ll also have something else…

It sounds as though Moog Music is going to officially announce the thing they’re making that involves subliminal guitar images during Ethermusic. So, if you’re there, bring a camera for any one of those reasons.

As I write this, both Moog’s and Ethermusic’s sites are hiccupping; hopefully the Evil Carolina Server Hag hasn’t gotten to them. I’m sure all is well as you read this.

Now, I’m embarrassed to admit that I can’t actually play Theremin any better than this cat. Not worse, necessarily. I’m very much on the cat’s level. Fortunately, I won’t be playing Theremin tomorrow at The Tank.

It’s tough to pull off an April Fool’s joke in the age of the blogosphere, because on April 1, everyone’s RSS feeds are saturated with fake news.

So, how do you fool people? With real news that seems outlandish enough to be a joke. It wouldn’t be the first time 4/1 became an auspicious date; Apple, Inc. incorporated as a business on the first of April.

And so, it seemed I got … uh, punked. Because sources close to Asheville tell us that the Moog guitar, teased yesterday in a video, is really coming. A guitar from Moog. You heard that right. (More comments are coming in, leaving no question: it’s real. Oops.) The Moog Music homepage has the video, so maybe someone who knows something about guitars / doesn’t already look like an idiot regarding this story would like to comment?

I just hope Gibson doesn’t sue Moog claiming to have invented sound.

At least this is a 4/1 fake. Right? Isn’t it?

Photo courtesy Matrixsynth @ Flickr; see “New Moog Guitar Related?”

Since it’s now April 2, the music technology April Foolishness has been revealed for what it is.

Composer/educator Steve Horelick provided a sneak glimpse of future functionality in an “unreleased” version of Apple’s Logic Pro:

Logic 303: Logic TNT

… although I wouldn’t be surprised to see Region Animation in a future version of FL “Fruity Loops” Studio.

Moog Music claimed to introduce a Moog guitar in a video teaser segment — that video appears to still be up. Personally, I thought this wasn’t as classic as the Moogerfooger MF-433’s “pure analog silence” — but some people did think it was real. (Hmmm… a guitar with built-in Moogerfooger effects, perhaps?) Don’t miss the MF-433 reviews, though.

Update: Okay, one slight correction on the Moog story. Did I say April Fool’s joke? That may be April Fool’s actual real product announcement. Then again, what’s real? Maybe Moog Music isn’t real, either. Ummm…

The best Moog gag of the day, though, was the Minimalmoog, as seen on Matrixsynth. I love “THE OSCILLATOR.” Ubercoolische, my friend.

Not to be outdone, Clavia introduced the Clavia Left Lead, for left-handed people.

Most amusing of all: Sweetwater’s faux vocalist plug-in, as released to CDM, was criticized for being too feasible. Yes, folks, technology has progressed to the point that readers fully expect to see a plug-in that replaces your vocalist. Well, or maybe that says something about the opinion you have of your vocalist. Point taken.

Updated: from comments, MusicRadar came up with the MusicMask, which reads facial expressions. Again, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone did something real along the same lines. (I was just fiddling with a new facial recognition library for Processing. Okay, I’ll stop…)

Thanks to Matrixsynth for being on top of all the 4/1 stuff. And yes, I will commit here and now: at some point during 2008, CDM will slip fake news into RSS on a day that isn’t April Fool’s, just to see who’s paying attention. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Updated again: This is my favorite yet: multi-sampled, multi-mic ReFill for Reason, “Reason Accordions.” Thanks to Wax in comments.

Introducing Reason Accordions - the hassle free, creativity sparking way of adding studio-grade accordion sounds to your mix. With Propellerhead Software’s ground breaking Hypersampling technique, we have captured these fine accordions in painstaking detail using state of the art equipment and instruments.

Too bad. Ernie Rideout would have been all over the Keyboard review, seriously. See, it used to be hard telling which 4/1 announcements were fake. Now it’s just hard keeping up. I think there were more product announcements yesterday (with a handful of real ones, for extra confusion) than on the first day of winter NAMM.

Then again, music tech announcements are often surreal as it is, so 4/1’s faux releases just seem like another average day.

I usually don’t pick up presets and sound libraries on CDM, but this one deserves an exception. Musicrow has built a preset pack for Arturia’s Moog Modular V. That’s the software emulation of the truly modular Moogs — the ones with patch cords — so this gives you what you don’t get out of the real thing, a set of sound presets you can call upon immediately. Looks like a good blend of “traditional” presets and more unusual ones, and Arturia’s emulation, like the original Moog modular, has a rich set of sonic capabilities.

20 of the 200 presets are available for immediate, free use; if you like them, the whole set is US$39 (EUR29).

Musicrow Modular Dreams

I have to say, as much as I loved the tactile feel of patching on a real Moog modular, and as much as the software sound falls slightly short of the real thing, you can’t beat the fact that you can transport a laptop and save presets! Photo by Erikadotnet.

How do you make the Moog legacy of instruments accessible — assuming you can’t afford a studio full of vintage gear? One choice is to model the instruments virtually, as developers like Arturia have done. That provides real-time control, but models may not be perfect, and if you want more than one instrument, you really need more than one model. Others have reimagined some of the Moog sound designs on more modern instruments, as Craig Anderton did recently with Cakewalk’s Rapture.

IK Multimedia, working with veteran sample house Sonic Reality in collaboration with Moog Music, have taken the “museum” approach — put samples of everything in a single box. And what an ambitious collection they’ve got, as we noted when the product was announced. But can you win over even someone who owns some of the real gear? We put that question to our own Lee Sherman, who’s been diving deep into the tool. Mindful of the tradeoffs, he’s got some insight into just how useful they were able to make that sampled content.

SampleMoog can’t help but be greeted with some degree of skepticism. Even virtual analog synths like Arturia’s Minimoog V don’t go all of the way in reproducing the Moog experience. How can something based on samples even come close?

NAMM08: Volt Per Octave Play the Moog Music Booth from cdm tv on Vimeo.

Husband-and-wife synth duo — and Moog superfans — Nick and Anna Montoya were helping out at the Moog Music booth this year and NAMM. Their greatest responsibility: making sure synthy good vibrations emanated from all that hardware through the day. We picked up a bit of their performance, which was able to rise above the din of the trade show floor.

Craig Anderton is easily the most prolific music technology writer on the planet. We got an exclusive interview with him at Cakewalk at the NAMM show to talk about the technologist who has had the biggest impact on him: Bob Moog.

Craig talked to us about two projects, each a tribute to Moog’s legacy. First, there’s The Minimoog Tribute, an inexpensive expansion pack for Cakewalk’s Rapture and Rapture LE synths. Why another set of Moog samples, given there’s a fake Minimoog patch or thirty in just about every synth? Craig tells us he wanted to do something different: really create patches that “cover” the classics rather than duplicate them, taking advantage of samples of his personal Minimoog but blending them with Rapture’s digital capabilities.

Craig also talks about why he chose Rapture, because “it basically says twist my knobs, man, have a good time.” (I won’t touch that one.) In all seriousness, he describes the relationship with the synth as being a personal one.

And this isn’t just a preset pack. It’s got gear porn in it, too — cue the Moog porn bassline.

Craig Anderton’s MiniMoog Tribute Expansion Pack [Cakewalk]

Liz interviewed Craig for CDM at the Cakewalk booth:

NAMM08: Craig Anderton @ Cakewalk - Moog Tribute for Rapture [cdm@blip.tv]

But the real reason Craig wanted to have this interview wasn’t just to talk about his product — it was to make an impassioned plea for The Moog Foundation, which is working to save the vast archival materials Bob Moog collected through his life. They’re not just the history of Bob, or the history of Moog synthesizers: they’re a chronicle of the history of electronic music. And they now have met a formidable foe: humid southern weather. But you can help:

NAMM08: Craig Anderton @ Cakewalk - Moog Foundation [cdm@blip.tv]

A portion of the proceeds from the Minimoog expansion pack for Rapture will be donated by both Craig and Cakewalk to the fund, but even if you’ve only got $10 or $15, consider giving something directly to the foundation — or volunteer or contribute in other ways.

Moog Foundation Call to Action

Donation form

Have Moog synths influenced the way you use non-Moog synths and software? We’d love to hear how — aside from the obvious ways, of course. I know my approach to sound was deeply affected by using both the Buchla and Moog modular systems, even applying thinking about sound and synthesis to very different digital systems. Let us know in comments.

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: