Obscure and famous, people touch us in creative ways, ways that reverberate in patterns that reach clarity at odd times. With just such a story, our last entry in Bob Moog’s birthday this week, from Moog Music veteran and experimentalsynth.com artist Chris Stack:

Driving a truck into the night, headed to Nashville to tell the world about a new way to play guitar… no, wait… that’s a different (but related) story. Back on track… Here goes…

It’s late evening, May 23, 2012. Bob Moog’s birthday. It has been a great day with people remembering Bob in many ways. His birthday five years ago was a very special event in some very different ways. Michelle Moog-Koussa and I have been talking about writing about it ever since. I promised some people I would do it now, so here it is…

For me, this story encompasses not just Bob’s birthday in 2007, but also other events separated by many years, so this may jump around a bit. To understand the full impact on me you’ll need to know about these somewhat disparate points in my life.

An elementary school music teacher let my class listen to the Album “Swithced-on Bach”. As most (or all) of you know, this album was performed by Walter (later Wendy) Carlos on synthesizers designed by Bob Moog. This starts my near life-long interest in electronic music.

Around the same time I see Nipsey Russell on the Tonight Show recite the poem “Abu Ben Adhem”

“Abou Ben Adhem”
Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An Angel writing in a book of gold:

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the Presence in the room he said,
“What writest thou?” The Vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord
Answered, “The names of those who love the Lord.”

“And is mine one?” said Abou. “Nay, not so,”
Replied the Angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerily still; and said, “I pray thee, then,
Write me as one who loves his fellow men.”

The Angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And, lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest!

– By Leigh Hunt.

I loved the poem, looked it up and memorized it. I still remember it.

I graduate from highschool and work various factory jobs, primarily to enable me to buy synthesizers. My interest in electronic music (and five years in a zinc die-casting factory) prompts me to return to school to get an associates degree in Electrical Engineering, after which I go to work as a printed circuit board designer. I spend the next ten years designing PCBs for the industrial computer industry.

During that time, I learn that Bob Moog lives in Asheville and is giving a public lecture at UNCA. I attend the lecture and afterwards introduce myself. Bob calls me the next day and I wind up designing a few boards for him. This was back in the Big Briar days. These boards were for the Multi Touch Sensitive Keyboard that he designed for John Eaton, a product that according to the Moog Foundation, he considered to be his crowning achievement. This is of course a very significant event for me since he played a large part in me choosing electronics as a profession.

Many years go by…

After ten years as a printed circuit designer, I make a switch and spend the next ten years working primarily as a marketing manager, broken up by a year and a half stint as an engineering manager (high frequency CATV analog electronics). In addition to electronic music, I start playing music (on oud, flute etc) for belly dancers every weekend in Asheville, NC.

Mid-afternoon, Sunday, August 21, 2005 – Preparing for a bellydance music gig, I get the idea to start a song by reciting “Abu Ben Adhem” over a low drum beat with Ishani, the dancer that night, playing the part of the angel. I call her to see if she has a “book of gold” to use as a prop. She does.

Sunday night approximately 10:00pm, August 21, 2005 – We perform Abu Ben Adhem at Hookah Joe’s hookah lounge. Ishani is a great dancer and it is very well received.

Monday morning, August 22, 2005 – I get an email from Barry Darnell who also did printed circuit design for Bob. The email informs me of Bob’s death. I had been out of touch with Bob for a while at that point. I heard he was sick, but had no idea that it was terminal. Needless to say, it came as a shock.

Tuesday afternoon, August 23, 2005 – Barry and I attend Bob’s funeral at a local synagogue. After the rabbi finishes his part, one-by-one he calls the family members up to speak. The first one to speak is Bob’s oldest daughter. She says she wanted to start by reciting one of Bob’s favorite poems…
…Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream….

When I heard that, I almost passed out. I was standing at the edge of the room. My legs got weak and my vision grew dark. And then I remembered that the email mentioned that Bob died at 2:00 on Sunday… right about the time that I got the idea to add the poem to our performance. I was in a daze for quite a while after that.

I cannot say I knew Bob well. After doing the projects for him, I would see him occasionally here and there, but we never really hung out or talked about anything much other than electronics. The subject of poetry never came up.

I’m still trying to understand the significance (if any) of this. The mathematician in me says that everything we do, think or say is an opportunity for a coincidence. That would add up to billions, trillions or more opportunities in a lifetime. If some amazing ones didn’t come along every once in a while, that would be the strange thing. But still, when something like this happens to you, it’s hard to be objective about it.

In May of 2007, Moog Music hired me as Marketing Manager. This actually had little or nothing to do with the previous work I had done for Bob. Bob was gone and the only one there from the Big Briar days that even remembered me was Steve Dunnington.

My first week at Moog was also the week of Bob’s birthday. We had a nice birthday party at the office in his memory, and over ice-cream and cake we found out that SonicState.com (who had been doing a weekly countdown of the top 20 synthsizers of all time) had “coincidentially” just named the Minimoog as the top synth. When Mike Adams (President of Moog Music) called them to thank them for doing that on Bob’s birthday, their reply was something like “What… we didn’t know it was his birthday!”

It was at this party that I first met Michelle Moog-Koussa. When I told her the story about the poem, her response was “Oh my god, you’re the “Abou-Ben-Adhem-Guy”. After Bob’s funeral, I sent my story to the Caring Bridge website set up for Bob and his family. Mixed in with the hundreds (if not thousands) of other comments, I didn’t think that anyone had seen it. I was wrong.

Michelle and I spent much of the party talking about this coincidence… and many others. It turns out that my story was one of many surrounding Bob’s passing. She related numerous other similar stories (many of which I unfortunately can’t remember). There were one or two that were along the lines of “when I heard that Bob died, I went to turn on my old Minimoog that hadn’t worked in years… it worked!”

I thought that the birthday party supplied a nice end to the story. I was wrong. The next day Michelle called me. Our conversation went something like this…

Michelle: “Did you see LOST last night?”

Me: “No, why?”

Michelle: “It was the season finale (of season two). They were breaking into a bunker to stop the device that was jamming their radio transmissions. In doing so, they mortally wounded the person inside. As this person was dying they divulged, “The programmer was a musician. The password is GOOD VIBRATIONS”.

Me: “Yeah? Beach Boys… so?”

Michelle: “GOOD VIBRATIONS is the epitaph on dad’s tombstone.”

Me: “Hoe-lee _________ !!!!!!” (Insert uniquely Southern expression of surprise)

It wasn’t over then either. At NAMM shows or during factory visits I heard many similar stories. It helped give my time at Moog a very surrealistic edge.

Every year about this time Michelle and I talk about how all this needs to be written down. This was the year it happened.

Chris also sends this image along, with another story:

Trying to think of a good photo for this. I remembered this image. It has a bit of historical connection to the story. I created this in the early 90s. It was one of my first forays into computer graphics and photography. I think I did this in Aldus Photostyler on an 80386-based PC.

It kind of has a vaguely cosmic/spiritual feel that fits the story.

The circuit elements came from my PCB design work for Bob. He got a kick out of seeing it used this way. This image was used in the poster and ticket design for the first (and possibly only) rave in Spartanburg SC.

Here’s to all the ghosts in our machines, from Bob Moog to Max Mathews. I certainly feel their gifts in the work I’ve done just in the last couple of weeks alone.

Chris Stack writes:

Jon Hassell just shared with me a very interesting and historic letter. Very timely too, with tomorrow being Bob Moog’s Birthday celebration…

16nov64
Letter to Jon Hassell
Electronic Music – The Early Years

I had a very interesting experience about one week ago. A gentleman, Mr. Robert Moog, who claims to know of you, visited Washington and demonstrated a compact electronic studio. He claims to be the only man in the country building and designing equipment solely for the creation of electronic music. He was tremendously impressed with your proposals. [For - among other things - applying the principles of electronic music manipulation to the video domain.]

He stated that he would be able to provide much of the equipment called for in those proposals at the same quality or better at considerably less cost. He also demonstrated equipment (in a crude state of development) which could provide great flexibility with extremely simple manipulation involved, almost to the point of being able to improvise an electronic composition – to be recorded or not.

He is going to send me descriptive material and quotations, copies of which I will either forward to you or hold for your interest and considerations.

Lloyd Ultan
Head, Music Department
American University
Washington D. C. 20016

Sound technology pioneer Bob Moog’s birthday is May 23, and just about the whole Web will be in on the celebration.

Play Google like a Minimoog: Google’s Doodle, the image you see on their homepage, is one of their best yet: it’s a fully interactive, playable Minimoog synthesizer. You can even record and playback little musical sketches and share with friends. Since the Earth is round, Google Japan gets an early scoop. (Yes, the Moog sun will rise first on the land of Roland, Yamaha, and KORG.)

Bonus (for Web nerds): this all uses the Web Audio API, which promises to bring real sound into the browser. Check out the technical details on html5audio.org, but if you love synths, and you use the Internet, this is good news.

Get swag, save cash, benefit the Moog Foundation: Rags and riches will be on sale for your shopping pleasure, including a benefit for the Moog Foundation on Moog-logo merchandise and clothes, with 50% of proceeds going to the Foundation’s educational and historical mission, which goes far beyond just Bob Moog to synthesis in general. That one-day birthday sale includes the lovely new Moog travel mug (I need one, after mine sadly broke in the mail to Germany), and a huge knob on a t-shirt (nice). See image, below.

Moog Music is also discounting their iOS apps, in case you missed discount pricing on their superb Animoog synth.

I Want My Moog TV. But let’s get back to the man himself, with a series of videos shared by the folks at Moog Music.

From an 80s BBC TV special, here’s Bob Moog demonstrating the synthesizer:

Moog Music are painting their spiritual father and founder’s image on their offices in North Carolina; see a timelapse of this gorgeous mural:

And in the sweetest gesture for the day:

To #celebratebob on what would have been his his 78th birthday local Asheville piano teacher, Kim Roney, brought two of her pupils to the Moog Store to perform a song in celebration of Bob Moog’s life and legacy. Bob Moog is still inspiring creative exploration in children of all ages. Thank you Dr. Moog, Happy Birthday! How has Bob Moog inspired you? #celebratebob

Finally, here’s a five-part series on synthesis fundamentals that uses the Moog Voyager. That seems, perhaps, the best way to celebrate Bob Moog’s legacy: it’s a chance to learn ideas about sound that can allow you to unlock the world of electronic music. With that knowledge, you can use any synthesis, anywhere, with or without a Moog logo on it – or use your imagination to invent the next great music technology, something Bob Moog I’m sure would have loved to see you build.

Moog Music Inc. is proud to present Dr. Joseph Akins’ five part series on the fundamentals of synthesizer programming. Dr. Akins is an associate professor at Middle Tennessee State University and strives to teach his students a complete understanding of synthesizers and computers as tools for modern music production. In this five part series Dr. Akins uses a Voyager to teach the process through which a synthesizer’s sound is generated and the techniques needed to program your own sounds and sonic experiments. In part one of this five part series Dr. Akins gives a brief history of synthesizers, goes over basic synthesizer theory, and overviews basic signal flow.

http://www.moogfoundation.org/

Steve Reich had his Music for 18 Musicians.

Here’s a modular made of 18 Moogerfoogers.

And for those of you who complain that modulars can become large, expensive, hard to carry, and unwieldy…

This absolutely, positively … doesn’t help with that at all. (Happily, new desktop modular tools do, but… this is… also possible.)

And to those of you who say this seems impractical or silly, well, maybe you have five friends, and each of you has three Moogerfoogers, and you’ve wondered if you could ever form a band. Yes. Yes, you can.

This is the creation of Shout Out Out Out Out:
http://www.shoutoutoutoutout.com
http://www.auxgang.tumblr.com

After the jump, we’ll see some more practical work they’ve been up to in the studio.

First, here’s part 1 of 2…

Found via Kent Williams, on Google+.

There’s some great musical nerdery as Shout Out Out Out Out show their process tracking in the studio.

Part three of the Shout Out Out Out Out new album video diary. Winter finally drops down like a metric tonne of hammers! Gravy finds “The Button” and Will explains how recording works.

The upcoming record they’re working on here is Spanish Moss And Total Loss, due July 17th in North America from Normals Welcome Records (digital, vinyl, CD). Based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, they have … a lot of analog. So much analog. And for that, and their fresh, crisp songwriting and expansive imagination, we love them!

It’s a collision between a twenty-first century tablet and some of the most iconic analog instruments ever produced. It’s MIDI and digital meeting up with control voltage and analog. It’s our friend Chris Stack, endeavoring to find the path that allows him to take the best pieces of his studio and put them together, pushing all that gear to its limits and finding a sum that exceeds the parts. In short, it’s music making, how a soloist can make an ensemble out of their tools. On ExperimentalSynth.com, Chris has been very interesting indeed. But it’s nice to pull together a few of these recent episodes to get a sense of the larger theme.

First, let’s have a look at Moog’s Animoog synth as it’s crossed with the Moog Voyager. Now, some will recall my original criticism of Animoog and iOS synths in general was the lack of tactile feedback on the iPad. But that makes Animoog’s support of MIDI significant. And put these instruments together with your hardware instruments, and something very different happens. (I find it interesting that the most active users of Animoog I’ve met all have it as an addition to a conventional hardware studio – it’s all pieces of the puzzle.)

Chris tells us this video has gotten an especially-enthusiastic response. The video demonstrates “some of the many possibilities when using the Moog Voyager as a MIDI controller for the Moog Animoog app and feeding the iPad audio back into the Voyager’s filter.”

What you may not have seen is the “extended,” “noir” version of that video:

But that’s just one direction to go with combinations of gear. Here’s a look at what happens when you augment a synth with outboard effects, also in this case from Moog Music. Chris writes:

These next two are a pair showing how to use the Env Out CV from the Moog MF-101 filter and MF-107 FreqBox to bring tempo-synced filter effects to the Voyager (which is somewhat limited in that regard compared to the LP and SP which have MIDI synced LFOs and arpeggiators). First the MF-101, then with a bit gnarlier and more complex setup with the FreqBox.

One thing you get out of computing platforms versus analog gear is worlds of sound that are impossible in the analog domain. That’s why it’s especially nice to see Chris combine csGrain, the out-there granular effect in Csound’s new incarnation on the iPad, with a Moog guitar:

But just as with desktop computers, a terrific role for mobile and tablets, particularly the MIDI-equipped iPad, is as a sequencer. The tablet interface becomes as natural an editing and composition tool as the gear is for tweaking and performance. Chris offers:

Here’s a really quick and dirty one I shot on my Droid while playing. It is on my other YouTube channel. Here I used the Koushion app to sequence the LP. The LP has the CV Out Upgrade so I sent the Pitch CV to the CP-251 which inverted it, then sent it to control the Voyager’s filter cutoff. As the LP note goes up, the Voyager Filter Cutoff goes down. This was all tied together through Ableton which was sending the same clock to a Line 6 Echo Pro so all the echos were synced to the same clock…

Of course, there’s a strong Moog Music emphasis in all these videos, but they all demonstrate more broadly where the productive overlaps of digital and analog can lie, adaptable to much humbler rigs and combinations.

If you find this sort of thing inspiring in your own music, you can follow Chris’ site directly:
http://experimentalsynth.com/

And give Animoog a try, or visit Moog Music:
http://apps.createdigitalmusic.com/apps/animoog
http://www.moogmusic.com/

We’ll be watching.

Quit your job, leave your loved ones, stock up on food, and get ready to destroy your life with videos from YouTube. Network Awesome, a kind of curatorial “TV” network full of free online videos, has been assembling the best documentaries dealing with electronic music online, with hours and hours and hours of things that could basically keep you from, ironically, reading this site for the rest of the week if you like.

This isn’t just some random assortment, either. There are thoughtful assortments and surprise discoveries, including a celebrity-chosen set of some pretty far-out live shows pulled by Jan St.Werner of Mouse on Mars. (How Jan has time to watch YouTube in the midst of an obsessively-detailed production process and punishing touring schedule, I have no idea.)

As Network Awesome’s Jason Forrest tells CDM:

We have guest curated shows by Soul Clap & Mouse On Mars as well as specials on Aphex Twin, Clara Rockmore, Giorgio Moroder, Daft Punk and pretty much every other interesting electronic musician you can think of.

You can find everything on one massive archive page from last week. But here are a few favorites of mine, if the official Network Awesome page made your eyeballs fall out:

A collection of Aphex Twin videos:

An epic collection of IDM classics (remembering that the IDM dream of the 90s is alive on CDM):

Autechre – Gantz Graf
Plaid – Itsu
Aphex Twin – Donkey Rhubarb
LFO – Freak
Pan Sonic – Telakoe
Cylob – Rewind
Bogdan Raczynski – Ahou Bouken
Squarepusher – Come on My Selector
Seefeel – Fracture
Amon Tobin – Esther’s
µ-Ziq – Zombies
Oval – Ah!
Boards of Canada – Dayvan Cowboy

Channel 4′s 2001 docu “The Shape of Things That Hum” covers a significant lineup of electronic instrumental milestones, including the Minimoog, vocoder, Yamaha DX7, Fairlight CMI sampler, Simmons, Roland TB-303 and TB-808, and Akai sampler.

Live appearances by Jean-Jacques Perrey:

An all-live collection selected by Jan from Mouse on Mars:

1. Whitehouse – Live Action 39 Reseda 6-21-84
one of the coolest live electronic music perfomances ever. if kraftwerk would have performed like that they could have skipped the robot fake part and go straight to pop heaven.

2. Masonna @ Helluva Lounge, Kobe (May 2010)
not really pure electronic, rather an effect distortion cabaret in a beautiful stage design. you don’t know if any of the sounds are live and still it is such an outstanding performance.

3. Yannis Xenakis – Mycenae Alpha
it’s always hard to identify which actions exactly trigger which sounds in an electronic music performance. xenakis’ upic system provides the most obvious and honest translation: you can see exactly what you hear. as live as it gets in granular synthesis.

4. Jacques Tati – PLAYTIME
tati’s playtime is one is of my most favourite movies ever. it’s all choreographed around sound. this is a sequence in a hyper modern office building where the concierge is playing the most fantastic sequencer imaginable. replay, switch off the image and just listen to the sounds.

5. Tatu Tyni’s tap dancing cards
tatu tyni the godfather of skweee in one of his magic dance trigger performances.

6.Radioboy live @ Music Plane
perfect performance with a noble purpose. herbert as radioboy replaces the 808 with flaky cornflakes packages. bonus: introduction by mtv veteran ray cokes.

7. Michel Waisvisz – Crackle Synthesizer
michel waisvisz’ crackle synthesizer, probably the most immediate and beautiful synthesizer ever built. unfortunately it’s not michel who plays it in this video.

8. Michael Waisvisz – the Hands
so here is a clip with michel waisvisz, inventor the crackle synth. michel was also the director of steim, amsterdam’s legendary institute for electronic music research. he is using his other famous electronic instrument “the hands” in this clip.

9. Dick Raaijmakers – Intona (1992)
as there is no category for live microphonic music we lump this into live electronic. dutch composer dick raaijmakers doing all the things you ever dreamed of doing to a microphone.

10. Dj Elephant Power – Scratch Tv- Part 2
to round up this little journey into the world of concrete musical abstraction here is a live scratch anthem by dj elephant power.

Delia Derbyshire, Tom Dissevelt and Luc Ferrari feature in a collection of electronic pioneers working primarily with tape and simple electronics (before modulars and computers transformed the techniques of the medium):

Selected by The Sadnesses, Theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore is seen in a series of performances and an interview. Whether she’s the only person to “master” the instrument is debatable, perhaps – but she is certainly incomparable.

The complete list:

http://networkawesome.com/special/electronic-music-week/

The name “Jupiter” evokes some strong feelings among synth aficionados. Little wonder, than, that when Roland introduced a modern successor, the response was impassioned. CDM was one of the first to look in detail at the Jupiter-80, and I was surprised – given the tendency of this readership away from massive flagship keyboards – to see it become one of our biggest stories of the year.

Roland faced some serious criticism when the story it told about the new Jupiter was less about synthesis and more about the instrument-emulating Supernatural engine. After all, since the days of the original Jupiter’s launch, we’ve come to think of the synthesizer as its own category of instrument – not an emulation of anything else. Then there was the fact that the JP-80′s weight and cost put it out of reach of many musicians.

If those were your criticisms, the news out of last week’s Musikmesse should be welcome news. First, the Jupiter-50 is a Jupiter keyboard for those of you without big budgets and road crews; it’s lighter and more affordable. The lack of the JP-80′s nifty touchscreen isn’t bad news, either – new iPad integration means you can get deep into programming right from your tablet.

Second, the JP-50 and a new second version of the JP-80 significantly refocus on synthesis features. I spent some time talking to Peter from Roland Europe at Messe about the synth stuff added to the JP. A lot of the effort went into behavioral modeling of classic analog filters. (See CDM’s hands-on video above.) Peter can’t say on camera the names, but you’ll get the trademark filters found on synthesizers from Sequential Circuits (Prophet) and Moog.

The new Jupiter-50, little sibling to the big JP-80 introduced last year.

Most notably, I got the sense from Peter that Roland not only heard but took seriously complaints from the synth-loving public that any new keyboard called “Jupiter” really needed to be a synth. Now, don’t get me wrong: I actually think the Supernatural stuff is pretty cool. I can easily imagine someone who needs versatility onstage or is programming film and TV scores or otherwise needs some great-sounding, wide-reaching instruments will really love it. It’s not anything you haven’t heard from big sample libraries on computers, but you get it in a keyboard you can turn on in a matter of seconds and tour with without needing a dedicated computer tech tailing you around. I think, ironically, those features will seem more appealing when you don’t have to choose between a keyboard that makes those sounds and a rich synthesizer. Now you get both of those things in one unit, and via the JP-50, one that can reach a wider audience.

New in the version 2 JP-80 and on the JP-50:

• Three new low-pass filter models, for a total of four
• New effects structures – yes, parallel routing as previously, but now a total of five structures including serial routing. This gives you the kind of semi-modular effects routing you’d normally expect on a soft synth.
• Quicker access to playing a single sound (without all the zones) called Registration Play, and SONAR integration.

Jupiter-80 Version 2

On the JP-50:

• Same sound engine as the JP-80
• 76-note weighted keys. (This isn’t the same class of keybed as found on the JP-80, but it still feels like a premium keyboard; I gave it a try at Messe.)
• Integrated USB audio/MIDI interface, and USB song player/recorder. This also includes, via an optional wireless dongle, the ability to wirelessly stream MIDI and audio to an iPad or iPhone – new functionality also demoed at Messe last week.

Jupiter-50

No official pricing yet, but word is it’ll be significantly less (of course) than the 80, and availability is planned for late spring.

My colleague Steve Fortner at Keyboard Magazine got an exclusive first look at the JP-50. There’s an extensive video series, but to get you started, here’s the sound programming vid:

See the full hands-on (and this, naturally, covers some of what’s new in the v2 firmware upgrade for the JP-80):
Roland Jupiter-50 Hands-on [Keyboard Magazine USA]

Previously:
First Look at Roland Jupiter-80, Images, and Reflections on the Jupiter Legacy

And little did I know how prescient the cooler in German words I uttered would become. Oops. (Hello from Berlin.)

Design, and investigation in general, thrive on a challenge. So Bastus Trump, working with none other than Monolake co-founder and Ableton imagineer Robert Henke, took on the call to make the blank glass of an iPad behave more as an instrument might. The results, filling that screen with overlapping circles, are impressive, exploiting continuous touch movements to make pitch gestures that are more difficult on a piano-style keyboard. But it’s even nicer to see digital fuse with analog and timbral transformation as the app, Orphion, meets the more traditional Moog Moogerfooger effects.

Bastus writes CDM:

[Orphion's] interface was developed especially for a touch screen and allows very expressive — and also virtuosic — playing. You can choose between different layouts of tonally-tuned pads, which sound differently depending on the finger position when played, and can be modulated by further movements. The sound and the means of interaction is a mixture of string and percussion instruments and reaches from soft to plucked to a hard slap.

The concept of the Orphion results from my master thesis at UdK Berlin supervised by Robert Henke (aka monolake). The topic was to develop an interface for multi-touch screens that allows a maximum of expression.

So, you can see a quick demo of how it’s played. But just how would this fit into your studio? For the answer to that question, we turn to our friend Chris Stack and his excellent Experimental Synth series.

In this episode:

Playing the Orphion iPad app through a Moog MF-102 Ring Modulator and MF-104Z Analog Delay. Moogerfooger parameters are controlled with the Moog Voyager Touch Surface CV outputs.

experimentalsynth.com

Thanks for the great work, Bastus. We’ll be watching.

iPad only; download the app or provide your own review on our exclusive Apps section:
http://apps.createdigitalmusic.com/apps/orphion

[Oh, yeah. About that. Announcement coming shortly. Consider yourself with the scoop by virtue of having read to the end of this article.]

For the lover of musical instruments and technology, southern California’s NAMM show is a giant toy shop. It’s work for many of its attendees, of course, but we know many of our readers dream of the objects that will make their next creations. And sure, inspiring lust is not our aim; on the contrary, there is some love that goes into these things. In the ideal, that’s the relationship of creator and consumer. These are things not to be bought and discarded, but kept and really used.

So, we have a different look at the NAMM show, through the lens of CDM contributor Marsha Vdovin, who has been at this show more times than she might like to count. I’ve added some comments about what these devices are and why they’re important. And the next time we see them, these inventions pictured in silence here, we expect them to be working hard on music far from the din and flourescent glare of the trade show floor.

As always, click for larger images. Photos by Marsha Vdovin; words by Peter Kirn:

Roland’s V-Guitar marks a surprising collaboration, bringing the famed American guitar maker Fender together with the Japanese electronic maker to make an “electronic guitar,” merging the two company’s tech on a digitally-augmented Stratocaster. More on this soon – but the extended playing techniques won over many guitarists.

The Danish design aesthetes of AIAIAI have improved upon their TMA-1 headphones with a studio model. Same drivers, same basic design, but a “flatter” response to sound (rather than beefed-up, DJ-ready bass) and closed ear design. It’s impossible to hear anything at NAMM, but I can attest that the new design is far, far more comfy to wear. Actually, if I could have kept these on the whole show to drown out the sound, it would have been great.

An easy place to spot a talented celebrity was at the Dave Smith Instruments booth, at which artists clustered around Dave and Roger Linn. They were on-hand with plenty of tweaks to their stellar Tempest drum machine.

Teenage Engineering’s OP-1 grew up, with new features (drum sounds! MIDI sync – at last), and grew out, with a companion product for connecting sensors and USB host mode that could be a boutique item for music DIYers. We’ll go hands-on with each this year, and while readers were disappointed on a lack of some details (will the OpLab be open source?), we expect to get more details from the Teenagers when the product is ready in the coming months.

Readers of tech blogs (ahem) may miss out on the fact that the vast majority of NAMM is really for guitarists, drummers, and traditional instrumentalists. And yes, that includes glittery, pink products from Daisy Rock Guitars. We’ve concluded this model will be perfect for Sparkle Pony. (And really, if you’re not watching Portlandia to get that reference, get on it. Also, Jenny Conlee is crazy awesome.)

Thin, responsive, and expressive, the QuNeo from Keith McMillen – funded on Kickstarter – proves it’s really happening. With continuous pressure response on its touch controls and bi-directional control, it could be the most anyone will ever have gotten from a US$200 controller. Yes, we’ll be watching.

Pioneer wasn’t showing anything new at this show — they timed those launches over the fall with new controllers like the Ergo. But they did have a glossly all-white lacquer set of limited-edition devices that looked absurdly gorgeous. Now if I want to do my flat over in the style of a Stanley Kubrick set, I know what DJ gear I’ll be buying. (If you don’t know what I mean, watch the end of 2001 again – or the living room in Tron: Legacy, which is more or less a copy.) White is the new generic-dull-charcoal.

Akai’s MPC Renaissance is unlike any other mass-market controller we’ve seen. It’s actually substantial, something that feels like a vintage MPC even though it’s designed to work with software (pictured). The audio circuitry is straight out of the modern MPC, but there’s a switch for “vintage” modes – think 12-bit output when the MPC60 is enabled, for instance. Akai told CDM they built the software in-house, but we also learned at NAMM that they licensed time-stretch tech from iZotope, giving their upcoming MPC software generous audio-manipulation abilities.

The Renaissance will cost you, with a street expected well over a grand, but that makes it even more welcome that the same superb pads and response curves are also on the maker’s MAX49 keyboard and cheaper MPC Model.

Just expect to wait: these were prototypes, and there were still some bugs to work out.

The Renaissance is for the MPC die-hard; the MPC Studio is the model that will directly take on Native Instruments and Maschine. It’s slim, sleek, and still has great-feeling controls. And while that makes it compelling competition for Maschine, I’m gratified to see this whole market expanding, new workflows for performance and production, and a push to better quality in the controllers. The days when computer gear meant “cheap and plastic-y” are mercifully at an end. Speaking of which –

Akai’s MAX49 keyboard could be a new model to beat. The keyboard action is satisfyingly springy, with a new keybed not seen in previous models. The pads are identical to those on the Renaissance, and feel more the way proper MPC pads should. Not everyone will love the light-up, touch-sensitive resistive faders, but I found with a bit of pressure, they worked well – and that means never having to worry about a fader catching up with the value in software. You also get serious features: Control Voltage, a full complement of MIDI ports, and aftertouch. Did I mention Control Voltage? It’s nice to see a controller keyboard with a slightly premium price, build, and features.

The last surprise from Akai was this MPC DJ. The company says it’s a prototype only, and had little more to say about it, but it’s fascinating to see the MPC and turntable controls converge.

Moog’s Minitaur was my favorite synth of the show. It just sounds consistently brilliant, no matter which way you turn it or play it – and I accordingly noticed it was the synth the most people were actually playing on the show floor.

This is what a 24-karet KORG MonoTribe looks like, alongside a silver-plated model. There’s little more one can say. It is, of course, one of a kind — and already spoken for.

The other thing of beauty at the KORG booth: a limited-edition reverse-key SV-1 keyboard.

iOS accessories were numerous, but a few were genuinely useful. IK Multimedia’s iRig Mic “Cast,” for instance, is coupled with handy software for podcasters, as a quick tool for interviewing or podcast recording.

It’s not a new product, but one of the reviews to which I’m most looking forward is this Eers product. It promises custom in-ears you make yourself, rather than the enormous cost of getting them custom-made. Stay tuned on this one – protecting your hearing and making on-stage gigs go well is perhaps as essential as gear can get.

The just-intonation Hymnatron from the Dewanatron crew was one of the most compositionally-compelling instruments at the show, with a unique sound, tuning, and key layout. And it looks mighty handsome in this one-off wooden case.

LiveWire’s modular was among the many dreamy modular rigs at Big City Music and Analog Haven, two Los Angeles hotspots for analog modulars. Did we mention space was more plentiful and inexpensive, and gigs more generous, in LA than in NYC, Chicago, or San Francisco? Funny coincidence, that.

Many modules graced this show, but the most intriguing was not analog, but digital – think digital algorithms in an analog, patch-cord-modular hardware workflow. Tom Erbe, maker of long-beloved SoundHack (the app, and then more recently the plug-ins) put some of his sonic wizardry into a module, collaborating with one of our favorite modular builders, MakeNoise. The result: the MakeNoise Echofon. As such, it’s a perfect emblem of our Create Digital Music, Create Analog Music philosophy. Dear Berlin friends: let’s plug this into your monster modulars, okay?

Big City Music is a wonderful place. The other candidate for best new module: brilliant creations by Metasonix, as previewed here. We’ll be watching for these to be patch-able, too.

Casio had its classic CZ-1000 synth on-hand at its booth. The Casio XW isn’t quite a successor to the CZ, though it does include some of those waveforms and phase distortion sounds. What it does appear to be is a very affordable, do-just-about-everything workstation at a fraction of the price of any of its rivals. For someone who wants a jack-of-all-trades gigging keyboard, this could very much be a contender.

Our friends at Beatport are evidently getting into the hardware business. The most interesting launch wasn’t a set of TMA headphones with Slimer-green cords (I’ll take the Studio model, thanks, or just a non-Danish set of studio cans). Instead, I was intrigued by the eminently-practical line of gigging cords Beatport is working on with Hosa. They include features live digital musicians and DJs badly need, like color-coded cords you can find easily at a show, and hinged USB cords you can cram into tight spaces. More on those soon.

Thanks, all. Lastly, I want to thank everyone I got to spend time with at the NAMM show, and particularly Marsha Vdovin, who is responsible for these photos and keeping our schedule together. NAMM is always too crowded and too short, but it can lay groundwork for a whole year. And I’m excited for this Year of the Dragon. Be seeing you.

For the rest of our NAMM coverage:
http://createdigitalmusic.com/tag/namm/

Photos by Marsha Vdovin / Words by Peter Kirn.

There’s lots of new stuff for musicians. Sometimes, the best thing to do is to leave some of it out, and skip to what’s really interesting.

Neil Bufkin did a great job last year covering NAMM for CDM, shooting some lo-fi, informal videos that got right to the heart of what we wanted to know. So, I’m pleased to share Neil’s work again, since unless you’re following forums (fora?) closely, you might miss it.

He picked out some of our absolute favorites. Highlights: Moog sums up the Minitaur in one, excellent word (“knobby”!), the Arturia shows off its sound shapers, Teenage Engineering flaunt their DIY prowess (hint: you can make your own inputs for next-to-nothing for the OpLab), and we get some up-close highlights of other hardware, too.

Bonus: I’ve included a quick upload from my, cough, phone of the QuNeo hardware. We’ll wait to shoot prettier videos when this gear actually ships. In the meantime, find a really old CRT (maybe from an old Commodore) and plug into that, if you can.

Minitaur: It’s Knobby!

I didn’t get to shoot a video, because I was too busy for the few minutes I had with the Minitaur just playing. The controls are simple, elegant, and – here’s why you know it’s a Moog – absolutely every conceivable position of the parameters sounds brilliant. It’s a bit spooky, or unfair, or something. I’ll have a full hands-on hopefully around April from Berlin. Here’s a tour with the Chief Engineer of Moog.

(For more of why we love Moog Chief Engineer Cyril Lance, see him show us the Moogerfooger Cluster Flux.)

Moog also posted some celeb visitors to their booth jamming away and making this thing sound even better; see other tidbits from their Twitter stream.

Arturia Minibrute

It has a name that sounds Moog-like, and it might be an analog hardware synth, but make no mistake: this synth is all-French, and un-Moog. The feel of playing it different, it has a great rotary-controlled arpeggiator, and the sound shapers and oscillator mix controls can take it into some very different sonic territory. I made repeat visits to the booth just to wrap my head around the feel, and got to really love it.

Akai MAX49

So now that you’re looking for a keyboard with MIDI and CV to go with all these new sound modules, here’s a surprising candidate – Akai. Yes, we’re utterly relieved to see the company that was recently making tiny keyboards for iPhones and things with only USB MIDI on them return to MIDI DIN and CV.

In my hands-on with the MAX49, I was very impressed by the feel. The keybed feels terrific and just springy enough, and the pads are more traditional MPC-style pads shared on the new MPC controllers. They’ve also sorted the velocity response. (That is, they aren’t the pads readers were complaining about on previous Akai keyboards.) Also, the red color that looks so garish in the product photos looks very nice in person; it’s a high-gloss, thick finish that is reminiscent of car paint.

Here’s a more detailed look at all the features via Neil:

Smithson Martin Emulator

It’s likely spendier than what at least some readers will want – especially with the iPad as an everyman’s alternative – but I really enjoy Neil’s detailed look with Smithson Martin at the custom control layouts on the Emulator hardware.

Our friends at The Verge also take a look at the new hardware. (I’ve become a great fan of Joseph Flatley’s general tech writing, so I’m really pleased to see him covering the music tech area … and Joseph, one of these days we’ll be in the same place at the same time.)

Teenage Engineering OP-1 Update, Oplab

While some may resent the gloss of marketing around their work, the truth is, the Teenage Engineers are also doing some great engineering. The OP-1 updates take a synth that was conceptually interesting and make it more musically inspiring and productive, finally starting to realize some of its original potential.

And then there’s Oplab. At $300, it’s not an Arduino – but what it is is a unique, programmable combination of CV, MIDI, and USB hosting (that’s the key) to which you can connect virtually any hardware or custom sensor or hardware creation. Some onlooked misunderstood what it was initially, comparing its pricing to boxes that only to CV-to-MIDI conversion, and missing the advantages of USB hosting.

Here’s a better look at what it actually does, and I can guarantee, having talked to the TE crew, that there will be more details to come. I hope that this will also inspire other DIY projects, even those not involving the Oplab per se, so we’ll document those aspects, too.

Again, The Verge gives us a second look with a nicer camera.

Livid

Livid has been very, very busy of late. And their latest controller, in collaboration with Richie Hawtin and M-nus, is an extraordinary example of what iteration can do for hardware. The first pad-and-fader-and-knob controllers from Livid were very, very good. This is even better. Quietly, Livid is making the kind of all-around controller many musicians will appreciate, even as big makers struggle to find the formula artists want.

Since I hear there’s some association between M-nus, techno, and Berlin, let’s hope we can get a closer hands-on. Anyone interested in that? Show of hands?

Watch This Space

We have more photos and hands-on details of new tech from NAMM to bring you. I’m working through them slowly, as is my speed, so we can go into the stuff we really care about in greater detail. And since I can’t only look at new gear, new music coverage coming, as well. Be seeing you.