Sunday Newsletter

Sunday Newsletter: Halloween III

In the spirit of the season, we have been re-watching the original Halloween series of movies. And in some ways, the most intriguing one is Halloween III.

It’s an odd one as it has nothing to do with the first two, or the Michael Meyers saga at all. It’s a standalone story that follows the uncovering of a rather ominous plot by a successful Halloween mask company. In some ways, the movie is a bit of mess, particularly when it comes to characters and storyline. But putting aside those, it is full of some interesting sound an imagery.

This is no more so than in the opening credits. Rather than the iconic 5/4 theme from the first two movies, we open with some low analog-synth tones, and simple pixelated computer graphics that is gradually revealed to be a Jack-o-Lantern.

I was curious how these were done. The synthesizer sounded like a Prophet; the graphics were a mystery. Fortunately, it wasn’t too hard to find out that John Carpenter indeed used a Prophet 10 as the main synth, along with a Prophet 5, a LinnDrum, and an ARP analog sequencer.

I don’t have a Prophet 10 handy. Very few people do. It was a massive synth that was essentially two Prophet 5 engines in a large package with two keyboard manuals and a wooden finish. I did have the opportunity to play one once at the Vintage Synthesizer Museum.

At CatSynth HQ, I have Cherry Audio’s P-10, a great re-creation of the original. We did a review for CatSynth TV back when it came out.

It came with two “Carpenter” presets. One was a beautiful, undulating drone with noise and filter details. The other combined a bass synth with a minor arpeggios. Of course, these referenced not only the Halloween series but also Carpenter’s other films of the era, like The Thing. I had quite a bit of fun improvising with these after watching the film, in particular “Carpenter Soundscape” by our friend James Dyson. I recorded a bit of what I did, which you can see and hear in this short.

Finding out about the computer graphics required a bit more digging. I did find this interview on the website The Art of the Title with designer John Walsh.

“The Halloween III animation was fairly simple. I enlarged the logo that production used for their TV spots and had it printed out on a grid. That made it simple to manually generate X and Y data for the logo. The program that animated the reveal of the scan lines was written in Fortran. I could control the speed of the lines as they animated onto the screen, and did several detail animations of different parts of the logo, as well as the entire pumpkin.”

The program was run on Cromemco Z-2D computer, an early microcomputer that used a Zilog Z80 processor and S100 bus, and ran the CP/M operating system. In many ways, it was similar to the Zenith Z89 that I used as a kid in the early 80s, but Walsh’s Z-2D apparently supported color graphics. I thought it was interesting that he used Fortran rather than BASIC, but either was a perfectly good option for CP/M systems of the time. It would be interesting to recreate this on an emulator, though to get the true effect, one would need to run it with a big old CRT monitor and film it.

In addition to the opening credits, there was the sinister company town of Santa Mira, a strong visual element, and a character in its own right. Although the town is fictional it was sound in the very real tiny town Loleta, California, just south of Eureka.

[NoeHill, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons]

I will have to stop there next time I head up to Eureka and the north coast.

Sunday Newsletter: No Kings

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Like millions of others, we at CatSynth attended our local No Kings protest. It was a beautiful day in San Francisco, and people were in a joyous and defiant mood. I made a short video with highlights from the march up Market Street.

In the midst of the march itself, it’s hard to get a sense of its magnitude – 50,000 people by most estimates.

And this was, of course, repeated in cities and towns across the country, and even in other parts of the world. It gives one a bit of hope in this very challenging and sometimes demoralizing time.

As happens every time I cover one of these protests for CatSynth TV, I get at least one person complaining about my “getting political” and unsubscribing/unfollowing in a huff. I always politely say that I’m sorry to see them go, and remind them that the channel (and the blog) have always delved into political and social causes when I think it’s important to do so. And in this moment, it’s really important that people with platforms that “aren’t political” participate. For every person who complains or leaves, I’ve received multiple positive and encouraging remarks. For example, someone who appreciated seeing a “synthfluencer” that wasn’t just bopping along like everything was OK, and taking the time and effort to bear witness and push back against the regime.

It’s also worth noting that so many people get their information on politics and shape their opinions through channels that aren’t overtly political. I think a lot of us on the liberal-to-leftist side lost track of that in the last few years. In particular, a lot of young men seem to be influenced by channels ostensibly about fitness, men’s health, sports, and the general “manosphere” world, which mixed in a bit of right-wing populism with their sports banter and promos for health supplements. I think a channel about cats, synthesizers, culture, etc., can potentially reach some people who aren’t enmeshed in politics more positively and progressively. Even if we don’t change anyone’s mind, it might get someone who shares our opinion off the sidelines and involved in a way that suits them. There is no one right way or right medium to stand up to this increasingly fascist regime.

Did you attend a No Kings event yesterday, or have you been involved in other actions or events? Please do let us know in the comments.

Our First Sunday Newsletter

Also published to Substack.

It’s been a while since I’ve written an essay or such. It used to be a regular occurrence on the CatSynth blog. Between the photos, I wrote music and art reports, “fun with highways” articles, and the occasional opinion piece. Music, art, and highways all migrated to CatSynth TV, and slowly after that, writing dried up altogether, other than the year-end post and the occasional other short piece.

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I’ve wanted to reverse that trend for a while, as there are ideas that don’t lend themselves to videos, music, or the highly compressed bits of communication on social media. But writing always took a back seat to CatSynth TV, to music, and to living life in general.

So what is finally getting me off my tuchus, firing up the ancient Tandy m102 laptop and assembling these words that you are reading now? A few factors stand out. One, I am finally starting to observe free time amidst my usual busyness, given a few external commitments this month. Another is that I have started reading *How to Do Nothing* by Jenny Odell, and resonated with her thesis and examples on how to step back from the ever-toxic milieu we find ourselves in. And finally, there is the toxic milieu itself, which lends a sense of urgency to anything that resists it without running away from it entirely. I have my escapes, and we will talk plenty about them in the coming weeks and months. But for now, I think this is sufficient, being present in this moment outside on the patio at CatSynth HQ, typing on my cute little retro computer while my cat Sam Sam enjoys the cool, fresh air.

Please join me here on most Sundays for more wordy thoughts.