Peggy the cat stars in this beautiful music video featuring the EOWave Ribbon 2 and Mutable Instruments Beads. From Viktor Alles (@victor__alles) on Instagram.
eowave
Yom Kippur 2017, Meditations and Reflections
Fast, reflect, and question. These are our personal mandates on Yom Kippur this 5778 (2017). Fasting is pretty self-explanatory – I don’t do it every year, but this year it feels important to do so. Sam Sam does not have to fast. The questioning centers around “what does it mean to be Jewish in this time and place”, an especially complicated and treacherous question for those of us who are secular Jews. Yom Kippur is described in Leviticus, the one book of the Torah that I have not been able to get through in its entirety (mostly because it’s extremely dense and about as riveting as the phone book). But I still celebrate independent of that, based on heritage and family tradition. You are a Jew if your mother is a Jew, end of story. I extend this rule to my cats.
[Sam Sam is exempt from fasting]
For an excellent read on the topic of secular Jews on Yom Kippur, especially secular Jews committed to activism and social justice, please read this article by Dania Rajendra [Full disclosure: Dania is my sister-in-law.]. For me, part of my plan for this holiday was to compose a track based on sounds from a short-wave-radio synth module an, idea I formulated during a reflective moment last night.
[Cover image taken during Yom Kippur 2016, see this article.]
The track was recorded as a meditation of sorts, getting into a heightened, focused state while turning the knobs of the Eowave short-wave module, tuning into stations that aren’t there. The other “master” of the track was the Wiard/Richter Noisering, which I let control the Rossum Electro-Music Morpheus module. Both focus on chance and working with elements very much outside my control. I also did not want to spend much time outside the meditation-recording process itself. There is no editing save for some tapering at the beginning and end of the track and the obligatory EQ and compression.
I am both doing too much, and too little at the same time. I can’t save all the shelter cats; I can help everyone suffering through one disaster after another in North America and Carribean. But I can try to make a little bit of a difference in each. When I focus on all things “CatSynth”, sometimes my music suffers – I’m overdue booking new gigs for my band CDP and I do feel a need to atone for that. In short, the challenge in 5778 and beyond is to find a way of doing all the things that matter most while minimizing time and resources on the things that don’t. No easy task for someone who tends to say “yes” to everything, hates to disappoint others, and has a difficult time letting go of things. But that last one is another aspect of this holiday, and so it is as good a time to begin as any…
NAMM 2017: Erica Synths, LZX, Sputnik, Roland, And More
There are multiple superbooths of modular synth makers this year. We visited the first (and smaller) of the two this afternoon.
The folks at Erica Synths have a new DIY kit inspired by the legendary Soviet synth Polyvoks.
It’s a raw but sonically rich instrument and we at CatSynth could see using it. They have also updated their flagship black series.
We would be remiss if we didn’t also show their adorable logo 😺.
One thing we have observed this year is that many module makers have upped their game when it comes to visual design. We saw that with the Erica Synths offerings, but with others as well. Consider this Euclidean Circles from vpme.de:
The Charcot Circles is a collaboration of Studio Electronics and eowave. It is a rather complex and enigmatic module providing sequencing and CV with non-linear processing.
The round designs are reminiscent of Buchla synthesizers, which of course brings us to Sputnik Modular which produces Buchla-inspired “west coast synthesis” modules.
LZX Modular is all about the visuals, as their modules process video rather than audio. They have several new offerings, including an LCD display module and an all-in-one starter. You can see a little bit in this video.
The both also featured Roland’s AIRA series, including the System-8. The setup featured remakes of some classic Roland modules that we reported about last year in addition to the “plug-out” system.
It is interesting that Roland has moved its display of these instruments from their main area at NAMM to the modular-synth booths. It would seem they know their audience.
Finally, we have new offerings from Industrial Music Electronics, formerly known as The Harvestman. They still have the same characteristic orange knob style.
Among there new modules are the Argos Bleak, a CV processer, the Bionic Lester mk II, a capacitor filter; and our favorite name-wise, the Contempt, a dyamics processor.
Modular manufacturers haven’t lost their edge even as the industry matures.
Big City Music
One of the “destinations” at NAMM is the booth of Big City Music, who always feature an array of analog synthesizers and esoteric musical instruments.
This rack featured modules from Metasonix and Wiard:
I have been interested in getting something from Metasonix for a while. But there also plenty of things to consider on this “toy shelf”:
In the lower left is a circuit bent toy from the Speak and Spell series. Above it are various effects pedals from 4ms Pedals:
The pedals all have very appealing visual designs (especially the Bend Matrix in the foreground), as well as interesting sound. You can hear some clips on their website.
I had a chance to play the Persephone Mark 2 from Eowave:
It featuring a “duophonic ribbon”, which allows one to use two fingers on the ribbon simultaneously to play chords with continuous pitch changes and produce unusual elastic harmonies.
Here we see a Dewanatron, I believe this one is a Hynmotron, with two ribbons for controlling sound:
We have encountered the Dewanatron in a previous post.
We received a professional demo of of the Surfin Step Sequencer from Surfin Kangaroo Studio, including its remote control capabilities:
Finally, we had a chance to try out the new digital simulation of the classic Mellotron synthesizer:
It was set up such that one could play both the original (below) and the new digital simulation prototype (above). The simulation faired quite well in an A/B comparison, including trying to play both simultaneously.