Saturday, September 15, 2007

Busy weekend, no synth fun

This weekend (and week actually) has been usually busy and I unfortunately do not have time to work on a new video. In fact I still haven't unpacked my rig since AH Bay Area last weekend :(

I did get around to playing with the Boss DS-1 that I won in the raffle; I forgot how cool those are. I guess I've become a bit jaded, not expecting a $40 pedal to be that good.

Speaking of AH Bay Area, the idea of putting together some kind of touch controller for the modular has constantly been on my mind since then. Ive wanted a Haken Continuum for a few years now but as I invest more and more money into modules, the price of a Continuum becomes harder and harder to swallow. That being said, I'd love to have some kind of Buchla-like touch controller. The best idea I've thought of is a 2 octave arrangement of short ribbon controllers arranged like keys of a standard kwyboard. That way you have some control fo up/down as well as pitch and trigger. Maybe even add a long ribbon along the bottom for a third control source; could be utilized by your thumb while your fingers are on the ribbon "keys".

What do you guys think?

Sunday, September 09, 2007

Analogue Haven Bay Area 2007

AH BA was fucking awesome! I had *a lot* of fun and even managed to walk away with two raffle prizes; Best Of Analog Dialog magazine and a Boss DS-1 distortion (something I was planning on buying).

I also got to meet and talk to some really cool people. Eric from Metasonix was there, as was Paul Schreiber from MOTM. Dave Smith even showed up with a Prophet '08 which sounded sick and thick as hell. If anyone is in the market for a analog poly-synth, look no further than the Prophet '08! Zerosum also made the trip out and it was really cool to meet and hang out with him in real life. We need to do that again bro!

I was really pleased with the attention that my rig received; people generally thought it was pretty cool and a nice choice of modules. There were some *amazing* rigs there though. A huge Wiard system, Robert Rich's MOTM system, and Brandon Daniel's big Eurorack rig. There was also a big dot com system, I forgot that guys same (sorry to whoever you are). I was setup next to Chris Muir and his 200e rig; that was sweet!

All in all it was an awesome, awesome time; kudos to Gino and Brandon, and whoever else helped to organize the get together. Cheers guys, I can't wait until next year!

PS. I completely forgot to make use of the camera phone that was in my pocket the whole time, but there were a few folks there with still and video cameras, so I'm sure you'll be seeing coverage on Flickr + youTube soon.

[UPDATE]
From the AH list: Pictures from AHBA 2007.

There's a couple shots of me and my system on Page 2; just look for the Metasonix boxes ;)

Monday, September 03, 2007

Model 28 Video Demo

It's Labor Day, I have the day off, and nothing really to do...so that means....video demo!

This time it's the Plan B Model 28 Programmable Tap Clock, per request. I tried to make it somewhat brief, but I still can't seem to make it under the 5 min mark.



Enjoy.

Addendum from Peter @ Plan B (via comments on Matrixsynth):

Regarding the separate START/STOP inputs:
Doing it with two inputs instead of one is a flashback from my Buchla days. My feeling it's better this way as you can if you wish use separate signals to start and stop the counting. This way you could for instance use a keyboard trigger to start it, which would also be used to start a sequencer and reset that seq to stage 1. Then you could use the gate output of let's say stage eight of that sequencer to stop the M28. This way you can get repeated eight beat phrases from the 28 which would begin on the depression of a keyboard. It would be much harder to do that with a single start/stop input.

-P