Archive for the 'Synthesizers' Category

Rossum Electro-Music Control Forge

Friday, November 4th, 2016

For several months now, I’ve been involved with Rossum Electro-Music and have been testing their new eurorack module, the Control Forge. This is a programmable 8 stage control voltage generator that can be use in a variety of applications. It can act as a waveform generator or an LFO, an envelope generator, a step sequencer, […]

Don Buchla

Sunday, October 2nd, 2016

It’s been a few weeks since the sad announcement of the passing of Don Buchla, and I’m still processing the weight of this news. In the history of electronic music there are a handful of pioneers who unarguably, have been pivotal in the development of synthesizer technology, and Don is one of the most […]

Moog Brother from Another Mother

Friday, May 20th, 2016

Class Photo from Group C of the Moogfest Engineering Workshop where we built the Brother From Another Mother Synthesizer. Thanks to Steve Dunnington and the Moog engineers for their efforts in making this another great event!

Composing a backing track for Bob Moog

Wednesday, May 18th, 2016

Minutes after stepping into the Moog Pop-Up factory set up at Moogfest, Emmy pulls me aside and asks me to compose a little bit of backing music for the Minimoog Model D Reissue, promotional video. Naturally, I tell her that i need to do it using only the new Model D! They pulled […]

lopassholes at robotspeak

Tuesday, March 29th, 2016

Jordan Ginsburg and I perform as a modular synth duo under the moniker, “Lopassholes”. Here’s a recording of our set in San Francisco from last week.

DSI/Sequential Prophet 6 Sound Design

Friday, May 15th, 2015

Once again, it’s an honor to have been asked to be on the sound design team for Dave Smith Instruments. Having regained the old “Sequential Circuits” moniker, the company is now DSI/Sequential! It’s only fitting that the new synthesizer is a six voice polyphonic instrument dubbed the Prophet 6! Synth legend, John […]

Dave Smith Instruments Pro 2

Monday, July 14th, 2014

The Pro 2 Synthesizer is part of the new generation of keyboards from Dave Smith Instruments. Partly inspired by the classic Sequential Circuits Pro-One, and using the technology of the DSI Prophet 12, the Pro 2 is a monophonic instrument that can be a center of a synth production studio, but also has the […]

Tesla Coil Samples

Thursday, February 27th, 2014

For those who follow my social media streams, you may have already seen the various DIYAudio, DIYSynth, DIYrepair projects going on around here for the past year. One of these projects is the oneTesla Musical Tesla Coil kit. In “synth speak” it’s essentially a pulse wave oscillator. The oneTesla incorporates an arduino […]

Korg MS-10 Ressurection

Thursday, August 29th, 2013

Last winter, my friends, Ryan and Lisa came for a visit and brought along a Roland TR-606 and a Korg MS-10, both of which were not working.  The 606 was easy to fix since the lead to the battery compartment had come loose.  The MS-10, however, was a completely different story and required a lot […]

mØxr - CV Audio to MIDI Converter

Wednesday, June 15th, 2011

mØxr is a MaxMSP based application that converts Control Voltages as audio signal to monophonic MIDI note messages. The application must receive two CV signals through audio connections, a Gate CV and a Note CV. While any audio signal can trigger a MIDI note message, mØxr is calibrated specifically for the Note CV […]

Minimoog Voyager CV/Gate control from Record

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Last year, I posted a few items on using Reason CV/Gates to control analog synths through a MOTU audio interface, and recently, I’ve received an unusual amount of email inquiring about the concept of controlling analog synths via Record. I figured it’s about time that I should post this, a Record session file with […]

Reason CV to Roland DIN Sync

Monday, July 20th, 2009

In this continuing quest to interface analog hardware to Reason 4.0, It’s become very apparent that only a few brands on hardware interfaces feature DC coupled outputs which will enable direct routing of control voltage signals (CV) from software applications to analog devices. Since the release of MOTU Volta, people have been trying to […]