Lying users and synth manuals

In "Every User Lies" at the excellent Coding Horror blog, Jeff Atwood refers in passing to the concept of the "active user" – the person who immediately runs the software without looking at the manual at all.
In my trying out of various softsynths (most notably the WayOutWare TimewARP 2600 and the GForce Oddity and impOSCar), I’ve found myself doing that – firing up [...]

The ARP 2600 manual

Quite some time back, I found a scanned copy of the ARP 2600 User’s manual. I’ve always had a soft spot for the 2600, though I could never quite afford one; it’s always seemed like a great balance as far as analog synths go.In a recent fit of “my disk is too full”, I unzipped [...]

Different Skies: after

I’m currently at the airport, having just finished going through security and having to have my backpack scanned twice; too many confusing electronic bits, I guess.
Load-out took from after the concert and final jams (ten-ish) until about 3AM. We got to experience the weather we might have had: 60 mph winds and cold. Fortunately, [...]

Buchla 200

I saw one of these at a gathering at Recombinant Media Labs in San Francisco, with Buchla himself performing. It’s nice to see Real Analog Synths again, but the price point is still no more affordable for me now than it was when I first encountered synthesizers in 1972: $9K for a minimal version. Sigh. [...]

Calling all loopers

I got a mail the other day from someone who was looking to duplicate the kind of long, fed-back tape delays that Pauline Oliveros used in “II of IV”. I
initially suggested a Max/MSP program, or perhaps Supercollider, but, as he put it, “I use a computer as something to write on”, and I can understand [...]

The Lemur

No, not those animals with the big eyes; the Lemur is a new touch-control surface for computer-based synthesists. (Why do
lemurs so fascinate musicians?)
Not cheap: $2495. But it provides something exceptionally cool: you can drag-and-drop your desired controls in a Mac Windows, or Linux application and up load them to the Lemur. The controls are all [...]

createdigitalmusic

Those of you missing Metlay’s take on new gear should take a gander at createdigitalmusic. Nice reportage on upcoming interesting boxen.

(For those who want to see Metlay’s reviews in print, check out Recording Magazine. Mike is associate editor; you’ll often see articles there by other EMUSIC-L alumni as well.)

S3000 owners take note

William Shipway, in Sydney, Australia, asks:

I’m looking for an Akai S3000 to hire, borrow, or buy. I haven’t found one in the places I’ve looked in Sydney. My wife is organising a performance at the Sydney Conservatorium of a work that requires an S3000 (or compatible if that makes sense) for playback during [...]

The Man-Machine Interface: Audiopad

James Patten and Ben Recht, at the MIT Media Lab, have created a fascinating new tool called Audiopad. This is a hyperinstrument – a flat surface with embedded antennae that allows it to sense the position of objects on its surface. Combined with custom software and a video projector, this allows you to directly manipulate [...]