A compact show for you this month but still full of exciting happenings and quirky bits of gear. I’ll have a full report on Synth East next week all being well and do come along to the Live Stream on Sunday night at 8pm.
Synth East – We had a fabulous weekend in Norwich bathing in all things synthesis. We sold out the Saturday, enjoyed the Friday vibes and got told off for talking too loud during the workshop on Sunday. Everything went smoothly except that I never really got the chance to eat. It was fantastic playing in the patch-off with Jason Lim and the other patch-offs were also awesome. There will be highlights and performances on YouTube as soon as I’ve collated all the footage. One special moment was playing with Robin Scanner in the evening. I somehow managed to pull of some restrained fiddling that sat really well with what he was doing. Just a wonderful experience. So yeah, really good, really fun, lot of work but very very worth it. And a huge thanks to all the contributors and more importantly to you, dear attendee, who came, paid money and sampled everything we had to offer – thank you.
New things that were at the show included a ring modulator from Dwyfor Tech, the weird Splice thing from DPW that I am fully intending to get to grips with at some point and it was the first outing for the Caladan synth from Isla Electronics which is like an ala carte choice of 8 synths in one machine.
https://syntheast.com/
On a side note I was saddened to hear of the passing of Bob Percy. Bob performed at our very first Synth East, giving us 15 minutes of bliss on his Buchla Music Easel. Now, there was someone else who performed at Synth East that same year who has something else going on….
Look Mum No Computer Eurovision – well this is extraordinary. Sam Battle will be representing the UK in this year’s Eurovision. It’s mad but possibly genius – which is Sam to a tee. I’ve known Sam since the Thomann Synth Reaktor event, we’ve done live streams together and he came and did the patch off at the very first Synth East in 2023. He’s a great lad and my hope is that he finds this an incredibly joyful experience, and we’ll all be rooting for him as he brings some pure, unrefined, creative class to Eurovision.
Flat Six Modular Shroud of Turing – FlatSix is back with yet another take on their 1U keyboard thingy. This time it’s a Turing machine brilliantly called the Shroud of Turing. It generates randomness through s shift register and is tempered by a built in quantizer with recallable user scales. You can lock it, bump it, extend and contract it. Pretty cool I think.
https://flatsixmodular.com/
Musical Beings Tembo – Othello looking drum machine, programmed with magnets and is all over facebook at the moment. It’s a nice way to interact with a drum machine, I can see the appeal of placing draughts on a grid, although I also wonder about how quickly you reach the limitations of that idea. Aha, but then it samples, with a built in mic you can throw anything you like into it and start recycling that. It has hidden depths like looped backing tracks, extra kits and effects. Looks like fun, could be over-marketed, perhaps a bit too hipster and probably silly money, but very playful and potentially groovy. Apparently the website says it has over 20,000 preorders, although I think it only wants your email to tell you when the kickstarter goes live. Price likely to be $350-$550
https://www.musicalbeings.com/
GRM Tools Atelier – I had GRM Tools over 20 years ago. I thought it was brilliantly creative and I used it all over weird productions I was doing. Atelier is a modular and multi-channel playground. You build processes based on generators and modulators. There are oscillators, granulisers, samplers, effects, pitch shifters, delays and all sorts wrapped up in a fabulously detailed interface. They are tools to be interacted with and then applied to your music – what sort of mayhem will you make with them?
https://grm.tools/en/atelier.html
Eventide Music Mouse – Originally designed in 1986 by Laurie Spielgel, it uses a grid of interlocking harmonic structures to generate melody with a qwerty keyboard, mouse or trackpad. You basically just fiddle around with it and it pumps out notes and chord progressions into a nearby synth, at all times it retains its musical qualities and could push you into areas you never considered.
https://www.eventideaudio.com/software/music-mouse/
Gooey Audio Next – This is a cool little gater plugin that can push rhythms into all sorts of interesting places. It has 32 steps, 32 sliders and can be pointed at an envelope, filter or panning.
https://gooeyaudio.com/plugins/next/
FOAM by NOMN – Weird and complex sound generator that uses bubble acoustics. It takes the life of a bubble through expansion, membrane rupture, collapse and decay cascaded into over 16,000 voices. Is it chaos? Yes, definitely. It seems to sound like different forms of noise that are manipulable. I’m not sure what to make of it.
https://nomn.ai/#/product/FOAM
Cherry Audio SH-MAX – It’s a mash-up between the Roland SH-5, SH-7 and SH-3a in what looks like a classic System 100 era Roland synthesizer. Gosh, it sounds flippin’ awesome – just dripping with juicy vintage vibes. 3 VCOs, 2 filters, waveform mixing, lots of modulation and 20 studio effects make for a comprehensive architecture. Yummy.
https://cherryaudio.com/products/sh-max-synthesizer
Waldorf Protein – Cool little 8-voice wavetable synthesizer based on Microwave oscillators and cool things from the Iridium. You’ve got a lot of movement, a nice filter, layers of sound and some effects on the end. It’s affordable, compact and pretty nice way to get a Waldorf synth.
https://waldorfmusic.com/protein/
Safari Audio Superkeys Cubby – Nutty pedal plugin makers Safari Audio have released their first virtual instrument. It’s called Superkeys Cubby and is based on those really crap little Casio keyboards. It has four crappy sounds, a couple of controls, arpeggiator and buckets full of charm. What’s also fun is that theyu have a bunch of really high end people on the website with quotes saying it’s fabulous. It is certainly deliciously lo-fi.
https://safariaudio.com/products/cubby
Ezeptocore from Infinite Digits – totally mental sample player with slicing, sequencing and generally messing about in realtime. Streams directly from an SD card and applies Turing Machine style sequencing to generate patterns and variations. Also comes with a load of DSP effects – brilliantly bonkers.
https://get.ezeptocore.com/
Otter Mods – bunch of things including the Otter pattern generator, Octet Itero step sequencer, Triquetra shift register and a clock divider, which are all available in Eurorack and 5U. The Otter, or Oscillating Temporal Tessellation Repeater, can generate three different patterns through clock division and a bit of controlled randomness. The Octet is pretty simple and solid 8-steps of sequencing. The Triquetra is three shift registers that can loop or evolve. They have a hand-made vibe but the pricing looks pretty reasonable and the shop should be coming online soon.
https://www.ottermods.com/
Tembra Modules – Some of these are currently prototypes with very little information and will apparently be available only as DIY. There’s a 5-channel drum synth, dual shaped oscillator, dual VC envelope, Dual sequencer and Polivoks VCF. The drum synth is very interesting. It has a dedicated kick channel and then the other four could be anything. There are two “UNI” channels that feature filters and distortion and two FM channels with dual oscillators. It then has a mixing section and a compression section – this could be epic. The dual oscillator appears to be harmonic and looks like two separate oscillators side by side with some potential for cross modulation. The dual sequencer looks cool and is available and seems to be a pair of 4-step sequencers with probability and sample and hold.
https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/TembraModular
York Modular is a favourite of Paulee Bow and have a quirky, workshop vibe and are crazily good value for money. A handful of new modules just popped up including a dual linear VCA, a 2HP microcontroller based VCO and there’s an LFO version, a MS-20 style filter for (checks notes) 35 quid, and a vactrol based VCA. These look brilliant and I would be tempted to put together a starter eurorack system for people wanting to get into modular. The only problem being that they won’t ship to the EU or US for regulation reasons. I think they need to speak to people who do, because it must be possible – or if maybe Synth Cube and Schneidersladen take them on.
https://www.yorkmodular.co.uk/
SonicState Retro Cast – Sonic State has come up with a new podcast focused on vintage hardware, software, workflows and video games. Hosted by the fabulous Paulee Bow this is a unique show coming out of their little cupboard near Birmingham. What’s interesting I think is that it’s not just about the same cliched classic synths, this is about a community that still uses old computers, old workflows and revels in the usefulness of it all. The first episode is up now and features Paulee talking, of course, to Nick Batt about their first synths.
https://sonicstate.com/
Synth South West – Our friends at Pro Synth Network are having a jamboree down on the south coast of Devon at Dawlish. This is happening on the 21st of March with an all day Expo at The Strand Centre followed by a gig in the evening at the Shaftesbury Theatre. Tickets are £10 for the Expo and £10 for the gig or you can get a combined ticket for £18. I’ll be there, hanging out, with a bit of modular and stuff although I haven’t yet worked out how I’m getting there or where I’m staying. It’s great to see another local synth event pop up because not everyone can make it all the way over to Norwich 😀
https://www.synthsouthwest.com/
Synth Picnic – The next Picnic is upon us – Saturday 7th March at the Honesty Library in the Castle Mall, in Norwich, near Boots. I still have the Fourm, the TEO-5, Korg Kaos Pad and many other things. I’ll have the new Keystep 37 mk2 and the Transparentsea from Gintronic to play with. I also have lots of modular and synths available for rental from £1 a day – details on the website.
https://synthpicnic.com/