Submitted by ⓉⒺⒸⒽℕ⌽▃ⒾⒹ●⒞⒪⒨ via Twitter.
Cats
Mensa Cat Monday
CatSynth pic: Teenage Engineering Pocket Operator
Submitted by John F. Elberstein via Twitter.
“OK, it’s just a pocket synth, but there’s a cat with it ^^ @catsynth #Pocketoperator #TeenageEngineering“
Amidst the overwhelming abundance of synths at NAMM, we managed to miss this. If you have experience or opinions on the Teenage Engineering Pocket Operator series, please share.
Mensa Cat Monday: Recursion
CatSynth: The App! now available for Android
We at CatSynth are happy to announce that CatSynth: TheApp! is now available for Android. You can get your copy on the Google Play Store.
It has all the same features as the initial release of iOS, including an Android-optimized reader and manager for the blog, and of course a couple of Mystery Synths 🙂
So please download, leave us a good review, and share with your friends. But most of all, just have fun with it.
NAMM: Synthrotek and Synthesis Technology
We finally come to the end of our exhaustive visit to the huge analog modular booth at NAMM. We of course had to pay our friends at Synthrotek a visit. They make DIY synthesis kits as well as full modules, often with a delightfully noisy quality. For example there is the aptly named DIRT Filter and the Chaos NAND of which we at CatSynth are quite fond. They had some new offerings for this year’s show.
Among the new modules were a series that came from a collaboration with George Mattson. The MST and Synthrotek modules together form a complete analog synthesizer voice, with MIDI-to-CV, oscillator, filter, mixer, and modulations. There is even a classic Mattson-designed buffered multiple. Another interesting offering was the DS-M, a complete drum synth module with multiple “colors” of noise, built in oscillator, VCO and a voltage-based “velocity sensitivity.” It can create standard analog drum sounds, but can also do some rather unusual sounds as well. Like most products from Synthrotek, these can be ordered as raw kits, module-assembly kits (with panels, etc.), or as completed versions.
Nearby was Synthesis Technology, makers of the E-350 Morphing Terrarium that was among the first modules I bought back in 2012.
Next to the e350 in the photo is an expander module from Manhattan Analog that opens up some additional functionality of the original module. Also pictured above the the E-102 Quad Temporal Shifter, basically a digital implementation of the Serge analog shift register. The E-560 thru-zero frequency shifter and ring modulator is quite interesting as well.
This concludes our reports from this year’s NAMM show. There was so much to see on the synthesizer front we were not able to get to it all, much less write about it. It was definitely one to remember, but we are looking forward to more next year!
Mensa Cat Monday
Weekend Cat Blogging with Luna: Logo Portrait
Luna posed quite elegantly for this impromptu portrait. As always, she seems to match the interior design. The quintessential modern city cat.
If I can wrangle Photoshop, we might also be able to use this as Luna’s official logo portrait for our new app-development house, the CatSynth Appwerx! So far we just have CatSynth: The App, and that is all we can say at this time for a great many reasons.
NAMM: KOMA Eletronik, QuBit, 4ms
Today we continue with the panoply of synth module manufactures that we say at this year’s NAMM show.
One instrument that garnered quite a bit of attention (and deservedly) so was the new Komplex Sequencer from our friends at KOMA Eletronik.
First of all, it is sleek and beautiful. But it is also quite powerful. It features four independent 16-step sequencers supporting both MIDI and CV/Gate. The sequencers can each be set to play in one of five modes (forward, backward, ping-pong, ping-pong reversed, random); and CV can be quantized to various Western scales (for those who need such things in their music). The size of control and combined support for MIDI and CV would be a lot in itself. I am definitely looking forward to seeing this ship in the near future.
Qu-bit Electronix presented some modules that are also going to be our “want” list. The Nubulae may not be new for 2015, but it seems extremely useful compositionally. It reads and renders audio files from a flash drive, but with CV-based control for speed, pitch, and granular synthesis. The NanoRand is a tiny module that packs four different randomization functions along with a bright multi-color LED (it’s that big purple light in the photo above). Switching among the four functions via a sequencer creates some very intriguing musical patterns.
Finally, we at CatSynth were quite interested in the new Spectral Filter from 4ms. It is a spectral multi band resonant filter that can sculpt and amplify sections of a signal to create harmonic (or inharmonic) structures.
A unique feature was the circular control that allows one to “rotate” around the spectrum. I found myself comparing this to the newly released additive synthesis module from Make Noise (you can read about it here. They are both spectral manipulators and can some similar in particular moments, though they approach and instrument architecture is quite different.
CatSynth video: POLYGAMIST LOVE 6
From Smokey Quartz on YouTube, via matrixsynth.
“In this video three people and one cat attempt to play the Ekdahl Polygamist. One of them has never played a synthesizer before… and it’s not the cat!”