Cats

Trash Audio party at NAMM and Matrixsynth “Wine Bar”

Last night was the annual Trash Audio party that occurs during NAMM. It’s an opportunity to meet a lot of makers and enthusiasts of esoteric and DIY electronic instruments in a quintessentially southern Californian setting: a backyard pool party. It was great to meet some of the people I have gotten to know through writing this site.

Matrixsynth hosted a little wine bar of sorts, with his own Analog Reserve (red) and Digital Reserve (white). They were quite good, actually.

Weekend Cat Blogging #345 round-up

As stated yesterday, we at CatSynth are stepping in at the last minute to host the round-up for Weekend Cat Blogging #345.

And we did get a few entries, so let us continue with the round-up.

First up, we have this very sweet image of Jules and Vincent together at Judi’s Mind Over Matter. They share brotherly love, and body heat.

Napping appears to be the order of the day (isn’t it always), and Meowza has staked out a good spot, on his human’s lap. But it’s mutually beneficial. Human acts as cushion and cat acts as space heater.

At Jan’s Funny Farm, Percy and the other cats decide to get a nice gift for Jan. Fortunately, they have sense not to select a cat bed.

At Animal Shelter Volunteer Life, they are celebrating the gifts of new homes for many of the cats, including Diamond pictured above. The PAWS shelter has been able to place a great many cats into new homes in both December and January!

At Pam’s Sidewalk Shows, the crew invites readers to submit their own captions for this week’s picture (shown above). Be witty, be creative, and leave them a suggestion.

Truffle and Brulee are taking it easy this Sunday, and have some advice for their mom that spending time with them will be healing. We at CatSynth agree that time with cats been be very good for one’s health.

And a bit of “WCB Apocrypha.” Susan St. Clair is a regular visitor for Wordless Wednesday and the Weekend Photo Hunt, which was part of yesterday’s post. But her photo hunt image is too cute not to include in this round-up.

We will continue to update through the end of Sunday, Pacific Standard Time, so if you would like to participate, please leave a comment below.

Weekend Cat Blogging: Luna and Luna

For Weekend Cat Blogging and Photo Hunt, we present this photograph of Luna with the Luna II microphone from M-Audio. The Luna mic has a very distinctive circular shape, and combined with the stand and the beanbag chair support this week’s Photo Hunt theme of Circular

The Luna is a recording mic (i.e., for good recordings in the studio and not for amplifying voices/instruments during band practice), so it only comes out when needed. I was setting up to do a recording for a collaborative project and Luna came and planted herself on the chair. Which is quite reasonable, as it is undeniably her spot.

Weekend Cat Blogging #345 is hosted by…well, it looks like it is hosted by no one. So we at CatSynth are happy to step in and if you would like to leave your entry in the comments below, we will append an impromptu round-up to this post.

This week’s Saturday PhotoHunt theme is Circular.

The Carnival of the Cats will be up tomorrow at Meowsings of an Opinionated Pussycat.

And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

CatSynth video: XoXboX plus KOMA AnAlOg gate / delay pedal.

From Janoise on YouTube.

Demo.
The Koma pedal has a gate and a very short delay.
At the end of the delay range the Koma gets in a kind of a bit-crusher sounding effect.
This is not often found at a analog pedal.
This is because Koma has modded the chip!

Also on matrixsynth, where you can see more videos and find out about the KOMA Elektronik “YouTube yourself!” Competition. They are going to be at NAMM next week.

via KOMA: “By the way, we love cats in videos! ;-)”

CatSynth pic: Appliancide (mostly) DIY modular

From Appliancide, where you can read more about the project.

I ordered some knobs and switch covers for the Doepfer modules, so they will blend in with my DIY stuff better. I am working on a second case and the modules to fill it. I will try to do a start-to-finish pictorial on one the modules this coming year. We’ll see. I like to build slow and rock out to music. Taking pictures cramps my style.

Also on matrixsynth:

“Clockwise starting from the upper left:

Doepfer a-111 VCO, Dual CGS/Serge DUSG, Doepfer a-188-1 256 stage BBD, Doepfer a-188-1 4096 stage BBD, DIY manual gate/lag generator, Doepfer a-135 mixer, Doepfer a-101-2 LPG, DIY version of Fonitronik Attenuverting Mixer and Buchla 292C LPG clone using boards from Thomas White.”

Weekend Cat Blogging: Return to the Beginning

For our first Weekend Cat Blogging of 2012, we reprise the original photo that launched this site. Here is Luna with the Novation keyboard on the beanbag chair near the turn of the new year.

Luna is all grown up compared to the youngster in the original photo in 2006, but she still has the same fur and eyes.  And she still favors this particular beanbag chair as her own.  Indeed, it’s a favorite napping spot here in the studio area:

I didn’t realize until looking at the original against these photos how similar the windows look, even though the original was in a completely different place.

The studio is a currently a focus of attention here at CatSynth HQ in that I am trying to further make it into a better organized laboratory for musical and visual creativity.  And it also has to continue to double as the office, the place where the computers sit and where I pay the bills.  I expect that Luna will continue to spend lots of time here as well.

Weekend Cat Blogging #344 is hosted by Mog with assists from Meowza and Ritzi at Mind of Mog.

The Carnival of the Cats well be hosted by Kashim, Othello and Salome in Vienna.

And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.