One of several submitted by Ron de Rooij on Facebook.
“bimbo . jemoet wel veel omje kitty geven astie de plaats van je tb,…. inpikt in de studio. tb acid monstertje”
attention / tickle me or;…….. i wil destroy ya setup;-[[
Cats
Weekend Cat Blogging and Photo Hunt: Korg MS-20 Patch
The theme for this week’s combined Weekend Cat Blogging and Photo Hunt is Patch. We at CatSynth have an alternative take on the theme, as Luna poses with a Korg MS-20 patch on the iPad:
As a bonus, the app’s simulated interface features patch cords. They’re a little challenging to manipulate on the screen, but the make for nice visuals.
Appropriately for an iPad-centric post, Weekend Cat Blogging #320 is hosted by Meowza at his blog iMeowza.
Photo Hunt 275 is hosted by tnchick. This week’s theme is Patch.
The Carnival of the Cats will be hosted this Sunday by Nikita and Elvira at Meowsings of an Opinionated Pussycat.
And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.
Ketzel, Feline Composer, Dies at age 19
Sad news about a feline composer, from the New York Times:
Ketzel, who won a prize for piano composition in 1997 and went on to be featured in a book, “The World of Women in Classical Music,” died Wednesday in Manhattan. She was 19 and lived on the Upper West Side.
Ketzel was a black-and-white cat.
In the article you can see a picture of Ketzel (whose name means “cat” in Yiddish), and a recording of her one composition, Piece for Piano, Four Paws. It is descending pitch-wise, but has a good sense of timing with a “beginning, middle and end.” The work was transcribed by one of Ketzel’s humans, Morris Moshe Cotel, who retired as chairman of the composition department at the Peabody Conservatory in 2000 and became a rabbi. It would be interesting to see, and even perform the score of Ketzel’s piece at some point.
Her piece one an award in the Paris New Music Review’s One-Minute Competition, and led to exchange between Professor Cotel and Allan Forte, with this observation:
long the way, Professor Cotel said he realized that Ketzel’s “exquisite atonal miniature” used only 10 pitches of the chromatic scale. “The two missing pitches are G natural and B-flat” — the opening notes of Domenico Scarlatti’s famous Fugue in G minor, known as the “Cat’s Fugue.”
Our thoughts go out to Ketzel’s surving human, Aliya Cheskis-Cotel.
CatSynth pic and video: My Cat is a Synthesizer 2.0
A photo and video submitted by vlern via facebook:
“Clyde guards the modular.”
Clyde also stars in the next installment of the “My Cat is a Synthesizer” video series.
CatSynth 5th Anniversary!
Today we mark the 5th Anniversary of CatSynth!
I started this site on July 19, 2006 as a novelty when a friend and former colleague at E-MU systems suggested that I “should make a website about cats and synths.”
Every anniversary we feature the photo of Luna from the inaugural post.
I still have that Novation keyboard, though it does not get used as often of late. Luna of course still is very territorial about that beanbag chair. Times have changed a bit, here is an iconic photo of Luna from this past year, this time with an iPad app (in this case, the Smule Magic Piano):
Another quirky way we like to celebrate is with statistics. First the basics:
1559 posts.
0.85 posts per day.
8784 comments.
5.63 comments per post.
476 posts featuring cats and synthesizers.
195 reviews (and gig reports).
381,735 visitors.
Even after five years, people from around the world continue to send us pictures of cats and music gear. These days most of those come via our Facebook, which together with twitter has become a major way people engage with this site.
From Google Analytics (which we finally got working properly over the past year), here is an overview of where our visitors come from around the world.
By far and away most of our visitors are from the United States, followed by the United Kingdom, Canada, India, Australia, France and Germany. I’m gratified to see so many visitors from India, though I’m curious why we never receive any comments from there…
It’s also interesting to look at cities.
Not surprisingly, the top cities are San Francisco and New York. In Google, it’s SF followed by NYC, while in Facebook, New York is the top city.
Our most popular posts judged by number of visitors are the annual endangered wild cats on earth day. Over the past year, our most commented posts were:
Our top commenters the past year:
| Kitty | 199 |
| Mickey, Georgia and Tillie | 146 |
| Gattina | 94 |
| CatSynth | 90 |
| The Chair Speaks | 66 |
| meowmeowmans | 65 |
| Snowcatcher | 56 |
| AVCr8teur | 51 |
| Daisy the Curly Cat | 48 |
| Cats of Wildcat Woods | 41 |
| Beth @ 990 Square | 40 |
Thanks to all our friends (in time zones earlier than U.S. Pacific Daylight Time) who already sent in comments for the anniversary, and to the Cat Blogosphere for their anniversary shout-out!
And while we will continue to keep doing what we do, it has been more of a challenge over this past year to keep up with posts, especially the longer-form reviews. There is a trade between doing music and art, and writing about people doing music and art. But I still love doing everything here, and will find a way…
CatSynth pic: Voice To Sprint Gets a New Band Member
Via The MATRIXSYNTH Lounge (and the matrixsynth blog).
“New member of the band. Pretty good on the modular.”
Weekend Cat Blogging #319
Our foggy, overcast summer days in San Francisco make for great cat photography:
Luna enjoys looking out the window, and a nice stretch.
Weekend Cat Blogging #319 is in honor of Sher, one of the original WCB participants we met back in 2006, who tragically passed away in July, 2008. Like many longtime participants, Sher was primarily a food blogger, and in tribute we made one of her recipes. Between work, music and social events we haven’t had much time to cook here at CatSynth HQ – and as I look back through the archives, that has happened each July since 2009. But we will make time this summer to try out a new recipe and share it on an upcoming weekend.
Weekend Cat Blogging #319 and Carnival of the Cats will be hosted this weekend by Billy SweetFeets.
And the friday ark is at the modulator.
CatSynth video: iPad Cat attack!
From ipadjunkie on YouTube.
The cat is clearly not amused by the the human’s antics with the Cat Piano app.
You can see more fun with cats and the Cat Piano on this previous post.
CatSynth pic: Yamaha CS15
Weekend Cat Blogging #318
For Weekend Cat Blogging #318, a few interesting photos of Luna from multiple cameras. First a high-contrast picture in the window:
And here is Luna today, once again napping in her favorite beanbag chair:
This was done with the impulse-acquired Roboto Glitter lens for the Hipstamatic iPhone app. The first photo was with done with the conventional camera.
Like Luna, I am looking forward to a relatively quiet afternoon.
We know that several regular WCB participants are foodies, so do check out the report from the Outsound Music Summit Benefit Dinner that I posted yesterday.
Weekend Cat Blogging #318 is hosted by Jules and Vincent at Judi’s Mind over Matter.
The Carnival of the Cats will be hosted this Sunday by Samantha and Clementine at Life from a Cat’s Perspective.
And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.