Cats

Happy Gotcha Day Big Merp!

It was two years ago that Marlon, aka “Big Merp” came to live with us at CatSynth HQ! We had already known him for a while, but circumstances arose where he needed to find a new permanent home, and we were more than happy to oblige.

We first met him in 2018. He was living on the street in the Temescal section of Oakland, California.

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Life on the streets can be rough, and it showed on his face. But he was incredibly friendly and loved people, and enjoyed coming indoors to hang out. He was clearly a former house cat, likely abandoned. We’re glad we found him and gave him a home. The posh indoor life has been good to him.

Big Merp is a “synth cat” – he loves to get up on the main instrument desk to be close to the action. There is the iconic photo lounging with the Novation LaunchPad Pro and Arturia MicroFreak above, as well as many others.

Although he bonded with the humans right away (including visitors), things were a bit more difficult with Sam Sam. She was not happy with this newcomer to her home and tried her best to avoid him for quite a while. Over time, however, her confidence returned and the two grew more comfortable with each other’s presence. They may not be the best of friends, but they do at least accept one another and share space.

Please join us in wishing Big Merp a very happy second Gotcha Day!

Cat Pianist

Remember the Jeffin Rodegheri and Cat duo from a couple of weeks ago? Here is another video featuring the same feline pianist. Once again, the playing is quite musical, and the cat’s adorable cooing adds a nice touch.

Regular readers know I have long been intrigued by these feline musicians. This is one of the best musically, along with Nora. Nue and the rest of the Rock cats are a lot of fun. The OG Keyboard cat was human-directed, so not quite the same (though I adore him and his successors as well). Do you have any favorite musical cats?

Vanilla and Modular

Vanilla the cat joins us from Guangzhou, China, with an impressive modular system. We see an Erica Synths Plasma Drive, numerous offerings from Endorphines and Make Noise, including a 0-coast; 4MS, Noise Engineering, the popular SQ-1 sequencer from Korg, and even a box from Elektron.

From complexwaveform on Instagram.

CatSynth Pic: Hydrasynth

Our beautiful Maine Coon friend is big, this time with a brand new ASM Hydrasynth! I am sure she will have a lot of fun with it. From lwxbeats on Instagram.

#hydrasynth has just arrived and she can’t wait to play those awesome pads 😃

We at CatSynth are also quite interested in the Hydrasynth, as it brings novel synthesis features along with polyphonic aftertouch. You can see our demo with the lead engineer from ASM in this video from NAMM 2020.

Lola and Roland MC-202 Rhythm Composer

Lola (the calico cat) is inspecting a Roland MC-202 rhythm composer. From exfade_electronics via Instagram.

More accent? Lola (the cat) probably has a better grasp of the sequencer than I do!

The MC-202 was among Roland’s first grooveboxes. It has a synthesizer architecture (and visual look) similar to the original SH-101, but also looked ahead to the TB-303.

White Cat with Nerdseq and Massive Modular

A beautiful white friend returns, longing behind a Nerdseq tracker-sequencer and in front of the same massive modular system from this post. We also see modules on the vertical section from Rossum Electro-music, Make Noise, Mutable Instruments, Intellijel, TipTop Audio, SSF, Random Source “EuroSerge”, as well as Catalyst Audio, Ciat Lombarde, and Mystic Circuits.

From blush_response via Instagram.

The Nerdseq is an intriguing instrument, essentially an old 90s-style “tracker” sequencer in Eurorack form. The boxes on the screen would be familiar to anyone who worked with trackers and MOD files, but the flexibility and possibilities of CV input and output.

Drone Recording: Red Panda, IdiotBox, Elektron, and more

Cat on guitar pedals

Our feline friend Charlie is ready for a drone recording session. Antoine Marronclɘs via Facebook.

We see some pedals from Red Panda, IdiotBox, and others. Zooming out, we also see an Elektron Digitakt box, a vintage portable cassette recorder, as well as more pedals.

Guitar pedals, Elektron Digitakt, cassette recorder, laptop with Ableton Live.

And zooming back in to that cat on the Red Panda Tensor pedal.

Cat paw on Red Panda Tensor pedal.

This Tensor pedal is quite intriguing, as I have a longstanding interest in tape effects. From the official website:

The Tensor™ gives you live reverse and tape stop effects, pitch shifting, time stretching and hold functions that you can combine in creative ways. Slow down, speed up and rewind in real time. Stretch or compress time with no pitch change. Loop, overdub, and randomly slice phrases up to 9.4 seconds (4.7 seconds in stereo).

http://www.redpandalab.com/products/tensor

Cat on Covered Synths

Cats sitting on synths are a regular occurrence on this site – it’s kinda what we do. But our cat today is sitting on synth covers. Some beautiful covers, actually. There is the ARP Odyssey with classic lettering, and the more oblique “Synthesizers” with future-retro lettering. What actual synth lies beneath the cover and the cat is left as an exercise to the reader.

Submitted by Barry Whyte via our Facebook page.