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Farewell to 2025: Brightness from Darkness

2025 is drawing to a close, so it is time for our traditional end-of-year collage and post, a year that was “the best of times, the worst of times.” It was simultaneously one of the darkest and one of the brightest. If I focus on the personal and professional, it was a great year. If we look at the country and the world as a whole, the story is completely different. Our collage focuses entirely on the bright, even as our minds and souls are pulled by both poles simultaneously.

For CatSynth TV, it was another year of strong growth, 50% again in views, and strong growth in subscribers. But it’s not just the raw numbers. I am especially proud that this growth came on my own terms, rather than by “following the crowd” so to speak, maintaining the quality, diversity, and uniqueness of what we do on the channel. We’ve done more interviews with more people, explored more highways, enjoyed the cats’ antics on Caturdays, and of course, reviewed a lot of great synthesizers and music. The blog has found some new energy as well, where we have drawn in more regular viewers to our tried-and-true photos of cats and synthesizers, as well as our long-running Wordless Wednesday series.

We found community at NAMM, at Buchla and Friends, and Knobcon. We traveled not only to New York and Los Angeles, but also to Chicago, San Diego, all through the southern California desert, and to India. And many new friends and new connections along the way. And close to home, the cats are doing great, as are the humans at HQ. I am grateful for the companionship, both human and feline, for family, friends, and community that have sustained me throughout the year.

But one cannot ignore what is happening beyond our bubble. On day one of the new regime (it feels more appropriate to call it that than an “administration”), they chose to cruelly target people like me in one of the first executive orders, and it has cast a dark and stressful pall over all the bright and exciting things that happened. And it was far, far worse for many other people. It was also disheartening to see so many institutions, in media, in business, and even academia, seem to cave so quickly. If there has been a bright spot, it has been the way ordinary people are standing up and resisting, on the streets, in the courts, and in their work, with more strength than I would have expected given those dark days in the early part of the year. And as strange as it seems to say it, the regime’s own incompetence gives me a modicum of hope.

What comes in 2026 remains to be seen. We will hopefully be adding more travel, including to Superbooth this coming year! There are so many videos in the queue as we speak that we are excited to share with all of you. At the same time, I want to find more time to focus on music, both recording and performing. Oh, and the perennial goal of de-cluttering both our physical and metaphorical space. On the larger front, I do hope the world can find a bit more peace, and the regime here in the United States continues to fray at the edges and perhaps even crumble.

We at CatSynth wish you all a Happy New Year and all the best for 2026!

Sunday Newsletter: The Final Night of Hanukkah

Tonight marks the final night of Hanukkah. A particularly poignant one given the tragedy that unfolded in Australia just one week ago, as people gathered on a beach to celebrate the first night of the Festival of Light.

Honestly, I was not feeling it at all last Sunday. In addition to the many tragic events one after another, I was still recovering from a nasty ailment that had me completely down for the previous week. I was just drained. But I was reminded that it was ultimately important to light the candles, maybe even more so to symbolize both resilience and defiance. It’s a difficult time to be Jewish, just as it’s a difficult time to be queer or trans. Which makes it all the more important to be openly and defiantly Jewish and light these candles for eight nights. No matter how much some people hate us, or kill us, or try to co-opt us for their own nefarious purposes, we are still here, and we are ourselves.

As always, I brought out my somewhat idiosyncratic menorah with musicians fashioned from metal hardware. I think it perfectly characterizes both the music and modernism here at CatSynth. And it seems to be a hit with friends online.

The Hanukkah origin story is itself one of Jewish defiance, but in some ways, a very uncomfortable kind. It celebrates the triumph of religious fundamentalists over the more cosmopolitan Greek/Syrian/Jewish state. If anything, my own celebration in this time is the opposite of the original legend, i.e., as a more cosmopolitan Jew against the more fundamentalist and nationalist forces casting darkness over the United States and other parts of the world at this time.

As the holiday draws to a close, just as we pass the winter solstice, we can look forward to the days once again growing longer and a couple of quiet weeks of calm, care, music, and, of course, cats.

We at CatSynth wish everyone a happy holiday season, however you choose to celebrate!

Sunday Newsletter: Sam Sam’s 7th Gotcha Day!

Today marks the 7th anniversary of Sam Sam’s arrival at CatSynth HQ! Please join me in wishing her a Happy Gotcha Day!

As we have related in previous years, Samantha, better known by her nickname “Sam Sam”, had been through a series of homes, including (as I like to say) “out in back of Palmdale where the turkey farmers run”. Our friends who were looking out for her let me know that she needed a new home and knew that I had recently lost Luna. Grief is a non-linear process, and I had not yet been looking to welcome a new cat into my life. But I could say no to this adorable kitty in need. So of course, I said yes, and she made the long trip up from Southern California to join us at HQ.

She was very skittish at first, but soon grew into her new home, and of course, we have loved having her ever since. It’s hard to imagine life at CatSynth without her.

It’s not common for Sam Sam to get up on the desks in the studio, but she does get curious from time to time, as seen in the image above. In recent years, she has also become one of the stars of our Caturday Shorts series on CatSynth TV, along with her frenemy Big Merp.

We certainly hope to share our home and life with Sam Sam for a long time to come.

Sunday Newsletter: Beauty & Curiosity

Our most recent video, “Beauty and the Beast”, explored the surprising and fascinating collaboration between Debbie Harry (of Blondie) and horror-surrealist artist H.R. Giger, perhaps best known for his work on the alien in the Alien films.

It got me thinking about the “beauty” in general. I think of beauty as one of my core values, along with curiosity, and these permeate what I choose to share with the world in my music, in videos, even perhaps in writing. Beauty comes in many forms beyond what we conventionally think of with the word. I find it in the faces of my cats, modernist art and architecture, the music I listen to, and yes, sometimes even in fashion magazines marketing “conventional beauty”.

It “arrests the mind”, to use James Joyce’s term from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, specifically in a way that pushes away other thoughts and emotions and leaves one with positive focus, even if just for a fleeting moment. To bring it back to H.R. Giger for a moment, there is a beauty in some of his work, even as it remains deeply unsettling. The image that I used as the backdrop in the video, which was taken from the set of the KooKoo music videos, would be an example. It reminded me of the bodies of woodwind instruments (clarinets, bassoons, etc.).

Beauty’s counterpart for me is curiosity. Always being curious about things, exploring, and sharing what I find with others. Sometimes the reward for curiosity is beauty. This is something I try to bring across in my math videos, like the recent Henon Map video.

One does not need mathematical expertise, just curiosity and openness to it, rather than a pat dismissal of “oh, math is too hard,” and the imagination to see where it might go. For the Henon Map, the reward is indeed the beauty of the three-dimensional map, an unreal terrain.

This is even at play in the highway videos, where music and curiosity come together as we follow the road wherever it might lead.

But highways are really a story for another time.

If you enjoy these Sunday posts, please come back here for more. You can also subscribe to these newsletters on Substack.

Sunday Newsletter: No Kings

[Note: we’re still figuring out the best way to offer email subscriptions, as CatSynth is self-hosted. We’ll get that up and running soon. In the meantime, if you’re on Substack, you can subscribe to this newsletter there.]

Like millions of others, we at CatSynth attended our local No Kings protest. It was a beautiful day in San Francisco, and people were in a joyous and defiant mood. I made a short video with highlights from the march up Market Street.

In the midst of the march itself, it’s hard to get a sense of its magnitude – 50,000 people by most estimates.

And this was, of course, repeated in cities and towns across the country, and even in other parts of the world. It gives one a bit of hope in this very challenging and sometimes demoralizing time.

As happens every time I cover one of these protests for CatSynth TV, I get at least one person complaining about my “getting political” and unsubscribing/unfollowing in a huff. I always politely say that I’m sorry to see them go, and remind them that the channel (and the blog) have always delved into political and social causes when I think it’s important to do so. And in this moment, it’s really important that people with platforms that “aren’t political” participate. For every person who complains or leaves, I’ve received multiple positive and encouraging remarks. For example, someone who appreciated seeing a “synthfluencer” that wasn’t just bopping along like everything was OK, and taking the time and effort to bear witness and push back against the regime.

It’s also worth noting that so many people get their information on politics and shape their opinions through channels that aren’t overtly political. I think a lot of us on the liberal-to-leftist side lost track of that in the last few years. In particular, a lot of young men seem to be influenced by channels ostensibly about fitness, men’s health, sports, and the general “manosphere” world, which mixed in a bit of right-wing populism with their sports banter and promos for health supplements. I think a channel about cats, synthesizers, culture, etc., can potentially reach some people who aren’t enmeshed in politics more positively and progressively. Even if we don’t change anyone’s mind, it might get someone who shares our opinion off the sidelines and involved in a way that suits them. There is no one right way or right medium to stand up to this increasingly fascist regime.

Did you attend a No Kings event yesterday, or have you been involved in other actions or events? Please do let us know in the comments.

Our First Sunday Newsletter

Also published to Substack.

It’s been a while since I’ve written an essay or such. It used to be a regular occurrence on the CatSynth blog. Between the photos, I wrote music and art reports, “fun with highways” articles, and the occasional opinion piece. Music, art, and highways all migrated to CatSynth TV, and slowly after that, writing dried up altogether, other than the year-end post and the occasional other short piece.

Thanks for reading CatSynth’s Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

I’ve wanted to reverse that trend for a while, as there are ideas that don’t lend themselves to videos, music, or the highly compressed bits of communication on social media. But writing always took a back seat to CatSynth TV, to music, and to living life in general.

So what is finally getting me off my tuchus, firing up the ancient Tandy m102 laptop and assembling these words that you are reading now? A few factors stand out. One, I am finally starting to observe free time amidst my usual busyness, given a few external commitments this month. Another is that I have started reading *How to Do Nothing* by Jenny Odell, and resonated with her thesis and examples on how to step back from the ever-toxic milieu we find ourselves in. And finally, there is the toxic milieu itself, which lends a sense of urgency to anything that resists it without running away from it entirely. I have my escapes, and we will talk plenty about them in the coming weeks and months. But for now, I think this is sufficient, being present in this moment outside on the patio at CatSynth HQ, typing on my cute little retro computer while my cat Sam Sam enjoys the cool, fresh air.

Please join me here on most Sundays for more wordy thoughts.

Farewell to 2024: Beautiful Dissonance

2024 has come to a close, so it is time for our traditional end-of-year collage and post. You might notice another kitty in the corner this year – that’s Golda, one of the wonderful cats I stayed with in Berlin. She is representing our European adventure this summer, along with Plac Grunwaldzki in Wroclaw, Poland.

It was a banner year musically. I am especially proud of the album, the best musical work I have done to date! If you haven’t heard it yet, you should. Opening the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival was a special experience. And we had numerous other musical adventures both live and recorded, and an ever growing community of musicians scattered across the country and beyond that are not just colleagues, but friends.

It was a banner year for CatSynth TV, our best to date in terms of viewership, subscriptions, and audience interaction. 50% year-over-year growth ain’t bad. January of 2024, with NAMM, was our best month on record. We even saw an uptick in blog readership, including a new cohort of loyal followers for our cat+synth posts and Wordless Wednesday.

Indeed, with CatSynth TV, I look not only at what we accomplished this year, but what was left undone. So many videos partially complete or in the ideation phase, waiting to be finished in 2025. We are particularly looking to jumpstart our interview series that was big in 2023 but took a bit of a back seat this year because of various circumstances.

The dissonance between things at a personal and CatSynth level, and at a national and world level, is deafening. The election here in the U.S. this year was tragic and heartbreaking, and this coming year is going to be difficult. This time, it wasn’t a fluke, it was a choice, and we chose…unwisely. In my usual cynical way, the best I hope for is sheer incompetence by the new regime, but even so, a lot of people will be hurt, including people who are a lot like me.

So we go into 2025 in a very strange place. The personal successes and hopes for the New Year, set against the fear and coming disasters in the world. All we have is forward motion, each other, and defiance.

Farewell to 2023

As is our tradition here at CatSynth, we look back on the year that draws to a close with a collage and stats. It’s always a challenge to pick photos to represent the year, these were just a few that covered some of the themes. We made more music than ever (mostly in the studio here at CatSynth HQ). We had many explorations and adventures. It was the first time attending the NAMM show since the pandemic. It was our first time going back to New York since the pandemic, and we went twice! In some ways, the year was divided into three sections based on different day jobs (or lack thereof), but the images and memories connected to them transcend these divisions. And as always, the arbitrary ending of a year leaves us with a full queue of things not yet done and still to do – and in this particular passing of the year a sense of dread, not so much for us at CatSynth but for the world around us. Again, the images and memories anchor to what is important.

And now, some stats. Here on the CatSynth blog:

195 Posts (including this one)
Top 5 commenters:
1. Ellen Pilch (15andmeowing)
2. meowmeowmans (Animal Shelter Volunteer)
3. Sandee (Comedy Plus)
4. Keith’s Ramblings
5. Patrick Weseman

And on CatSynth TV, it’s been a banner year. 35% increase in views, 30% increase in watch hours (that’s the big one they care about over at YouTube), double as many new subscribers as 2022. We launched “shorts” to complement our full-length numbered episodes. A few other stats for the year.

Most Viewed Videos

Most Popular new videos of 2023

It’s interesting that some of the most watched overall were not new this year. I like to think of that as representing that there is enduring interest in our videos from previous years over a longer period of time.

And that is the final thought heading into the new year, enduring and being resilient even has chaos, difficulties, and challenges abound. As always, we’ll keep doing what we do.

Our 500th Episode of CatSynth TV!

We are celebrating our 500th episode of CatSynth TV! Hard to believe we have made so many of these, but we have and we’re still having fun with it.

This one features numerous synthesizers, including the Octave CAT, Pocket Gamelan, and various instruments from Arturia, Cherry Audio, Moog Music, Strymon, MOK, Buchla, Metasonix, Make Noise, and more. There is also an appearance by Sam Sam at about the 1-minute mark.

CatSynth 17th Anniversary!

https://youtube.com/shorts/ncD81w0BZgI?feature=share

It’s our 17th anniversary. Hard to believe it was 17 years ago when we first posted that picture of Luna with the Novation keyboard.

We still miss her very much. The continuation of this blog and the video channel are her legacy.

Here’s to many more years of cats, synths, and all the other stuff that we do 😻🥂