Finnegan shares his latest composition on a pair of Ensoniq Samplers. Submitted by Greg Cole via our Facebook page.
samplers rather than synths but this is Finnegan who spends most days in the studio with me…’helping’.
We at CatSynth are quite familiar with Ensoniq’s venerable line of sampling workstations. I got an EPS in 1989, and then upgraded to an ASR-10 a few years later. The latter is still in storage here at CatSynth HQ.
Obie sits in the center of Charles Whiley’s impressive studio. Obie is short of Oberheim, and we of course love black cats. But he is rarely photographed with the synths compared to Mr. Maximillion. We are happy to be able to feature him today 😺
Murder (we’re sure there must be an interesting story behind her name) gets ready to perform on a Korg EMX2 Groovebox. From Jackies Fridge via our Facebook page. Part of a series of posts on our page this week celebrating black cats.
Black cat checking out the wonder that is the
“Finally! My turn…needs more sawtooth.”
One can never have too much sawtooth.
The adorable Meiko with a Sequential (Dave Smith) Prophet ’08 synthesizer. From Charles Whiley via Facebook.
Bonnie has definitely found a nice napping spot in this studio. Submitted by David Lemur via our Facebook page.
Bonnie says: ‘More of John Cage’s 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence please Donny’.
We see an Arturia Keystep, Roland TR-8, a TB-303 clone, a vintage Korg sequencer, and even a bit of Buchla in the upper-left corner.
One of the most talked-about releases at NAMM (at least within our circles) was the new MicroFreak from Arturia. So, of course, we at CatSynth had to check it out.
It is a unique-looking instrument. The panel is etched with a variety of iconography
Beyond its looks and keyboard, the main feature of the MicroFreak is its digital oscillator. There are several different “types” for the oscillator, including wavetable, sampling, physical modeling, virtual analog, and something called “texturizer”. Within
The digital oscillator followed in the signal chain by an analog filter, specifically an Oberheim SEM-style filter, which sounds quite good when the oscillator is set to a rich source. There also the usual array of modulators, including envelope (one-shot and cycled), LFO, and arpeggiator. The sequencer includes a bunch of compositional functions with cute names like “Spice” and “Dice” to help build and modify patterns, which then can be routed via the modulation matrix.
It is quite a powerful instrument, but attempting to play it was a bit intimidating at first. Unlike the MiniBrute (analog) or even the Sequential Prophet 12 (hybrid), the knobs weren’t quite as intuitive for someone used to a lot of subtractive or semi-modular synthesizers, especially the oscillator with its various modes and the composition functions. I suspect it was an easier first-experience for those who use beat and sample boxes like those from Elektron. Indeed, I was able to get more out of it by turning on the arpeggiator and then turning knobs. You can see a bit of my initial attempts in our recent video.
In order to really understand what this little beast has to offer, a deep dive in the studio would be required. We at CatSynth hope to be able to arrange that in the not-to-distant future, and will report back here and on CatSynth TV.
Meet Jazz the cat, who presides over a studio with Roland AIRA, Elektron, and modular synthesizers. From Border One on Instagram.
In the #studio with #jazzthecat
A noir-ish photo of a cat atop a Yamaha MOTIF XF7 synthesizer, along with a Sequential Prophet 12. From Pete Dolan via Facebook.
Here’s my dark boy in an arty shot
