CATSYNTH

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Category: Synthesizers

  • catsynth pic: Gingerbread

    MIT Media Lab assistant professor Dr. Joseph A. Paradiso includes the above photo of his old Himalayan cat Gingerbread atop a synthesizer cabinet as part of his web page documenting his modular synthesizer. His collection of modules and writings about synthesizers are quite impresesive, and I've spent a bit of time looking through them. That is one of the fun things about looking for these pictures of cats and synths: it often leads to something more interesting.

    Dr. Paradiso's synthesizer has received note in Keyboard magazine, and he had a synth rig featured at the 2004 PrixArs Electronic festival. He has some great photos of synth rigs from the 1970's as well.

  • Little Sound Dj and "lo-fi" synthesis

    I came across some interesting resources while visiting Ouroboros Complex the other day, in particular references to lo-fi synthesizers for small devices, such as Nanoloop for the GameBoy. Unfortunately, there was no free demo that I could run on my VisualBoyAdvance emulator, but I did find another synthesizer/sequencer that did: Little Sound Dj. It is set up like an old-style tracker application:

    One can assign notes within a phrase (or larger structures called songs and chains) to various instruments. The instruments can be pulse tones, noise, built-in drumkits (emulating several classic lo-fi drum machines like Roland TR and even a “drumulator”), and custom waves that you can hand edit:

    Although it is cute and fun to play around and see what one can do with such a limited but nonetheless interesting pallette, I think it falls short for actual musical work because of the interface and lack of interoperability with my other software and hardware instruments. Much of the lo-fi synthesis can be easily accomplished with OSW (check out the lo-fi and swiss_cheese tutorials) or several freely-available VST isntruments – and Ableton Live! remains a much more usable system for quick real-time pattern editing. I will be looking into some other lo-fi synthesizer plug-ins or algorithms to use in OSW and post more in a future article…

  • Actual Cat Synth

    jfm3 of Ouroboros Complex posts about as literal a “CatSynth” pic as you can get, featuring his cat Kona and accoutrements as part of his rig. Cat aside, the rig and website include a wealth of personal experiences with analog synthesizer hacking as well as circuit bending (note the mod'ed Speak&Spell). Please give jfm3 and Kona a “catsynth welcome” by visiting their site.

  • fun with Emulator X and filter response

    I have been experimenting lately with Emulator X as a synthesizer rather than a sampler, i.e., using only primitive sources (impulse, noise, etc.) and generating new timbres based on the filter section and other features of synth engine.

    In one such experiment, I have built several patches based purely on the impulse responses of filters. By setting the Q of each filter (or each section in the Morph Designer), a highly tuned impulse response is produced. The center frequency can be controlled by keyboard input, thus creating a primitive but “playable” instrument. The following example uses a cascade of tuned two-pole filters on a single voice:

    click here to play example

    The more complex Z-plane filters can also be used to generate interesting impulse responses, though they are more difficult to control in terms of pitch:

    click here to play example

    In each of the examples above, the responses decay very quickly, yielding short percussive timbres. Longer decays require narrower-band filters, and even though the E-MU filters have very high Q (resonance), most are not narrow enough when compared to the filters used in resonance modeling The exception is the rarely used Contrary Bandpass filter:

    The impulse response of this filter is a nearly pure exponentially-decaying sinewave. Combining several voices with different center frequencies, complex resonance models can be generated.

    click here to play example.

    Of course, these examples are far less efficient than the resonance-modeling tools Open Sound World, but by combining the models with Emulator X's modulation features, effects and voice management, some more interesting instruments can be created.

  • catsynth pic: Sneaky w/ E-MU Xboard

    Sneaky impersonates Schroder from Peanuts atop an E-MU Xboard 49.

  • getting ready for tomorrow's performance, part 1

    Well, it's time to stop fooling around with pictures and get back to using Open Sound World for what is was intendend, making sound. In preparation for my performance tomorrow at the Skronkathon, I have selected a couple of patches that have worked well for me in the past. They are quite robust, and provide a variety of musical gestures and timbres that complement the sound generated by Ron Lettuce on his PVC wind instrument.

    First there is my sinusoidal timbre space based on bifurcation diagrams from classic chaotic functions, controlled using my Wacom graphics tablet. If that sounds really complicated and weird, just accept for the moment that it sounds really cool, and that I will post a more in-depth article about it along with sound clips in the near future. The second patch uses a WX7 wind controller to control a set of resonance models and the excitations used to drive them – essentially, a metallic chamber that one plays like a wind instrument (clarinet, saxophone, etc.). Both of these programs were used in my performances with ELSA Productions last year.

    Before today, I had been a bit worried about using my Dell laptop for the performance, as it had a tendency to start running the fan at full blast and slowing to a crawl, especially when running a CPU-intensive program like OSW or Emulator X2. Things would get even worse running a program like Poser or Bryce that is both CPU and graphics intensive. I installed the fan control software and cleaned out the internal fans and heat sink as described in this article and others, and while this has helped, it hasn't cured the problem, particularly with respect to graphics. I fear the root cause of the problem is simply that the laptop, which is nearly three years old, is simply nearing retirement.

    In any case, I am also the planning to use the Evolver and the feedback+filter technique I described in a previous article. I generally have both a hardware synth and computer running simultaneously during live performances, so that if the computer and software crash I still have something to play. This has paid off on numerous occasions.

    And that's pretty much it. It doesn't sound like a lot, a couple of very focused synthesis techniques, but by listening and playing them like traditional instruments, I expect to get a ful musical performance – I often advise such a “simple” approach to live electronic performance when asked by other musicians.

    So that's it for now. I'm off to San Francisco for my one “rehearsal,” taking a leisurely trip up Highway 1 to Half Moon Bay and then cutting over to get to the city. More later.

  • DSI Evolver legal again in Kansas public schools

    After the recent electoral defeats of Creationists on the Kansas school board, students are now free again to use the Evolver synthesizer from Dave Smith Instruments. Was the Evolver an unintended victim of the continuing assault on the theory of evolution and scientific reason, or part of an orchestrated effort to eliminate all electronic music in Kansas except for the DX7 electric piano patch used by wedding and bar-mitzvah bands?

    Speaking of music spawned by the devil, I have been experimenting a lot lately with the use of feedback as the primary sound source for the filters instead of the starndard oscillators. The instability combined with the filters and multiple conversions between analog and digital in the signal path make for some very interesting results. I have posted an example here for your listening pleasure. Be forwarned, there are a lot of harsh high frequencies in this example, though the MP3 compression does help soften them a bit. Enjoy!

  • More Cats and Synthesizers

    It looks like some others out there had the same idea. Check out this post at Create Digital Music featuring photos of animals with synthesizers. While the author is an admitted dog person, there are several cute cat pics, including this one from the Matrixsynth blog:

    The synthesizer in this photo is the legendary and all-too-appropriate Octave CAT.

    Also at Matrixsynth is Arak and Legion. Arak is handsome black cat, like Luna but with yellow eyes, more like a Bombay. Matrix also has an adorable shot of his black cat JD with a Sequential Circuits Multitrak. Check it out, it looks like he's actually reviewing patch specs.


    Sadly, it sounds like Arak has passed away and JD isn't doing very well. My heart goes out to Matrix, Legion and their kitties. Our animal companions truly share our lives, even our odd hobbies.

    If you would to submit your own images of cats and synthesizers for this blog, please use our handy submission page.

  • the inaugural post

    What would be more appropriate for a blog about cats and synthesizers than the photo of Luna that started it all…