Weekend Cat Blogging: Rain

It’s been very stormy week here, with sometimes violent winds and heavy rain, and flash floods. Indeed, it has been raining at least once every few hours continuously since I departed from Los Angeles last Sunday. It’s the kind of weather where one really just wants to curl up and stay warm:

In additional to seeing Luna napping on one of her favorite chairs, I liked the way the clothing draped on top formed this perfect triangle above her. This image has a very symbolic quality – the triangle is a very powerful element in my own visual ideas, and I have often talked about juxtaposing geometric elements against more natural organic shapes.

This morning, the sun has appeared at CatSynth HQ for the first time in over a week, and Luna peers out into the world:

Weekend Cat Blogging #242 is hosted by Nikita Cat.

The Carnival of the Cats will be up this Sunday at When Cats Attack.

And of course the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Mungo State Zero

One of several instruments I encountered at the Analogue Haven booth at NAMM, the Mungo State Zero from Mungo Enterprises:

The State Zero is a large patchable synthesizer. Among its novel features are polyphony (patchable synthesizers are typically monophonic per oscillator unit) and the ability to “memorize” the most recent state of the patch even after the cords of removed. There is also a display feature that shows the signals of the most recently patched elements:

I like the industrial design and the textless graphical elements representing knobs and units, reminiscent of international symbols.

Eigenlabs Eigenharp

The Eigenharp Alpha from Eigenlabs:

The instrument looks a bit like an “electronic bassoon”, but beyond the mouthpiece, long thin shape and wood finish, it is quite different. It has 128 discrete keys that are also sensitive to pressure and motion in two directions, several large heavier keys and continuous controller ribbons. As such, it has the potential to be a very expressive instrument.

There is also a small version, the Eigenharp Pico:

And a new intermediate version, the Tau:

I particularly like the sleeker, modernist design on the Tau.

I did hear some demonstrations, which showed the features of the instrument, but focused on very conventional sounds and performance techniques. There were standard software synthesizers with keyboard and wind control, percussion sounds and beats and patterns controlled by the keys. With so many degrees of freedom and the ability to map different axes of expression to different musical parameters, I would like to see such an instrument used to push musical expression in novel directions.  To this end, it is great to see that they are making their SDK open source.  The first extension I would recommend is an OSC (OpenSound Control) protocol interface.

Snyderphonics Manta

Jeff Snyder of Snyderphonics poses with the new Snyderphonics Manta, a “a touch-sensitive interface for controlling music or video.”

The Manta has a series of hexagonal sensors with LEDs that can be used as independent controls or together as a large X-Y control surface. I’m always interested in new control surfaces, and wouldn’t mind trying one of these out.

CatSynth pic: CatBook

We take a break from our NAMM backlog for a cat-and-synth pic this Tuesday. From Kids at Midnight, via matrixsynth:

Arthur interrupts work on the latest tune, finding the laptop a nice warm place to settle down. He once changed the preferences on my Pro Tools with his arse and it took me about a month of fiddling and a call to a help desk to get it back to normal. Cat hair can also be a problem at the Kids At Midnight HQ. Shall be pooling our money and investing in a Dustbuster …

jamLink

The jamLink from MusicianLink allows musicians to play together from different locations via high-speed internet. Below we see two performers onsite at NAMM jamming with a guitarist in Plano, Texas, which was 1438 miles (2312 km) away:

(Can you spot the obligatory cat in this picture?)

The performance was relatively tight, though one could hear a slight bit of delay or hesitation on the first beat of some measures.

I have actually had a chance to glimpse the jamLink during its development, and would like to use it in the future. At the moment, however, it is doubtful that the network service at CatSynth HQ is up to the task.

Teenage Engineering OP-1

Perhaps my favorite new instrument of the show, the OP-1 from Teenage Engineering:

Among the attractive features are its small size, the tape mode (shown in the picture above), and the user interface which uses color coding to visually map the parameters being edited to one of the four colored knobs. The color coding was present in all the modes, including the tape mode, the sampler, the pulse-wave synthesizer, envelope generator and others.

I might have bought one had it already been available.

More info at the Teenage Engineering website.

Korg microSAMPLER and Kaoscillator Pro

I could definitely see the utility for one of these in my live shows. It is a bit like a Casio SK-1, but with more up-to-date features in terms of ability to control and play samples, including multiple samples, and arranging them into beats and layouts on the keyboard. And of course higher quality sound.

Also, check out the new Kaoscillator Pro:

More at the Korg website.