CatSynth Pic: Chord Kitten (Qu-Bit Electronix)

Seen on matrixsynth today 😺, featuring modules from our friends at Qu-Bit Electronix.

Just a random synth cat pic via @quebitelectronix.

“Chord kitten from @catsonsynthesizersinspace 💙🐱”

Makes you wonder what it was hearing. Or maybe it was reading MATRIXSYNTH.

macOS High Sierra and The Great Purge

Apple’s incessant nagging gets to me. They really seem to want to grab your attention with alerts and updates to a level that reminds me of Microsoft Windows of the early-to-mid 2000s. This is perhaps no more true than with OS updates. I do my best to resist them, but in a moment of fatigue and weakness after busy few days around New York, I gave in and allowed them to update my laptop to macOS High Sierra. After all, I had no trouble at all installing any of the previous mountain-themed updates (Yosemite, El Capitan, Sierra), and maybe I would even save a little disk space on my boot drive afterward.

This was a huge mistake. After several minutes of churning – harmless enough – it stopped with the ominous message “macOS could not be installed on your computer.” Unfortunate, but ok, just move on. But after rebooting and attempting to log in, I started getting Linux-style text errors pouring down the screen and a kernel panic. This repeated multiple times and was definitely not good. Not good at all. A boot to recovery mode with Command+R and running “First Aid” in Disk Utility cleared up that problem, but I now had a MacBook Pro stuck in a Groundhog-Day-like cycle of attempting to install macOS and failing.

OK, no need to panic yet. After all, I could restore from Time Machine back in San Francisco. But in the meantime, no CatSynth posts with photos, no CatSynth TV episodes, no app updates. And when I want to get something done, I really want to get it done. Perhaps, in retrospect, it is this impatience that gets me into situations like this.

My best theory as to what went wrong (none of the obvious things via Google search made any difference) is that the macOS installation collided with the older Journaled+Encrypted hard drive, or perhaps the 40GB of disk space was distributed in such a way that hindered installation. So before and after a delightful Thanksgiving with family, I embarked on another direction: making a quick backup image of the still intact drive, and reformat it in a more modern but unencrypted way. Both those operations went smoothly, and macOS High Sierra installed quickly and flawlessly afterward.

But now I had a blank system. I realized rather than tragedy, this is actually an opportunity. The filesystem was basically layers upon layers dating back to at least 2011, a mess of disorganized photos, music, scattered source code and partially uninstalled applications. It was always on the verge of running out of space and running rather slowly. I now had a chance to start again, without losing what I had in the past. I have done such a purge before, but not in several years – I have been lulled into complacency by installations and backups that mostly work. So we are now installing our most used items: Photoshop, Lightroom, Final Cut, Xcode, IntelliJ, etc. The music is simple. I’ll figure out what to do with the photos. And I’ll leave the old image on an external drive.

We are starting fresh, or fresh enough. And while it will be a day or two before I can do videos again, we can certainly get back to more articles; and sort the rest out when we get back to San Francisco. It’s also an observation that in-the-moment impatience is sometimes a blind spot. I need to pause a bit more, perhaps, even in those moments when I don’t plan to.

Weekend Cat Blogging with Sam Sam: The Departure and the Coat

Early Saturday morning, I embarked on another trip to New York. As it is late November, this trip requires a winter coat. While it was sitting out, Sam Sam came over to investigate.

She was fascinated by the wool coat and immediately started purring up a storm and kneading.

The soft woolen surface clearly brought out some kitten instinct in her. While Luna used to purr and knead soft things frequently, I haven’t seen Sam Sam do that as much, and not to the degree she did in the presence of this coat.

One of the hardest parts of leaving on a trip is leaving my cat. Fortunately, we know that Sam Sam is good hands, being lovingly looked after at CatSynth HQ (and probably spoiled rotten). I look forward to reuniting with her in a little over a week.

Anne Marguerite Herbst at Far Out Gallery, San Francisco

Far Out Gallery in the Sunset district of San Francisco is currently hosting a solo exhibition of works by Anne Herbst, and we were on hand to see it and cover it on CatSynth TV.

Of course, the cat-imagery particularly caught my eye, but there are many layers beyond that. Even in the cats, one can see some of the other elements that permeate Herbst’s art, including undulating lines and traces of her body that are used both as textures and bounding elements.

There are also the frequent connections to her personal history in the inclusion of faces and hints of other people. The connection to blood comes up both in the use of color, imagery, and the context of a couple of the paintings. It features in a self portrait as well as a piece for her father’s 90th birthday, both of which are featured in the video.

Anne Herbst

Herbst took the personal history to a new level for this exhibition by re-imagining childhood drawings with her current artistic style and practice.

We see the lines, shapes, and character of her current work brought to the original cat figure from the drawing. One can also notice the blood-like elements and color in this piece.

Creatures of all sorts abound throughout. In addition to the cats, the turtle seems to be a recurring animal, and was featured prominently in the work we most associated with the exhibition title “Ripples.”

Far Out Gallery has been a great discovery for us, a place connecting us more deeply to that sometimes remote western edge of San Francisco. We are happy to have been there for both Anne Herbst’s show and Kasper Rodenborn’s earlier this season. We hope to see more in the future.

CatSynth Pic: Picasso and Realistic MG-1

Picasso the cat means business as he poses with a Realistic MG-1 synthesizer. Submitted by James Bahleda‎ via our Facebook page.

The MG-1 was built by Moog for Realistic (Radio Shack), and was designed and marketed for home/casual use. It’s no Model D, but it does still have Moog technology and sound. It remains popular with some collectors and artists. You can read more about it here.

CatSynth Video: Silent Strike – Modular Cat

From Silent Strike on YouTube, via matrixsynth.

https://www.facebook.com/silentstrike…

Winter Modular Eloquencer is the main sequencer with all 8 tracks used for: bass from Verbos Harmonic Osc, 4 drums from 2 Erica Pico Drums.
The chords are formed by Intellijel Shapeshifter, Mutable Instruments Elements and Braids, through Makenoise Erbe-Verb and Erica Black Hole DSP.
The lead and blips are from Tiptop Z3000 and Malekko Anti-Oscillator, triggered by the Varigate 8+.
Other modules, vcas, mixers etc: MI Veils, Doepfer A-132-2, A-143-2, A-134-1, A-138b, A-138p/o, Waldorf KB37, Low-Gain Submix7, Makenoise Maths and Optomix.

That cat is too adorable 😻

Arma Agharta and Song & Dance Trio, Luggage Store Gallery, San Francisco

Today we look back at the recent show featuring Song & Dance Trio and Lithuanian sound-and-performance artist Arma Agharta at the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco. It was the subject of a recent episode of CatSynth TV.

I have seen the members of Song & Dance Trio, Karl Evangelista (guitar), Jordan Glenn (drums) and Cory Wright (baritone saxophone) many times before in many musical contexts, but this was the first time I saw them as a trio. As one can hear in the video, they mixed complex virtuosic avant-garde performance with familiar jazz idioms. And they made it work. There was a strong rhythmic sense throughout the set, with the musicians moving freely between a relaxed shuffle and frenetic staccato runs. The familiar jazz figures sprinkled throughout were fun, but the more experimental interludes were a palette cleanser that made the grooves stand out more strongly.


[Song & Dance Trio (Evangelista, Glenn, Wright)]

Next up was a solo performance by Arma Agharta, a Lithuanian sound-performance-artist who was kicking off the west-coast swing of his United States tour. I didn’t know quite what to expect, even after looking at his interesting setup with a mixture of sound-making objects and electronic instruments.


[Arma Agharta’s colorful electro-acoustic rig]

And then he took the stage wearing a large pointed had and colorful robe. Things started quietly but very quickly turned to a loud, frenzy of sound, movement, and vocals.


[Calm and anything-but-calm moments with Arma Agharta]

This was one of the most physically and sonically intense solo performances I have seen in a while, and the energy was nonstop for most of the duration, with just a few ebbs and pauses. An endurance test for performer and audience alike. I haven’t heard anything quite like it, and it is hard to do justice either in written or video form. The intense sounds were from many layers of electronics, including recorded sounds played at high volume along with Arma Agharta’s own powerful voice howling, bellowing, and other vocalizations.

It was interesting to see such different performances in the same show and to assemble them into a single 3-minute video. But it worked both live and recorded. We wish Arma Agharta well on his next tour (last we saw he was in Turkey) and hope to hear more from him. We, of course, will continue to follow Evangelista, Glenn, and Wright on their musical adventures here in the Bay Area.