A pretty orange tabby plays some notes on an Arturia Keystep and Behringer Neutron synthesizer. From Karl Garcia via Facebook.
In the middle of a patch this cat just sits down on the keyboard and gets the arpeggiator going lol.
Of all the synthesizers in Behringer’s growing catalog, the Neutron is one of the two that most interests me personally, the other being the new VC340 Vocoder. You can see my encounter with Behringer’s synths before NAMM in this video.
Meet Numbers the black cat. He sits on a custom synthesizer rack made from recycled wood that houses an Arturia MiniBrute 2S, Novation keyboard, and a MicroKorg. From Sam Brubaker via our Facebook page.
A photo of my cat, Numbers. Here he is inspecting the room lighting while sitting on a synth rack I built out of recycled wood from a shipping palette.
A gorgeous house panther shows off her studio, which includes a MicroBrute and controllers from Arturia, an Elektron SidStation, and a Nintendo GameBoy. From Shaun Steven Struble on Facebook, who says this about the GameBoy:
My main composition machine. If I can write it in three voices on the gameboy and it sounds good, I know it’ll sound good when I expand it to the other synths.
Nepal sits in the studio ready to compose a magnum opus on an impressive collection of synths including a Moog Sub Phatty, Arturia MiniBrute 2S, multiple Novation instruments, and several vintage Yamaha boxes with that cool diagonal front panel. Submitted by Brian T Geigner via our Facebook page.
Nepal composing a new song.
We can’t wait to hear what Nepal comes up with 😻🎹
Scout sits atop a vintage Roland synthesizer. We are pretty sure it’s a Roland Juno 106. In the back, we see a Dreadbox Hades, as well as offerings from Novation and Arturia. From Carl Peczynski via our Facebook page.
Mojo the cat looks on as a musical performance with an Arturia Keystep and Moog Minitaur unfolds. He seems to quite enjoy it. Submitted by Bruce Oliver via our Facebook page.
Mojo was my little buddy for 17 years. He loved synth sounds but would vacate the room if you picked up a guitar!
Kasey finds a comfy spot between a Roland Plug-Out system, Roland modules, and an Arturia Beatstep Pro. Submitted by Chris Bentley via our Facebook page.
Kasey the cat. Passed away at the age of 19 back in August 2017 but used to love to hang out on my desk while I was tinkering in the studio.
We are very sorry to hear of Kasey’s passing, and our hearts go out to Chris as the rest of Kasey’s family. A wonderful studio cat who lived a long and loved life 💕
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.
We at CatSynth feel there is no better way to celebrate Superb Owl Day than with “owlsynth pics”. Here is our stuffed owl atop our main modular system.
And with our trusty Roland Boutique VP-03 vocoder.
And with our Arturia MiniBrute 2.
(Definitely need to tidy up a bit there.)
Owls are quite captivating as they are so different from other birds, even from other birds of prey. We all know their unique front-facing faces and nocturnal behavior. But they also have amazing auditory capabilities.
Both the cat and the Barn Owl have much more sensitive hearing than the human in the range of about 0.5 to 10 kHz. The cat and Barn Owl have a similar sensitivity up to approximately 7 kHz. Beyond this point, the cat continues to be sensitive, but the Barn Owl’s sensitivity declines sharply.
Some Owl species have asymmetrically set ear openings (i.e. one ear is higher than the other) – in particular, the strictly nocturnal species, such as the Barn Owl or the Tengmalm’s (Boreal) Owl. These species have a very pronounced facial disc, which acts like a “radar dish”, guiding sounds into the ear openings. The shape of the disc can be altered at will, using special facial muscles. Also, an Owl’s bill is pointed downward, increasing the surface area over which the sound waves are collected by the facial disc. In 4 species (Ural, Great Grey, Boreal/Tengmalm’s & Saw-whet), the ear asymmetry is actually in the temporal parts of the skull, giving it a “lop-sided” appearance.
Owls and Hearing – The Owl Pages
We at CatSynth hope you all have a fine and enriching Superb Owl Day!
