big merp

Farewell to 2024: Beautiful Dissonance

2024 has come to a close, so it is time for our traditional end-of-year collage and post. You might notice another kitty in the corner this year – that’s Golda, one of the wonderful cats I stayed with in Berlin. She is representing our European adventure this summer, along with Plac Grunwaldzki in Wroclaw, Poland.

It was a banner year musically. I am especially proud of the album, the best musical work I have done to date! If you haven’t heard it yet, you should. Opening the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival was a special experience. And we had numerous other musical adventures both live and recorded, and an ever growing community of musicians scattered across the country and beyond that are not just colleagues, but friends.

It was a banner year for CatSynth TV, our best to date in terms of viewership, subscriptions, and audience interaction. 50% year-over-year growth ain’t bad. January of 2024, with NAMM, was our best month on record. We even saw an uptick in blog readership, including a new cohort of loyal followers for our cat+synth posts and Wordless Wednesday.

Indeed, with CatSynth TV, I look not only at what we accomplished this year, but what was left undone. So many videos partially complete or in the ideation phase, waiting to be finished in 2025. We are particularly looking to jumpstart our interview series that was big in 2023 but took a bit of a back seat this year because of various circumstances.

The dissonance between things at a personal and CatSynth level, and at a national and world level, is deafening. The election here in the U.S. this year was tragic and heartbreaking, and this coming year is going to be difficult. This time, it wasn’t a fluke, it was a choice, and we chose…unwisely. In my usual cynical way, the best I hope for is sheer incompetence by the new regime, but even so, a lot of people will be hurt, including people who are a lot like me.

So we go into 2025 in a very strange place. The personal successes and hopes for the New Year, set against the fear and coming disasters in the world. All we have is forward motion, each other, and defiance.

International Cat Day with Sam Sam and Big Merp

Today is International Cat Day (8/8), so we’re celebrating Sam Sam and Big Merp.

Black and white cat sitting on a cat tower. To the left is an audio mixer and patch bay. To the right are several rackmount synthesizers and other pieces of music gear, and the left corner of a large red Nord keyboard.

Brown and white cat sitting on a large red Nord keyboard, depressing some keys. Behind the cat is a computer screen with an open Pro Tools recording session, a small Arturia keyboard synth, and various pieces of audio gear.

Wordless Wednesday: Big Merp Tintype

A “tintype” photo of Big Merp, created using the Hipstamatic iPhone app

Big Merp on the Nord for CatSynth TV!

Big Merp helps us with our recent I-710 video, adding his own part on the Nord. We also see an Arturia MiniFreak V and Delay Brigate, E-MU modules, a Golden Age Project compressor, and more.

You can see the video we were working on here

Big Merp in the studio

Last week we featured a “CatSynth pic” with Sam Sam, so it’s only fair that this week we feature Big Merp. As we’ve seen before, he likes to get up on the equipment while I’m working in the studio.

Merp is sitting on our “trusty red keyboard”, the Nord Stage EX. To the right, we see a couple of our more colorful modules, the Strymon Starlab and Dreadbox Euphoria. Behind him are a couple of audio processing units, a tube compressor, and a mic preamp (from Golden Age Project); in the left corner are the same E-MU modules that we saw with Sam Sam last week.

You can see our reviews/tutorials for the Strymon Starlab and Dreadbox Euphoria, respectively, below.

Big Merp loves scritches and rock music

Our cat Big Merp loves rock music with keyboards and he loves scritches. In this styled short, he is enjoying both.

Jack White’s concert film “Jack White: Kneeling at The Anthem D.C.” is playing in the background.

Big Merp on the Modular Desk

Big Merp loves attention and always wants to be where the action is. So it’s fairly common to find him on this spot between the MacBook Pro and the Modular system. And in this instance, he struck a particularly handsome pose 😻. You can see quite a few of our Eurorack modules, including our prized Metasonix yellow and silver tube modules in the upper left corner of the case, as well as many others that have appeared in our recordings and videos over the years. A full list of brands is in the tags.

This is also where we shoot a lot of our hardware demo videos, so it often ends up cluttered. But we always make sure there is space because you never know when Merp is going to jump up and say hi.

Sam Sam and Big Merp on International Cat Day

We were reminded that today is International Cat Day! So here are Sam Sam and Big Merp together enjoying time on the patio.

Scenes of them together have become more and more common – I wouldn’t say they were best friends, but they have learned to live together and it makes all of us at CatSynth quite happy.

A Special July 4th PSA from Big Merp

Big Merp reminds everyone to keep kitties and other pets safely indoors on this July 4th holiday, as fireworks can be very frightening and confusing.

Big Merp, Yamaha RX5, and Modular

Today we feature our very own Big Merp in the studio. He was assisting with our recent video on the Yamaha RX5 – specifically the “RX5USB” cartridge. We also one portion of our modular collection, including Metasonix modules, Rossum Morpheus, E350 Morphing Terrarium, Benjolin, Expert Sleepers, Sputnik Modular, Mordax, 4MS, Make Noise, Pittsburgh Modular, Koma Elektronik, 2hp, Folktek, and more.

This is the video we were working on at the time.

We also have a detailed tutorial for the RX5 itself