Some recent pictures of our pal Mr. Maximillion in his studio. Looks like found a great spot for relaxing and supervising.
He is quite the handsome fellow.
Photos courtesy of his human, Charles Whiley. Mr. Maximillion’s extensive synth collection isn’t really visible in these photos, but you can see more if it in some his previous pics and videos.
Even with so much happening in our own lives and in the world at large, we pause it all on this night to remember our beloved Luna, who passed away two years ago on October 31.
There is a both a poetic beauty and a cruel irony in the fact that she left us on Hallowe’en. It was the day every year that she was the star of cat-blogging world, hosting the annual Hallowe’en edition of Weekend Cat Blogging and being the most beautiful of beautiful black cats.
As we begin the yahrzeit, we light our memorial candle, and pay special respects to her memorial.
There was a moment of explosive grief as I told her, wherever and however she is, that I miss her so much. After that, a calmer sadness settled in as I sip a glass of bourbon, play “Dollar Days” from David Bowie’s Blackstar, and assemble this post.
She was a work of art, and fit in perfectly with aesthetics and design of CatSynth HQ.
But she was also extremely sweet and loving.
Please join me in remembering our sweet little girl, who left us way too soon. She will always be missed, never forgotten.
No, that’s not Sam Sam, but a similarly marked cat (at least from the back). She is inside her own “synth fortress” with w Korg Poly-800, and Yamaha CS01, DX100, and VSS-30 synthesizers. From thedigitalpurrgatory on Instagram.
thedigitalpurrgatory Her very own (almost) color-coded fortress of synths while the wooden cat watches her sleep. [Korg Poly-800, Yamaha CS01, Yamaha DX100, Yamaha VSS-30]
Handsome Marcel returns, and enjoys participating in a modular-synth session with his human polynominal. Both are longtime friends of CatSynth and you can see their previous posts here.
Gracie is back! This time with an Ensoniq SQ-80 synthesizer. From Alsún Ní Chasaide (Alison Cassidy) via Facebook.
It seems that Gracie really likes this particular synth 😸
The SQ-80 is an interesting synth that came out about the same time as the Ensoniq EPS (which along with its successor the ASR-10 were mainstays of my studio until about 2000). From Vintage Synth Explorer:
The SQ-80 is basically a reved-up ESQ-1 with a total of 75 waveforms, a 61-note keyboard with velocity & aftertouch, floppy disk drive for storing patches and sequences, and an enhanced sequencer. Great for organs, analog-type sounds, pads and sound effects. Like the classic ESQ-1, the SQ-80 functions in providing analog-type 4-pole lowpass filtering and editing of digital waveforms. Each voice can combine up to 3 of the 75 waveforms. These waveforms include multi-sampled transient attack waves such as violin bow, plectrum picks, mallet, hammer, breath attacks and percussive sounds. There are also 5 sampled drum sets. Three LFOs are onboard for some pretty wild modulation of the sounds you create or edit.