drum machine

Outsound GearExplore at Chamber Music Day

Back in mid-October, a few of us from the crew at Outsound Presents participated in Chamber Music Day at the De Young Museum in San Francisco.

There were over 140 musicians participating, with performances and demonstrations scattered around the museum. And “chamber music” was defined quite expansively to include a wide variety of instrumentation and genres, ranging from traditional classical music to experimental avant-garde ensembles and crossover groups. Our contribution was a demonstration of electronic-music gear – a mini version of “Touch the Gear Night” from the Outsound Music Summit. I primarily focused on software-based sound generation, with an iPad and a Monome connected to a MacBook running Open Sound World. Matt Davignon presented his setup featuring drum machines and effects pedals. CJ Borosque demonstrated her input-less effects change where the noise in the signal chain is the source for sound manipulation; and Rent Romus demonstrated live sound processing with a setup that included a Korg Monotron.

There was quite a large turnout overall for Chamber Music Day, and we had a lot of traffic at our demonstration table. Reactions ranged from mild curiosity to deep technical conversations. We were a particularly big hit with children, who are naturally attracted to hands-on demos and electronic gear.

[Amar Chaudhary and Matt Davignon demonstrating gear for young attendees at Chamber Music Day. Photo by Scott Chernis.]

This trio of young ladies spent a lot of time at the table exploring the various devices in great detail.

[Exploring the gear. Photo by Scott Chernis.]

They were particularly interested in the iPad. Here they are trying out the Korg iMS-20 app.

[Playing the iPad.  Photo by Scott Chernis.]

I would like to think that some of the kids (as well as a few of the adults) went off and downloaded some music-making apps for their devices and started playing. Or perhaps a casual guitarist found a new way to make sounds with his or her pedals.

Overall it was a great experience, and an opportunity for us to share what we do with musicians outside our small “new-music” community and with the general public. Thanks to the San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music (SFFCM) for inviting us to participate. To find out more about Chamber Music Day and their other events and programs, please visit their website.

[All photos in this article by Scott Chernis and provided courtesy of SFFCM.]

CatSynth pic: Mimi and Drumtraks

From our friend Eric Pochesci of Polynominal, some more pictures of Mimi, this time with a Sequential Drumtraks:

I also thought this was a great sepia-tone photo, and quite well posed with Mimi pushing one of the buttons. Look for more of Mimi in the next few days.

We would like to remind readers that they can always submit your own cat-and-synthesizer or cat-and-music pictures via facebook, twitter @catsynth, or using our handy submission form.

CatSynth pic: Vermona DRM Rare Vintage Analog DDR Drum Machine

From a now expired auction, via matrixsynth:

“Vintage Analog drum machine with TR style sequencer, made in Germany in 1987. There’s not too much information available on the VERMONA DRM on the internet, so I will provide some of my own background knowledge. It was released in 1987 by a German synthesizer company named Vermona. These days they are best known for their
analog drum module the Vermona DRM-1 MK3. It is the European answer to ROLAND’s TR-X0X and CR-XXXX drum machines.”

You can read more detail on the original post on matrixsynth.