nord

Sam Sam in the Studio with Nord, Yamaha

Sam Sam naps in a cozy but cluttered corner of the studio at CatSynth HQ. Above her is our trusty Nord Stage keyboard. In the background, one can see a bit of the old Yamaha rackmount synths, the TX81Z and TX802.

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.

Monty plays the Nord

Monty thinks this F sharp is the perfect note for the current track he is working on with Dave Newhouse (The Muffins, Moon X, Manna / Mirage, and other projects).

Dahlia and Rob Robinson in the Studio

Dahlia and Rob Robinson show off their amazing studio. We’ve seen many of these instruments in past posts featuring Rob, Dahlia, and/or Persephone, so we’ll leave those as an exercise to the reader.

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.

Our 500th Episode of CatSynth TV!

We are celebrating our 500th episode of CatSynth TV! Hard to believe we have made so many of these, but we have and we’re still having fun with it.

This one features numerous synthesizers, including the Octave CAT, Pocket Gamelan, and various instruments from Arturia, Cherry Audio, Moog Music, Strymon, MOK, Buchla, Metasonix, Make Noise, and more. There is also an appearance by Sam Sam at about the 1-minute mark.

Persephone in the Studio

Persephone (aka “Mewskers”) is in the command chair of her very impressive studio. This studio is also used by our friend Rob Robinson and his industrial/noise/EBM project Order of the Static Temple (where we found this photo).

In front of Persephone is a Nord keyboard, to her left is a Sequential synthesizer, behind that a venerable Roland SH-101. We also see offerings from Behringer, Akai, Korg, and Ensoniq!

You can see more of Persephone via her tag.

Monty is Judging You

Monty casts a judgmental look as he sits in front of the keyboards, including a Nord. From our friend Dave Newhouse.

More studio work today. Monty does not seem happy with a recent track.

Monty and Nord

Monty is getting ready to play some electric piano on his Nord keyboard. From our friend Dave Newhouse (The Muffins, Moon X, and numerous other musical collaborations).

Monty helping with some keyboard tracks for Michael Bass and my collaboration album. (I especially like Monty’s Fender Rhodes sound on this one.)

You can see our interview with Dave Newhouse and Jerry King below.

You also check out his music at https://davenewhouse.bandcamp.com/