A trip to NAMM always includes a visit to the booth of Big City Music. As always there was a mixture of old favorites (e.g.,an entire collection of Metasonix modules in a matching yellow case, the Mellotron, etc.), as well as new and unusual things. Upon arrival I was greeted by this rack containing Intellijel synth modules and a Mellotron rack-mount unit.
This the digital Mellotron M4000D in rack-mount unit. It sounds like the classic Mellotron in a unit that is more practical for live gigging or integration into a studio setup. Of course, there are no tapes in this one.
The polyphonic analog synthesizer from Schmidt was on display and I had a chance to play it.
This thing is a beast! Beyond the polyphony, it has four oscillators and seven filters per voice. Quite feature rich and very playable. But it’s price is this instrument’s most infamous feature. It comes in at about $20K USD, similar to the price one might pay for the car to schlep it around in.
This odd but intriguing electromagnetic contraption was from boutique manufacturer Analog Outfitters. We still have no idea what it does.
And of course there were lots of large modular installations, including this “Wall of Cwejman.”
It’s a dangerous booth to visit, as I start to get purchase ideas…
The Muff Wiggler Store was onsite at NAMM this year, hosting quite a few module makers whose work I had not encountered before.
These eye-catching modules from Minigorille have graphic screens (an unusual feature for a Eurorack module) for manipulating control voltage. It includes several programs such as a pong-like game and an XY freehand drawing unit, and has an expander for input from a handheld controller.
Next was the rather psychedelic Circuit Shaman, featuring modules with purple knobs and colorful LEDs, all to be viewed through distorting rainbow glasses.
The flagship module was the Spectra Mirror, a resonant down-sampler with a variety of controllable parameters allowing it to sound like a clean VCA, a bit-crusher and various things in between such as downsampling the signal with a high-pass filter. It would be interesting to run the shape controls through an LFO, or through the Minigorille module.
While not in Eurorack format, this complete system in Moog format from Synthetic Sound Labs was quite playable, and included a newly released Steiner filter.
There was a lot more at the booth, some old some new, but more than I am able to cover in this article. Visit the Muff Wiggler Store to find more, including some you may have never heard of before.
Our friends at Make Noise were back at NAMM this year including a few new modules. The Telharmonic is a 3-voice additive synthesizer with a variety of controls including spectral centroid, triads quantized to scales, a more. This module is another collaboration between Make Noise and Tom Erbe of Soundhack.
You can see a bit of the Telharmonic in action in this video. Our little mascot gets a starring role 🙂
Make Noise also introduced the Fixed Filter, and the RxMx which pairs with it to do all sorts of interesting gate-like effects.
The RxMx is expected to be available soon after NAMM, but no word on the release date for the Telharmonic. Both are intriguing enough to consider for the collection.
Buchla introduced several new instruments and add-ons this year, including an entirely new modular series, the 200h. The 200h aims to be a more compact (and hopefully lower cost) series of modules, but the same esoteric sound and control that make Buchla instruments infamous. They have been assembled into “mini-systems” including the LEM3 Spider shown below.
That colorful circular thing is actually a 200e series, specifically a 252e polyphonic rhythm generator. It is visually gorgeous!
Here is a short video of my attempts to play the LEMs.
Moog Music seems to have a bigger presence and NAMM every year. This time they had a large enclosed space complete with retro neon signs.
But that merely prepared the way for what was inside. The centerpiece and main attraction was the reintroduced Moog Modular.
There was quite a bit of excitement with the news about the modular. Besides being huge and impressive, it also boasts simple and easy to control modules with distinctively Moog sound.
While some sounds that one could get out of the demo system reminded me of the Minimoog, it was a different instrument. It is a modular, so the combinations can go quite distant from the classic Minimoog subtractive sound. Since the modules are fairly basic in terms of function compared to the recent Eurorack modular releases, it does take quite a few to make a patch. The larger size of the modules and knobs does make it easy to handle and play. But it is probably more of a studio instrument than a live instruments (especially with the high price tag).
More down-to-earth but perhaps odder was the Moog Werkstatt, a tiny patchable synth with Moog sound that interoperates nicely with Eurorack systems.
This one is indeed something for live use. I’d love to see how it works together with the Theremini. It does make some weird crunchy sounds, and would make a great first stage of a modular in between the Theremini as controller and various Eurorack modules as post processing.
In between, Moog does continue to provide its “Phatty” line, including the Moog Sub 37. These are quite practical to get a Moog sound for live-stage situations.
Of course there was quite a crowd to see the Modular. We at CatSynth certainly wish them well with the new instruments and exposure.
Our first stop at NAMM 2015 was Dave Smith Instruments. And they certainly had big news, with both the acquisition of the legendary Sequential Circuits (aka “SEQUENTIAL”) brand name and their first instrument under the new name, the Prophet 6.
We were able to talk with Dave Smith himself about the “new old name” and the new instrument.
The Prophet 6 itself is quite a sight. It includes the industrial design, lettering and other features from the Prophet V, and includes custom component based VCOs and analog filters.
It has a rich sound that ranges from the lusciousness of the Prophet 12 to the nastiness of the Evolver, though it doesn’t really do the same things as either of those instruments. As described in the video, it doesn’t have the complexity and feature set of the Prophet 12, but it’s not intended to. It is it’s own creature, and probably best as a lead synth used in conjunction with others. And it was definitely fun to play.
It does appear that both the Dave Smith Instruments and Sequential brands will be used on future offerings, which we look forward to seeing and hearing.
I often find myself spending quite a bit of time at the booth of Analog Haven at NAMM. It is an opportunity to see quite a variety of analog instruments (and a few not-quite-analog), and meet several of the small independent makers. The visit took on added significance as I cautiously wade into adding analog modular to my own arsenal of musical instruments.
We big with KOMA Elektronic, who showed off a prototype of their new Kommander, an infrared motion controller with multiple axes of control. It joins their existing effects boxes in their product line:
We also had fun with the fact the industrial design, particularly the geometric black-and-white pattern, match my own aesthetics in terms of dress and decor.
Make Noise is known for their unique and complex modules for audio processing and control. They had several new offerings, including the Echophon whose sound I quite liked.
[Click to enlarge.]
The Echophon is a collaboration with Tom Erbe of SoundHack, and is a reverse of the usual trend in that digital character is re-imagined in the analog domain. Make Noise also presented their first oscillator, the DPO.
Another module that particularly caught my fancy was the Morphing Terrarium from Synthesis Technology. It is a wavetable VCO that contains numerous waveforms, but more significantly it has parameters for “morphing” or moving among the different wavetables. With the right self modulation, this can lead to very surprising and complex waveforms:
Another interesting new find was an analog modular video synthesizer from LZX Industries.
Like analog audio counterparts, the LZX modules generate, process and modulate analog video signals. Think of it as being the boxes that each do all the little pieces of an old TV studio but with creative routing and control. You can see a little bit of video below:
I did specifically ask about mixing audio modules with the video modules (LZX uses the standard Eurorack format), and was informed that yes, this can be done, though one would need to match the voltages between the two domains, and keep in mind that the frequency ranges of video are much higher.
Visual interest and catchy names are a big part of the inspiration in many of the small boutique offerings. These pedals from Audible Disease were quite creative.
Among the visual designs, this simple switcher caught my attention. It reminded me a bit of my visit to the Communist Propaganda Museum in Shanghai.
Other offerings included the ARCHANGEL, an analog sequencer with touch plate controllers, from Detachment 3.
The Goatkeeper 3 is a tremolo pedal with analog signal path, but with a variety of waveforms (including the ability to record your own), and a sequencer for even more complex modulation.
There was a lot more at the booth, more than I can do in one article. I hope to see more of these instrument makers as I personally explore analog synthesis in greater depth.
This year, Malekko Heavy Industry had their own booth at NAMM. It was actually a bit of a challenge to find, all the way in the back of Hall C past the endless walls of guitars and celebrity-induced traffic jams. But I did find them, and was treated to a tour of a Malekko-only modular system:
In the above image (which admittedly isn’t the best quality), we see a simple patch that was focused on the Wiard Anti-Oscillator and Borg Filter, both of which I was particularly interested in. The Noisering was quite interesting as well and offered a lot of possibilities. The Wiard Jag (Joystic Axis Generator) was very pretty and intriguing, but I couldn’t immediately envision it’s use in a musical performance the way I could with the Noisering.
The system being shown is quite complete, with a host of VCOs, filters, modulators and utility elements. Indeed, one could build something just from their modules alone. But I do think it is most creative to mix and match with our manufacturers.
IK Multimedia has introduced a few new items in their iRig line. These are appealing for those of us who use “i-Thingies” (i.e., iPhone and iPad).
The iRig Cast is a tiny microphone. You can see the scale compared to the kitty in the above picture. For those who have used the Square card reader for iOS, it’s about the same size and shape. IK Multimedia suggests that this would be a device well suited for voice recordings, podcasting, interviews and such. So I am thinking this would be a useful accessory for those who are doing live streams from Occupy Wall Street protests!
The microphone will join the already available iRig MIDI interface.
The iRig in some ways seems better than a dock for live performance, particularly if one wants to pick up the iPad and move it around (though that is not what was being done in the demos). It is bidirectional and thus will be useful both for use as a controller (the primary direction in the live performance situation) and as a synthesizer receiving control data from DAW (in a studio setting).
Teenage Engineering is always fun. That goes for both playing the instruments and visiting their both at NAMM. We remember the OP-1 from the previous show:
Teenage Engineering introduced Oplab this time around. It’s a DIY system with a small versatile connectivity hub and variety of available sensors, including this shoe:
The heart of the system is the Oplab device itself, with CV inputs and outputs (in a format that connects easily to Eurorack format modules, the OP-1 and other devices), MIDI and USB. The USB can used to connect to an iPad to control synth apps or receive control data. Similarly, the analog CV and custom digital connections serve both directions. In addition to the shoe, they have several available sensors, including pressure, tap and rotation, though they strongly encourage users to bring their own.
The little eviscerated hard-drive on the right is an example of the DIY spirit of the system. It turns out one can spin the disk inside a hard drive and generate useful pulses for temporal control. I had never thought of using a hard drive as a controller before.
The Oplab and its related devices should be available later this spring. I’m definitely intrigued.
