GRollins

I love that song, but it's problematic in that they get into the middle and just pound that one note over and over and over and over... If they had cut out that part--or at least reduced it--the song would have been a lot stronger. Grey

And as a subtext for the synthesizers.com thing, if you look at the math on the years quoted, Roger Arrick, the founder, must be getting on in years. He might be wanting to retire. Grey

A second Beads has shown up on eBay. Grey

Addendum: Apparently a buyer was found and synthesizers.com will continue. Grey

They're up for sale, as of this past June. Whether a buyer has stepped forward, I do not know. They say it was the pandemic and subsequent supply issues that did them in. Grey

Never having followed through on my original intention to create a 5U synth, I cannot claim that the thought of Big Knobs is like seeing an old girlfriend; I never got the girl in the first place. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that it's like seeing an old lust. I spent a lot of time researching brands and models. Now all of that is probably moot. I wouldn't even know where to begin. Grey

Mutable Instruments has come up several times in this thread. A Beads just popped up on eBay if anyone is interested: https://www.ebay.com/itm/275595620246?hash=item402ac76f96:g:gFsAAOSwf-Vjq0h9 No, I don't intend to bid, so you guys have at it. Grey

External sites. You've got links to other peoples' stuff and a lot of those seem to be kaput. Grey

And while I'm thinking about it... Moe, your hotrodmotm site has a bunch of broken links. Grey

Oh, puh-leeze! Will you kindly quit yammering about Big Knob synths? PLEASE? You're, like, giving me some serious GAS, just when I thought I was over it. Jeez...some people... It's like you're wanting me to go spend a buncha money or something. Grey

That's 'cause ribs ain't politics...they's religion...least-a-ways that's the way it is 'round these parts! Grey

I've only had one white Christmas in my entire life and don't anticipate another in this incarnation. The climate thing is against me. But, man, I'm here to tell you that I enjoyed that one time to the hilt. It was nearly perfect. Hereabouts, it's either cold or it's precipitating, but almost never both at the same time. When it does snow, it's gone in a couple of hours. My boys have never been sledding. Ever. The snow never coats the road long enough and deep enough to do any good. I'm old enough to remember when we'd get six to eight inches of snow at least two or three times every winter and be out of school for several days each time...and not through "an abundance of caution." We'd be out because the roads were impassible if the road crews didn't plow--and they always managed to be busy elsewhere, bwess their widdle hearts! Grey

There was a guy in elementary school who was tone deaf. When we'd sing in class, he drove me absolutely batty. I was convinced he was doing it just to torture me. I begged the teacher to seat me somewhere, anywhere, other than near him. She said no. Maybe they were both in on it...? But, yeah, I'm a fiend for tuning. Note my mention of the fine tuning on the Doepfer oscillators. The MI critters can be fine tuned also, I think. Grey

Moe, Mutable's got--or had, see note above about them going away--a whole raft of things that I've never tried. I like Elements better than Plaits, but some people really like Plaits. I have both, so I don't have to choose. Don't get me wrong, I love my Moog stuff. Two Voyagers (kbd and RME), a Little Phatty (I think it's the oldest, most basic one), and a Big Briar (still Bob) theremin, so I'm on that train. I don't own any actual Moog 5U modulars, just the Behringer clones of same. That said, the Moog modular building block philosophy, for me, strikes the right balance between function and flexibility. I coded in Assembler for a while. Ultimate programming power and flexibility, but it's a lot of work. I went back to C. The building blocks were the right size for me. At this point it's been thirty years or so since I've written a computer program. I'd have to dust off some very creaky brain cells if I needed to code in any language today. I do not regard myself as a master sound designer. I get something in my mind's ear and I sit and think about how to achieve that sound with the synth stuff available. Then I put thought into action. But at the end of the day, it's all about the melody for me. I'm not worried about whether the sound I'm using has been done before or if it's a preset or whatever. If I can make up a melody that makes someone whistle or hum after they hear it, then I feel that I've done my part to make the world a better place. Grey

Moe, One thing I kept running into was when the piece ahead hit 0V and couldn't go any further, then the through-zero piece would cut off or freeze at zero or whatever, depending. Same thing going the other way--leading piece goes below zero and the following piece doesn't know what to do with a negative signal. Yes, this all boils down to signal path sequencing--making sure that you know which pieces input or output what voltages, but it was all more trouble than it was worth for me. I never saw that it would do anything for me that I couldn't do (more predictably) some other way. I'd like to note that I'm not generally drawn to the sound of overdriven opamps. Tubes...yes, I'm very much open to overdriven tubes, but not solid state. A lot of people go gaga over the sound of overdrive in a Eurorack piece. Not me. To my ear, that harshness is nearly always unpleasant. Yes, this closes off many avenues that others would gladly explore. I have no problem with that. If they're getting sounds that work for them, that's what it's all about. I don't usually modulate timbre. There are exceptions--I do things in the E370 where the sound morphs, which is kind of its raison d'etre, but that's getting off into another realm and it does it without crossing zero, if I recall correctly. I cannot think of a single instance where I've pushed something (e.g. filter) into self-oscillation. I'll sometimes go right up to the threshold, where it's just barely audible, but no further. A lot of the above is due to my hearing. I get migraines. Most people who have sensory problems during migraines are photophobes, meaning they're sensitive to light. Not me. I'm a phonophobe. I'm sensitive to sound. High frequencies make me very unhappy indeed. I avoid harsh, high frequency sounds like the plague. Pure high frequencies aren't so bad. A wide open, self-oscillating filter is like an ice pick to the brain. I was in a store a week or two ago and they played Axel F. from Beverly Hills Cop over the intercom. Supersaw City. I was in a vulnerable pre-headache sort of status. I left the store. It just wasn't worth it. Grey

As far as saving, the Eloquencer will, the Metropolis won't. So will the E370, for that matter. I take meticulous notes on EVERYTHING that I regard as important and store them as a doc file with the same name as the tune I'm working on so I can find it easily. I can recreate anything I've done on Eurorack--it just takes attention to detail. Yeah, it can be a pain in the butt, but it's doable. Maths? Oh, gawd, don't get me started! I have a simple rule: If I can't read the nomenclature, I won't buy the damned thing. I don't care if it's God-In-A-Box, I won't buy it. I have no patience with all the stupid graphics [certain companies] use. I don't need attitude, I need a musical instrument. That's one reason I feel drawn to the Moog modulars...I can read the bloody labels and they mean something. The calibration lines around the knobs are fine and precise. If I set something to -1 originally, when I set it to -1 the second time, it will be -1, not -1.5, because some nitwit specified a calibration line wide enough to park your car on (e.g. Tip Top). And the artwork people put on things? Oi! Confuses my poor eyes and does nothing functional. The Mutable Instruments pieces have art, but it's not overly dramatic and at least I can read the labels. The XAOC Batumi has some lines on it, but they're more subtle than some of their other units and I can live with it. Off the top of my head, I don't think anything else I own has "art" on the front, and all the lettering is legible. One Box Does One Thing is the reason I got into modular to begin with. I wanted to do something with my Voyager but couldn't, because the thing's hardwired to go from point A to point B to point C to point D. There's no way to insert C between A and B; can't be done (unless maybe you've got an XL or can do what you want with their waaay overpriced breakout boxes). So I bought modules. If somebody starts sticking 37 things in one module, I'm right back where I started. Nope. Uh, unh. Gimme basic boxes for basic functions. I'll put it all together. It's my Erector Set, and I'll damned well build what I want with it! Grey

Honestly, the sub-zero (sounds like the temperatures we're going to have for the next few nights) devices I have on hand generally end up doing something I don't want them to do at a moment when I really, truly don't want them to do it. Bear in mind that I'm not seeking beeps and bloops, I'm after noises that (as we put it in a thread a year or two ago) sound like they could have come from real instruments or from nature. I want notes that play at well-defined pitches. I want drums that sound like real, acoustic drums, not like '80s synth percussion. I want everything to be constrained and predictable. I don't need wide sweeps (synth equivalent of a dive-bomb whammy bar on a guitar), because "real" instruments or sounds made by living creatures rarely go more than two or three octaves (yes, yes, yes...88 keys on a piano can go quite a ways, but most compositions don't utilize even one extreme, much less both in the same work); but within that octave or two, they're often very complex, timbre-wise. If I want some sort of swoopy sound (whale song? aliens? alien whales???), I pull out my theremin. Grey

I don't know about you, but I feel that the more "feature crammed" a device is, the harder it is to use. I'm not overly fond of deep menus--gimme single function knobs whenever possible. The Eloquencer is about as menu-y as I care to go and it's only sorta medium on that scale--and I would gladly trade a few HP for more buttons or knobs, so as to get rid of some of the menu layers. The vast majority of my Eurorack things have knobs that do what the label says and only that. This fetish for smushing forty-'leben functions into a device 1HP in width doesn't make sense to me at all. Grey

I started here in a back-asswards attempt to find a keyboard player who shared my musical views so I could go back to strings, where I'm happiest. Didn't work. Instead, I found a bunch of maniacs who made me spend a bunch of money on things that I didn't really need... ...and I love 'em for it! Happy Holidays/Merry Christmas/Good Yule/Happy Winter Solstice and whatever else floats your boat. Oh, and Happy New Year as well. Me and my single malt are going to settle in and try to stay warm (wind chill here forecast to be near zero tonight). Grey

Modular? Ooookay, here we go... Initially, my impulse was to go full-on 5U, Moog-style modules (e.g. synthesizers.com), but I started looking at eBay and the used market was rather thin. It's not that I buy exclusively used units, but I want the option. Well...wanted. Stuff came up, but not often enough to suit me. So, I gave up on my Big Knob fantasies and grudgingly went little knob. I just try to avoid the ones that are stupidly tightly packed. For me, the 84HP, 19" rack mount chassis is the preferred system. I've got racks all around me and they can be portable if necessary. At this time, I have six and they're mostly full. Big stuff: Behringer Model D (two of these) and 2600 If you want to get picky, I can patch Voyagers and such in with the Eurorack items, but... As anyone who's read my Deep Oscillator posts will suspect, I've got oscillators. People get passionate about oscillators, but my philosophy is that the filters are where it's at. I went with the Doepfer A-111-2 for several reasons: They allow for fine tuning (for reasons that I do not understand, not all oscillators can do this) and they have a wide range, they're also versatile in that they can be LFOs, etc. etc. etc. I also have Mutable Instruments Elements and Plaits, Intellijel Plonks, Erica Synths Bass Drum, Synthesis Technologies E370, Tip Top One, and probably something I'm forgetting. Now, the trick here is that I frequently (like 70-80% of the time) mix in something from the A-111s to bolster the sound--a predictable offshoot of my Deep Oscillator notions. I'm not shy about using two, three, even four sound sources to get what I want. Filters. This is where things get wiggy. I don't have as many filters as I'd like; they all sound different and I pick and choose, depending on what I'm after. Behringer 121, 904A, 904B, and 914. manhattan analog SVVCF. And others I'm sure I'm forgetting. They all sound different and I'd like to have more. Sequencers: Intellijel Metropolis and Winter Modular Eloquencer. I don't really like the Metropolis--too limiting--but it's comparatively easy to use. The Eloquencer is an incredible piece of hardware, but the learning curve is so steep as to approximate vertical. But, man, what that thing can do! You can tell it what key and scale you're in (and it knows an ass-load of scales, including some you've never heard of), then tell it to improvise, assigning a probability to how likely it is to deviate from the literal settings. Un-friggin'-believable. These things are expensive, but I swear, for what they'll do, they ought to cost twice as much. There are the usual assortment of oddities, like a Doepfer stereo panning unit, phase shifter, quantizer, etc. XAOC Batumi LFO--I like this li'l bugger. For whatever reason, I find this thing more intuitively obvious and versatile than other LFOs. Intellijel Outs for sending stuff to the outside world. Mutable Instruments Yarns for MIDI. Unlike others, this will do four simultaneous MIDI channels. To me, this is a no-brainer. I've got to scoot, but I'll add one thing: If my rig got struck by a meteorite, which units would be first on my replacement wish-list? Winter Modular Eloquencer XAOC Batumi Mutable Instruments Yarns and Elements (Plaits? maybe, maybe not...) Synthesis Technologies E370 Doepfer A-138s mixers, plural (not listed above, but priceless for sub-mixes) Behringer filters...all of 'em...don't overlook the 914, it's a gem, and the 904B is a rare bird, in that it's a high pass in a world thickly populated with low pass filters I have other units that I specifically would NOT buy again, such as the Doepfer phase shifter (wimpy sound), Mutable Instruments Shades (useless for what I want to do), and others. Knowing what to avoid is as important as knowing what to buy. More later if I get some time... Grey NOTE: Mutable Instruments is going out of business. What this means to the individual who might want to acquire some of their modules will vary.

Music is often about politics. Look at all the protest songs about the Vietnam war and racial stuff back in the '60s for starters. How can you separate them without creating a gaping hole of music-we-can't-talk-about? Wouldn't that be a little conspicuous? Grey

I came across Yes by accident. There were some guys up the street who were into them...but they weren't the kind of guys you'd think would be the Yes sort--more redneck. However, they turned me on to the material available to that point (this was summer '71 to summer '72, then we moved away) and it stuck to me like glue. They were also into Jethro Tull. I don't remember that they were very big on ELP, and the other "prog" bands, such as Genesis, etc. weren't even on their radar at all. One way or another, Yes and Tull are still with me today. Grey

It's performance anxiety. The difference between recording and performing live is that with a recording you know that your mistakes will live on in perpetuity...and that's a scary thought. At least at a gig (assuming there's no one in the audience recording you), your mistakes float away on the breeze, never to return. Grey

I'll take all three. Grey

They did...it's called Yessongs... ...or Progeny, your choice. I liked Close To The Edge best of all...probably Fragile second, at least the full-band songs; the solos were mostly so-so. Relayer maybe third...or...The Yes Album? I don't know. I lost interest after Relayer. What might have happened if Moraz hadn't gotten himself fired? I can see different scenarios, some good, some bad. Topographic Oceans was difficult for me. I wanted to like it. I really did, but it just never gelled for me. It has moments that work, but a lot of it is just tedious. I think if someone had cracked the whip and told the band to take out the meandering stuff it would have made a decent single LP album. Not a strong album, mind you, but a decent one. (I feel pretty much the same way about Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti, but let's not start that conversation.) Bill Bruford said he didn't want to make "son of Close To The Edge" so he left Yes. Well, that's his right, of course, but I often wonder what would have happened if he had stuck it out. Would he have steered the others away from Jon Anderson's idea for Topographic Oceans? Apparently the basic concept was Jon's, who in turn sold Steve Howe on it, and the two of them talked the rest of the band into going along. In some alternate universe, that knife's edge (oops, wrong band...) decision might have gone the other way. They might have made Son Of Close To The Edge. Would it have measured up? Could it have measured up? We'll never know. I think one of the things that's wrong with Topographic Oceans is that Rick Wakeman has nothing to do. There's no pyrotechnic playing. It's just a bunch of pads. He's bored out of his skull and it shows...and so he left the band, too. Rick is one of those guys who needs to play something non-trivial, at least some of the time. To tether him to all that low-level background crap isn't fair to him and it did a disservice to both the album and the band in the long run; a Ferrari being used to ferry groceries. Every time it sounds like they might get up a good head of steam, it just kinda fizzles out and they go back to sleep walking through the music. Grey