Magman

With a great deal of help from Dr Metlay, I now have a lot more Keyboard magazines in my collection and a few more hopefully arriving shortly. I will likely hold off on scanning these though till we have a consensus on if or how an archive project can go forward (I have plenty of other magazines still to scan, and synths to build and fix, so I will be plenty busy regardless). As Ben and I have found out, when there is sufficient community interest, it is surprising how quickly content can be gathered. With Polyphony magazine it was effectively weeks from the archive going live on mu:zines to the collection being completed. Admittedly, a much short production run, but Keyboard also has a larger audience and a larger community of interest. For the community to support it though, one key aspect is that access to the archive should be free if at all possible, or the community will be reluctant to provide content for free so that someone else can make profit from their efforts. This can be mitigated to some degree if the access costs are to maintain the archive, but again, donations or Patreon contributions are a better model than a paid access site. Anyway, here"s hoping we can work out a good way forward for this archive. I will be watching developments with interest.

Waves hello as the interested party in the UKð I am a major contributor to www.muzines.co.uk and one of the reasons for trying to get the magazines from Dr. Mike Metlay is that we would very much like to add Keyboard mag to the collection on mu:zines, but this is a decision that will be down to Ben, the site owner. The key issue though is permissions, mu:zines is very conscious of respecting people"s copyright so works to get permission before publishing anything. I"m not afraid of scanning, as a collector of magazines my scan queue is always in the 1000"s, so adding keyboard mag is not a worry, though obviously time is a major constraint. I have over 16,000 magazines in my house, but I am a single guy so don"t get nagged about my piles of magazines ð. We also normally scan to high 300dpi tif"s then convert to other formats as required. Will keep an interested ear on these discussions. Regards Mike

One of my friends pointed this thread out to me, so I thought I pop in and say hello. To say that I am a magazine collector would be a bit of an understatement, let"s just say that I have a 'significant' collection that hasn"t quite squeezed out the synths so far. I have joined one project to see how many of these I can get on the Internet. You may have come across the http://www.muzines.co.uk/ website already, where I am a major contributor. One success we had last year was to get permission to host the collection of Polyphony magazine, which - with the help of the wider community - we managed to build a complete collection of very quickly. I am interested in trying to do something similar for Keyboard and Electronic Musician. Critically, this is dependant on getting permission from the copyright holders as I believe copyright is important and should be respected. If we get permission though, we would look for donations or purchases of magazines to build the collection online. Perhaps it might only be the early years, like has been done for Sound on Sound magazine, but it would be great to even just have these available as they start to disappear from more public access. I have a few of these magazines already in my collection, but plan to hopefully get them all in time. So if any of you folks are still looking to move some of your mags to new owners, count me as interested. I may appear to be on the wrong side of the Atlantic from first appearances, but that didn"t stop me completing my collection of Byte magazine thanks to a contact in America a few years ago with some large heavy boxes and a good shipper. Regards Mike

A friend from the Netherlands and I looked into this a few years ago. Our idea was to have something like a card table (so it was portable). In the centre would be a collection of synth electronics - we were going to use at least 2 Doepfer DIY Synths plus a few additional modules to flesh out functions available. We also looked at a version with 4 synths, so one for each side. Around this central area would be a wide border of polished steel, this would allow magnets to fix a collection of toys to interface with the synths. Audio output would be headphones with a possible external amplifier for more public demonstrations should something interesting came out of the play. At least 2 headphones per synth would allow collaboration. The toys were to allow a sense of 'playing' with music. Some of these toys included: Small CV keyboards, akin to toy organs or perhaps something like a Korg Nanokey A small 8 note Sequencer A motor driven opto-interuptor with a variable speed control. A fan driven generator, that could be blown or use a motor driven fan to generate CV"s or pulses. A mechanical Sequencer, moving a contact generates notes - both circular and straight versions. Ball bearings in tracks that make contact as it or they travel along the track, could be used as a clock for sequencers, or a step generator. That was just a few of our idea"s, but these would all be connected by 4 pole jacks to provide power CV and clock connections as well as power to the edge of the central area. All of these toys could then be patched into the synths to make music or noise as required. So we had lots of idea"s, but none of them have seen the light of day as yet. As I am now a member of a Maker Place, I might just move this along a bit this year, as I attend a few Maker Events and Synth Meets during the year were this would be an interesting conversation piece. Regards Mike

One of my friends pointed out this forum to me, so I decided to join the fun. I am Mike and live about 10 miles from Liverpool in the UK. I am a collector at heart, having been collecting magazines since a teenager, but more recently, collecting synths. My first magazine was a Practical Electronics (UK), which just happened to have the PE Sound Synthesiser as one of its projects, so synths have been an interest since the start. I even tried to build a PE Minisonic in 1974. My magazine collection is now approaching 16,000 unique issues and my synth collection has also grown. I am also a major contributor to the mu:zines website. If you haven"t found this site yet, go and enjoy looking at loads of electronic music mags, including a complete set of Polyphony that we added last year. Now for a bit of a synth list in no particular order. SCI Sixtrax, ARP Quartet, Ensoniq ESQ1, Roland D50, Roland JD800, Novation Ultranova, Korg MS20, Yamaha DX7 IIFD, DX5, TX816, QX1, KX88, CX5M, EX5R, Powertran Transcendant 2000, Transcendant Polysynth, Oberheim Matrix 6R, PE Minisonic 2. I build and restore a lot of my synths as well, so have a Deckards Dream, a couple of TTSH"s, Jasper EDP Wasp clone, a very large 5U modular and a collection of Vocoders and other DIY effects. I am more of a maker than a player and end up noodling more than playing, but this year I plan to get more serious with my playing. As a way to hear my synths being played by better musicians than I am, I also run the Liverpool Synthesiser Meet every couple of months. This a free public event where people can come and learn about synths or play synths that they may have only heard of. This meet is slowly building a community of interest, so it will be interesting to see how it develops this year. Anyway, that"s enough about me for now, time to go and scan another magazine for mu:zines. Regards Mike