Went round my brother-in-laws the other week and came across this beauty in the summer house / shed thing their teenage son hangs round in. As you can imagine, it was all I could do not to explode. My BOL said he picked it up on ebay for 50 quid, but they all seemed to be going for 300 when I looked.


It has fabulous fat analogue sounds


It has a built in microphone for doing vocoder magic


The knobs and lights on it are brilliant. The feel of the knobs is like "thunka-clunka" not some el cheapo rubbish.


It has a knob on called "Arpeggiator"


Go from about a minute in, just to enjoy the wonderful knobs. I know, I know.


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speaking of synthesizers, you might want to listen to http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01101sg on 6music.


"in the latest of his occasional series of 6 mixes exploring synthesised music past and present, record label boss and electro enthusiast mark jones is joined by propaganda frontwoman claudia brücken to discuss her life in music. hailing from dusseldorf in germany, propaganda were signed to trevor horn's ztt label in 1984 by paul morley, whom claudia would later marry. the band hit the charts the next year with their debut album 'a secret wish', featuring seminal singles 'dr mabuse' and 'duel', and although the band split two years later, claudia has carried on making music, both as part of a duo with omd's paul humphries and on her own. in this programme, claudia shares her 'synth-fluences' with mark, including tunes from kraftwerk, patti smith and la dusseldorf alongside contemporary electronica from crystal castles and james blake. she also discusses her new solo album 'combined' featuring, amongst others, a duet with erasure's andy bell. there's also music from depeche mode, motor and a look ahead to next week's short circuit festival at london's roundhouse, celebrating the output of seminal electronic label mute records."


in other synth news, gorillaz have teamed up with korg and done a special app thing for the apple pantypad http://gorillaz.com/korg-ielectribe-gorillaz-edition

Wee wah woo wah! I'll listen to it tomorrow. Thanks for that. Sorry it took so long to moderate, but the moderate thing still isn't working so I had to go into the database and update it manually in there. Given the amount of users and posts, it's just not worth the work to reinstall the forum software and move all the posts and whatnot.

i've used a thing called radio downloader to save the program as an mp3, so i'll listen to it on my phone / in my car tomorrow.


i'm downloading that into the music library at the moment.


...


have now listened to the show. the dj was a bit annoying, a bit hospital radio i thought, (i know he's some form of label head rather than proper interviewer) and she was a bit dull to be honest. no real mention of the recording of a secret wish for example.


i quite like the crystal castles / robert smith thing though, less annoyingly chiptune than their other stuff. sorry, i mean "to be cast adrift in a vortex of deafening pain without a safety net. you get the feeling you could do anything in the world, but that 'anything' would ultimately mean nothing. crystal castles marks a nuanced emotional territory that dance music never covered before."



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I've used a thing called Radio Downloader to save the program as an mp3, so I'll listen to it on my phone / in my car tomorrow.

Thanks for mentioning/posting that - is it any good? I'm always a bit paranoid about downloading software unless it's by some big IT entity. It seems that not a month goes by when I don't have to reinstall/recover my PC due to some glitch or bug or virus or something or other. And then it f*cks up my McAfee and I have to reinstall that from scratch and get all the updates again and lose hours to it.


But some sort of radio downloader would be useful. Do you stream the prog live or does it condense the process (i.e. if I want to download a 3 hour prog does it take 3 hours?) and then can you scroll back and forward in the prog or can you only listen to it as one continuous stream? (sorry if it answers that on the website, I haven't been able to extract that info from a cursory glance.

Yeah it's ok, actually. I downloaded the Stewart Lee / Richard Bacon thing after all. So, all you do is fire it up, click on BBC Radio or Podcast. Then click on the relevant a-z button (or you can choose by genre or format) so I scrolled down to Richard Bacon, and then it showed about 10 different shows, and I clicked on the one that said Stewart Lee, and then pressed download. It took about 5 minutes to download, and it just downloads it as an MP3 so you can scroll back and forth on the track as you would any track on your pc / ipod or whatever.


The only pisser with it that I've found so far is that it doesn't seem to have a search facility, so I had a bit of a job with the Claudia Brucken thing, because it wasn't in C from Claudia or B for Back to the Phuture, but was in S for Six Mix: Back to the Phuture - Claudia Brucken. But it's hardly a show stopper.


I know what you mean about crap on your pc. I tend to find that the download time of a lot of the programs that I use is so small, that I download them, install them, use them for what I want, and then uninstall them, especially because lots of programs are pains in the arse that sit there running when you start your pc, even when you're not using them, so they can send you a message to tell you an update's available, or some such shit. What a long, dull sentence.


Windows 7 also supports something called Windows Virtual PC , which allows you to install a virtual pc (never) and run it as a piece of software within Windows 7. So you could install a Virtual PC running XP or Ubuntu or whatever, and use that to download and run any dodgy stuff. If your virtual pc gets a virus, just delete the virtual pc and start again. I use it for dull work stuff - I've got a Virtual PC with an Oracle database instance on that I wouldn't want installed and running all the time using up resource on my actual pc. But it is also useful to have to run Keygens and stuff on the virtual pc knowing that it won't feck up yer actual box.


I know, I know, NERD!!!

I know, I know, NERD!!

No, no - that's all good. I wish I knew half what you know about this stuff - perhaps then I wouldn't have so many problems and have to keep winging it.

Bizarrely after all this, read about this radio downloade r in a magazine at work this week - don't know how it compares but may be worth investigating.

Back on a synthesizer tip ...

Preorder
The Mute Synth is a hand-held touch and tilt instrument with copper etched artwork and contoured printed circuit board that wasb designed in collaboration with Mute and graphic designer Adrian Shaughnessy. The instrument brings together many Dirty Electronics aesthetics and instrument designs into one device in particular creating an instrument ‘of the hand’ (in terms of both playing and building), a noise-based device that utilises feedback, and exploring the relationship between artwork and circuit board.
It combines sound synthesis with a sequencer/pulser, and it is ‘knobless’. The Mute Synth is controlled by using the conductivity of the human body to complete the instrument’s circuit when the copper etching is touched. There are touch ‘points’ on both sides of the circuit board, and the instrument is designed to be played with thumbs and fingers. Two tilt switches on different planes allow for gestural control of the sequencer. Pulsating brilliant white noise and grunge in the hand!
Features:
Copper etched PCB artwork
Touch and tilt control
Two oscillators
Feedback network
Distortion
Filter
Sequencer
Contoured shape
Battery powered - coin cell included (CR2032)
Requires amplification
Jack output

I thought this was quite interesting until I watched the vimeo clip where they twatted about so much I stopped caring.

Speaking of synthesizers

There's an hour long documentary about the BBC Radiophonic Workshop available to Download on Sky Go or whatever they're calling it now . Originally broadcast on Sky Arts.

"A fascinating look at life inside the BBC Radiophonic Workshop which closed in 1995 having produced memorable music and sound effects for Doctor Who, Blake's 7 and Blue Peter."

Expect sonic weirdness and hopefully some Delia Derbyshire.