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ManCave

Why the 🧻 did I buy that synthesiser?

Tag: essay

10 Posts
Dec 6, 2024December 15, 2024

The Space Echo Echo Echo Echo Echo

It is the year 2025. Powerful hardware can now create a universe of new, exciting synthetic sounds and … oh fuck it. Why bother. To be continued.

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Jul 16, 2024July 16, 2024

The dialects of FM

FM synthesis has enjoyed a surprising popularity and longevity – from the inscrutable but best selling DX-7, a plethora of cheesy OPL sound cards for game consoles, a rabble of…

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Jul 26, 2023February 10, 2024

Vocoders

Vocoders are the synthesiser version of bagpipes. They make me cry and I’m not thinking of bonnie Scotland. There are three reasons why a vocoder might be acceptable – It’s…

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Jun 30, 2023December 6, 2024

Death to the ladder. We need new filters.

I hear much about oscillators: the unstable VCOs of yore, the digital waves of the 90’s, wavetables, geo-blends, samples… so many great ideas – but this luxury of waveforms is…

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Apr 3, 2023August 12, 2024

About the ManCave

It came about at a difficult time, when I needed a bit of hard laughter – the idea of a ‘man cave’ being ridiculous but very necessary when very awful…

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Mar 28, 2023August 2, 2023

Roland Roland Roland

Keep movin’, movin’, movin’Though they’re disapprovin’Keep them dogies movin’Rawhide! In recent months my studio has started to look like a Roland showroom. That could be taken as some kind of…

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Sep 22, 2022September 22, 2022

Roland Spend The Five Bucks

A little phrase that sums up something odd you will notice in synthesis land – the machine that is crafted with attention and love and yet at the last moment…

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Aug 28, 2022February 10, 2024

Toys I won’t pay for. Sorry.

Build your own Edison Style Phonograph seems like a great idea – and there’s lot of other sound related experiments to try. But the phonograph looks like it inscribes a…

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Jul 2, 2022June 3, 2024

Things I (most probably) will never review.

Teenage Engineering OP-1: a horribly expensive toy that approaches some interesting processes while never quite mastering them. The synthesis is made unwieldy and mysterious by tiny ‘keyhole’ parameters – a…

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May 10, 2022May 21, 2022

This Behringer Thing

I’m sure you can’t wait to hear my take on Behringer. I know everyone else has had a stab at it but they aren’t me. There is a difference. Christmas…

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Posts pagination

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  • Essays and Barbs
  • Glorious Nippon
  • American Standard
  • United Nations
  • Virtual Wood
  • From Beyond
  • Toys
  • iPad isn’t dead it’s just resting

additive ai AIRA analogue category drum machine essay FM granular groovebox iPad modular mpc physical modelling roland S+S sampler sold spectral SuperNatural toy transwave virtual analogue wave sequencing wavetable

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