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…
Tag: essay
10 Posts
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Sampling in the 20’s
I’d like to put forward three major eras in the cultural development of digital sound sampling. You can slice it many other ways but this trio will be useful here.…