Tag Archives: San Francisco

Meeting with Dave Smith

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A couple of days ago I had the great honor to meet with Dave Smith of Dave Smith’s Instruments. Dave is perhaps most famous for being one of the two inventors of the MIDI protocol, but for the last 30 years he has also been busy designing some of the most interesting synthesizers around.

image001His latest creation is the Prophet 12, a massive 12 voice synthesizer with 4 oscillators and a sub-oscillator per voice.

They are still hard to come by as the production has just started and they are all built here in San Francisco.

I had the great luck to be able to pick one up at Robotspeak at Haight Street, and through a series of lucky events Dave agreed to sign it for me.

So, with the synth still in its box I headed down to Dave’s office, where he kindly signed it and agreed to pose for some photos :)

I am now the happy owner of a signed Prophet 12, and yes the signature of course adds that extra ‘warmth’ and magic to the sound! ;-)

New Song (ML2 Un-less)

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This is the second track in my new Clicks and Cuts / chopped up crackle and pop direction. It is a bit more ambient than the previous one, but my intention is to keep going up and down the spectrum of very slow and atmospheric to more rhythmic almost drum and bass inspired tracks. This one will probably lead into the ML1 track at some point…

The track was made entirely in the box in Live, using no analog / OB gear at all.

Please leave a comment with any feedback. Hear anything you’d change? Something you like / do not like? Please let me know!

New Song (ML1 Chopped Up Cuts)

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First exploration in a more more chopped up, broken rhythmic style. No loops used, all percussion was handcrafted in Live. (Handcrafted as in even the samples are chopped up and modified.) You will need headphones or something that is capable of reproducing deep bass to hear all the parts of the track.

Leave a comment and let me know what you think! :) ANY feedback is more than welcome!

Modular Synth Dust Covers

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I’m about to embark on a 2 week trip away from home, but against all odds I wont be bringing my modular synth with me. Naturally dust is a concern when leaving gear unattended for extended periods of time, so I wanted to find a good way of covering up the modular.

At first I tried cutting out paper bags. Turns out the standard Safeway / Whole foods paper bag as just about the right depth and height to be slid over a Doepfer 9u case (that’s the LC9 one, not the portable). However, this not only looked silly, but the paper bags have a tendency to give off this foul smell that I did not want to imbue my gear with.

Instead, I found these really nice and stretchy iMac covers on Amazon that are just about the right size to be stretched across a 9u LC case. It’s a tight fit, but it works pretty well. Check out the photo below.

CumulusDustCoverThat’s two Doepfer LC9 cases side by side, each covered with a 27″ iMac stretch cover. If you have any better suggestions on how to cover up these cases and protect your modules from dust, please leave a comment and let me know!

New Song (Cumulus 3 – The Quarters)

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This is the 3rd track in the Cumulus series. As always this is coming from multiple live overdubs using my modular synth and NI’s maschine.

This is music for very late nights, dark rooms and headphones… or any other time and place of your choice of course.

(The Cumulus series is intended to work as a conceptual soundtrack to an abandoned, hulking and alien structure. Use of rich imagination and association is highly recommended!)