Just got an update from Joe Paradiso on his homebuilt mammoth analog modular synthesizer. He’s installed it in the MIT Museum and has completed a fairly epic patch which you can listen to (24 hours a day!) here.
Joe will be at the museum this Thursday and Friday (2/23 and 2/24) at 1pm, demoing the synth to visitors, so be sure to stop by if you’re in the neighborhood. Here’s some info from Joe on the construction and inspiration for the latest patch.
The second patch I made at the MIT Museum is totally done now, and you can hear it live on the stream. Listen to it at http://synth.media.mit.edu, and let me know what you think if you’re inclined – it’s running in physical space in Quad, of course – stereo on the stream. Note that this one has absolutely NO sequencer of any sort on it – all of the patterns you hear were made entirely from hand-patched logic (counters, ands, ors, flip flops, ring counters, rate multipliers, etc.). It’s an entirely different kind of composition environment from the norm – you really need to simultaneously be an engineer while being an artist and something of a performer. The inspiration for this patch started with the Boredoms – if you don’t know who they are, you should (http://www.boredoms.jp/). In particular, I was thinking of SuperRoots 9. The beauty of the patching interface is that you can never exactly nail what you start out to attain, but on the other hand, you get drawn into places you wouldn’t have normally gone once you start. The 3 drummers that Yamantaka Eye performs with lay down a compelling rhythm that my hand-patched logic and analog processing can’t match, of course. But this patch definitely has a strange jumpy groove once it gets into gear, and the 2-chord pad is archetypical too. Yes, Boredoms rule today! BTW, this patch took every cord I had, plus a good 30 more wires just shoved into the pin jacks – check out the photos here and here – the latter shows the kind of logic section patching complexity you need to build a sonic environment like this one.
I’m ripping this baby out next Thursday, as I’ll be at the museum next Thursday and Friday (2/23 and 2/24) at 1pm to demonstrate the synthesizer to visitors – doing some very simple patches and showing off what the modules do in case anybody is interested in this. It will run continuously until then.
Otherwise, enjoy the stream – there are moments of introspective drift in-between wild percussion (yes, Boredoms!). I might pull the percussion line back so it doesn’t come so often or regularly, but it’s essentially a wrap.
On that note. -Joe-
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