FakeBook

The Dark Esquire - Situation Day 3 giveaway

Johnny — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:48:00 GMT

My remix is being given away today as a promo for the new Dark Esquire release.

get it

The Lost Remix «Circlesquare Remix Competition»

Johnny — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 17:50:00 GMT

Seems the Circlesquare remix contest (which was announced on XLR8R.com) winner was never announced. The deadline was moved from November 2nd to the 15th, but that date has come and gone with no announcement. Anybody know what happened?

You can here my entry here:

My Dark Esquire Remix

Johnny — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:19:00 GMT

Take a listen and leave a comment on the timeline:

Themes-DarkEsquire-PolitBureauMix-J.reading by resonancemultimedia

The Dark Esquire "Situation" Official Music Video

Johnny — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 14:28:00 GMT

Check out the video a friend of mine just completed:

The Dark Esquire "Situation" Official Music Video from Mike Ferrara on Vimeo.

HTML5 drum machine

Johnny — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:08:00 GMT

Check out this drum machine/sequencer written in javascript using the latest HTML5 spec.

HTML5 looks to unseat flash as the dominant web, audio/motion graphics platform. Cool!

http://www.randomthink.net/labs/html5drums/

Firefox 3.5 or Safari 4.

From Ajaxian, author Brian Arnold states:

I'm also working on something like the ToneMatrix or Tenori-on (Flash and actual devices, respectively) in pure HTML/JS. It works too, but the sounds aren't exactly designed to be great together (it's currently working on a C scale) and so if you're careful, you can get some decent sound but otherwise, it'll hurt your ears.

LIMS: New Roland Juno & Yamaha Synths

Johnny — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 13:14:00 GMT

Nick at SonicState is at LIMS and gives us a first look at new synths from Roland and Yamaha.

First the Roland Juno Di, which is an "entry-level price" synth in the Juno family. New feature are a USB port for a thumb drive and mic input. Nick promises a "proper demo" later.

Roland Juno Di @ sonicState

The Yamaha S90xs is a more top-of-the-line model with all sorts of fanciness

Yamaha S90xs @ sonicState

Tom Oberheim's High School yearbooks on Ebay

Johnny — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 13:53:00 GMT

We have heard the news of the great, new oberheim SEM's that Tom Oberheim just released; the original of which are much sought after and indispensable to many producers including Goldfrapp's Will Gregory.

So what pops up on ebay? Two high school yearbooks of the the man himself from 1954 and 1953.

Now you'd have to be the ultimate fanboy or Tom himself to want to get these, but I thought that it was quite funny to see these and wondered if it was due to the recent news of a new SEM. Unbelievable....

Tweet A Sound Update: Little Sounds through Twitter

Johnny — Fri, 29 May 2009 21:39:00 GMT

Many have heard of the live twitter playlist from Richie Hawtin. But check out this cool little app that just got updated. Yes, on the face this is silly; but hell, why not?

Tweet A Sound: getting started tutorial from Andrew Spitz on Vimeo.

Tweet-a-sound.

We eagerly await the Windows version.

Linkage: Cool Digital Audio Hacks at Hack-a-day

Johnny — Wed, 27 May 2009 13:42:00 GMT

Just thought I'd pass on a link to the digital audio hacks at hack-a-day. Often times, cool music related hacks come up that any self-respecting music-making nerd must love.

How about a homemade 8-bit sampler? Or a Robotic snare drum?

Check it out.

Also, be sure to check out the portable audio hacks.

Early Moog. Earilest Actually.

Johnny — Fri, 08 May 2009 15:35:00 GMT

I normally don't post on things from other blogs, but I thought I'd pass on a very interesting post on Matrixsynth (which was a post on the AH mailing list).

Looks like the Monkees were the first to use a Moog on a pop record with the song "Daily Nightly" in April '67.

Quite a cool song in it's on right. Most of the commercial work with the Moog was done by Beaver & Krause

Check out the post for other interesting early Moog work and more on Beaver & Krause.

WTF? Crumar Cordatron?

Johnny — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:06:00 GMT

Here's a very interesting piece that has come up on eBay. The Crumar Cordatron. I have a Crumar Tocatta, which is a neat little preset organ, but this is very odd indeed. It's an accordian splayed out in a keyboard fashion.

From the auction:

I can't find any information by running a search on this board. It must be incredibly rare. It might even be a prototype for all I know. If anyone has any information on it I would greatly appreciate your expertise.

What is so unusual about this piece is it couples accordian style buttons into an electric organ. The power output is very unusual also. Unfortunatey I don't have the power adapter & don't know where to begin on trying to find one. I'm dying to know what this board is capable of. Because of this I'm selling it as a collector's piece. The previous owner owned a music store that specialized in accordians.

Crumar is not know for their great build quality, so I'd be surprised if it powered up. Looking at the inputs on the back, it's think it was meant to connect to another controller or control an amplifier (maybe a leslie type device)...

Anyone heard, heard of or seen one of these?

The Ultimate Sound Design Hardware: Pacarana

Johnny — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 15:25:00 GMT

I like hardware. There are more than a few music tech blogs that tend to share the software side of things, but I really like hardware. My studio looks like a museum of obsolescence, but hey I can get down with Reason and Live at times.

Regardless of my feelings, this has to quicken the pulse of any self-proclaimed music geek, "The Most powerful sound design workstation on the planet"

It's not exactly just hardware, it's a massive load of outboard sound processing power.

In a nutshell the Paca Rana claims:

The Pacarana is a powerful multiprocessor computer that runs alongside your Macintosh or PC. Like other computers, the function of the Pacarana is defined by its software. Unlike other computers, the Pacarana doesn’t have to run a huge general-purpose operating system with elaborate GUIs and multiple independent processes that can interrupt each other at any time. With the Pacarana, all compute cycles are dedicated to sound; you don’t have to share it with any other tasks.

You can’t run software without a computer. This computer was designed for sound computation.
The Pacarana communicates with the Kyma X software running under Mac OS or Windows via FireWire 800 (IEEE1394 or an 800-to-400 adapter cable.
Audio and MIDI input and output is handled via an external FireWire or USB converter or, for current Kyma owners, through a Capybara-320 with Flame FireWire I/O. Connect additional USB MIDI controllers like keyboards or fader boxes via the second USB port.

Quite cool....but it aint' cheap..$2970 to get started.

So how does it sound....?

Here's a drum loop and then a processed through the device:

Here's a cool audio morphing example, drum loop to a voice:

Music is Math

Johnny — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 15:07:00 GMT

Here's an interesting story about a Math professor, with a love of the beatles and his attempts to formulate their song structures. Nothing earth-shatteringly new here, but cool none-the-less...

Jason Brown listens to the Beatles with a uniquely analytical ear. The mathematics professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, says he's figured out the math behind the best of the Fab Four. Now, using "mathematical tricks" he's picked up from the band, he's written a very Beatles-esque song of his own. WSJ's Christina Jeng reports.

The importance of sound design (yet another Star Wars post)

Johnny — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 14:42:00 GMT

Good sound design is invaluable in selling an idea. It's timeless, memorable, and above all transparent.

Spent a great deal of time this holiday watching the Stars Wars movies (all 6) with the kids and it got me thinking about how good the sound design is in those movies They really are the White Album of sound design.

Here's a top ten list of the best sounds from Star Wars (compiled by some one with an opinion!) from the King of Sound Design Ben Burtt:

The amazing thing is the simplicity of some of the sources. The Tie fighters are pitched down elephant calls, blasters are contact mics on cables on the a bridge:

We climbed to the top of a hill where there was a small radio tower in the hopes that the wind would make some interesting sounds in the tower or the support cables. I picked up a rock and banged on the cable just for fun and Ben said, "That sounds like the imaginary laser gun ought to sound!"
SO he recorded the sounds there and later in California he looked around for other towers and finally found one that he especially liked in the Mohave desert in California. There was a broken brace hanging on the cable that added a special quality to the sound and that was the one he used in combination with some other sounds to create the sound of the laser gun

All of these sounds are forever linked with a particular image and added more to the success of the Star Wars franchise, then any other single element.

Ben Burtt has moved on from LucasFilm to Pixar and did the work on the lastest Pixar masterpiece Walle. Look for the DVD extras that give a glimpse into the creation of the voices. Good stuff!

ResonanceMultimedia now on SoundCloud

Johnny — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 16:33:00 GMT

Happy to announce that ResonanceMultimedia (the sound company that owns this blog) has a SoundCloud account. In the future it'll probably be used for client work, but at the moment it's just public.

Check it out here

And you can always send me your tracks through my dropbox and I'd be happy to comment on them:

Send me your track

Optigan Repair: Fixing Chord Buttons on the 35001

Johnny — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 15:34:00 GMT

If you are like me and are lucky enough to have gotten hold of an Optigan ($40 in the late 90's, whoot!), chances are that you have had a few scratchy keys or buttons. In my case, I have had inoperative chord buttons since I've owned this thing. Not even a crackle or pop could be heard no matter how I jiggled/pressed/molested them, so I always figured the electronics or sensor had gone bad. Well to my surprise, they just needed cleaning! I can't tell you how thrilled I am to have working chord buttons, since they really are 75% of the charm and sound of the Optigan.

There's very little info out there on servicing these units (Pea Hicks site is not terribly forthcoming with the service manual), so I thought I'd give a step-by-step on how to get at those suckers. My unit is a 35001, not sure how others related in terms of assembly, but this should be helpful for anyone trying to service their Optigan. It's taken me a while to finally do this, because every time I started unscrewing things, I thought I was doing something wrong (you can see why below).

Step 1: Unscrew the back panel and remove. Slide out the top panel that holds the stand. This should slide right out.

Step 2: Remove all the screws holding the top unit in from the front.

There are two screws under the keyboard ends, one on each side:

There are another 2 screws in under the keyboard holding in the circuits blocks from the front.:

Step 3: Remove the platter spring access panel.

This is a service panel that lets you get at the springs that send the spindle up and down. It's in the way of pulling out the top unit, so just take it off:

Unscrew and remove the bracket for the front panel bar that turns on and off the drive system. Since the front opening doesn't get removed this has to be disconnected:

Step 4: Unscrew the top unit from the frame.

There are 4 screws, 2 on each side that need to come out. A socket wrench helps on these:

There are 2 screws that hold the unit in from the bottom that also need to come out:

Finally, unscrew the circuit board from the vertical block holding it in. Two screws here:

Step 5: Disconnect the amp boards and volume pedal string.

At this point the top unit is free, but you need to disconnect some things to get the unit out.

First start by removing the wires that lead from the Amp boards to the speakers. There are 2 AMP boards and 2 jumpers that need to disconnect on each. You should be able to see which are which by running the wire from the speakers:

Also, disconnect the RCA jacks that go into the reverb tank.

Now comes the tricky part: the volume pedal string...

The Optigan uses an ingenious method of controlling the volume by revealing a light sensitive resistor to the residual light coming from the lamp via a piece of film similar to the discs with varying degrees of opacity. Depressing the pedal all the way reveals the sensor completely. Unfortunately, in my case, I can't remove the string that connects this to the pedal, so I took it off the pulley to get more slack. Next time I service mine, I will cut the string and add a quick release, like a ball chain link, and tie the ends to that. I would recommend that you consider this, because it's time to slide the unit out.

Step 6: Slide out the top unit.

If you didn't add a quick release to the pedal string, BE CAREFUL. This thing is heavy and unweildy.

Slide it out:

Place it right on top of the frame:

Home free now!

Step 7: Remove the plastic top panel.

By now you can see the 4 screws on top holding on the plastic cover on, remove them.

There are also a few screws in the front:

But there are 2 other hidden screws....

The first is next to the chord buttons on the inside on the unit, you can see this by looking in from the back:

Also, a secret screw is accessible from the bottom of the unit. I removed this screw and never bothered to put it back. It doesn't seem to ground anything or make anything firmer and was too much of a pain to get back in! You can get access to it from a little hole in the bottom (I did this eariler in the process as you can tell from the photo):

Now the plastic cover can come off.

Step 8: Access the circuitry.

Flip up the plastic cover and place behind the top unit. I didn't bother to remove the cable that connects to the beat indicator/logo, so be careful here as well:

Now you can see the horror of the chord buttons, remove any dead rodents, human finger cheeses, and the rotted remains of the cushion (which by now has turned into something resembling asbestos).

Now we can unscrew the contacts from the PCB and CLEAN IT! It will still be connected via a green wire, so take caution again and flip it open like a butterfly:

Step 9: Clean it! I used a combination of electronics cleaner, deoxidizer and a razor blade. You can get the good stuff at Radio Shack. Take your time and test and re-test. It's a bit difficult to clean the contacts on the button frame (pictured to the right of the PCB ), but those are the most important. When I first heard the chords working, I nearly fell out of my chair! These were totally DOA (or so I thought), no crackles no hum, no nothing.... So that should tell you how dirty they can get.

Step 10: Put it all back and rock out!

Personally, I didn't replace the chord button cushion with anything. It's recommend to shield it from ground loop hums, but I'm not hearing anything. I've heard of using a mouse pad with the proper grid cut in it.

Hope this helped, comments and questions welcomed, especially if you would have done anything better/different.

The Greatest Gameshow Theme of All Time

Johnny — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:12:00 GMT

"The Price Is Right Theme" by Edd Kalehoff:

I just love the passing flutes lines and the counterpoint on the horns (yes, I actually said that and mean it). Funky, bouncing bassline and moogy interlude; what's not to love?

Bonus:

Here's possibly the greatest piece of incidental music ever. I suggest you email this video to your co-worker the next time he or she screws up.

Extra Bonus:

Here's the track played before the showcase showdown. It's called "Dig We Must." Indeed.

Extra Extra Bonus:

Can't forget the Consolation Prize Theme. Definate Bacharach influence here

WE'RE NOT DEAD YET!

Johnny — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 16:35:00 GMT

Sorry for the lack of posts recently...

Been away cutting, sawing, hammering, screwing, lifting, panting, smoothing, transporting, plugging in, pulling out, chopping down, digging, hiding, finding, turning, programming and drinking...

I'll be posting soon about a new project (mega-rack 2008) and updates on the guitar mod project, as well as new demos.

soon.

Andreas Tilliander Hardware Dub Spectacular

Johnny — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:01:00 GMT

Check out this amazing video of micro/click House guy, Andreas Tilliander.

Pretty cool in this day of soft synths to see a new-school guy with no DAW in sight....

But look how much gear he has running...

Boards of Canada Old Tunes are simply wonderful

Johnny — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 23:55:00 GMT

Came across Boards of Canada Old tunes Vol. 1 & 2 (~1995, but I believe older than that) recently and I'm simply blown away. Classic Boards of Canada that many may have heard from the Skam releases, but two things definitely stood out. The humor and levity and the amount of tunes here (60+)...

I do feel a bit ill-at-ease with having gotten these through questionable sources (I'm firmly against piracy), but more so because this music wasn't intended to be released outside of their circle of friends. Oh well.

Lots of interesting stuff in here. Early versions of other tracks, pieces that were reintroduced later on Music Has the Right to Children, funny samples. Really, really cool stuff. And I most certainly hear a WaveStation on Magic Teens.

BoC definately suffered a post-IDM backlash (wow, are we post-IDM now). I'm reminded of an interview with Matthew Herbert, wherein he told us he was "bored of Canada." mmhmmm....

Regardless, this is the stuff that keeps me going. And it still sounds fresher than more than half the stuff out there now...

But I do feel a little guilty. I think I'll send them a copy of my vinyl release. Fewer people have probably heard that!