#polyrhythms have never been my strength

[chinsims]

15 questions for 15 mutuals

Thank you @nectar-cellar for tagging me! I enjoyed reading your answers.

I think it’s my first time participating in one of these, so hopefully I can do it right!

my answers:

1. Are you named after anyone?

Legally, an actress. By choice, I took a masculine version of my grandmother’s name.

2. When was the last time you cried?

I’m actually not sure. The most recent time I can remember was last month when I got overwhelmed after worrying that a coyote had stalked me (don’t worry, it ended up being fine). I have probably cried more recently, though.

3. Do you have kids?

Nope! It’ll probably be a long time until I’m ready for that kind of responsibility.

4. Do you use sarcasm a lot?

Not as much as I used to, but still quite a bit for someone who can’t tell when other people are being sarcastic lol.

5. What sports do you play/have you played?

I’ve never been that interested in sports due to all the rules, but I used to be really competitive about running for some reason.

6. What’s the first thing you notice about other people?

The way people walk tends to stick with me. I know some people with very distinctive walks, so that tends to stand out. I’ve even had to double check that strangers weren’t secretly people I know because the patterns were similar.

7. Scary movies or happy endings?

I like anything that I find personally compelling. I tend to pick up mostly on the choices made with the style and the theme, so I think both have their strengths. I do tend to lean more towards darker themes, however. I (unfortunately) really enjoy Funny Games (1997) and what it does with fourth wall breaks. I could ramble quite a bit about just how much I love (and hate) that film. I also really like the short film Meshes of the Afternoon (1943). I need to get caught up on more recent movies though.

8. Any special talents?

Depends on whether the emphasis is on special or talent. A somewhat special thing about me is that I have very flexible shoulder and hip joints and have double jointed fingers. I’m also fixated on altered states, so I forced myself to be very suggestible to meditative states and learned that I could auto-write when I dropped lucy (it was supposedly for spirits, which I don’t think I believe in personally, but at the very least I’ve been slowly able to tap into something in my own subconscious, so that’s kinda neat!). 

9. Where were you born?

California

10. What are your hobbies?

I’m a musician, I’ve been getting into auto-writing, I used to be obsessed with inventing this thing called polyrhythm hopscotch, I’m working on some film stuff with a few of my friends (which is super exciting!), and making cc for the sims 3 :)

11. Do you have any pets?

Yes! I have a dog and a cat. They are both cuties.

12. How tall are you?

5′ 2″ last time I was measured, although I think that was 4 years ago. 

13. Fave subject in school?

I liked most subjects for different reasons. I was the least jazzed about my art classes though. This was mostly because it was actually an instruction following class, and I feel compelled to do at least one thing that goes against instructions when it comes to anything creative.

14. Dream job?

Full-time musician. I recently switched my major to music, so I’ll always be working in the same field, even if it’s more of the technical aspects!

15. Eye color?

Brown.

Let me see who I haven’t seen tagged yet:

@xiasimla @nornities @simdreams @venusprincess-ts3 @getboolpropped

@omedapixel @tripstaysnoided @tsims

I think most people I’m mutuals with have either already done it at this point or don’t typically do tag games, but if I can think of anyone else who might want to do this I’ll add them to this list!

[l33tsaber]

Now that it’s piano-not-sticking weather, I’m back to working on the song cycle.  There’s a section in the third verse of “In the Willow-Meads of Tasarinan” that has triplets in the piano part under straight eighth notes in the vocals, and I am Suffering™

[forcri]

Madonna: Madame X review – her most bizarre album ever

4 out of 5 stars.

(Live Nation/Interscope/Maverick)

The lows, featuring white-saviour narratives and witless lyrics, are really low. But by embracing Latin pop, Madonna sounds more natural than she has in years.

We all get old, but never at the same age. Some of us are old when we’re children, bringing briefcases to school and talking to adults at family parties; others leave uni with the thrill that they never have to go clubbing again. Most of us think we’re doing pretty well, then we find ourselves nodding appreciatively at something in a Boden catalogue and suddenly death is real.

For years, Madonna outpaced all of this. In 1996, Evita looked like ushering in her middle age, but she did an about turn, delivering convincing, idiosyncratic trip-hop on Ray of Light (1998) and convincing, idiosyncratic electro on Music (2000). Confessions on a Dancefloor (2005) was even better, its Abba samples and smooth deep house a way for her to stay out past 4am with dignity, rather than trying to score ketamine off teenage fashion influencers at the afters, musically speaking.

But she couldn’t run forever. Perhaps it began pre-Confessions, when she kissed Britney Spears as if to parasitically extract her youth. Certainly by Hard Candy in 2008 she was playing catch-up, spurring Timbaland and the Neptunes to some of their tamest work, a good five years after their pomp. MDNA (2012) tried to keep pace with stadium EDM, while Rebel Heart (2015) struggled to get its head around a newly global, musically cosmopolitan pop market, and just randomly glued hip collaborators together. The woman who had once led was following, and sluggishly.

To her credit, she has not done what many in her position would then do: lick their wounds and sell a jazz standards album to Radio 2 listeners. With Madame X, Madonna instead grits her teeth, puts on a glitter-encrusted eyepatch, looks in the mirror with seriously reduced depth perception and says: “Bitch, I’m Madonna.” And by drawing on the Latin influence of not just reggaeton-crazed recent pop but also her new home base of Lisbon, she has, at 60, produced her most natural-feeling, progressive and original record since Confessions.

It’s also one of her most bizarre and sprawling, and features some of her worst ever music. Killers Who Are Playing finds this American multimillionaire – already not shy of white saviourhood – play empath to the world’s huddled masses: “I’ll be Africa if Africa is shut down. I will be poor if the poor are humiliated. I’ll be a child if the children are exploited …” We pause for presumably more of the same, this time in Portuguese, and then: “I’ll be Islam if Islam is hated. I’ll be Israel if they’re incarcerated. I’ll be Native Indian if the Indian has been taken. I’ll be a woman if she’s raped and her heart is breaking.” It’s well intended but fails to read the room – the room here being the entire planet.

The dog’s dinner of Dark Ballet, aired in part at Eurovision, features vocodered vocals sung to a melody from the Nutcracker, and irritatingly gnomic pronouncements about commerce blinding us to reality. Extreme Occident, only available on the deluxe version for a very good reason, sees Madonna trying to “recover my centre of gravity” in a politically polarised world – a really worthwhile topic, but expressed in witless lyrics. “I guess I’m lost / I had to pay the cost / The thing that hurt me most …” (at this point you’re ready to bet your house on the final line being about a ghost, but no) “… Was that I wasn’t lost.” Tablas arrive with stupid kneejerk exoticism. It ends with her asserting “life is a circle” about 20 times.

These shockers are suitable only for schadenfreude lovers or scholars of extreme camp, but another of these wildly messy tracks actually matches its vaulting ambition. God Control was presumably made after an all-nighter on Reddit – a rambling “Wake up sheeple!” screed that confronts gun reform, disenfranchised youth, democracy and the man upstairs. One section has her rap “Each new birthday gives me hope / that’s why I don’t smoke that dope”, and that her only friend is her brain – all with the peppy naivety of Tom Tom Club’s Wordy Rappinghood. And all of it set to hi-NRG disco with cascading strings and Daft Punk vocoders, for over six minutes. It is – only just – brilliant, and will become an equally beloved and despised curio among fans.

All this baroque weirdness knocks the album off its axis, but most of its 64 minutes are actually full of very decent pop songcraft. Future is her go at pop’s next big trend, roots reggae, and while there is a slight, perhaps unconscious but audible white-person Jamaican accent, it is catchy and full-bodied, producer Diplo shamelessly ripping off the brass from Outkast’s SpottieOttieDopaliscious. She returns to Deeper and Deeper-style house on I Don’t Search I Find, its strings and fingerclicks a clear nod to Vogue. Crazy is beautiful and brilliantly catchy, a midtempo soul ballad that you could imagine Ariana Grande singing, but which has clever detailing like an accordion that has surely been influenced by Lisbon’s fado scene. The most emphatically Latin tracks are all strong, particularly Faz Gostoso with Brazilian superstar Anitta, whose frenetic beat is somewhere between baile funk and Angolan kuduro – another Lisbon-influenced rhythm that also flits through the polyrhythmic Come Alive. Bitch I’m Loco, the second track to feature Colombian star Maluma after lead single Medellín, is reggaeton roughage, but will be satisfying enough booming out of a club system. Perhaps there isn’t an absolutely diamond pop chorus on Madame X, but the singles I Rise, Crave, and Medellín all have elegant, sinewy melodies that twine around you rather than jabbing you into submission.

Throughout, there is more density and musical adventure than at almost any other point in her career (perhaps this is the influence of Mirwais, who produces numerous tracks here and gave Music its fiendish intricacy). Her voice is remarkably plastic, pitched down one minute and up the next, into a Sia-like bleat and out into robotic polyphony. Often, around the seabed of the mix, is a swirl of aqueous psychedelic sound, profoundly different and much more interesting than her earlier R&B and EDM minimalism.

Killers Who Are Playing ends with the questions: “Do you know who you are? Will we know when to stop?” The untamed, batshit Madame X suggests that Madonna doesn’t have the answer to either – and that her strength is in never knowing.

The Guardian

[biofunmy]

When Twyla Tharp Made Ballet Modern

Twyla Tharp threw down a gauntlet in 1973: She mixed classical and modern dance to make the first crossover ballet, “Deuce Coupe.” It was a revolutionary work, and to pull it off she needed both the Joffrey Ballet and her own company. Its impact still reverberates through the dance world.

“‘Deuce Coupe’ said, O.K. look, we have modern dance over here and we have ballet over here and we have this big void in between,” Ms. Tharp said. “Why is there this gully in dance? I think everybody should be able to do everything.”

Set to songs by the Beach Boys — pairing pop music and ballet wasn’t the norm, either — “Deuce Coupe” was the introduction to a different world for Ms. Tharp too. Before its premiere, she said, she had never taken a bow. When she was handed a bouquet of flowers during the curtain call, she threw it back.

This season American Ballet Theater presents the company premiere of “Deuce Coupe,” part of the “Tharp Trio” program (May 30-June 4) that also includes “The Brahms-Haydn Variations” and “In the Upper Room.” “Deuce Coupe” melds styles, but never loses its underlying groove. It’s wild and reckless, elegant and refined. Throughout, a ballerina calmly executes the ballet vocabulary in alphabetical order. The other dancers are like waves churning around her.

Even at a run-through in the studio, “Deuce Coupe” has an incandescence that has nothing to do with nostalgia. For “Catch a Wave,” the dancers slide dangerously, even defiantly across the floor; the solo, “Got to Know the Woman,” originated by Sara Rudner and now danced by Misty Copeland, is seductive and earthy, a statement of female strength. In “Don’t Go Near the Water,” eight women line the back of the stage and give way to improvisatory, twisting spurts of motion.

Ms. Tharp remains among the very few female choreographers to have had a lasting influence on ballet. Her Ballet Theater program — a retrospective of sorts — shows how she integrated modern dance into the ballet vernacular (“Deuce Coupe”) and then expanded that mission (“In the Upper Room”) and, finally, made the two forms into a seamless new movement language (“The Brahms-Haydn Variations”).

Recently, Ms. Tharp and Ms. Rudner sat down with Isabella Boylston and Ms. Copeland, the dancers performing their original parts in “Deuce Coupe,” at Ballet Theater’s studios to talk about the revival. It was lively — on occasion, their voices tangled together as they spoke over one another — but certain points became clear: How important is it to work with the artist who actually created a ballet? Very. And how scary is it to step into the roles of two of the finest dancers of their generation, classical or otherwise? Ditto.

Ms. Boylston, in Ms. Tharp’s part, keeps falling. “That’s O.K., you’re going for it,” Ms. Tharp told her. “I’ll have to teach you how to fall if you’re going to do that.”

She had more advice too: Ms. Boylston and Ms. Copeland should keep a spoon and peanut butter in their lockers — fast nourishment for brutal rehearsal schedules. More important, Ms. Tharp said, she wants them to realize that they “are now the experts” on “Deuce Coupe.” “It becomes you,” she said. “It’s not Sara anymore, it’s not me anymore, it’s you.”

And that is how a ballet is reborn. What follows are edited excerpts from our conversation.

What do the ballets on the program have in common?

TWYLA THARP The three pieces are actually about the same thing: What’s classical, what survives, what’s important and what’s going to last? That is the big question. Is your longevity there?

What was foremost on your mind in bringing back “Deuce Coupe”?

SARA RUDNER Accuracy, accuracy, accuracy. I had to relearn my parts from the beginning, and things that were just so natural are like, how’d she do that? It was a lot of analytical work, but it really paid off, because we gave everybody a really firm basis from which to begin and then create their own phrasing and timing. But the framework is as solid as we could make it.

What has it been like to learn and dance “Deuce Coupe” so far?

ISABELLA BOYLSTON After we learned the steps we got to watch a little bit [of archival video], and Twyla is such a force. I’m just watching this thinking there is literally no way I can recreate what she did, so I feel like it’s been very much like starting from scratch and very collaborative. I feel like I had a turning point in the past two runs where I hit another level. I think I was going from “Am I doing this right?” to “I’m doing it.”

Sara, talk about the “Woman” solo. How have you passed that along to Misty?

RUDNER I danced as much as I could at the beginning with Misty. Physically, it was very exhausting for me. Getting on my feet and doing that movement over and over and over. Getting all the accuracies going on and what were the oppositional actions, where’s the head?

MISTY COPELAND No matter what we were doing, I was always trying to find you in the studio — your eyes, because I wanted to be, “Is this right?” It just feels so real and authentic. The way we grew up hearing music and dancing — just in the club or something — is so much about your hips. There’s such a different way of moving in “Deuce Coupe.” It was so hard for me to articulate at first.

THARP It’s the difference between something that’s truly sexy and something that’s manufactured sex, as in Madonna sex. It’s not Madonna sex — this is the real deal.

RUDNER Has doing this dance infected your own dancing?

COPELAND Absolutely. The human connection that we often overlook — no matter what style of dance we’re doing — is something that I’ve taken from this process. It can enrich an entire piece to acknowledge and relate to people and see them.

BOYLSTON Also, it feels very adult to me.

THARP Oh, this is getting good. Adult porn. No more kiddie porn.

BOYLSTON [to Ms. Copeland] I love that you’re in heels for your “Woman” dance. I love that dance and Misty in it — she’s just so in her own world. It’s so cool. A woman in control of her body.

What has been the most difficult quality to get back?

RUDNER I would say the underlying strength and ease, knowing where your weight is, having a strong leg — but also the upper body actually is working polyrhythmically. The head is going one way, and the arms are going another.

COPELAND I’ve been working with a new teacher and trying to retrain myself, which is crazy. Twyla has been saying the same words to me for years, but now I can hear them: It doesn’t matter what type of movement I’m doing, the same rules apply. I think my natural instinct — when I’m not doing classical dance — is to be hunched over and not open, and so it’s been fascinating to be given the same exact corrections from Twyla in the movement in “Deuce Coupe.”

How would she correct you?

COPELAND “Lift your back up. Put your shoulders down and stay open, hold your center, turnout. Make a decision!” [Laughs] And I think because we haven’t had that base in training with modern dance that it’s this idea of what we think it is, and then it becomes contrived.

THARP It becomes an approximation of what modern dance is. But the reality is that a well-trained classical dancer can do it all. You just have to tell them what part to move.

BOYLSTON The way Twyla throws herself onto the ground. She’s not afraid of going down.

THARP The Graham technique has a lot of different approaches to falls, and I studied with Martha for a year and I studied in the studio for three years, so I knew a lot about falling. And also the clowns. I’m a clown. I have always been a clown, and I will always be a clown. Clowns are very close to God. They know how to get down.

BOYLSTON Oh my God. Is that why you picked me to do your part?

THARP Partially, yes! I knew you had it in you. But I’m still waiting. I’m still waiting for the [Buster] Keaton to get out, but I know that you can do it.

Do you think this ballet has changed you?

COPELAND [Firmly] Yes. It couldn’t be more perfect timing in my career and my life to be able to absorb this information, or just have an understanding or acceptance of myself about what I want to be and what I’m capable of.

THARP It’s always about creating artists, right? About creating the possibility for somebody to become an artist. Not simply a dancer. There’s nothing the matter with dancers. They’re great, and some of them are phenomenal athletes, but an artist is a person who thinks for themselves, uses what they have that they recognize and is willing to take their own chances. That’s the person that we want to see develop in the studio.

Sahred From Source link Arts

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[jessicakmatt]

10 Unnostalgic Analog Synths That Refuse to Repeat the Past

10 Unnostalgic Analog Synths That Refuse to Repeat the Past: via LANDR Blog

The sound of the new.

I’m decidedly un-nostalgic. Nostalgia is expensive and often doesn’t do the job I need it to do. Especially when it comes to gear…

My set-up contains exactly zero vintage instruments—and it’s all analog. Vintage gear is often expensive (not always for the right reasons).

Current innovations in both analog synthesis, hardware design and firmware have brought us some incredible workflows for gear. Analog synths can now be used as VST plugins, and sync up with just about anything.

Even though some vintage re-issues are exciting to many, I can’t help but feel like it’s a bit… boring.

The exciting part of those re-issues is making iconic synths accessible to more people. But I have a hard time getting excited about something that’s a copy of the past. What made those original synths exciting in the first place was the way they were re-inventing musicianship with new technologies of their era.

So in honour of all the innovators out there, here are 10 future-facing pieces of gear that refuse to repeat the past:

1. Korg Minilogue

I begin this list with my own beloved synth: the Korg Minilogue.

Created by Tatsuya Takahashi, this fantastic polyphonic four-voice analog synth from Korg hit the market in the middle of the recent democratisation of analog synthesis. The popularity of the fully-programmable Minilogue was apparent in music stores and studios everywhere (often back-ordered for months).

Korg’s intuitive workflow and smart firmware makes this a performance-ready synthesizer. This machine saves patches as you make them, and saves motion sequences on up to 4 parameters.

When I played my last set, I saved all my 8 tracks in the order of the set list for easy recall—a real blessing.

Other cool features:  A 16-step sequencer and 200 program memories, on-board tape delay, ring modulation and knobs to shape your waves (lots of waveshape possibilities).

The OLED oscilloscope even shows you how you are affecting your wave shape as you change parameters in real-time, giving you valuable visual feedback on how you’re shaping your sound.

All features considered, this synth packs in all the benefits of a vintage synth, but with a sleek and useable interface that is truly modern. The price makes sense for today’s musicians as well (very affordable).

If you like this synth, check out its mono bass synth sibling, the Monologue. Aphex Twin even designed some of the presets!

Find out more about the Korg Minilogue.

Price: 500 USD / 630 EUR

2. Elektron Analog Rytm MKII

Swedish gear-makers Elektron are known for three things: building true workhorses, designing exceptional sequencers, and making you want to pull your hair out when you first get one of their machines. They’re notorious for having a steep learning curve.

You get ‘good’ at your Elektron after many months of deep diving. But once you get the hang of it, you discover the exponential potential and power of these machines. I know from experience—I have an Analog Rytm, or ‘AR’ for the homies.

After extensive explorations I understood how many complex polyrhythmic sequences and the patterns I could make. You can even do off the grid unquantized sequences for extra groove.

The Analog Rytm MKII is the new version of the AR. They’ve included more dedicated buttons and quick performance controls—bless the Save Project button! The AR also has full sampling capability via balanced ¼” audio inputs. The look is new and the pads are larger.

The AR MKII just like the original AR can fully integrate with DAWs by using Elektron’s Overbridge software. This allows you to use your Elektron device like a plugin. The MKII has higher bandwidth for Overbridge.

Elektron not only builds future-facing gear, they’re building future-facing workflows and changing how we perceive the creation of sound. No nostalgia here.

It’s not a cheap machine, but its complexity and durability make it worth it. The Analog Rytm MKII will be available in October 2017.

Price: 1549 USD / 1699 EUR

3. Kilpatrick Phenol

Kilpatrick’s Phenol patchable analog synthesizer is a Kickstarter success story. It was launched in 2015 and since then, this Canadian-made synth has been blipping, beeping and bubbling all over the world.

The Phenol is a new kind of instrument. It’s inspired by modular synths and compatible with them, but it comes in a neat little box that makes it more approachable.

It’s both a gateway for newcomers in the modular world, and a travel-friendly add-on for seasoned heads.

The Phenol is based on Andrew Kipatrick’s Modular Format. It uses banana jacks (surprisingly not also a breakfast cereal), just like the Buchla, Serge, and Fenix formats. To use with Eurorack, you’ll just need to get some minijack adapters.

It has two analog VCOs with triangle, ramp and pulse outputs, two analog filters and two analog VCAs with level control. It also has two envelope generators and digital LFO combos. There is a built in MIDI sequencer and looper, and packs a compact mixer and digital delay.

The cool part is that the price is totally decent for a modular box—something you won’t hear too often.

Find out more about the Kilpatrick Phenol.

Price: 849 USD / ~900 EUR

4. Novation Peak

I’m by no means an analog purist. All my synthesizer have some form of digital firmware anyway. If anything, hybrids of analog and digital are some of the best synths out there.

Novation’s latest polyphonic synth is a stunning example of an analog/digital hybrid.

What’s analog? The 8 synth voices, the distortion and the filters—as they should be.

So what’s digital? Well, the processor used for the routing, the modulation and the effects—reverb, delay and chorus. Which mean the sample rate of the effects can operate at super high quality: over 90kHz!

The digital components are powered by its high quality processor, called Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). Unlike the usual DSP chips, the processor can handle many functions at once and runs at a much higher rate. That means higher precision and clarity.

The type of waveform-generation used is Numerically Controlled Oscillators (NCOs) and 17 wavetables. NCO ensures the Peak will never fall out of tune. The modulation matrix allows for plenty of complexity. You also have FM synthesis for all you frequency modulators out there.

“It sounds as good as any full analog synth and in some cases sounds better — if you’re prepared to spend some time getting to know how it works.” – FACT Magazine

This is truly one of the most intriguing new comers on the synths market right now. Novation has found a perfect mix of analog and digital in this versatile synth. Grab your favourite MIDI keyboard plug it in and you’re set.

Find out more about the Novation Peak.

Price: 1300 USD / ~1400 EUR

5. Dreadbox Erebus

Dreadbox has been handcrafting pedals and synths in Athens, Greece since 2012.

Their reputation has grown and you can now find them at all the boutique gear shops. The Erebus analog paraphonic synthesizer is among their popular models. It’s got 2-voice analog paraphony or unison.

This compact box comes equipped with a MIDI-to-CV converter, a unique sounding Low Pass Filter, delay and echo units and lots of lots of modular patching options. You can hook it up to your Eurorack modules or an MS20. It also has basic MIDI implementation for syncing purposes.

“For a variety of solo and bass duties, the Erebus shines but its real strength could be in psychedelia. A couple of subtly detuned sawtooth waves and a slowly swept resonant filter work wonders every time, especially when bathed in wavering echo.” – SoundOnSound

Including the on-board analog effects and funky design, the Erebus doesn’t let the legends cast a shadow on it. I’m all for making space for smaller companies in today’s synth star system—and this one is promising and quite affordable.

Find out more about the Dreadbox Erebus.

Price: 600 USD / 530 EUR

6. Behringer Deepmind 12

The much publicized Behringer DeepMind 12 is intriguing. It has a ton of voices for an analog synth: a rich 12-voice polyphony.

The DeepMind might seem over the top, but once you start detuning all of those, you can get really trippy.

The DM12 has 4 effects engines that are made by TC Electronic (superb pedal makers) & Klark Teknik (who develop signal processing and audio equipment). You also get a total of 32 digital effects to choose from—and can load 4 per patch.

The screen gives you useful visual feedback on all the parameters you are effecting. The 1024 patch memory locations to save your patches means all your ideas aren’t gonna get lost in the shuffle.

It’s equipped with a one-finger chord triggering feature and an arpeggiator.  It comes with 49 Keys with aftertouch, a 2- or 4-pole low-pass filter per voice, a general high-pass filter, modulation and more.

Behringer is somewhat of a divisive company especially on issues regarding originality, but this synth is definitely not a copy—even though it’s said that the initial inspiration came from the Juno 106. It packs a ton of cool features for an impressively low price.

Find out more about the Behringer DeepMind 12.

Price: 1000 USD / ~1110 EUR

7. Moog Sub Phatty

Even though Moog rhymes with vintage synths, the company is building on their legacy to innovate. It might have the classic Moog look, but the Sub Phatty monophonic synth (born in 2013) has a totally new sound engine that barely requires any warm up time.

The Sub Phatty sounds crisp and aggressive thanks to its its Multidrive section. You can really push the sound to some gritty, screaming heights.

This synth has a nice front panel with tons of features, and more that can be accessed from the free standalone/plugin editor.

You have two variable waveshape oscillators at your disposal. The coolest part is the Wave selection knob. It lets you select a waveshape that’s in-between two waves, or even sweep through them during a performance for subtle sonic changes.

There’s also one sub oscillator that generates a square wave one octave below Oscillator 1. This adds depth and (phatty) meat to your sound. The last sound source is a noise generator that’s designed to have a lot of body.

The 25 semi-weighted keys have a nice feel, as you would expect from a Moog.

This synth is awesome for sound design and even recording your own custom percussion kit. What makes it future-facing is the renewed engine, the plugin editor and the decent price.

For a company that could simply rely on their back catalog of classic gear, Moog is instead opting to build their own future as well. The Sub Phatty is all the proof you need.

Find out more about the Moog Sub Phatty.

Price: 790 USD / ~888 EUR already assembled

8. Tasty Chip Electronics ST-4

The small Dutch operation Tasty Chip Electronics is another Kickstarter success story.

The Tasty Chip Electronics ST-4 is their second synth. It’s a analog-digital hybrid synth. Its defining feature is the 16-bit style tracker music machine. Think 707 grid mixed with a 1st generation iPod display.

It has digital oscillators and analog VCF and VCAs. It’s also got on-board sampling capabilities. There are lots of knobs, buttons and faders for hands-on tweaking.

It’s fully controllable with MIDI (I’ve seen demos that even use an Apple computer keyboard). Use it as a desktop or mount it on standard 19” racks.

The ST-4 also caters to the DIY synth nerds: you can buy the ST-4 kit to assemble yourself for much cheaper.

Keep an eye out for Tasty Chip Electronics. They’re also working on an exciting new polyphonic hardware granular synth, the GR-1.

Find out more about the Tasty Chip Electronics ST-04.

Price: ~1070 USD fully built / 900 EUR fully built

9. Roland SE-02

The small Californian analog synth company Studio Electronics teamed up with Roland to make the SE-02.

The result is an analog circuit encased in a Roland Boutique sized enclosure. It’s an analog synth with a lots of the functionalities expected from contemporary gear.

It’s got three analog oscillator, but they tune automatically. There’s also a 16-step that allows you to change the shuffle, scale, direction, and first/last steps while performing.  It has 384 presets and you can save 128 of your own. It comes with an LFO and digital delay that can be tempo synced.

The XMOD section allows for three different cross-modulations. In combination with the feedback section and the noise generator, you can really get some distinctive sounds out of this little box.

This synth is cool because it will likely fulfill both your vintage synth thirst and go beyond it—in both sound and usability.

The SE-02 is made for modern hybridity, seamlessly syncing with a computer set-up via USB, or with other hardware or modulars via MIDI, CV and gate integration.

Out of all the Boutique synths, this one is the most unique. It’s the first analog one of the series, and it doesn’t base itself on a re-issue of an old icon.  Oh and it’s pretty cheap too!

Find out more about the Roland SE-02.

Price: 500 USD / ~600 EUR

10. Arturia MatrixBrute

“Analog Avant-Garde” is how Arturia describes its latest machine, the MatrixBrute. Although this sounds a little over the top, this synth certain has some forward thinking features.

The MatrixBrute is a monophonic synthesizer that has a modular-like flexibility paired with the ability to save 256 presets.

In terms of approach, it’s similar to driving a spaceship: tons of buttons, knobs, keys and directions you can go.

The central focus is definitely the big modulation matrix (the button grid). It lets you create your own routings and come up with unique sounds. This machine promises no menu diving and double functions.

It’s got three analog ‘Brute’ oscillators (made famous in Arturia’s Mini- and Micro- Brutes), two high-quality filter and five analog effects (stereo delay, mono delay, reverb, chorus and flanger). These effects can be routed in various ways on the matrix.

It’s easy to connect to both analog and digital setups using USB, MIDI or CV/gate. That means that you can use it directly with your DAW or with whatever hardware setup you have.

This is definitely the priciest item on this list, but with the amount of possibilities, the unique workflow and the amount of hands-on control, it seems well-worth checking out and a nice unit that paves the path to innovate.

Find out more about the Arturia MatrixBrute.

Price: 2000 USD / 2000 EUR

Think Outside the Vintage Box

Without a doubt, now is the best time for both digital and analog synthesis.

Manufacturers are coming up with new workflows, hybrid machines and keeping the prices decent. It’s time to explore what this new wave of synthesis has to offer instead of getting stuck in vintage fetish mode.

You’ll find that your setup will be lighter, easier to use and present more creative possibilities. Companies know that music makers nowadays are smart. Producers need their gear to be compatible with a range of other machines without compromising on the sound. They need their gear to be travel friendly and reliable.

This list gives you an overview of some of the finest examples of forward-thinking analog synth design.

Never settle! Demand the NEW!

The post 10 Unnostalgic Analog Synths That Refuse to Repeat the Past appeared first on LANDR Blog.

from LANDR Blog http://blog.landr.com/future-synths/ via https://www.youtube.com/user/corporatethief/playlists from Steve Hart https://stevehartcom.tumblr.com/post/164838383749