Of all contributors to the 60×60 Buzz Compilation, which you should download, I am the only one not credited under a pseudonym. I am still trying to figure out the deep insight this fact reveals about either me or the Buzz community, but I’m sure it’s there.
So Roland announced their latest Juno synthesizer, the Juno Stage. It’s another rompler, this time more performance oriented. Roland have a long history of making good romplers. I have not played extensively with the new Junos myself, but friends who have them assure me they are worthy additions. However.
Why would they resurrect the Juno name for these? The original Juno was an afforable analog polysynth. People interested in a Juno 60 or Juno 106 today are most likely:
The new Junos, on the other hand, appeal to people who want to get some decent keys, pads, and other classic rompler sounds. No doubt the two groups overlap somewhat, but I suspect not too much.
The best analogy I can come up with is that the Juno 60 was a budget alternative to the Jupiter-8, while the modern Junos are budget alternatives to the Fantom family.
I was flipping through some pornography the other day, admiring some pretty guitars. Specifically, the maple-top Taylor T5 caught my eye. Of course, Grl’s 614CE is not exactly an eyesore either. Then I wondered: what gear do I have that’s nice to look at? The yellow-cone KRKs? The padKontrol? I love my kit, but it’s not pretty.
Guitarists can find an axe with any body shape, color, finish, and wood they like. Synthesizers, on the other hand, tend to look functional at best and butt-ugly at worst.
Sonically speaking, classics like the MS-20 or DX-7 were revolutionary. Visually, they look more like appliances than instruments. I would love to get my hands on an ARP Odyssey, but it’s pretty unattractive. At least oddities like the Wasp and the Fizmo are so ugly they’re cute.
What synths are beautiful? Pics and ramblings after the jump ..
I just got back from a trip for Day Job. Some notes:
Music Thing created a cool Google map of music shops around the world– you know, actual buildings where you can walk in to look at and play with instruments. It’s an open map, so you’re free to add your favorite joint. I was flattered that I had the chance to add Chuck Levin’s Washington Music Center to the map.
If you fancy yourself a musician and live anywhere in the mid-Atlantic USA, you need to make the pilgrimage to Chuck’s. It’s massive, occupying four ugly buildings in an ugly strip mall in ugly suburban Maryland. The selection is huge and the staff are phenomenal. I was there with my dad one time; he was looking for a guitar stand, which seemed like a good enough excuse to make the trip. I think this was around Christmas time, and the place was jam packed with people. But the clerk who helped him must have spent ten solid minutes asking about his guitar, comparing different models, showing him how they folded up, like he was Bob Dylan.
Happily, this is not one of those “please support this great independent joint or it might disappear” rants. Despite operating out of a single location, insiders tell me Chuck’s is the only music retailer in the US with enough clout to compete with Guitar Center on price.
The Washington Post had a great feature on Chuck’s a few years back that captures the feel nicely.
Have you been to Chuck’s? Share your love below.
In the market for an Oberheim OB-Xa? Well, now’s your chance to have Debbie Gibson’s.
“Remix” means two completely different things:
1. To mix down a song for the second time.
2. To make a new work by creatively combining elements of a different song.
Unfortunately, it’s not even always clear from context what you mean. I propose we coin a new term for one of the definitions. Suggestions?
Warning: serious geekery follows.
I don’t actually use CDs any more. I still have piles of them, and I even buy new ones from time to time, but they’re basically decorations. I pretty much rip them once and put them away. Unfortunately, my equipment has not kept up, and I don’t really have a good solution for listening to digital music away from my desk. At the moment my solution is to plug my iPod into the receiver, but that is less than ideal.
I would like a solution that lets me have a single collection of music that I can access from multiple points in my house over the network. A few candidates I’ve found are:
All three are built on open-source parts, which means they ought to be hackable, which is nice. The Mvix is the frontrunner. But at the moment I am leaning towards building a small, quiet mini-ITX computer in an attractive case and running mythTV or something similar. It would run slightly more than a Mvix, but I like building stuff.
5. Russian Linesman
4. Low Technicians
3. Dan Deacon
2. The Hacker
1. The Architect
Trivia: The original “Russian linesman” was actually Azerbaijani.
Minimalmusic.org reports that someone stole Matthew Dear’s removable hard drive– in the middle of his set.
Stealing a musician’s instrument (and if you perform with a laptop, that’s your instrument) is a particularly galling form of theft because the loss to the performer is many times greater than the gain to the thief. A USB hard disk costs about $200, while the data on there probably represented hundreds of hours of work. Both parties would have been better off if the thief took $300 out of Dear’s wallet instead.