Musicians who buy synthesizer wind controllers, such as a Yamaha WX-* or an Akai E*I, are often soon disappointed, not because of the controller's quality or their possibilities, but because they just don't work well with conventional MIDI synthesizer modules. Now that VST and other plugins are common, there has been an enormous explosion of new synthesizers. You would hope...

I see Visual VST/i Programming: Synthedit is out now. I haven't sighted it yet, but it includes some of my custom SynthEdit modules, so it is quite fun for me. SynthEdit is a shareware application for PC that is a kind of modular synthesizer; it gained a lot of traction early because it had one killer feature in particular: you...

Popular Mechanics have a great Hey Martha article 25 Skills Every Man Should Know. How did I rate, as red-blooded Aussie Urban Hobbyist keen to get more analog skills in this digital world? 1. Patch a radiator hose Oh, that would assume I had a car. Almost no-one I know has a car, one friend does, and I think Marcus...

After three years of "community" Mandrake Linux, my work PC has run out of steam. Lots of rubbish and out of date: time for a spring clean and a new operating system! So I decided to do things the easy way: go down to the newsagent and pick a nice looking distribution from a magazine DVD and install that. So...

I made up this little chart to keep track of the various makers of modular/patchable analog synths (including modules,kits, PCBs and virtual synths) outside America, especially here in Australia. Pin matrixes are definitely a British/Australian phenomenon. ....

Electronic Musician has an article up called Twelve under a Hundred on inexpensive VST synthesizers: lo and behold, my Neumixtutrautonium plugin made it! (The list is not an absolute top 12 just a list of the free synths they tried and liked the best.) This is despite all my best efforts: after someone complained about some minor detail in the...

Grant Richter of modular synthesizer manufacturer Wiard has called for the module-buying public to become less conservative about the kind of front panel material used. "If the public could change their perception of how a synthesizer module must be constructed, we could have a renaisance unlike anything in the past. The single most expensive component in a synthesizer is the...

Most synthesizer module circuits have much of their real estate occupied by a few common functions: Power supply regulation and decoupling components Input buffers, using op-amps, perhaps with AC coupling components Output buffers, using op-amps Signal converters: dozens of kinds of voltage-controlled resistor-ish functions (for example, using transconductance amplifiers, diode or transistor configurations, vactrols, etc.), and voltage to current converters...

Here's my selection for the best vocal and the best instrumental CD of 2006, for rock/pop music. First, my criteria. Personality is everything. When I hear someone playing, I love to realize "No-one else in the world would think of doing that": the Joe Zawinul/Garth Hudson/Mike Oldifeld class of musicians. Similarly, when I hear someone singing, I love to think...

I see TIME has a breath-takingly stupid list that pupports to be "the greatest and most influential records ever." Not one non-English-language record. Not one record from continental Europe. Not one from Africa. Not one from South America. Not one from Asia (I don't think the Plastic Ono Band counts). Australia/Pacific gets one for AC/DC. Only four non-US artists in...