NAMM 2018

2018 marks my 7th NAMM in as many years. I first started going in 2012 to get the scoop on modular synthesizer news and post pics before everybody else had a chance, but in the intervening years, modulars have moved up from the back corner of the subterannean Hall E to the front row of Hall A. Now roaming crews with video cameras are there as early as Wednesday before NAMM even starts getting vids of all the cool new modular synth stuff!

So this year, in my post modular-synth-blogging-retirement, I was invited to help out at the Noise Engineering booth.

Here’s the Noise Engineering booth crew for day one (Kris of NE, myself, Stephen of NE, and Patrick OBrien):

We were showing off the new Noise Engineering modules:

 Bin Seq, a 4HP switchable gate sequencer (you can make the gate on, off or on for the full length of the beat, so you can chain steps into one long gate if desired – simple, but powerful).

Muta Jovis, a 4HP quad mute.

Soleo Vero, a strobo-tuner that you can have up to3 oscillators always plugged into (each input has a pass-through output).

Clep Diaz, a sort of clockable LFO with smooth, stepped, and random modes

And Mimetic Digitalis, a 10HP 16-step 4 output sequencer with tons of features geared towards live use. (I can’t wait for this one!)

Here’s a pic of the new ones that should be available in the Spring:

 There were lots of familiar faces and new people as well in the modular booths. It’s really cool to see how happening it all is now. Even J.J. Abrams came by and was checking out all the new stuff! It was a busy first day.

QuBit had a cool rig under plexi that had a frame with interactive controls. A good way to keep out the NAMM-thrax!

Some jammin at the WMD booth:

Deckard’s Dream from Black Corporation looks and sounds like a lot of fun:

People were also excited about the Magneto tape delay emulator module from Strymon. I didn’t get over to check it out, but it sounds like it’s a winner.

I didn’t get very many photos this year as I was working at the booth, and the modular world is so well covered, I figured I didn’t need to get pics anyway! But when I went off to grab lunch, I wandered over to see some interesting guitars. 

I ended up at the Luthiers Beyond Limits booths and happened to meet Henry Kaiser, who was super cool and gave me a copy of his most recent CD.

And that’s about it for me from NAMM this year. Thank you for stopping by! See you in 2019!

Modular on the Spot: 2 Year Anniversary

Modular on the Spot had it’s 2 year anniversary last month and Pocket Computer (Stephen McCaul of Noise Engineering and myself) did a set to close out the evening.

(Photo above by Patrick OBrien, also a modular synth performer)

(Photo above by Ben Clark also a modular synth performer!)

It was a great night with a beautiful sunset and awesome bill of performers (Mike Dobler, Rodent516 (Eric Cheslak), Andrew Ikenberry, C1t1zen (Kylee Kennedy).

Here’s a short vid of part of our set:

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@noiseeng @pyraphonic #pocketcomputer #modularonthespot #modularpicnic #eurorack #modularsynth

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Tom Hall (yet another modular synth performer!) wrote about the evening here. And the LAist wrote a story about the LA monthly event here (the event now has spread to cities across the world).

Hats off to Bana Haffer and Rodent for managing to pull this off for 2 years!

Noise Engineering Ataraxic Translatron

I helped beta test and provide design feedback for the first Eurorack module from Noise Engineering called the Ataraxic Translatron.

More info here:

http://www.noiseengineering.us/ataraxic-translatron.html

It is a linear feedback shift register oscillator that sounds a lot like the early home video game consoles since it uses the same techniques to create waveforms. I also did a demo video which is embedded below. Note that I made a mistake in stating that the pitch knob scales incoming CV. It actually offsets it.

Purchasing info can be found here:

http://www.noiseengineering.us/purchasing-information.html