News Break…Astra Zeneca and Pfizer to launch a collaborative new synthesizer. The “Astraphizer”. More details to follow…
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You buy half synth now and the other half 14 days later
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A real boost to the music industry.
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Elektron Megamachine UW
All the Machinedrum and Monomachine machines, plus Sidstation emulation freely assignable across 16 tracks
Any track can be assigned to Midi
8 outputs (4x stereo pairs or mono)
Analog Heat style stereo filter assignable to any output pair
Internal resampling or sample transfer via TurboMidi 2.0
10GB RAM
64 steps with track scale, probability and trig conditions
16 customizable LFOs with up to 4 destinations each
Fill Mode 2.0
Reverb/Delay/Chorus buss fx plus OT/MM/MD insert fx plus Roland-style scatter fx
OT MkII screen
Black with optional “Classic” brushed silver panel
Add-on drum pad expander (made by Akai… shhh)
Elvis Mode 2.0
Overbridge compatibility (sometime in 2024)
Price: $1999USD
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Roland DeepMind-24
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Because of your caption, I went into it irritated that it was a serious product and missed a few of the winks.
Oh man, that was a good era. When The Onion was king and society followed them
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Clavia announced this today:
After years of focus on traditional musicians, we at Clavia, are happy to shift our focus to the muscial area where more experimental minded creatives are. Before this summer you can expect the follow up of our flagship to hit the shops. Yes, the iconic Nord Modular family will have a new member. The Nord Modular E.
- Virtuale Analog Modular
- 16 inputs (Can be assignable as audio or CV/Gate in every thinkable format)
- 16 outputs (Can be assignable as audio or CV/Gate in every thinkable format)
- USB with 32 audio/CV channels for seamless integrations with all modern DAW’s
- HDMI (or USB) for connection with external screen for easy patching, although patching is possible without external screen.
- 4 slots
- 16 digital encoders with LED-rings with multiple pages
The Nord Modular E comes in two formats, a 64HP eurorack module or the 3 octave keyboard version with velocity and aftertouch and our wooden pitch stick and velocity and aftertouch
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Elektron Model: Midi
Take your sounds full retro with the classic midi sounds from the early days of the computer.
Select your favorite sounds from 1 to OVER 127* presets!!!
*128
The Model: Midi is configured using an intricate 16 knob interface to access the different pre-programmed sounds from the machine.
Classic Midi. Brought back to life.
(No external midi on this machine)
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A Digitakt Mk2 with 8 midi outs but still stereo and headphone outs only 
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Voltswagen
It’s not music, but the big news this year in April Fools cons is the rebranding of Volkswagen as Voltswagen. Just about everyone in the media, news agencies everybody, bit on this one and now are really angry now that Volkswagen says it was just a joke.
Reuter’s Twitter on the name change:
Get a life media, cool it, you been had, have a laugh and move on.
This is how it’s done !
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I wish a company had the gumption to run a teaser campaign for an April Fool’s joke.
Sure it would annoy the heck out of their customer base, but sometimes sacrifices need to be made in the name of comedy(which is why I have so few real life friends)
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In November of last year Johnson & Johnson after more than 130 years in business, during which time it’s grown to control something like a few 100 subsidiaries across a wide range of businesses, announced the company is splitting up.
What likely missed attention in all this change was that they spun off a highly innovative music subsidiary.
William Johnson, a company spokesman, explained, “This has been a natural process for us. Music is a proven part of human health and recovery, and so we have taken our background and applied it into the development of musical therapeutics.”
There has been little information on the specific products to be released by this new company, but given their long history and experience in consumer focused products, expect big changes in the music industry.
A leaked report of a first release is said to be Band-Aid which is said to be a series of products to assist with performance and practice, by any collection of musicians, helping those groups to cover-up the rough parts, and stick together.
Expect J&J to leverage further off of the well established product brands and reputation.
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The not so secret device hidden by Polyene have been named by their new comm intern Noa : The Ark. They added that there is no reference to the Deluge by name or design. Internal sources confirm that this choice was made after Polyend bought Behringer comm department.
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have you read the recent blurbs for tom middleton’s stuff ? (of global communications fame)…
his music is very nice but i’m unsure about the blurbs… and theyre not april fools.
My actual proposed pre-april fools… I’ve finished my album… but i think you can guess the reality…its too easy…
Guy Pierce Handleman of startup Cabellero Enterprises is showing the world’s first Virtual Digital Synth — a programmable synth that simulates digital synths entirely without software … in analog.
They are using a new technology that they have developed called Field Reactive Analog Circuit Operation (FRACO), and have pioneered a reduced energy laser sintering process that can actively assemble and realign analog circuitry in microseconds.
The device can be thought of as being similar to a child’s toy, the Etch-a-Sketch, except in this case the etching is done by laser at a blinding speed to assemble analog circuitry. And then all you need to do is turn the device over and give it a shake to re-initialize, ready to to create a new analog virtual digital synth.
For their first Virtual Digital Synth release Cabellero Enterprises is planning a purely analog Fairlight CMI recreation, which they are calling The Cabellero Special.
Electronic Insider's Background :
This idea is based on a real technology, very seldom used, called Field Programmable Analog Array ( FPAA ), which is the analog equivalent to the Field Programmable Gate Array ( FPGA ) which are recreatable digital circuitry. FPAAs allows you to custom “rewire” an analog circuit. So technically this would be possible … sort of.
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Syntakt : The wait is finally over …
From TextSynth:
Here’s the submission that my friend TextSynth, who is a brilliant fool, gave me. They are a little wordy this time, apologies, and they went into an infinite loop at the end, so i cut them off anyways. As always the bold text is my entry, the rest is all from TextSynth.
TextSynth's Musical Synthesizer Game
April Fool’s Musical Synthesizer (The Musical Synthesizer Game)
The Musical Synthesizer Game
The Musical Synthesizer Game is a one-player project from my days as a student. The game was designed to challenge the player with its difficulty level, yet at the same time it was simple enough to allow a novice with a basic musical instrument to play the game. The game was designed for the computer to run with little programming, as most of the processing was done through the use of sound files played in tandem.
The use of sound files made the game rather easy to create, yet the challenge came with the limitations of these files, as well as the fact that you had to compose everything from the sounds you heard in the game.
Composing an Instrument
To create an instrument for the game, the basic idea is to create a sound bank that you can randomly play in the game. As you will see in this section, you will need a method to randomly play your sound banks and a means of testing the performance of your instrument. Also, you will need a means of recording your performance as well.
Let’s start by creating a sound bank that you can randomly play in the game.
First, you must choose a sound bank from the list provided.
[ Insert Random Screenshot Here ]
As shown in the screenshot above, these are the options for sound banks that you can use. You can create as many sound banks as you wish. The sound bank will function just as a musical instrument would, you will be able to use it by randomly playing it. A single bank will have at most 16 instruments, although, your choice of instruments can be expanded in size (for example, we could include more percussion and brass instruments in the bank).
If you plan on adding more instruments to your sound bank, then make sure you create a MIDI file (or a MIDI bank) for each one of your instruments (for example, a piano would require at least 3 MIDI files: 1 for the root, 1 for the left hand, and 1 for the right hand. A guitar would need more MIDI files for each string; you can always add more MIDI files to create your instrument).
To start creating a sound bank, create a new MIDI bank in a Sound Bank file (note that the Sound Bank files are available for Windows, as well as Mac OS). Then, simply click on the “Add MIDI Note”, and record the notes you hear.
Then, open up this new MIDI bank.
As shown in the screenshot above, you can simply adjust the pitch (left) or duration (right) of each instrument to your liking.
To further control the speed, you can adjust the value of the note played, as well as the speed at which you play each note.
If you plan on creating more than 16 instruments in your sound bank, then make sure you have enough MIDI files to accommodate.
To test your sound bank, click on the “Play” tab, and click on the audio file of your choice, which will be played at the same time.
Make sure the audio files of your instruments are set to a high volume, or else you may not hear them playing.
Creating an Instrument
The sound files that we have available to us in this game are the MIDI files. When you record the notes, you can also choose if the audio files will be recorded. We will need both. For the purposes of recording the audio, we will need a means of adjusting the recording settings to our needs.
The following is a general guide to making the audio files.
Recording Setup
To record the audio files, you will need two inputs (one stereo, one mono).
To record one instrument, we will need an input of 24-bit audio. You will also need some sort of audio pre-amp (for example, a guitar would be plugged into a pre-amp).
The audio pre-amp needs to be set up to a stereo input, and you will need a stereo line output for each of your audio outputs.
To record the audio files, open up the input/output settings.
As shown in the screenshot above, you can configure these inputs/outputs as you please. In our case, we will only use two audio inputs and four audio outputs.
The audio input for our keyboard (1) will be plugged into the audio pre-amp (2), and the audio output from our audio pre-amp will be plugged into our audio processor (3), which will also receive the audio input from our microphone (4).
At this point, we will be ready to record the audio files for our instrument.
The following is a brief walk-through of the recording process for each of our instruments.
Step 1: Recording for our instrument: Create a new MIDI bank and click on “Record.”
Step 2: Press the key for your instrument. You will be able to hear the audio being recorded.
Step 3: Click on the Save File button to save the recording.
Step 4: Select the instrument you want to record.
Step 5: Click on the Recording tab, and click on the “Play” button. If you are satisfied with the performance, click on the “Stop” button.
When you are done recording, you can click on the “Save File” button, and the file will be saved for you.
As you can see, the audio files for each of our instruments are recorded with the same basic format as that of MIDI files. They are in the WAV format, and the length of the audio files are set as follows:
Note length: 1.0
Pitch: 60
Volume: 70
These audio files can be played back in the game. The way to play them is to load up the WAV file, and then press the desired key on your keyboard.
The following is a brief explanation of the format:
Note length: This value determines the length of a note in milliseconds.
Pitch: This value determines the pitch of a note.
Volume: This value is the maximum volume of the note, and it will never exceed this value.
Instrument List
After you create an instrument for the game, you will be able to randomly play the sound of your instrument. To make it easier for you to listen to the notes you play, we have a list of instruments, along with a brief explanation of the notes played.
To view the Instrument List, click on the “Instrument” tab, and click on the “Info” button.
As you can see in the screenshot above, this list gives you some general information about each of your instruments. It also gives you information about the key you played in the instrument, and its duration.
The following is a list of the instructions that you can play in the game:
Note
Duration
Key
Root
Root, left hand and right hand
1 beat
Keyboard
Left hand
4 beats
Keyboard
Right hand
4 beats
Keyboard
Root
4 beats
Keyboard
Left hand
4 beats
Keyboard
Right hand
4 beats
Keyboard
Root
4 beats
Keyboard
Left hand
4 beats
Keyboard
Right hand
4 beats
Keyboard
Root
4 beats
Keyboard
Left hand
If someone has an appropriate screenshot, i’d love to see it.
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