Synthesis Bakis Sirros, aka Parallel Worlds, sends word via the synth forum that a new Serge M-odule has been released:

Its the ‘KlangShifter’ m-odule.

it includes the following modules (from left to Right):

DTG (Dual Transient Generator), MIX PRO (Mixer Processor), FREQUENCY SHIFTER, C/M (a Gate switch, plus lin and exp attenuators), X-Fader.

the official price is 2400 USD.

it is a great m-odule for anyone wanting to get the Serge Frequency shifter module in M-format, plus of course , vc-dual envelope generation, vc-slewing, vc-audio/trigger dividing, vc-gate delay, envelope following, cv mixing/scaling/offseting, vc-X-fading, audio vca, attenuation (exp. and lin.) and manual gate generation

If  you’ve used the Serge Klangshifter, leave a comment with your thoughts on it!

Sunday Synth Jams: Here’s a step-sequenced modular synth jam, with an old-school psychedelic light show.

Back in the day, you didn’t have a modular synth jam without a psychedelic head trip light show. Listening to synth music wasn’t just about listening to some music – it was a mind-expanding experience.

Kudos to BT + Robert Rich +Robotpickle and everybody else that’s helping to keep this tradition alive!

via robotpickle:

cuz i deliver, muthafuckazsounds from my modular synthesizer AKU II

See the full image at Quadslope.com, where you can also find info on Serge modules, peripherals, patches, tutorials and more.

Once you see this, your virtual synths may never look the same.

Some Serge M-Class sexiness, featuring a Serge M-Class modular system, featuring:

• Quad Slope M-odule
• Creature M-odule
• SQP M-odule
• Gator M-odule.

You can find out more about the Serge M-Class modular synthesizer system at the Serge-Fan site.

via hexenduction:

Delay provided by 2 Malekko 600 Bright pedals.

Shot on Kodak Zi6 in macro.Sound recorded direct to Logic via Apogee Duet.Cheers!

Here’s 2:53 seconds of glorious, HD synth action, taken at the recent Trash_Audio Synth Meet 3, held Sunday, Aug 16th:

Surachai notes:

We saw the entire range, from noise boxes to full on modular systems in plenty of different formats. If it makes noise, we’re into it.

It looks like the event was a great synth meetup.

Unfortunately, meetups like these still appear to be a guaranteed way to avoid any chance of meeting women involved in music. Or as Stringbot notes, “Who forgot to invite the girls?”

If you’ve got any ideas on how synth meetups could be made more inclusive, leave a comment with your thoughts!

In this video, a Cyndustries Photon module is used to control a modular synthesizer with light:

The Photon Interface module comes with a black metal Littlelite brand high-intensity gooseneck lamp, a rheostat dimmer, heavy duty right-angle 4-pin panel connectors, and an independent 12 Volt DC power transformer for system lighting right where you need it.

The lower half of the module features a sensitive photocell with its own dedicated voltage processor which can be used as a performance controller when your hand passes between photocell and lamp.

The voltage processor has an adjustable attenuator and comparator and offers both positive and inverted outputs. Rushing the photocell suddenly with your hand will also generate a Gate Output for triggering different things, and you can switch between an external signal input or an adjustable internal voltage supply simply with the pull of a knob.

via hexenduction:

This is the Photon Interface module by Cynthia. The positive CV output from the Photon is controlling the filter frequency of the Serge Creature and later the tempo of the Cynthia VC Tabla. The lower half of the module features a highly sensitive photocell with its own dedicated voltage processor which makes for a great performance controller when your hand passes between photocell and lamp. The gate out from the VC Tabla is triggering the Pulse Divider on the Serge Gator. These divisions are doing various tone changes in the Creature. 2 of the Malekko Echo Bright 600 pedals are being used for delay.

Here’s a few clips from Meeting of the Knobs 2009, held June 27th in Bedford, Texas (Dallas/Fort Worth area.)

It looks like MOTK 2009 was a great chance to see incredible and rare synth gear and to meet some of the people responsible for the renaissance of analog synthesis.

If you made it to MOTK 2009, leave a comment with your thoughts!

Click here to view the embedded video.

via zibbybone, , davidryle

This is a preview of a DVD portrait of synth pioneer Eliane Radique.

Summary:

Her life journey has been remarkable. At the end of the fifties, she studied in Paris with musique concrète pioneers Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, whom she also assisted, notably for the premiere of L’Apocalypse de Jean. During the sixties she began composing with primitive electronics (feedback and asynchronous tape loops), but found little recognition for her research in France.

In New York in the early seventies, she found understanding and emulation, exploring emerging minimalism with James Tenney, Charlemagne Palestine, Phillip Glass, John Gibson, and Steve Reich. Her absolute allegiance to electronic sounds began during this period. Since then she has composed on the best synthesizers of the time: Buchla, Moog, Serge, and then ARP, which would become her fetish instrument. She collaborated with Robert Ashley, who sang on Les Chants de Milarepa. She has composed about two dozen works, which she has presented and continues to present at numerous prestigious venues and festivals in the United States and Europe.

In 2004, upon Kasper Toeplitz´s request, she started instrumental compositions for one or more performers, with whom she works in a close collaboration during the compositional process. This work gets quickly focused on pure acoustic sounds, in an incredibly delicate timbral way, which extends, without aesthetic rupture, her electronic work. Notably between 2004 and 2009, she completed a cycle in three parts “Naldjorlak”, for Charles Curtis on cello, Carol Robinson and Bruno Martinez on basset horns. She has now stopped her electronic work.

Emmanuel Holterbach
(Translation Leslie Stuck)

TR-606 clocking Serge with audio – this video demos a technique you can use with most vintage drum machines to sync tempos with a modular synth and some old keyboard synthesizers, too.

via b3nsf:

I’m using audio from the headphone out to generate a clock on the Serge.. Fun times!

Serge has introduced a new Serge M-odule, the Dual ‘Q’ Filter M-odule.

Price is 1600 USD

Here are the details, via Bakis Sirros:

It contains the following modules (from Left to Right):

AC-coupled 3-channel audio mixer, Variable Q VCF, Variable Q VCF, Dual VCA (one vca is AC-coupled the other vca is DC-coupled), and a Mix Processor (DC-coupled).

with that M-odule, you can create various filtering slopes (12db and even 24db, with a patch described in detail here):  http://www.serge-fans.com/wiz_filt.htm ) and also, of course, you get various filter responses (BP, LP, HP, Notch).

the VCFQ module has a slope of 12db/oct.

the filters can be patched to self-oscillate and they have a trigger In socket, for exciting them to produce various percussive sounds.

By exciting the resonant filters in ‘Lo’ mode, you can use them as interesting modulation sources.

by combining them in parallel, you can get a twin Q peak also. or, by connecting them in series, you can get a BP filter with variable bandwidth and twin Q peaks also, etc…

also you get two vca’s for your audio, AM, and inter-patch modulation index needs, plus a mix processor for scaling, mixing and inverting cv’s.

If you’ve used the Serge Dual ‘Q’ Filter M-odule, leave a comment with your thoughts.

Synthesist Bakis Sirros sends word, via the synth forum, of a new Serge M-odule, the Audio Matrix Mixer M-odule:

it contains (from left to right):

an ac-coupled Matrix Mixer, a Dual VCA (both ac-coupled) and another Dual VCA (also both vca’s ac-coupled).

price is 1600 usd.

the audio matrix mixer module includes an extra attenuator in each of its 4 inputs, to control the amount of each sonic element that is applied to ALL 4 output mixes of the matrix.

also, inputs one and two include a phase inverting and muting switch.

so, just imagine the possibilities with this new m-odule…

for example, by mixing 3 audio sources (from NTO’s, PCO’s, DSG’s, etc…) and using the 4th matrix mixer input to create feedback (after processing one mix of these 3 audio sources with another Serge sonic mangler) and also using the 4 ac-coupled vca’s to introduce organic AM into your patches (either in the inputs or outputs of various devices), the tonal complexity you could achieve will be limitless…

If you’ve used the Serge Audio Matrix Mixer M-odule, leave a comment with your thoughts on it.

This is the Serge Gator M-odule by Sound Transform Systems. All sound was generated by the Gator and Creature.

This is one patch with 4 different passes, each slightly tweaked. A touch of delay was added by the Moog MF104.

Shot with a Kodak Zi6 in Macro.

via hexenduction

Serge Modular has introduced the ASR Quantizer’ (ASR/QUAN) M-odule.

Details below.

If you’ve used the Serge ASR Quantizer, leave a comment with your thoughts!

via Bakis Sirros:

it contains (from left to Right): VC Timegen Clock, Divide by N Comparator, 3 step Analogue Shift Register (x2), 6 channels Quantizer.

this is a great module for sequencing aplications, and not only:

it can generate arabesque melodies with its two ASR’s that can be chained to form a single 6 channel ASR), using 3 VCO’s. or you could use the ASR’s, clocked at audio rate, as a weird wave processor….

you can further quantize various sequencer channels with the Quantizer, or quantize the outputs of the ASR’s…

with the ‘Divide by N Comp’ you get a comparator, a clock divider up to /31 (with odd and even clock divisions), an audio wave divider to create subharmonics, a staircase wave generator with N steps, (all these with the N defined manually or via VC) a tool to create sharp clocking pulses, etc…

the Quantizer features six channels of quantizing plus two toggle switches, in addition to its gate input jacks, for selection of intervallic step variants (manualy or via VC).

and, of course, the ‘VC Timegen Clock’ that can act as vc lag, vc AD, vc LFO, lowpass VCF, vc-clock source, audio divider, envelope follower, etc…

put all these together for countless more applications….

ASR/QUAN price: 1700 USD.

Serge has released an new synth module -  the Stereo Mixer M-odule.

Features:

• Quadrature Oscillator module
• Dual Transient Generator module
• Dual VCA (ac-coupled) and
• Dual Channel Stereo Mixer module (with level and panning voltage controlled)

Synthesist Bakis Sirros notes:

With this M-odule, the user is presented with a bank of six VCA’s (two in the stereo mixer module, two in the Dual VCA, two hardwired in the two outs of the Quad Osc) and two transient generators plus a quadrature sinewave Osc.

so, he has plenty of cv sources to use for modulating volume (or AM synthesis) and for modulating Pan Position, etc…

the Quad Osc goes into well into Audio range, so it can be used as Audio source as well.

Price is 1700 USD.

If you’ve used the Serge Stereo Mixer M-odule, leave a comment with your thoughts!

This is a very nice gear porn video for the Serge Creature M-odule, with some awesome extreme closeups to go along with the audio demos.

If you’ve used the Serge Creature M-odule, leave a comment!

via hexenduction:

This is the Serge Creature M-odule by Sound Transform Systems.

All sound was generated by the Creature.

A touch of delay was added by the Moog MF104 on some sections.

Shot with a Kodak Zi6 in Macro.

Shade is scheduled for release on March 23rd, 2009, and looks like it will be a treat for fans of synth music.

Sirros notes:

This album is full of analogue modular synths, including the Serge modular music system, Analogue Systems RS-Integrator modular, Doepfer A100 modular, Arp 2600, EMS VCS3, Technosaurus Selector system D, Livewire/Plan B/Harvestman modular, Metalbox/CGS modular, Analogue Solutions Concussor modular, Korg MS50, Oberheim 4 Voice modular, etc…

Shade is the studio album follow-up to Obsessive Surrealism (DiN26 – 2007) and is the fifth CD release by Parallel Worlds (the main musical project of Greek electronic musician Bakis Sirros).

via Bakis Sirros in the synth forum

This useful spreadsheet is a labor-of-love by fellow Serge fan Ty Hodson. 

It features notes and descriptions of Shop Panels, M-odules and Function Blocks culled from many disparate sources including old catalogs, brochures and various web sites. This spreadsheet has multiple pages - click the tabs on the bottom. 

via Carbon111 via Matrix

Gameboy Genius nitro2k01 has a vision for the future of modular synthesis, and it’s the ModularDuino – An Arduino based modular synthesizer.

If that sounds like a lot of supernatural mumbo-jumbo, the Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software.

People are using the Arduino to do all sorts of freaky DIY stuff, so it’s only meet and right that synth DIY’ers should bend this to their will, too. The above audio sample, Funky Arduino Acid, documents the unholy marriage between the Arduinoscillator and the Serge modular synthesizer. 

nitro2k01 hopes to develop the Arduino as a low-cost component for modular synthesizer users. Arduino hackers should check out the Gameboy Genius site for more info.

Here are nitro2k01’s goals for the project:

• 1 V/Octave frequency response for the Arduinoscillator. 
• Implement ?M (Phase angle modulation. When most people FM, they means this) 
• More waveforms can be added relatively easily.
• A delay module. The Arduino has the potential to store a buffer of about a second in RAM, which could be used to create a lo-fi 8-bit delay comparable to BBD delays.
• It’s pretty possible to make waveshapers or distorsion units with a characteristic digital sound.
• Envelopes, LFOs and perhaps sequencers with extended possibilities, editable code and a lo-fi touch.
• A filter using the Arduino. 

A new Serge M-odule has been announced – the CV Matrix Mixer M-odule. It includes a CV Matrix Mixer module and two Active Processor modules.

The price is $1600 USD. Photos are available in the photos section of the Serge Yahoo! group).

via Bakis Sirros

I actually like a little dialog or plot to go along with the synth action…..