synth babes

The BT Visit London Awards 2009 opened this year at The Westfield Centre, London to the sound of a 10 piece Tenori-On Orchestra.

The event, to celebrate and award the best of the tourism industry in London, was opened in style. A  string quartet began playing Beethoven’s 5th against a back drop of images of London. As the piece built up, a 10 strong Tenori-On orchestra took over, turning Beethoven’s 5th into a disco tune a la Walter Murphy.

You can hear the Tenori-On Orchestra’s version of Beethoven’s 5th at the Yamaha site.

The Tenori-Ons were programmed by Sound Designer and Yamaha artist Marc01.

“Taking on such a monumental piece of music (Beethovan’s 5th), and adapting it for the Tenori-On was definitely an exciting and challenging project,” said Marco1. “The Tenori-On is a very inspirational tool – having the ability to program it in a very melodic way, and to suddenly switch to the more experimental layers such as Bounce and Random opened up a world of possibilities.”

“Having the luxury to use 10 Tenori-Ons meant that I could really experiment with multiple layers, effects and processing to take the Tenori-On way beyond peoples expectations of what it can do.”

If any readers made it to this performance, leave a comment!

If you’ve really been aching to see Ms March with a monster synth, the APC crew has got you covered.

While the site of a large modular synth, a Roland TB 303 or a Fairlight CMI III is titillation enough for most synth freaks, the 2010 APC calendar goes a step further.

Here’s what APC’s Simon Iddol has to say about their 2010 calendar:

The calendar itself is a limited edition (500 copies) A3 sized wall calendar featuring legendary synths like Fairlight CMI III, Roland TB 303, PPG Wave, EMS AKS or Roland Jupiter 8.

Our aim is to create a calendar like this in every year and to do something for the music world like the Pirelli calendar for the car world.

If every garage has a hot chick VS cool cars calendar, than every studio needs our calendar.

The model is a world famous Hungarian striptease dancer and model Dorothy Black.

The politically correct side of me thinks that they should have balanced out the gear photos featuring the “world famous Hungarian striptease dancer” with some shots with a hunky naked guy – but photos of naked guys with monster synths would probably kill the vintage synth resale market on eBay forever.

The calendars are $30 via PayPal. Details at the APC site.

SFW preview (that’s probably NSFW) here.

Remember Calvin Harris’s Humanthesizer video?

It’s predictably going viral, moving towards 100,000 views since it was released yesterday.

And, just as predictably, Harris is getting criticized for being sexist for his use of bikini-clad models.

Computer Music magazine goes further, though, calling Harris a “synth pervert”: Read more…

This is a must see – Calvin Harris may have created the ultimate electronic music controller – bikini clad models painted with conductive ink.

Harris performs a version of his new single Ready For The Weekend on a unique human synthesiser- the Humanthesizer.

The instrument employs 15 bikini clad models painted with Bare Conductive, a new skin safe ink which conducts electricity. When the performers touch, the connection completes a circuit, triggering a sound.

Think it’s all fake, and just a cheap excuse to get 15 bikini clad babes into a music video?

Then check out the behind the scenes video below! Read more…

We’ll admit it – this video of the V-Accordion Festival sort of freaked us out with its frightening majesty.

The technology behind Roland’s V-Accordion line, though, is pretty interesting – combining everything you know and love about accordions (Italian restaurants) with a slice of MIDI-controlled synth action. It does orchestral sounds, physical behavior modeling and has MIDI out for controlling Live, your bent Casio or whatever freaky gear you get your synth on with.

Anyway – Roland has announced an accordion contest, with the grand prize being a trip to Rome to jam with the V-Accordion babes at the V-Accordion festival.

Note: they actually make no mention of V-Accordion babes in the contest rules, but if you play the accordion, you can dream.