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!

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”:

We’re all for experimentation here at CM, but we can’t help feel that synth geek Calvin Harris had something more that technological innovation on his mind when he performed this suspiciously tight-sounding version of his latest single using what can most accurately be described as a workstation keyboard made out of young model types.

We’ve criticized companies in the past for advertisements that are blatantly sexist. For example, when Image Line introduced Deckadance with a shot of a woman’s butt in a thong, we asked if it was the most offensive gear ad ever.

Calling Harris a “synth pervert”, though, is over the top, to the point of being potentially libelous.

I’m not really a fan of Harris’s music, but his video is going to do more to expose Max/MSP, Arduinos, conductive ink & the idea of incorporating the human body into electronic music instruments than anything more “serious” artists have come up with.

What do you think? Does Harris’s video qualify him to be called a “synth pervert”? Or do some electronic music bloggers just need to get out a bit 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!

Click here to view the embedded video.

The instrument consists of 34 pads on the floor which have been painted with the conductive ink and connected to a computer via some clever custom electronics. The performers stand on the pads, and touch hands to complete a circuit and trigger a sound. Different combinations of pads trigger the different sounds needed to play the track.

The project is the result of a collaboration between Calvin Harris and masters students from the Royal College of Art’s Industrial Design Engineering programme.

Bare Conductive was developed by RCA students Bibi Nelson, Becky Pilditch, Isabel Lizardi and Matt Johnson. The custom electronics and software for the project were created by Matt Johnson, employing two Arduinos and the graphical audio programming tool Max MSP. The performers, floor pads, Arduinos and Max MSP combine to create a giant MIDI controller which is used to create music which is sequenced and quantized with Ableton Live.

Do you think you could get creative, if you had 15 bikini clad models and a gallon of conductive ink at your disposal?

Leave a comment with your thoughts!

via icreateddisco

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.

Joining the all-powerful Juliette Commagere, Imogen Heap, Lauren Rocket & Naomi Jarman as officially recognized Synthtopia Goddesses of the Keytar is Valerie Poxleitner, aka Lights.

Synthtopia’s Goddesses of the Keytar are an exclusive group of women that are doing what they can to keep the frequently maligned keytar at the forefront of popular music.

Poxleitner is a Canadian synth pop singer-songwriter, best known for her songs February Air, White, Drive My Soul, and The Last Thing On Your Mind, featured in 2008 Old Navy video commercials

Her style focuses more on synthpop than keytar pyrotechnics, as shown in this live video performance of Drive My Soul.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Do you know of other women that should join Synthtopia’s quintet of keytar queens? Leave a comment with your thoughts!

via Ambyr

OK – who’s got the best caption for this? The best I could come up with was “Two Girls, One Organ”.

I know you can do better than that!

Bonus points if you can identify the vintage organ!

Lush.i.ous, via the Synthtopia Flickr Pool

Synthtopia continues its Link Love for Tenori On Babes campaign with a shout out to LIttle Boots, who’s Fairtilized a free mix tape of synth-heavy retro disco – the Automatic Lovers Mix. 

You can preview it below or download it here.

via apc

This is a short interview with Little Boots before her performance on Later.

It’s not a great interview – but she touches her YouTube hit Meddle and using the Tenori On.

Anime girls show what you can do with a Korg Kaossilator in Korg’s promo movie. 

via Matrix

It’s Sexy Day at Synthtopia, and we’re bringing sexy back in a big way. 

All day, we’re going to be looking at the sexy side of electronic music. Where else could we start than by revisiting the heyday of Moog “switched on” albums and their “sexy” album covers, like the lovely example, In The Moog, from the Mocha Beans?

Here are five cheesetacular Moog albums that showcase the sexy seventies side of electronic music. Note that the last is NSFW!

Les Baxter’s sexy Moog album, Moog Rock.

Enoch Light gets Spaced Out with the help of a Barbarella clone. 

You haven’t felt love until you’ve felt the magic of Electric Love.

Electronic Toys is a retrospective on classic Moog music.

Joining the awesome Juliette Commagere, Imogen Heap & Lauren Rocket as officially recognized Synthtopia Goddesses of the Keytar is Naomi Jarman of the progressive electronic band Crisium.

Jarman handles the keyboards for the group, along with the other core member of the group, David Goodman. 

When Jarman’s not wielding the Yamaha KX5 keytar, she’s at the helm of a massive Analogue Systems – System 8500 modular. synthesizer:

You can preview a selection from Crisium’s CD, Letters from the Voyage, below, and find out more about the band at their site. 

via BigCityMusic

Sexy computer nerd Rucyl Mills looks stunning in her fashion-forward outfit.

She’s ready for not just the dance floor, but to star on the stage with her Elektro-07 wearable MIDI controller.

It’s made of black leather and snakeskin, and features a tasteful collection of MIDI pads and continuous controller knobs.

Mills explains her bold fashion choice:

“I built the elektro-07 so I could control the sonic and visual parameters of my live performances without having to look deep into the eye of my laptop, hunched over in computer music stance. I’m still learning how to play it.”

“Software wise, it runs a maxMSP/Jitter patch smoothly, connected to my laptop by a long USB cable. Major thanks to Luke DuBois.”

“Originally it was named the Chakakhantroller after Chaka Khan… but you wouldn’t believe how many people don’t get the reference.. so I changed it to Elektro-07 after my newly launched label, Elektrocardio.”

Mills promises that the next version will be wireless.

Props to Mills for not just making a bold fashion statement, but for creating a cool alternative to hunching over laptops or bulky keytars.

Her site has a lot of other interesting projects on it that you’ll want to check out, too.

Here’s Mills’ video for her track, Sexy Computer Nerd. Meow!

Sexy Computer Nerd from elektrocardio on Vimeo.

Made with a MacBook iSight camera and maxMSP.

via CDM

It’s been awhile since we highlighted any Chicks That Mix.

There’s probably no better way to remedy that situation than drawing your attention to Little Boots‘ Victoria Hesketh.

Hesketh is the former lead singer with Dead Disco, and now she does her own electronic dance music as Little Boots.

“Little Boots is just me, Victoria,” says Hesketh. “Well, it’s the name for my music project. I write and play stuff and sing and DJ and remix and do covers…Whatever I can get my hands on really!”

And she does analog:

There’s a fully produced mix of this on her MySpace page, but this solo version has its own charms.

Check out her Moroder-esque single, Stuck On Repeat, below. You can also sign up for a free mixtape from Little Boots at her site.