237 – Synthesizers

27 Responses to 237 – Synthesizers

1. David Woods says:

   February 27, 2017 at 00:04

   A truly great podcast with its mix of artistic understanding and technical explanation. One artist I would have added to the discussion is Isao Tomita who was doing extraordinary interpretations of classical music using early Moog synths. I was interested in synthesizers since the 70s and built one from Elektor magazine in about 1980 (though I’m not really a player). I feel it is worthwhile for synth players to understand better how they work and what they can do to alter the sounds generated.

2. Werner Engel says:

   February 28, 2017 at 20:48

   At the beginning of the Show you were looking for the right word, for driving an amplifier in saturation. Thats called “clipping” and occurs when the Output Signal is equal to the supply voltage. On an osci this would look like an increase of sinus-shaped amplitude up to DC.

3. Rutger says:

   March 2, 2017 at 18:20

   @David Woods: indeed, Tomita is too easily forgotten in the Western perspective on electronic music. As is Susumu Hirasawa by the way. Love his “logic airforce”!

4. Craig Hollabaugh says:

   March 6, 2017 at 09:36

   There’s a documentary called I Dream of Wires that covers invention of synthesizers both east coast vs west coast. It’s awesome.

5. MaNo says:

   March 6, 2017 at 13:12

   Thx! Do you happen to have a link?

6. Steve Biggs says:

   March 7, 2017 at 11:09

   This is one of my favourite episodes ever. I’ve messed around with synthesis before using the Reason software package from Propellerhead. There are a lot of buzzwords that I was familiar with from Reason, such as wavetable synthesis but I always thought they were just a Reason branding thing. Now I see that Reason has actually given a huge nod towards the history of electronic music and I understand things that before I only had passing familiarity with. Excellent episode. Great job!

7. Craig Hollabaugh says:

   March 8, 2017 at 05:21

   http://www.idreamofwires.org/

   I steamed about 9 months ago but can’t find that link now on Netflix or Amazon.

8. mrjerk says:

   March 13, 2017 at 18:16

   Absolute fantastic episode!!! Good job, Rutger and Markus!

9. Faldrian says:

   March 13, 2017 at 20:38

   I really liked this episode! Nice audible examples and a good intro to the different facets of synthesizers. I like when you reproduce known sounds / samples with your equipment – it feels like a “making of” of music and sounds which I always took for granted and never questioned the creation of that exact sound. I would like to hear more of those deconstruction / construction of popular sounds, but I think I may find some videos on youtube on that topic (if not – that would be an interesting show!).

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11. Karim Naqvi says:

    March 23, 2017 at 06:38

    These podcasts continue to astound me with their quality. I just loved the interaction between interviewer and interviewee, and the exploration of the boundary between science, technology and art. (Not that I’m recommending a permanent deviation from your usual technical focus. It’s all good.) Thank you so much!

12. MaNo says:

    March 23, 2017 at 19:41

    Thanks :-)

13. Yurgon says:

    March 27, 2017 at 03:38

    I discovered and re-discovered this podcast because of all the aviation related stuff, which is always incredibly interesting.

    But so far this must have been the most fascinating issue. Great topic, amazing guest, very good questions, it’s as good as a podcast can get.

    Thank you guys so much for taking the time and effort to record it! :)

14. MaNo says:

    March 27, 2017 at 09:32

    Thanks Yurgon :) I have forwarded your comment to Rutger.

15. Michael says:

    March 28, 2017 at 14:46

    Hi Markus, this episode was truely superb. I’m a bit of a synth nerd myself and I feel you and Rutger managed to squeeze in pretty much all the relevant basics on the topic and more than once Rutger added some background to stuff I sort of already knew. It doesn’t get a lot better than this in podcastland and I’ll make sure to promote your podcast and this episode in particular wherever I go online.

16. MaNo says:

    March 28, 2017 at 17:33

    Thanks Michael :-)

17. Rutger says:

    March 28, 2017 at 18:55

    Wow, I’m deeply grateful for all your wonderful comments!

    Rutger

18. Uhlig Steffen says:

    May 11, 2017 at 10:30

    Can you please do this episode again and dive into every little aspect once more, but for two hours each? I _love_ this episode. It’s a unique mix of technical depth, musical insights (where I lack quite a bit), and great examples.

    I have been an avid listener to OmegaTau for a while, but this is clearly a major highlight. Thank you very much!

19. MaNo says:

    May 11, 2017 at 13:42

    Thanks Steffen :-))

20. Hsk says:

    May 31, 2017 at 20:35

    Hey Markus.

    First: Your podcasts are great, keep it going. I just had the same feeling you had at 2:29:25 (“I’ve heard that before”) when Rutger played the 60’s organ. Check out The Doors – When the music’s over ;)

    Hajo

21. Matthias says:

    June 25, 2017 at 09:51

    Maybe these videos about Modular Synthesis are of some interest for listeners as well.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cudr9Y9lEMI

22. Hendrik Friedel says:

    July 12, 2017 at 04:10

    Maybe of Interesse
    http://m.spiegel.de/einestages/a-1154581.html

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24. Eric Hazen says:

    February 8, 2018 at 20:24

    This is absolutely my favorite episode so far! I put away the headphones and waited until I was home to listen through my home system (home-build class A tube amp driving a pair of Polk 10s) The recording quality was truly excellent, and well worth playing through a good system. I had forgotten my old love of synthesizers. I built a couple when I was young, the first one just had a separate oscillator for key on a one-octave keyboard, then replaced with a top octave chip when those became available. Then I got distracted by computers and forgot about synths (until now!)

    Anyway, a wonderful pix of technology and art, and I’m now inspired to look up some of the music you mention in the episode.

25. Joe says:

    February 26, 2018 at 18:18

    Greatly enjoyed this podcast. I have always been interested in this topic, and as usual Markus finds the right guest and goes into the detail I was hoping for.

    I’ve done some web searching for a similar analysis of guitar sounds, but have come up empty. Can you suggest any?

26. Steffen Uhlig says:

    September 1, 2018 at 14:27

    This may be old news for people familiar with the topic, but I am having big fun playing with the concepts mentioned in this episode using an Open Source “virtual modular synthesizer”: https://vcvrack.com/

    It you are on a Mac, installation is as simple as `brew cask install vcv-rack`.

27. Alex says:

    April 23, 2019 at 19:36

    Spitzenepisode! Jetzt ist meine alte Liebe zu Synthies wieder aufgeflammt, und ich überlege ernsthaft, mir einen Korg Minilogue anzuschaffen!

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