Rainboard video
How to make your own. (Warning: big job.)

After years of threats, the Therevox ET-4 is finally available.
And yes, it’s another Ondes-style controller.
(Unlike the French Connection, it has a built-in two oscillator analog synth. And $1475 is a bargain.)

This defies explanation.

All the way back in 1972, Tony Furse managed to get funding to build a polyphonic digital/analog synth. That was the Qasar.

He built precisely two prototypes–the finished machine would have been far too costly for the era, so no investors came forward. Tony persisted, though, and developed it into a primitive sampling machine with dual 6800 microprocessors (brand-new on the market) in 1978. That machine, the Qasar M8, eventually was commercialized as the Fairlight CMI. (More history here.)

It’s got a blog, it’s been mentioned on Gizmodo, Makezine has done a piece on it. They’ve been talking it up for at least 4 months. So when does it ship?

If you’re interested in one, go here and donate.

Seen on another Deviant Art account.
More in his gallery.

Showed off at NAMM: video
More pics.

There’s your alternate controller for the month…..

From Dave Wright, of course.
Video here.

Plus: it’s digital but worth mentioning for its
huge DIY potential: the Roninsynth.

And here’s your first deviant synth for the new year:
a horribly-mangled Atari 400……

This guy took an ancient (1980 or so) paper-tape reader from a Heathkit computer and rewired it so it would control a simple oscillator bank made with 555 timer chips. Then he made punched tapes for it, by writing a QBASIC program. I’m afraid to ask how long it took him.

Nervous Squirrel strikes again.

Cock-a-doodle-doo.

He also made something called a “mucky sailor“.

Courtesy of Make magazine: a MeeBlip synth, built into a vintage cookbook.

It isn’t quite a synth, but I reckon it is as good as the other “steam powered synth” out there.

Sorry about the background noise. Video is here:

Steam powered music box

Ken (from cgs synth)

Nick Collier has made a Flash animated version of his “Beast” synthesizer.
Try it–all you can make is glorious anarchy.

May I introduce, Hugh LeCaine.

First, watch this awesome video on the legendary Electronic Sackbut :

Electronic Sackbut Video

(sorry don’t know how to embed video here…)

As I troll around for Hammond Solavoxes and Novachords for my own projects, I must state here that THE ELECTRONIC SACKBUT WAS THE FIRST VOLTAGE CONTROLLED SYNTHESIZER, not some univox organ a dude is selling on ebay, despite what the ebay page claims. Although the novachord, clavioline, ondioline, trautonium, are all beautiful, LeCaine made a synthesizer with voltage control of things like filters, VCAs and pitch before 1950!!!

This technical touch of voltage control allowed the integration of all sorts of nuanced control of the instrument without the need to discretely switch components in the circuit or contrive complicated mechanical variable capacitors and inductors (as used on some other instruments of the time ie, martenot’s string).

Gotta love the look, too.

Visit http://www.hughlecaine.com/en/ to see the many more interesting and trippy sound machines invented by this nuclear physicist.

Like the “Spectrogram”, which often controlled the “Oscillator Bank”. Here’s a picture of a spectrogram tape that LeCaine used to synthesize bird chirps:

And, yes, this was all done with tubes – what would you use in 1945?

He apparently pulled the voice board out of a perfectly good Moog Voyager,
installed it in a Modularworld case, and wired it up like a modular.
Am I missing something here?

The work of Moritz Wolpert. More here.