Rhythm King - "Don had been hired by the Hammond organ company to demo its products on the show floor. He was using an Ace Tone rhythm box (which was distributed by Hammond at the time) as his percussion section. "I had modified my Ace Tone to death, changed all the rhythms because none of them fit my style of playing. I also wired it through the expression pedal of the Hammond, so I could get [percussion] accents, which no one was doing then. After the show this man from Japan came up and the first thing out of his mouth was ‘that looks like my rhythm unit but it doesn’t sound like my rhythm unit! How did you do that?’" It was Ikutaro Takehashi, the president of Ace."
posted by marienbad on Jan 31, 2013 - 22 comments

The Silver Dream Machine: The synthesizer that accidentally changed the world.
posted by gman on Jun 8, 2010 - 42 comments

808 808 808 808 808 808 808 808 808 808 808 808 808 808080808
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Aug 8, 2008 - 49 comments

Matmos provides a song-by-song exposition of their synth-only* album Supreme Balloon, including explicit pics of the gear they used. Highlights include the Electronic Valve Instrument, the Coupigny, & everything else.

*Mostly - all sound sources were synths, some software controllers were used.
posted by univac on Jul 6, 2008 - 14 comments

Bassline Bassline. Rock has its electric guitar, hip-hop has its turntable/mic, and electronic music has its Roland TB-303. One of the few single instruments that can claim to define the entire genre, its history is an interesting one: "Bassline Baseline is a video essay that investigates the invention, failure and subsequent resurrection of the mythic Roland TB-303 Bass Line music machine in the last two decades of the 20th century."
posted by afx114 on Jul 18, 2005 - 24 comments