My good friend Russ Hoffman, of Evaton Technologies, was off to ContinuuCon in Paris this week. He went to show off his new µCVC Eurorack module that allows Eurorack synth owners to connect their modular to their Continuum. As it happened, he was there for the release of the new, more affordable, more portable version of Haken Audio Continuum, called the  “ContinuuMini”.

The ContinuuMini is a smaller, less expensive version of the Haken Continuum, but containing the same powerful EaganMatrix synthesis engine. The ContinuuMini is duotactic (can track two fingers at once), and offers a three-dimensional playing surface with extremely tight coupling between performer and instrument. 

The internal EaganMatrix synth engine provides fantastic built-in sounds, but the ContinuuMini is also the perfect companion to Eurorack synthesizers, when coupled with the Evaton Technologies µCVC Eurorack module. One or two µCVC modules can be used in a Eurorack system to provide tracking of one or two fingers on the ContinuuMini surface (of course, also with the full size Continuums). 

The EaganMatrix synth engine is the Incredible Hulk of digital synth programs. Laid out in a way that will be familiar to fans of the EMS Synth/VCS3, it has far more connection options. And just to make things even more interesting, you don't simply connect THIS to THAT. You connect them with algorithms! So this smaller, more affordable Continuum will have all of that under the hood. As you can see below, There are a ton of possibilities.
​Find out more about the EaganMatrix here... ​

​Right: Lippold Haken and Ed Eagan with the prototype.

Here are some specs and pricing information...

1. Temporal accuracy - 700 uSec (N.B. the mechanical feel of the Mini is quite different)
2. Pressure Sensitivity — Hall-effect sensors (uses only four; has lesser dynamic range)
3. Onset Fine Structure - Reports attack trajectory, not just a 7-bit “strike” value.
4. Pitch sensitivity - Can roll fingers for super-fine pitch adjustments
5. EaganMatrix Synthesis - Tight timbre feedback loop (ideally, customize presets for ContinuuMini)

The ContinuuMini’s polyphony and computation power is the same as L2x Continuum
The ContinuuMini provides duotactic play, with a pitch reference display for each note.
Narrow body allows multiple units (multiple manuals, as is done on Trautonium)

Standalone preset selection and parameter modification is possible via 4-button menu interface.
Standalone operating instructions are printed on the bottom of each unit. 

When connected to a computer, the Continuum Editor and EaganMatrix editing are supported.
 
MIDI over USB (no 5-pin DIN)
Only one pedal jack is provided (not two). Pedal jack doubles as i2c connection to CVC and µCVC.

The ContinuuMini is USB powered (rated at 500 mA, actual use ~210mA) and weighs 10oz.

A mailing tube holds the ContinuuMini, USB cable, and USB AC power adapter.

The next public viewing is at Superbooth18. We plan a Kickstarter launch for late summer, with initial price of $549USD; MSRP $899.

This is a very exciting development. Especially for those of us who have admired the sonic possibilities, but were stopped at the price tag. The Continuum is a deeply expressive instrument. They are lovingly hand-built,  like a fine violin. 

​I will need two of the little ones please.

Rusty and the Hurty Foot


10 years ago today I came home from my my day job and decided to do some time on the treadmill. I took about 5 steps and something felt wrong with my left foot. Not a pain exactly, but just… wrong. After deciding to skip the treadmill, the foot got worse. It was only an hour or so later that I was not able to put weight on it at all. 


Gradually the pain became unbelievable. I couldn’t figure it out, because I could walk, take several steps and it was fine, but every so often there would be one step that resulted in a blinding flash of pain. There didn’t seem to be any pattern at all.


I am going to skip all the stupid details of this story. Suffice it to say that the Instacare doctor examined me, ignored my insistence that I had not sprained it and diagnosed it as a sprained ankle. The foot was turning a dark purple near the ankle on the outside. He sent me home and told me to keep it elevated and to put ice on it.


During that first 3 days, Rusty was my care provider. Rusty was a Jack Russell Terrorist. We picked him up at a Humane Society rescue party at a pet store. Rusty had been neglected and had behaviour issues. He had been with us about 3 years when my foot went to hell, and was the only dog on Homeland Security duty since Thai had passed away a couple of years earlier. My wife had just started working on a movie, so it was just us guys for 19 hours a day. Rusty really enjoyed having me home, laying in bed all day. He knew I was in pain. It was obvious because it got worse every single day. But that dog kept me sane during this ordeal, because he was a damned good listener. He always looked right at me when I talked to him. You could see the concern in his eyes. He always looked you in the eye,


Our days settled in to a sort of pattern. Somewhere between 2 or 4 in the morning I would get up and sit at the kitchen table with the foot propped up, helping the little woman put breakfast together to take to the film set. Rusty stood watch in case any eggs or bacon were dropped. Once we got her on her way, I would hop to the guest room and go back to sleep. This was the best place for me because it was a short hop to the bathroom across the hall. Over the next two weeks I worked out ways to get around that included pushing myself around the upstairs on a rolling office chair and dragging an ice chest in to the shower to sit on. One of the girls found a set of crutches and a wheelchair at a local thrift store. That made things a little easier. I could chair around upstairs, scoot downstairs on my ass, and then get around on crutches on the bottom floor. You will never believe how difficult it is to do the simplest things if you you don’t have two working legs.


Rusty loved to sit on my lap when I took the wheelchair to the kitchen. It’s not a long trip from the hall to the kitchen, but he always jumped on my lap and faced forward like we were going for a long drive in the car. In the early morning hours, after we were alone in the house, I would take him out on the front porch and we would sit and listen to the cars flying down the hill nearby and the horns from far away trains. Rusty was a deep listener. We really enjoyed the quiet time together.


Jack Russell are well known for needing a lot of activity. When you can’t walk it’s pretty hard to find ways to give them the exercise they need. Eventually I worked out to sit at the top of the stairs and throw toys into the basement. He would run down, fetch it and run back. One afternoon I decided to see how long he would do this. We were about an hour in when he laid down at the bottom of the stairs and took a little breather for about a minute, and then… back to work. He would take a break, but he would never quit. In addition to being tireless, he was smart. The smartest dog I have ever met. He understood the meaning of more words than a lot of people I know, I'll never forget the little freak out dance he did one day when I looked him in the eye and said, "Rusty. Jerky, walk, seek toy, ride, treat?"


Over the next two weeks more doctors got involved and at least two more wrong conclusions. Eventually it was discovered that I had a serious infection. I nearly lost that foot. There were many days of therapy following the operation to clean all of the nasty out of my Subtalar joint. I missed 7 weeks of work before I came back part-time on a cane. It was still incredibly painful to walk, but I was out of leave. 


Rusty was there for the whole ordeal. We had had many a long nap. Anyone with dogs will know how much they enjoy having you stay home in bed all day. Toward the end of his days Rusty began to sleep a lot more. I often envied how deeply he could sleep.


Rusty was the sort of person that never did anything half way. He barked as hard as he possibly could. He ran as hard as he possibly could. He went on the daily, 7 mile Death Marches with Mrs. Shadow and pulled her like a sled, every step of the way. Rusty was a fearsome killer of mice, squeak toys and down comforters. He never backed down from a larger dog. He was the living, breathing personification of the saying, “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog”. We first learned this one night when were watching a movie that had a pack of wolves that were running at us on the screen. Rusty looked up and jumped across the room, snarling, and bounced off the TV screen, got up and jumped again. One day he got out, ran down the street, and terrorized a Lab, a Dalamation, a Chow, and something that looked like a wolf. At the same time! He was without fear.


He was the head of of Homeland Security detail for many a year. We added George, the sickly Chihuahua to the squad shortly before Christmas in 2007. Sammie, the tough little street dog of complicated ancestry came on board in 2015. Rusty was always the Alpha until his decline last Summer. It was probably a stroke and most likely a brain tumor that brought him low. In his last year he began to sleep a lot and deferred to Sammie for keeping a watchful eye on the backyard. Just in case there was a badger attack.

In 2014 I had one of those Big Birthdays, where your age ticks over like an odometer and lands on a number ending in zero. Rusty was still in great form that Summer. I did wonder at that time about how many more Summers I would have with him. Now I sadly know the answer. He didn't make it to the Summer of 2017. Now I have yet another reason to hate Winter. 


After a series of seizures and three sleepless nights of trying to help Rusty recover from them, we made the painful decision, January 17th, to take him in. Put him down is what people say. Put him to sleep. The little euphemisms that sound far so much  nicer than “pay someone to kill your dog”. That's how it felt. I knew it was time to end his suffering but it still felt like a betrayal. It will haunt me for the rest of my life because he was pretty normal in the daytime, but was having a series of painful incidents all night. He was terrified and suffering and there was nothing I could do for him. The last day, we held him, fed him him all the bacon he could handle, and then we took him him for his last ride in the car. He still knew what ride meant and was so happy to go. I felt like a murderer. I still do. I always will. 


Rusty is gone, but I still have my foot. It turned out to be the only documented case of a spontaneous infection of a Subtalar joint in a human being. I am glad I still have the foot. But through the absolute incompetence of Inter Mountain Health Care, I am in pain on a daily basis. Now, every time my foot is pounding with that dull, throbbing ache, it reminds me of the time that Rusty was my daycare provider. 10 years ago, today.  My beautiful boy. I miss him so.

If you make music in the digital/internet age you need to have something to look at. The days of releasing an album and expecting it to receive any serious attention are long gone. Television was once the great promotional tool. An appearance on Ed Sullivan's weekly show could boost your album's sales massively. Some years later the music video become mandatory with the rise of MTV. This forced musicians to also become film makers. 

For a select handful of embarrassingly talented artists, this became a way to extend the vision of their song or album in to the visual world. Peter Gabriel and Bowie both come to mind. They made the most of  video as "art", extending productions well beyond the Lip Sync To Your Record In False Concert format.

These days you still need the music and something to look. For the internet. This requires me to be a film maker (lower case letters) as well as a composer. Making video is not something that I really enjoy, but I do think it can be instructive. The layout of my studio came about in a haphazard, and always evolving way. It was inspired by classic science fiction movies of the 50s and 60s, but it has also proved to best possible way for me to work. Standing. I like to pace and listen from different places in the room. I realized pretty early on that it also had potential as a live video setting. 

Gorgon Hat is the first live in the studio video in over a year. Some creative log jams had to be solved to finish the last album and the time finally arrived to get back in the studio and do some exploring. The piece is a result of early experiments with the SynthCube 266 module. This is a clone of a Buchla design which produces a variety of random control voltages. I thought that it would have a lot of potential with my way of working. I was right. I started looking at some videos on YouTube and trying to assemble what little information there is on the internet in order to understand how the thing works. Eventually I fell back on my old plugging-things-in-to-other-things approach to sound design. I had some interesting sounds happening with the modular. The next step was to make the generative patch on the EMW-200. That patch is the back ground that glues the piece together. The final element was setting up the RCA beat frequency oscillator though the guitar pedals.

This is the way I generally do things. I make one sound element at a time, taking care that all of the elements work together. Once I have some sounds that I find interesting, I play with them. Sometimes for hours, sometimes days. There may be some tweaking along the way as I discover unruly frequencies that crop up as a result of using random voltages. There is an element of chance and a great deal of deliberate intention that goes in to each of these live recordings. 

If I am working on a track for an album I use the same process. However, once the sounds are recorded I will edit them and move them around or recombine them in various ways. I like to leave the live video recordings alone. Mostly. For this video I only adjusted some volumes that got out of hand and added PSP Spring Box and EMT 244/245 to two of the tracks. There was a total of three stereo tracks on the performance.

The result is Gorgon Hat. It's dense, at times bordering on total chaos. It perfectly reflects my state of mind at the time of it's creation. The month of February was an especially trying time. It is interesting when I get these sounds rattling around in my head. At some point the compulsion to get them out of my head takes over.

​It's such a relief.

Synth Geeky details...
This piece features the RCA beat frequency oscillator, played live through effects pedals (including Strymon El Capistan). The EMW-200 is playing through a Lexicon Vortex unit. The modular synth is being controlled by the SynthCube 266 SOU and clocked with a Krisp 1 LFO. The other modules in the patch are the STG Soundlabs Sea Devils filtering a DotCom Q106, Analog Crafstman Gristlizer filtering the SSL DDVCO. Both Oscillators are routed through the Krisp 1 Ring Mod. The modular patch is mixed through the STG mixer on it's way to the Yamaha AW-1600 recorder. PSP Audioware plugs used in the mixing stage included the Spring Box and their excellent new EMT 244/245 reverbs. 
No Gorgons were harmed in the making of this picture.

Well the new year has begun and I celebrated with a sinus infection that has turned in to some sort of respiratory malfunction. 2016 was rung in to the sound of unpleasantly loud coughing and little to no sleep. After scheduling some days off to have a nice 5 day break and do some work in the studio, I ended up on the couch for most of the time.

I was able to get a little rearranging done to make room for some new modules that are on order from STG SoundLabs. A Mankato filter and an Integer Divider will me moving west from Illinois shortly. The gaping hole in the 5th rack frame will be down to four spaces in no time. I think my OCD can survive it. Barely.

One interesting thing about having a hardware problem is the way things move around, come and go, and change over time. There is always a desire for that perfect setup that will allow the creative juice to flow without the impediment of "where the hell did I put that f#@&ing adaptor" or "I KNOW there was an extra set of RCA to 1/4 cables in this m@t%@^f#@%ing drawer!" Out of such frustration many have yielded to the siren song of the Laptop and a pair of headphones studio. Not me. Oh no, not me.

And I am not going to open that debate about which is better. That is a silly debate. There is no right answer. Great music has been made all in the box, hardware only and some combination of both. A lot of dismal, horrible music has been made in exactly the same way. I have finally finished the next album and it is a mixture of hardware and software. Mostly sounds produced with the former and processed with the latter. But not always. 

So at the start of the new year I thought I might sit down and write a bit about where my studio is at right now and where I am trying to go with it in the future. 
 
​Here is a link to a video walk around of the studio that I posted on FaceBook...

 ​The AW-1600 recorder is now next to the Pro 2,and these two pieces are now the center of the entire setup. Gear by (Modular) Synthesizers.com, STG Soundlabs, SSL, krisp1, Evaton Technologies, EMW, Corsynth Modular Synths, Voltergeist Modules, Analog Craftsman, and Moon Modular. (Keys) Dave Smith Instruments MEK and Pro 2, KORG King Korg. (Signal Generators) Hewlett Packard, RCA, B&K, Eico. (Recorders) Yamaha AW1600, Pioneer and Telex tape. (Misc) Akai Professional, Moog, MOTU, Lexicon, E-mu, ART, Zoom, Korg, Behringer, Line 6, Strymon.

The EMW-200 mini synth has been racked up and mounted with the modular Atomic Synthesis System. Since the EMW-200 is a very dense collection of sub-modules it adds a ton of functionality to the system. The Pro 2 has CV in and out, so it will serve as the master controller for the modular as well as some of the other gear, via MIDI. The old Akai ME 30P is going to get a new battery and go back in to service routing midi around the setup, connecting keys, modular and computers. I have an old netbook that will be running Fractal Sequencer and another Mac laptop that will be running Five12's remarkable Numerology sequencer. And as long as I am throwing the word sequencer around, it should be pointed out that the Pro 2 has really deep sequencer that can address internal sounds as well as the CV outputs. In spite of all of this sequencing power there will NOT be any sort of "dance-y" stuff coming out this room. I can promise you that.

The two smaller racks, above the cabinets, house the shrinking remains of the live rig that went to KnobCon in 2014. That gear, along with the King Korg and MEK, are all being assimilated by the main Command Center systems. The small Behringer mixer will become a sub mixer for the gear on the counter top, and it will be sent directly to the AW1600 recorder. The large mixer on the main rack will handle all of the racked sound sources, the main output directed at another stereo pair on the AW1600. The other two pairs of inputs on the recorder will be fed from a patch bay so I can route things directly or through the Lexicon effects units and/or ART compressor.

The counter space around the MEK is becoming a catch-all area where I will be experimenting with a different kind of live rig. Something more portable in the unlikely event that I am invited to inflict this on an unsuspected group of people someday. This will probably involve the MEK taking over for the test oscillators and tape delay effects pedals and the SP404 staying on "tape loop" duties. The third sound source will most likely be an iPad running iVCS3, Soundscaper, and TC-11. I may include the Moog Theremini in this experiment.

Just at the lower left of this photo you can see the temporary table with my mixing setup. This is where my main laptop sits, with monitor speakers and a MOTU interface. The aux outputs of the MOTU are sent to the Behringer submixer for the times when I want to record a software instrument to a track. The two main ones that I use are Kontakt with all of the Hollow Sun things and Isotope Iris 2. 

So what have I learned from all of this effort and expense? 

1- Modular Synthesis. This is my favorite thing these days. Once I feared getting in to a modular system because I knew it could become a bottomless black hole, sucking all of the light and money out of my life. Once I started down this path however, a curious thing happened. I found that I began to compare each new potential gear purchase with how many modules you could add from Synthesizers DotCom. The latest, shiny VA thing with blinky lights or teeny analog mini synth? Nope! With 700 bucks I could ad a slew, envelope, panner and a spring reverb and still have money for some patch cables. A boutique "west coast" suitcase synth for 4,000 bucks? Not me! What I already have blows that away and I could nearly fill the entire Command Center with Texas modular goodness for the same money. As Matrix pointed out to me during a discussion on this very topic, I can't take my system out on the patio with a cup of coffee. But that's okay with me. My patio is 27F degrees right now anyway. I still need that spring reverb though...

2- I only need one poly synth. Period. The King Korg is a great sounding VA synth. It sounds warm, fat, meaty, tasty and beefy. All of the standard food related adjectives usually reserved for analog poly synths apply. It can do some very nice PPG impressions as well. Any lust that might have happened over some vintage thing has evaporated. I don't usually play a lot of chords anyway and I hate working on old keyboards. If you have old synths, they are just like old cars. Always needing a repair. So either you have to like working on them or be made poor by them. If you are looking for a poly synth, do yourself a favor. just get a King Korg or go the extra money and get a P6 or P08 or P12. Modern, in tune (or not if you swing that way), and reliable.

3- I only need one mono synth. But I have three with the modular, and the two Dave Smith boards. But even that gets fuzzy when you consider that you can play four note chords on the Pro 2 and that the current modular setup could easily be configured as at least 4 mono synths.

4- I don't need more crap! I have slowly been selling off all of gear that seemed like a good idea at the time and turning it in to... what else? Synth modules. With all of this hardware and software I already have more options that I can ever really master. But that is what I plan to do. One of these days they will throw me out of my job and I will have this purpose built selection of equipment. Some guys garden, some want to travel or even build furniture. I will be in the Command Center, finally finding out what it sounds like if I plug that thing in to this thing over there. 

I can even see the end of the modular system on the horizon. The Atomic Synthesis System (or A.S.S.) is nearly complete. 
​Seriously. It really is.

​Stop laughing.

Damn! It's been a long time since I posted anything on my stupid blog. I wrote a lengthy think piece on the Dave Smith Pro 2 a few months back, and my website ate it. That sort took all of the fun out it for quite a long while. With one project or another, things have been tight in the time department.

However, I have managed to finish the next album. It's called Shortwave Robot Pants. Check out the excerpt of the title track below.

This album has been two years in the making and it came very close to never seeing the light of day. This was down to an artistic crisis of confidence I suppose. The last two years have been a very difficult time, filled with struggles and personal loss. I am happy to have finally finished this album and to move on to some new ways of working. Hopefully 2016 will be a more productive year.

I will write more about the album in the liner notes that will be part of the download. Until later, please enjoy the preview.