This was the third piece from the live performance at last year's KnobCon event. Since the 2015 KnobCon is next week, I thought I would try and get the rest of the performance posted somewhere. Time and opportunity are working against that happening. There is a new album in the works. It has a vague deadline of "The Fall", which is fast approaching. 

The track in the video has major sonic elements taken from When Robots Started Dreaming on the City Of Chrome And Glass. album. The original track was built around a fairly long, stereo field recording. I walked around in an elevator control room for about 10 minutes as the motors and control relays operated. Large, open relays make a hell of a CLACK when they pull in and out. 

Once I had the recording back in the lab things were moved, prodded and abused in to the finished studio version. When it was time to try and perform live, I pulled some of these elements in to the SP404 sampler that substitutes for tape loops in a live setting. There are a lot of sounds being generated live in this video. In fact, I was barely able to keep some of the elements in control. This performance of this track was constantly in danger of sliding off the rails and devolving in to a tsunami of howling feedback. 

Last year I was very honored to be asked by Eric to perform at KnobCon. Eric is more widely known as Suit and Tie Guy, the owner of STG SoundLabs. As human beings go they don't come much nicer, or smarter. Eric is a very interesting person. He has a black belt in synthesis and he can engage you in serious conversation on a wide variety of topics. Eric is a great guy.

When he first asked if I might be able to do some of my stuff live, I said sure. Why not? As time wore on and I understood that he was serious I started thinking I was a victim of hubris. Condense what I do down to a collection of equipment that could be moved in a car? Flying to Chicago from God's Country was going to be out of the question unless I wanted to use a laptop, iPad, and a couple of controllers. Where would the fun be in that? This was KnobCon. The world's greatest synthesizer convention. Not LapCon or PadCon. A luxurious gear pile would be as mandatory as a crisply ironed lab coat!

So this time last year I started working out which gear to use, fabricating rack ears, painting parts, and wiring it all together. I did all of the work with hand tools on the patio. Some of the empty spaces in the rack frames were used to install some blinky lights to help with the mad scientist vibe. I was very pleased with the way the thing looked and it's functionality was more than adequate to the task at hand. There was only one thing that I had not considered. More on that later.

The Mobile Command Center evolved over time. I had started experimenting with the idea two years ago. There were videos made at the time where that focused on the EMW-200 synth, two small test oscillators and a Kaoss pad. The KP2 has a Theremin-ish preset that works really well when teamed up with the Moog ring modulator and the essential Strymon, El Capistan tape echo pedal. So those pieces of gear went in to the open back rack frames. The test oscillators are solid state sine/square models. One oscillator is paired with a Zoom guitar effects unit and a Kaoss Quad, which allowed me to play it with the touch pad. The other oscillator was routed through a Pod HD500. I paired the EMW-200 with a Lexicon Vortex. The EMW/Vortex combination is very powerful and I mean to explore it in more depth one day.

The final piece of the live rig puzzle was how to fly in my field recorded sounds? In the early days of electronic music they explored making new sounds by manipulating recordings of everyday sounds. It might be a baby crying, a fly buzzing, a machine, or anything. I have a very large selection of machine noises that have been collected for years. These are a large part of the Atomic Shadow sound. At one point I planned to handle this with a cassette deck and a pre-recorded tape to run as a backing track. Eventually I decided to handle it with an SP-404 sampler. It's small, not that expensive, has usable effects and is simple to use on the fly.

Once I had the rig nailed down I started working on adapting some of my album tracks for live performance. From there it was a matter of practicing with the instruments and devising a structure for the set. I have performed live for decades. But all of that experience was in bands, on drums, with other musicians to share the experience, or blame. When you play live there is always an element of the unknown. Something can happen. Something wonderful! Or, perhaps just as likely, something horrible. That is the nature of live performance. The possibility of something getting out of hand and turning from triumph, to humiliating defeat in seconds. The nature of this setup and the unruly gain stages of the test oscillators made the undertaking ripe for a sudden, violently loud disaster. It is very difficult to keep these devices under control while changing presets, pitches, and levels. That is why I practiced diligently, wrote down a score on a clipboard, and was ready for anything.


Except for THE one thing. Darkness. I had not expected the room to be so dark. Almost totally so. My blinky lights were not really helpful either. I could not see my controls worth a damn. If I had not had a flashlight it would have been impossible.  Lesson learned. Upon arrival back home I found a clip-on light and added it to the Mobile Command Center. I Have some ideas about condensing the rig and making it more ergonomic. Time will tell. I suppose it will depend on finding another opportunity to take it out on the road. 


This video is the first piece in the 35 minute performance. It is very improvisational. The first tentative step in to the darkness. It begins with the sound of static, as a radio dial is tuning in to a broadcast from yesterday's world of tomorrow.

I shot a quick and dirty video of the studio with my Windows phone yesterday and posted it to the Atomic Shadow FaceBook page. So far it has been seen by far more people than saw my last SoundCloud post of the Black Sun piece. So it seems that a lot of people are more interested in the gear than in the end result. That is fair enough. It is a serious pile of equipment. 

So what are you seeing here? 

It is a collection of vintage signal generators, MU synth modules, modern effects, old tape machines, an old sampler, lab gear and an oscilloscope. The green metal cabinets have my live rig (with blinky lights) and my recording gear which is sitting on the counter space. 

The video begins with the seldom seen, other side of the room. This is where the all important refrigerator sits, just inside the door. Next to that are the equally important Eames chairs. My assistant, George, is relaxing on one of them as usual. Some my be surprised to see two laptops on that side of the room. The old white one is mostly doing e-mail duties these days. If you have sharp eyes you may see my favorite software synth open on the second one, next to the new King Korg. 

You may notice that there are two black and white video monitors in the rack. This is where I play old science fiction movies from a couple of DVD players. The Akai filter unit has been removed to make room for the EMW-300, now sitting between the old reel to reel and the cassette deck . I have been experimenting with a sequence using the 300 and that is what is running in the background. I am not certain that sequencing is for me. Time will tell.

In time, the JP-8080 will probably be replaced in the main rack and be moved to the west wall, above the King Korg. More likely I will sell it off to finish off the modular. In all honesty the King Korg covers all of the same bases and more.

So that is the setup as of February, 2015. It's always morphing. There is a new album in the works. Some final recording and mixing is coming along reasonably well. More on that at a later date. Thanks for watching!

At long last I have added the KingKorg synthesizer to the instrumentation here in the Command Center. It has a spot on the opposite wall from the main set of rack gear, right next to the Eames chairs. I first heard the KingKorg when it debuted at NAMM, 2013. This was the same show where Korg first showed the MS-20 Mini. Since the lines for demoing the Mini were ridiculous I looked around and found this golden keyboard sitting there all alone. So I gave it a try and have been singing it's praises ever since. Yesterday I finally had time to sit down and record with it. This is not intended to be a comprehensive review (Check Keyboard Magazine and Sound On Sound for that),  but I thought I would share my thoughts.

As you can see, It is a gold sort of color. To be honest, I don't really care for it. I prefer gear to be black, grey or possibly silver, and hammerite finish if at all possible. So the color, along with the dopey name were two things I had to get over. The color is growing on me. The name is not. 

What you have here is a three oscillator, virtual analog synth with an effects section. There are multiple waveform options in the analog style which include the basics and dual, unison, X-mod (fm), and ring mod versions. In addition there are all 64 of the DWGS waveforms that many will know from previous Korg products. A set of PCM waveforms cover basic piano, organ, Clav and Mellotron bases and there is a mic input for vocoder duties. 

The filter section has excellent models of Moog, Oberheim, P5, 303, and MS-20 filters. There is a KingKorg filter as well that is very nice. All of the filters come in Low pass, high pass, and band pass options. They are smooth and creamy without the stepping that we have come to expect from modeled filters. Top marks go to Korg for the filter design.

There is an effects section that is made up of three knobs. Push the knob to turn that section on, turn the knob to select the effect and the dedicated smaller knobs control each section's send and amount. Real time tweaking is a breeze. There is a glowing thing just below the logo in the photo above. That is the tube drive section. It sounds great and really adds some growl and volume. Although it is the first section on the physical panel, be warned that the tube drive comes after the main effects section in the actual signal chain. So it comes after the cabinet simulation and reverb effects. That seems wrong to me, but you can easily overcome that by not using the onboard amp sim and reverbs. We all probably have other source of reverb.

You can layer two sounds or split the keyboard between two sounds. The oscillator section has it's own lcd screen so you can see which waveform you have loaded for each oscillator. The controls are all clearly laid out and you will have no trouble figuring out what is going on.

In addition to the mic input the KingKorg also has CV/gate out from a stereo mini plug. I have not done anything with either feature, but the possibilities are sparking ideas for future experiments. That is one of the best benefits of a great piece of gear.

I know that there is a lot of fuss made on various websites about analog polysynths. Why can't we have them and why can't they cost 500 bucks? Of course the answer to the last is cost. But the truth to tell is that the virtual synth has come a very long way since the late 90s. The KingKorg does some very convincing impressions of some classic, expensive and electronically unreliable gear of yesteryear. I had a P-600 a few years back. It sounded great, when it worked. Same could be said for the Akai Ax-60 that I once owned and several others. I got really tired of working on them. Now days you can save up for a Dave Smith poly of one design or another and you will have a great sounding and reliable, modern polysynth. But The KingKorg can get in to areas that you simply cannot reach with triangle, squares and saws. It will set up back far less with secondhand units going for $800-900.

I have recorded a track called Black Sun using only the KingKorg and it's built in effects. One patch uses some of the Inharmonic DWGS waves, which were switched and manipulated in real time during recording. The other patch employs various  combinations of  X-mod and ring mod waveforms, which were also swapped and controlled during recording. It's easy to change LFO settings, turn effects on/off, select different waveforms and more. You can do this on the fly.

Give the track a listen and then drop down for some final thoughts.

Korg have done a lot of things right here. I see this keyboard being very handy for a working musician as a second instrument in his rig, or perhaps a main one. Serious piano players are not going to like the keybed and the pianos are not mega gigabyte sample libraries, but in a band setting with a noisy guitarist this would not matter to anyone out front. If that is important to you then you are shopping in the wrong store here. As a great sounding synthesizer alone it more than earns it's keep. It is plastic and therefor, very light and portable. I would have a hard case if I were gigging it. The PCM sounds are nice to have if you need them. The addition of the DWGS waves makes it easy to get in to territory that belongs to the PPG. You can do some glassy FM pianos and bass sounds if that is your thing. It's all in there. Your screaming leads, fat bass, and swirly pads. 

But the bottom line for me is the sound. It just sounds very analog, when you want it to. Very lush, The quality sound and the price make the bang-for-the-buck factor very high. Try one out with a decent set of headphones. I think a lot of people will be very surprised when they give this instrument an honest listen.

The Sound Of Tomorrow by Mark Brend was a fascinating read. The subtitle is really the main point of the book. In writing this history of the early days of electronic music, the author's focus is on how electronic sounds progressed from DIY workshops and academia to movies, television and the Top 40. Or as he puts it, how electronic music was smuggled in to the mainstream. 

There are a great many historic insights and details about the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Louis and Bebe Baron, Raymond Scott and many other artists. In the 50s and 60s making electronic music was a very expensive undertaking. Artists trying to make serious electronic music had a constant battle to find grants or commercial work to keep body and soul together. As a result these sounds of tomorrow began to find their way in to films and advertising on radio and television. From there they percolated in to the minds of a new, younger generation of musicians who began to use these experimental techniques to spice up their early psychedelic explorations.

The section of the book that deals with the rise Robert Moog and the rise of the synthesizer brings a fresh perspective on the transitional period between tape manipulation of tone generators and standalone systems like the Moog or the EMS VCS3. When the synthesizer first enters the story it was not universally welcomed in to the world of serious composition. These devices at first were mainly used to recreate classical music or popular tunes of the day.

If you enjoy some dry, British wit you will not be disappointed. If you are interested in electronic music this book is a must have. The retelling of several of the tales set out here provided a good laugh. He also includes a detailed list of film and television programs that used electronic elements in their soundtracks, as well as influential record albums. From the Telharmonium and moving forward through the Theremin, the Ondes Martenot, and Hammond Novachord, on to the rise of the synthesizer, all of the people and equipment that created the sound of the world of tomorrow are here. This book gives us a clear sense of how the march of technology impacted the production of music and how that music went from the workshop of obsessed dreamers and in to the fabric of the world of today.

A great stocking stuffer for that racket obsessed someone on your Christmas list.