Posts by Scott

CDM is reporting on a new iOS based Moog product called Filtatron, “an iPhone Filtering, Effects, and Sampling App”, basically Moogerfoogers on your phone. This is looking pretty amazing interface-wise; very true to the signature Moog aesthetic with the Little Phatty style rotary encoders and soft buttons. From a strictly user experience perspective this must have been a lot of fun to design. It will be interesting to see how it actually sounds compared to the real thing though — I’m going to take a wild guess and say it sounds nothing like a MoogerFooger. Software analog modeling is an imperfect art (or perhaps too perfect); it’s best to think of it as it’s own beast entirely than a faithful representation of the sonic characteristics of a true analog circuit. At any rate it’s interesting to see music technology makers pushing the capabilities of mobile devices. Software like this can may never replace analog hardware, but it would be nice to have the portability and power when you’re away from the studio, even if it comes with a healthy dose of compromise. See also: iRig

Source MatrixSynth via CDM

I’m posting this partly because there was one parked outside my house on Monday and partly because you can’t have grown up during the 80’s without lusting after these things (but I’m guessing all designers, regardless of age, have at least a passing interest in the aesthetics of this car). Gizmodo reports that an Italian team has converted a DeLorean DMC-12 to run on lithium-ion batteries. Sounds like fun but I think I’d rather just buy a new one.

Source Gizmodo

We’re pleased to present the exclusive premiere of a new song and video by one of our favorite new artists, Memoryhouse. Yours Truly captured this beautiful performance of Pale Blue by the Canadian duo while they were visiting San Francisco’s The SUB. Stay tuned here for more info on the upcoming album and tour dates.

Memoryhouse – Pale Blue Video

A Collection A Day is a blog by Lisa Congdon chronicling her daily obsession with assorted ephemera. I’ve always held onto little scraps and tokens like these, but none are as good as the stuff Congdon has on display. I often find this kind of stuff even more inspirational than straight-forward design, particularly the airline tags.

Source A Collection A Day via Grain Edit

Shailesh has some excellent examples of various matchboxes up on his flickr. I forgot where I found this link but I’m going to take a wild guess and say it’s from Dave over at Grain Edit, who has a very impressive matchbox collection of his own.

Source

I just got back in from Toronto which was the last stop on the short Tycho tour we just did (I was joined by Dusty Brown and Zac Brown for the live sets). I just wanted to thank everyone so much for having us, we had a great time playing for you and couldn’t have asked for a better vibe. Our very own contributing writer Shelby White was on hand at the Seattle show to shoot with his 1D MK2. As you can see (above) the results were beautiful, he really captured the feel of the lighting that night. And that last one of Dusty is amazing!

I’m going to take a break from shows for a little bit here while I tie up some loose ends on the music front, but we’ll be hitting the road again — and making it to a lot more cities — once the album comes out and we have time for a proper tour.

Images Source: Shelby White / Wanken Blog

I just put together this flyer for Tycho Toronto show at the Drake, which, as it turns out, is a free show as part of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche. I’m not sure if they’re printing them or if it’s web only.

Hope to see some of you out: Seattle 9/26, NYC 9/29, Toronto 10/02

I believe this is a catalog for Aries Kits, a company which manufactured modular synthesizer kits during the late 70’s in Massachusetts. I love how the limitations imposed by 1970’s printing technology actually fostered good design in a lot of cases. I wonder if the designer put much thought into the layout of top portion; it looks very purpose-driven. That “Explore Sound” wire-frame logo was probably super high tech at the time.

I forgot where I found that image, any ideas? (Tineye was down at the time of this posting)

I’m always geeking out on music hardware and have a soft spot for DIY projects like the one you see above. I came across this custom MIDI controller by William Logo and was pretty impressed by the looks of the thing, especially considering that it was built with off mostly the shelf parts for under $400. I’ve been wanting to build my own custom controller for the Tycho live shows (to control VDMX, which runs the visuals) but I’ve never found the time to get anything started. It’s nice to see someone pulled it off with some aesthetically pleasing results. And I’m really loving the vibe of the photos, great tone.

For all you music geeks out there, I’m just decided to lighten my VDMX MIDI controller load by swapping out the big Akai APC40 and heavy Vestax VCM600 for a Novation Launchpad and a M-Audio X-Session that I’ve had lying around. We’ll see how the new setup works out for the upcoming shows.

MIDIBox Project Via CDM

Hard Format has some great shots of and original 12″ sleeve for Kraftwerk’s Autobahn (the brown tape just makes it that much better). This has to be one of my all-time favorite covers; I cut a picture of it out of Rolling Stone and had it on my fridge for years, but if I had this is would be framed in the middle of the room. What are some other great minimalist sleeves? Link them in the comments.

Source Hard Format