SynthBooth (online exhibition / performances)

Just got a mail from the Sensel guys that they exhibit at a virtual exhibition that starts today and happens over the weekend: SynthBooth. Seems to be all about modular synths on first sight. Could still be interesting.

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arghhh… I really meant to buy tickets for this… and now its closed :frowning:

arghhh…

Looks like you can still buy tickets via “get your digital pass now”

ah… its just changed… earlier when I tried it said ‘tickets were now closed’
but now seems possible!

edit: bought ticket… now waiting for synthbooth to tell me how to actually get in :slight_smile:

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and im in… though have to go walk then dogs… then I guess, I’ll wander around a bit :slight_smile:

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How was it? Having been stuck at a desk all week, my weekend priority was to get out into the fresh air.

Was interesting! Am usually not so much into sequenced music, but many of the musical setups and live interactions with these modular synths were quite creative, it’s a different kind of approach.

My takeaway was that for polyphonic controllers, physical modulars might be a little unwieldy. But had some interesting talks with guys. E.g. about physical “poly cables” that have several cables inside, so one could patch hardware modules like the poly modules in VCV or Voltage Modular. Then things might become interesting - but also potentially expensive with e.g. four to eight voice modules…

Will play around a little more with VCV and Bitwig Grid in the next time :slight_smile:

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I thought it was pretty good too…
the highlight (unsurprisingly) for me was the keynote by Suzanne Ciani :slight_smile:

also nice to see a few performers I didn’t know ( Aqeel Aadam and Afrorack) , and some I did (Ann Annie)

yeah, I think this is the case… its also gets very expensive, in an already expensive field.

that said, my big interest is mixing digital and hybrid into modular… at that point things open up again.

on the digital front, we are starting to see more direct midi input on the module which means the module can have polyphonic voices, outputting a mono/stereo sum. of course, this is not fully ‘modular polyphonic’ (paraphonic?) , but still means the module can respond to CV modulation
( or you can be ‘clever’ about what cv you expose, e.g. cv over voice spread… so you are affecting individual voices)

on the hybrid front, its similar, do the polyphony on the computer… but then be sending audio/cv back n’ forth to the physical modular for hands on control.

hands-on control is also where I think multi touch also becomes useful to modular.
Ive been using my Soundplane a large bunch of X/Y/Z control pads to output cv, to control modules in the physical rack.
this is an area that interests me with with the Erae Touch, since we also can have some visual feedback.

so yeah… true polyphony on modular is outside my modular budget, but I still see a way to get polyphony, and also use expressive controllers :slight_smile:

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Yepp, that talk was interesting! It was also nice to see the original of that Buchla playing overlay that Sensel has recreated for the Morphs.
Guess this was monophonic back then?
On the other hand - the guys who had the budget for these monster modulars probably had no problem to multiply the number of oscillators, filters, envelopes and vcas etc. by X :slight_smile: