Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: MOTM

Yesterday here in the sunny (for a while) Pacific Northwest we had both a
Synth DIY get-together and the Robert Rich show. Both were good, and
well-attended.

The Synth-DIY meeting had more attendance this year, and people brought a
lot more stuff. I took my whole MOTM system, including a couple of Oakley
modules and a Blacet Darkstar, with Stooge panels, and my pile of Stooge
cables. There was one other MOTM guy there who is just getting started and
didn't bring his equipment with him.

As I should have expected the meeting snuck up on me when I was pretty busy,
so there are a couple of Blacet conversions and any number of DIY projects
that didn't get ready, including modifications/improvements to my
touchscreen controller, but all my MOTM stuff was finished. I got there late
and spent a bunch of time setting up because my system isn't especially
portable and I had it partly disassembled. I need to find new "packaging"
that's compact at home but also reasonably portable, especially as I have to
get it up and down stairs...

Jim Patchell brought a whole wall of stuff, including his vocal filter and
vocoder, Jay Schwichtenberg had his compact DIY modular (mostly surface
mount), Tim Ressel (I think) with his DIY modular (RCA jacks!) including a
tube diode ring modulator, and (the organizer) John Marshall with his neon
bulb relaxation oscillators. There was a small Modcan system (I forget who,
sorry) which included Cynthia Webster's clone of the Buchla low-pass gate.
There were two or three people there who had stuff from Synthesizers.com,
but no one brought any to the meeting (slackers!)

Unfortunately, Robert Rich was too busy to attend the meeting. Oh well, we
all got to meet him at the concert anyway.

The concert was very good. Robert was constantly triggering or tweaking
something, and played several different instruments through the course of
two sets. There seemed to be quite a bit of sequenced, sampled, or
self-evolving stuff playing continuosly, and then Robert would play a
particular instrument over it. As a result the sound was very full but he
was still clearly playing something identifiable and not just twiddling
knobs. He performed on the MOTM for a piece from Bestiary, but he mostly
played his lap guitar and flutes, along with some keyboards. There was bunch
of stuff from Outpost and Bestiary in the first set, the second set was
older stuff which I'm not as familiar with.

Quite a few people showed up; a friend of mine said he counted 60-odd people
which was apparently above expectation. The venue was a sort of art studio
in Seattle, not the best part of town, and was a little noisy outside but it
served its purpose.

After my experience of moving my modular to an SDIY meeting once a year I
imagine its a real job carting Robert Rich's MOTM around on tour all
summer...

...Craig