Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: MOTM

Here is a report on the fun meeting of MOTM and modular people here in the
SF Bay Area last night. I am recommending our club name be Modularities.

We met at Paul's hotel at 7:00. After about a half hour, everybody had
arrived--all twelve or more--and introductions were made. Paul then spoke
and talked about his history behind MOTM, and some of his design decisions
and their rationale. Then he outlined his plans for upcoming modules for
the rest of the year. In this context he talked about why the sequencer
was delayed for later. He also talked about his super vocoder which will
be made. Then he took questions, and first answered his own about why he
doesn't want to have too many LED's in his modules. One user asked for his
plans for more unusual control voltage sources and controllers. We also
discussed cabinets. Paul plans to come up with PDF plans for us all to
download and use for building our own. He says that UPS and shipping of
cabinets is just not practical.

Then we broke for a fun MOTM / synth trivia quiz. (What was the subject of
Bob Moog's PHD thesis? etc.) The winning team members all got a cool
Synthesis Technology cap.

Then Chris MacDonald took the floor and presented his Evenfall semi-modular
mini-modular synth. It is a very nice small synth, rack-mounted, with two
oscillators, VCA, VCF, S&H, lag processor, EG, AR, etc. It is made all on
one circuit board and it fits in a three-space rack format. He has planned
to sell it only as a partial kit, but we may have convinced him to produce
it as a full kit, or possibly even fully assembled.

Rob Johnson came with his rare Synton Syrinx synthesizer. It is also
something of a rack-synth, but came in its own Anvil case. It was
definitely cool, made of red brushed metal, with some ribbon type
controllers that were more like a slab of marble.

Dave Pearson and I brought our MOTM setups. Mine was set up in a standard
portable rack, and Dave's in an SKB-rack.

Then we packed everything up and caravanned to Andy Miller's for the
purpose of making synth sound. There we talked more in groups, and set up
the gear to make sound. We used mainly Dave's MOTM and Chris's Evenfall
placed in my rack. We succeeded in getting output from Chris's synth into
the MOTM for further unusual processing. Most had a moment or too of
modular tweaking.

Tony also brought his Encore midi controller piece, which he explained. He
has posted his digital photos of the event already. Andy Miller also
showed his old and new PAIA systems. Then we all had to finally leave
after an all-too-brief fun time. Such is life, with weeknight events. So
it was a very fine second meeting for our new modular club.

Fred