Reviews
CatSynth regularly features reviews of music and art. The focus is on modern, contemporary or experimental work in a variety of media. We primarily cover the San Francisco Bay Area, but occasionally find ourselves in New York or such far away locales as an electronic music show in Tokyo or an underground club in Shanghai.
Check out the featured review below as well as other recent reviews. If you are interested in having your event or work reviewed on CatSynth, please contact us or leave us a suggestion on Facebook. Note that with a volunteer staff of one human and one cat, we probably won't get to all of them.
Featured Article: San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Part 1
Today we look back at the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival that took place earlier this month. Specifically, we review the opening concert which took place for the first time at SFMOMA. Appropriately for a collaboration with an institution focused on the visual arts, many of the pieces combined electronic music with graphics, video, or [...]
NAMM 2012 article round-up
I have consolidated all of the NAMM 2012 posts in the list below. Lots of photos with our stuffed cat, and also a few videos. At NAMM at last NAMM: Waldorf Zarenbourg and Blofeld Korg’s Little Instruments at NAMM Battle of the iPad Docks at NAMM. Behringer iStudio and Alesis iO Dock Moog Minitaur Dave [...]
Analog Haven at NAMM
I often find myself spending quite a bit of time at the booth of Analog Haven at NAMM. It is an opportunity to see quite a variety of analog instruments (and a few not-quite-analog), and meet several of the small independent makers. The visit took on added significance as I cautiously wade into adding analog [...]
Malekko Heavy Industry at NAMM
This year, Malekko Heavy Industry had their own booth at NAMM. It was actually a bit of a challenge to find, all the way in the back of Hall C past the endless walls of guitars and celebrity-induced traffic jams. But I did find them, and was treated to a tour of a Malekko-only modular [...]
IK Multimedia iRig MIDI and iRig Cast (Good for OWS?)
IK Multimedia has introduced a few new items in their iRig. These are appealing for those of us who use “i-Thingies” (i.e., iPhone and iPad). The iRig Cast is a tiny microphone. You can see the scale compared to the kitty in the above picture. For those who have used the Square card reader for [...]
Teenage Engineering OP-1 and Oplab
Teenage Engineering is always fun. That goes for both playing the instruments and visiting their both at NAMM. We remember the OP-1 from the previous show: Teenage Engineering introduced Oplab this time around. It’s a DIY system with a small versatile connectivity hub and variety of available sensors, including this shoe: The heart of the [...]
Dr. Lonnie Smith, Hammond Sk2 (NAMM)
Dr. Lonnie Smith on a Hammond Sk2 organ at the Hammond-Suzuki booth at NAMM. Once again, the sound quality isn’t that good given the noise in the hall (and the bonus commentary by others in the audience), but it gives a little taste of the performance. This is the “other pole” of my musical experience, [...]
Keith McMillen Instruments QuNeo (NAMM)
Yesterday at NAMM I had a chance to see the new Keith McMillen Instruments QuNeo. It was a prototype, so it was demo-only at the time. It was definitely designed with Ableton Live in mind, with a layout and style that would be familiar to users. I liked the use of lighting to provide feedback, [...]
Big City Music at NAMM
One of the perennial destinations at NAMM is the both of Big City Music. They have quite a collection of both vintage electronic musical instruments and contemporary analog electronics. The highlight this year was a live performance with a Dewanatron by Leon Dewan: It was hard to hear it well in the hall environment, unfortunately. [...]
Arturia MiniBrute
One of the surprises at NAMM was the Arturia MiniBrute: The MiniBrute features a pure analog signal path (a first for Arturia). It has an oscillator bank with the usual complement of waveforms (sawtooth, square, PWM) as well as a sub-octave oscillator. As such, it reminded me a lot of the Octave Kitten, and I [...]
Dave Smith Instruments Tempest and Mopho at NAMM
Another perennial stop at NAMM is the ever-growing booth of Dave Smith Instruments. I had a chance to talk with one of the senior representatives on my regular use of the DSI Evolver in my live shows and my fondness for the instrument (despite the tendency of the knobs to fall off). I of course [...]
