With dub soundtrack to boot.

Andy Summers explains the importance of dynamics in music, and specifically how they used dynamics with the Police. Bonus shot in this video: Andy playing guitar synth!

Moog was showing off their newly unveiled update of the Taurus bass pedals. They looked great in person and it seems as if the design draws heavily from the Little Phatty line of synths. As an owner of the Little Phatty I can say that the bass sounds in the Taurus III are going to be astounding. Taurus II will be a limited quantity product with less than 1000 units produced.

From the moogmusic site: “Long requested by many of our very best customers and used by the likes of Rush, The Police, Genesis, Led Zeppelin, Phil Collins, Asia, Weezer, and many more. This is a one time opportunity to own a new set with a new warranty but one absolutely faithful to the original Taurus I sound.“

Very interesting and informative lecture by Brian Kehew and Larry Fast filmed and streamed live on the web. This was done on opening weekend of the new Bob Moog exhibit we posted on earlier. The exhibit is at the museum of making music in Carlsbad, CA.

Click here for the video lecture

“The Museum of Making Music and The Bob Moog Foundation announce Waves of Inspiration: The Legacy of Moog a special exhibition to run from August 29, 2009 – April 30, 2010 at the Museum’s facilities in Carlsbad, California. The exhibit is the first of its kind, marking the first public display of the artifacts from Bob Moog’s archives.”

“The exhibition, which highlights the inventor’s career and the impact that it had on the world of music, will feature rare vintage synthesizers and other related Moog instruments and memorabilia from the Bob Moog Archives and from various private collections.” … “Tickets for the opening weekend events can be purchased on the Museum’s website beginning August 3, 2009″

Read all of the details here

This new pedal features an opto compressor fashioned after vintage circuits. The OB.1 also has and integrated clean boost with selectable frequency shaping if you are wanting a mid or treble boost as well.

From the site: “Everything you love about studio optical compressors … right at your feet … From beautifully subtle and transparent compression to vintage squash … Integrated foot-switchable Clean, Treble and Mid boost … TRUE BYPASS … Crafted with love in the USA”

I’ve just watched “Glass - a Portrait of Philip in 12 Parts.” It’s available to stream on netlflix which is nice. Fascinating life, highly influential composer… definitely worth a viewing. The above picture shows Mr. Glass rocking a Sequential Circuits synth.

And, what do you know … it’s a flute! Made from the bone of a vulture over 35,000 years ago. The flute was found in southern Germany and suggests, as the BBC article points out, that the early modern humans who were settling in Europe were a creative community. The article goes on to say that “the concept of music and other creative expression runs deep in human culture, ” and also that “cultural expression might have helped human species become more sociable and co-operative, whereas neanderthals were culturally more conservative.”

Classic 4 voice polysynth used on numerous albums. Wikipedia entry.

video discovered on Matrixsynth

Hidden in the depths of the Line6 Spider Jam lurks an awesome SID emulator written by the lead software engineer who worked on the project. There are some 450+ chip tunes hidden in the amp.

For the first easter egg:

* Press Drum/Song until you get the menu with the 3 options
* Turn the wheel clockwise (sitting on the Play Preview option) for around 10 seconds, until you see it…

For the second easter egg:

* Press Drum/Song until you get the menu with the 3 options.
* Push the 4-way switch up around 16 times in a row, sitting on “endless play”, until you see the message
* The “songs” “drums” and “recordings” tabs will disappear until you reboot the unit.

From this new Song/Drums menu, you can:
* Turn the wheel to load some other tunes
* Press play to start/stop the tune
* Press nav left/right to move quickly inside the tune
* Press nav down to “alter the tune”, you can mute a voice, change the semitones and speed (speeding up does not sound good but it’s normal in fact…)
* Press record to set loop points inside the tune and export the loop to the normal spiderjam recordings (mic track)

* You can use any of the Line6 4 button floorboards :
A : Start/Stop
B : mute/unmute voice 1
C : mute/unmute voice 2
D : mute/unmute voice 3

Update(via Hans at Vettaville.nl): it has been confirmed that these easter eggs were removed in software versions > 2.0  Too bad…