Automatic Gainsay

I visited the astounding and sublime Analogue Solutions, and was able to play this testament to the true joy of individual-note analogue synthesis.

September 8-10, 2023
Come for the synths, but stay for me to tell you about this lost form of synthesis...

It is always inspiring and motivational to experience the story of someone's creative journey. Christine Anderson's story is fascinating, astonishing, heartbreaking, and ultimately inspiring. In this time where the creative work of skilled and talented women is explored and celebrated, this is a story to read!

How I Became a Producer: A Decade of Obsession & Transformation Magic Powers Studios started off as little more than a refurbished iMac and m-audio keyboard in 2011. As a classically trained pianist and singer-songwriter, this was my initiation into the world of music production. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, technically. But I was under pressure. I...

Last weekend, whilst working the Korg booth at the Portland Synth Expo, I was frequently asked what I've been doing lately. I wish this picture was available at that time, as I think it about sums up my recent activities.
Cornelia Llama

When your family photoshoot takes an unexpected turn...

Guys, I can't even look at these photos without being reduced to breathless laughter. Perhaps the best part was the passersby who about broke their necks doing double takes.

Epic

I had a great time working the Korg booth at the Portland Synth Expo!

Here is a great song that was written, performed, produced, and made into a video all by Christine Anderson (Christara). I know, and have known, a lot of musicians... but a musician who can literally do it all in general, and with results like this in specific, is a rare and fantastic thing.

And, she is an avid synthesizer enthusiast. Most of the synth sounds in this song were performed by her on a DSI Prophet 12, one of the best polysynths ever made!

Check it out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SdQshu5j_4

The wonderful Performer Magazine kindly asked me to write an article about the subject that will undoubtedly be included in my epitaph: the great mystery of terminology related to synthesizer note count and articulation. :)

Hooked on Phonics: Synthesizer Polyphony Terminology | Performer Mag Talking about, or learning about, synthesizers can be a challenge in general, but the situation is made worse by the fact that synthesizer culture lacks firm, codified terminology. Whether it’s because of the strange, immediate, and recent history of the synthesizer, or the way that social media c...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf185T02gxo

The Me I Used to Be: a catalog of musical performances and haircuts of mine from my past! Here is a catalog of musical performances, videos, and haircuts from my increasingly-distant past. The 13 years following high school were filled with the p...

Yay! The 2600FS is available again!
I play mine on a nearly-daily basis, and I am grateful for its existence.
I also have a certain fondness for this documentary. :D

The ARP 2600: The Story of a Legendary Synthesizer | Reverb Feature In 2020, Korg reissued the legendary ARP 2600. First released in 1971, this synth has been used by massive musicians like Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder, Edga...

https://youtu.be/RWcNd-5XJvo

08- The Therevox ET-5- Sounds of the Therevox Here is a set of realtime performances of the expressiveness and timbral variance of the Therevox ET-5. The entrance and exit theme music of this demonstrat...

Herb Deutsch was iconic in the history of the modern synthesizer. I had not only met him, but spent time with him, worked with him, and interviewed him. I will miss him.

He is one of the people I asked to sign my Minimoog, and as far as I can remember, that's when I actually met him. I'm honored to have his name on my Minimoog.

Here is some sweet authentic 80s stuff performed in the 80s by a guy writing music in the 80s. It's brimming with digital equipment, too, so that's different.

https://youtu.be/y1alMpa-41Y

Are you interested in experiencing some fantastic synthesizer-based pop written, performed, and produced by a brilliant female musician as presented in a video shot and edited by the same? Here you go!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfcOiqpbahc

Here’s the TL;DR:

Yeah, we’re back to this.

With the release of the incredible MiniFreak, I have seen all sorts of retail companies and YouTubers and etc. running wild with terminology, and it is driving me crazy.

“Why do you care, Marc?” Well, I guess if the meanings of words don’t matter, and we don’t need words that are at least somewhat static in meaning for us to be able to communicate with each other, then I guess my various crusades are pointless. But my job is to communicate functionality and history, and neither of those things are really possible if words don’t have set, and specific meanings. If I’m trying to tell you how to use a thing, I can’t use words whose meanings have been so blurred by marketing and misunderstanding that they don’t actually communicate what you need to know.

Anyway. I’ve been saying it since 1997, when the Internet first demonstrated its propensity for being similar to the “Telephone” game where every single word gets corrupted by the average of misuse, but POLYPHONY IS ABOUT NOTE COUNT, PARAPHONY IS ABOUT ARTICULATION. Yes, words are plastic. Yes, words change meaning. Yes, even “paraphonic” has already changed meaning. But my point is that there was a time when these terms helped people understand the specific functionality of a synth, instead of simply being marketing terms that give people some sort of vague sense of something. Synth companies, as much as I love them and work for them, use terms they think YOU want, and are not in the business of forcing you to submit to functional meaning. Synth companies use terms in ways they hope will MOTIVATE you, or not NOT motivate you. They do not define meaning. Casual discussion shouldn’t define meaning (the telephone problem). So, I try to defend the meanings based on their original intention, common usage of the past, and very logical application. Sue me.

If “paraphonic” simply meant “not articulated in that one way everyone seems to like (which is actually very boring and piano-like, if you think of it… and it tends to massively limit polyphony in analog synths),” then you never get a sense of how many notes play at once. You get the sense that more than one does, but beyond that, you have this dumb vague sense that more than one note at a time plays, and that multiple notes aren’t individually articulated. I guess that’s something. But it’s incredibly limited compared to how “paraphonic” used to describe a very specific type of synthesizer, and how it worked… which is to say, top-octave divide synths with a single filter and amp. Back then, if you said “paraphonic” it described a SINGLE ARCHITECTURE instead of literally every architecture that isn’t the limited-polyphony-full-articulation one. The way the term has been misapplied has made it worthless as a category… and vague as a term.

And then there’s the “it’s not polyphonic, it’s paraphonic” idiocy. People… synthesizers are not, nor have they ever been, PIANOS. There is not a “right way” for multiple notes to play simultaneously. There are a multitude of ways, and that is one of the elements of flexibility you find in synthesizers that you don’t find in traditional synthesizers. If your notes aren’t individually articulated, they’re not LESSER NOTES. Polyphony DOES NOT MEAN “multiple articulated notes played simultaneously,” and it shouldn’t. That is not only incorrect, but it’s historically incorrect, and flies in the face of how this whole thing came about.

Lastly, I’ve never made a big deal about the term “voice,” but “voice” in regard to synthesizers had a number of decades where it specifically indicated a fully-articulated synth note signal path… and that’s why you said “voice” instead of “note.” If you had a synth (often a digital synth) that could play sixteen notes of polyphony, AND each note had its own filter and amp, you’d say “VOICE” instead of “NOTE” to indicate that these weren’t just boring ol’ notes, these were FULLY ARTICULATED notes! But I’ve seen companies now using “voice” in place of “note” when they were describing actually paraphonic synthesizers… and that, just like the rest of it, makes these words meaningless.

At some point, if this continues, synth literature from the time where synths were invented… synth literature from the era of the classic synths you love… isn’t going to make any sense, and what’s worse, you’ll have a lot of vague marketing terms that don’t communicate specific category, architecture, or function.

Well, the whole "East Coast / West Coast" thing was a lot of fun while it lasted. But there's just a point where some serious discrepancies in the criteria must be addressed. :D

https://youtu.be/uT7oV5Js_JQ

In 2021, the fine people from Waveform Magazine interviewed me in a German forest (at Superbooth). It was a total blast. This is that interview! I... uh... spoke with a... umm... certain level of... candor. Ha ha.
Anyway, pick up the latest Waveform, and then come back and harangue me here in comment form. :D

I probably don't need to tell you how beneficial to the education of kids the support of the Bob Moog Foundation's raffles is. But it is. As a person who helped prepare a lot of these raffle items in the past, I can tell you that they are worth throwing some money at, in addition to the help you'll be providing to a worthy cause.

With every pair of raffle tickets sold, a child can experience the 10-week Dr. Bob's SoundSchool curriculum. Buy a ticket, help change a child's life: https://bit.ly/MinimoogBillyJoel

The PolyBrute is one of my favorite synths of all time.
It is truly what synthesis is all about.
No, you don't get a picture. You've been bad.

In this video, Sean Lennon is playing a Minimoog.
This is cool for me, because years ago after a Lennon Claypool Delirium concert, I got to do a bit of hanging out with Sean, and talking to him about his dad's involvement in Beatles synthesizer usage.
The video itself is purportedly about autotuning, but is really about a thing that is kind of different... a thing that I used extensively in the late 90s, and that is using MIDI information to control the frequency of a voice. My 1996 song "Damn," for example, employed this functionality previous to the release of Autotune, through the Digitech Studio Vocalist's mis-named "Vocoder" function. Which is to say, yeah... I beat Cher to the punch! Ha ha ha.
Anyway, Friendly Fire is one of my favorite albums.

Sean Lennon Autotunes John's Voice (Watch the Sound) Sean Lennon autotunes John voice from Hold On

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wZ2ILAXwZA

I contributed to this!

Famous Synth Filters From Moog, ARP, Oberheim & Korg: What's the Difference? In this video, we take a look at the history and sound of 4 of the most iconic synthesizer filters of all time - from Moog, ARP, Oberheim, and Korg. Read Mor...

Oh, I'm sorry... did you mention vocoder? Well, this is where the vocoder became a thing. Not that later thing where that novelty band was talking about highways.

Well, it's been a decade and a half, so I guess that's a reasonable amount of time to revisit an important demonstration.

As you undoubtedly know, Korg made a compact version of the ARP 2600, and I am making an update of the ARP 2600 synthesis paradigm with it.

I feel confident that your experience of it through this demonstration series will be similar to mine.

Here we go! The Korg ARP 2600M!

00-The Korg ARP 2600M-Why I am astonished Here is the introduction to a multi-part series that demonstrates the sound and functionality of the Korg ARP 2600M synthesizer. It features some discussion...

Well, I hope you'll all forgive me. My premise was flawed, and I was wrong. Still, it was fascinating and educational!

P.S. Please don't kill me.

02- Did you recognize the Minimoog? THE SOLUTION Here is the video where I confess my realization that I was wrong, and that the concept needs further exploration. Also, I present the bad news about the ac...

After getting yet another "this guy probably couldn't tell a Minimoog from any other synth" comment, something had to be done.

01-Can you recognize a Minimoog? People don't seem to realize how recognizable a Minimoog is. This video was funded by the Patreon supporters of Automatic Gainsay. Support the creation of ...

Sometimes, I almost think my efforts are having some effect... BLESS YOU, BEHRINGER

An end to your suffering: the answer.

A polyphonic in 1974? THE ANSWER Have you spent a week wracking your brain and biting your nails in regard to the previous video that proposed the preposterous idea that there was an instrum...

If you're not aware of this, you should be. Dave Spiers and team continue to bring absolutely invaluable historical content! And also, Tom's story is fascinating and engaging!

Bright Sparks - Tom Oberheim After the 2015 release of our Bright Sparks Documentary & Album collaboration with I Monster, while we were elated at the critical acclaim the project receiv...

You could have been jamming some hot polyphonic synth sounds right there in 1974, but were you? No. You were glumly waiting around until the Polymoog and 4-Voice.

Here is my irritatingly clickbaity, and, somewhat misleading but accurate enough for me, you know- me, to post, exposure of a truly unappreciated gem of a 1974 instrument with extremely delicious vintage analog polyphony sounds.

A polyphonic synthesizer in 1974??? What if I told you that there was an instrument capable of giving the polyphonic synthesizer sounds that were sought after 1968, but historically weren't pro...

I have decided to change the names and thumbnails of the songs I wrote to demonstrate the Analogue Solutions Treadstone. All of them are delightful, and I'm pretty sure few watch them because the thumbnails and titles do not reveal the secret thrills within.

Tell me I'm wrong after watching this video:

02-Analogue Solutions Treadstone- Song Demonstration 2 Here is a musical example of the sound of the Analogue Solutions Treadstone. All of the synth sounds were created with the Treadstone, and are presented wit...

Did you ever watch the episode I wrote for Reverb about the Sonic V and Sonic Six?

Is This the First Portable Synthesizer? | Astonishing History of Synthesizers Ep. 4 How is this early design still so unknown compared to the Minimoog? And how on Earth did it later become a Moog product? Read more on Reverb: http://bit.ly/P...

It's probably been awhile since I posted this lovely holiday song I wrote a number of years ago.
Since I am living in MInnesota again, it seems quite apt.

The Scrimshaw Show: Holiday Wish An Automatic Gainsay Christmas song as performed on The Scrimshaw Show December 2004.

Let's talk about this. It is, apparently, not meant to be comedic.

Zac Efron Buchla Scene

:::psychotic text-only post:::
Goddamn, my Lambda theme kicks ass.