Roundup 07/12/22

Greetings dear readers.  We said two weeks and we meant it.  14 days have passed since the last mailout - 14 days where we've been busy trying to tame the chaos that was previously the Signal Sounds showroom (and the office space, and the bit in-between the office and the showroom and....pretty much the whole place) and make something that's a funky mix of vintage synths and modular gear, drum machines and electronic music culture that's fit for the fine citizens of Glasgow and beyond to enjoy.

That's a long way of saying we are having an opening party (low key, no black tie necessary, minimal paparazzi, easy to bribe security staff) on Thursday Dec 8th - tickets are now sold out but drop us a line if you think you can make it and we'll see if any spaces appear on the list.

The only other thing to mention this time is how much I've enjoyed creating a sense of simmering sexual tension in my emails (whilst simultaneously flying my Gen Z flag high) by excessive use of ellipsis in my email correspondence this week.  If you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about head over to the ever entertaining Tom Whitwell "52 Things I Learned This Year" list over here (https://medium.com/magnetic/52-things-i-learned-in-2022-db5fcd4aea6e) and check Number 4.  As well as being a very entertaining writer, deep thinker and general all round good guy, Tom runs the excellent Music Thing DIY modular company and invented the Turing Machine.  That's a lot of talent for one guy!

Anyway..........that's enough for this time around, next time you hear from us it'll be full on Christmas Madness so buckle up and get ready for it

As we said in the last mailout, if you are going to use computers and software in your music creation...you might as well use good stuff.  Bitwig are finally beginning to break through into the mainstream with their super modular friendly multi track recording software.  For the next couple of weeks you can get onboard their train for a pretty huge reduction, with the main Bitwig package now only £249 and similar discounts on their upgrades (you get an 8 Track version free with the Expert Sleepers ES-8 so you may already have a license you don't know about).

If you want a quick blast on it you can get a 30 day trial here:

http://https://www.bitwig.com/download/

We were all Ableton Live users here at Signal Sounds but we're slowly coming round to the idea that there might be a better way of doing things and Bitwig might just be that way.

French company Norand are also begining to make some waves in the music tech world and justifiably so.  The Norand Mono is a vaguely TB-303 style monosynth with "parameter lock" per step modulation sequencing that gives you an incredible range of possibilities.  That description realty doesn't do it justice, it's one of our favourite bits of hardware from the last couple of years and Norand are definitely "ones to watch" for 2023.

Deep dive into what it can do here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIRniE_-cLI

What happens when you turbo charge the Tangle Quartet?  A 4 channel VCA module morphs into the MEGA-TANG.  A nicely featured 4 channel VCA mixer with FX Send and Stereo Return, Panning per channel and Mutes and individual outs for each channel.   That's a pretty great combo for under £250!

We LOVE a nicely named module here at Signal Sounds.  I mean obviously we love the starkness of Doepfer's A-138-2V naming convention but....."Source Of Uncertainty"???  Even if you dont know what it does you're already drawn in.  This module, the latest in TipTop's offical Buchla 200 series reworkings, basically gives you several different sections based around Random circuits (Stepped or Quanitzed, Sample and Hold, Fluctuating and more) and was the inspriation for a LOT of other random modules in Eurorack from before

These are due to land with us towards the end of this week so get your Pre-Order in now before they all get snapped up.

Another great module from Jon-Marks' Apollo View - it's a classic Analogue Oscillator with an emphasis on generating as many differrent outputs from its Triangle core (8 outs in total covering pretty much everything you could conceivably need and with some nice front panel illuminations).

This module is incredibly stable over a full range of 10 octaves (!) and will stay that way no matter how hot your rig is running

Check out the DivKid video here (which is also a great inspiration patch video for more general modular use)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvv8RiWRf6M

The most common question I hear when we open a big box from Error instruments is "What the hell is this?  And what does it do???"

Paul Tas makes a bewildering range of highly unusual desktop and Eurorack synths that focus on noise, filtered noise, unfiltered noise and other iterations of noise.  he does it in a playful and endlessly entertaining way and often combines his synth circuits with unusual ways of interacting with them including contact mics attached to weird silicon brushes and miniture music boxes fed through trigger outputs or even original cassette Walkman players controlled by CV.  He's a bit of a genius and a big favourite of ours here at Signal Sounds 

We think.......we're pretty sure actually....that we now have the widest range of Doepfer modules in stock in the UK.  We thought it was only fair to dig deep into Deiter's back catalogue since he kind of invented the whole Eurorack thing  and we really wouldn't be here if it want for him.

We did a HUGE restock order and then added in as many new modules as we could and the UPS guy was cursing me when he had to delier the whole lot to Signal Sounds HQ. Kyle was then cursing me as he had to add all the new products to the website and Robert was cursing me as he had to write the model names on literally 100's of modules so he could put them away on the shelves in the stock room. Hope Deiter appreciates all the flack I've been taking on his behalf this week!