Ice Moon

Here are some pictures I took in Iceland. I made them into Moon photos! And at the bottom is a page from the book I am reading at the moment called The Outward Urge by John Wyndham

First Foundation

I am a huge fan of Roland's beautiful publication The Synthesizer. In fact I have both 1st and 2nd editions of it. What makes it so good for me it its use of the Roland System 100 series modules in most of its patching examples, as I also have those modules. Well the good news is that Analog Industries have gone and scanned this long-out-of-print tome and you can download it from their website. Here is the excellent A Foundation For Electronic Music
RTS Foundation

ARP Book

When I was visiting Rash and his Buchla, I spotted a synth-book on his bookshelf that I had never heard of before. He very kindly lent it to me which is great because it is a thorough workout on the ARP Odyssey, much in the same way as Roland's The Synthesizer is with the 100M. Its full of examples and patch ideas with diagrams of the Odyssey's panel settings. Should be fun! Click on the front cover for a larger version. I love the design, it matches the later Arp products

Form In Music

This is a brief description of the musical term sonata, from a book called Form in Music by Stewart McPhereson

And Lets Not Forget

These are the source of so much inspiration...
From Joe Kral's flickr set [tons more there]. As he says:

'After buying the book "Penguin By Design: A Cover Story 1935-2005" I started searching local book stores and online for some of the old Penguin and Pelican books. Here's what I have so far'

Albums as Books

Check out Huw Gwilliam's amazing flickr page. He has spent an awful lot of time converting record covers into Penguin Book covers, so we don't have to. For example:

We are the Music Makers

I was going through some old books from my parents house and I found a huge tome called The Music Makers, which I vaguely remember reading when I was a kid. It was published in the late 70s and focused primarily on classical music. It has this great picture of a studio in London where orchestras were recorded, and in the picture credits it refers to EMS studio, London*. They look very much like a couple of Neve consoles in there, and I'm sure I've seen pictures of this place before. Anyway, as I am just about to revamp my studio I find this extremely inspiring....

*UPDATE - I think it is Studio 3 at abbey road, according to this SOS article

Electronic Music Review, 1967

Here are some scans from the above publication. I got them from the Moog Archives site. They were put together it seems by Moog themselves: "Electronic Music Review was published quarterly by the Independent Electronic Music Center, Inc., out of the R.A.Moog plant in Trumansburg, New York. The intent of the magazine was to provide a source of information on all aspects of electronic music. Contributors included some of the leading composers, educators, writers, and engineers in the field... Bode, Stockhausen, Berio, LeCaine, Carlos, Mumma, Davies, Cary, Dolby, and Moog.
Issue number 2 and 3 was the "International Electronic Music Catalog", compiled by Hugh Davies, simultaneously published in early 1968 as a hard-cover book by MIT Press (as pictured here)"


I would love to find an original set of these!

Graphs

Look at these graphs from my favorite book 'the a-z of analog synths' by Peter Forrest [I have more than one favorite book, ok?]. They show values as defined by him of each synth ever made, ever. It struck me that I definitely started buying keyboards at the right time - every graph in the book has a very pronounced nadir around 1989. THOSE WERE THE DAYS! [Trust me - every graph in the book looks like this....]

EMI Console

I was watching a really nice little 8 channel EMI 8000 console on the bay. It comes with a matching EMI limiter and patchbay, and would make an exquisite little set-up. Having read about the amazing EMI equipment made for Abbey Road studios in the 50s, 60s and 70s in my favorite book [Recording the Beatles] I know how rare these things are. They were not mass produced but made for their own studios and therefore their bands and producers. They had no reason to compromise any part of the stuff they made, and it always sounded incredible, as you can hear on all those great albums. Go and read the book, and put on The Zombie's Odyssey and Oracle. This 8000 series console looks a bit like the mythical RS147 solid state small console that was used in one of the small studios, which apparently disappeared and the only picture they could find for the book was of another EMI desk, see the last picture. Could this be it? [I don't think so but it's a nice idea]

The seller seems to be Andy from Emis, but I'm not sure. It had 7 bids and got £7400

For auction, one EMI 8000 mixing console dating from 1973, one of the last, maybe a prototype as all EMI console development was halted at the end of 74

Eight Channels with Mic and Line inputs and passive EQ, Four Groups with EQ, Master and Echo cassettes, all featuring huge custom wound EMI input transformers

4x 8020F Channel Cassette (note each cassette holds two independent channels)
2x 8021F Group Cassette (note each cassette holds two independent Groups)
1x 8022F Master Cassette
1x 8023F Echo Cassette
1x '80' type Bucket/ frame with 5 massive EMI Output transformers
2x '8212413' limiters in a '82' type rack mount frame
2x GPO patch bays,
1x rack mount Headphone panel
1x Bound manual.
1x Console Power Supply

The console was decommissioned and stored for many years, It was my intention to get a wooden console/ rack made to house this beautiful piece of history, alas.. present workload prevents this happening

Tech work required to re-commission:
Make and connect an XLR panel to be attached to the existing tails from the patch bay. Alternatively you could go in and out of the bay.
Hookup of the Limiters to the Patch Bay
Service and interface the included Power supply.

General interfacing, a map of the cassettes connectors is included in the manual
The GPO bays are hooked up to the bucket and feature: Line and mic ins and channel Inserts
Have run up the Limiters, channels, groups and master, and it really sounds fantastic! 
All EMI equipment was made for their own studios and not available to the general public, only very small quantities were ever made

This is not a massed produced item, It was hand made in England
Would make a perfect sidecar for tracking or mixing... or 4 track recording :-)

Full set of photos here