don't know much about this one yet, it's one of 3 new cool looking Tip Top audio modules. the other two include a step / gate programming module with lots of fun buttons and a LAN to gate module with a very high number of outputs, it uses the new CopperLAN format of modular control. i hope it becomes more popular!
and behold, the king of all, the 2013 reissue of the Buchla Music Easel, this time under their new business name "BEMI" . there were probably around 30 original buchla music easels made, they're really unique instruments, and meant to be self contained really. the top module is called the 208, the bottom is the 218 (both are now updated with "e" designations i believe)
this is a pretty video that many have seen - note the primitive patch storage device on the old easel in the video, it was actually a PCB that had to be wired to create a patch. interestingly, the new presto-patch card is just a way of controlling the easel via OSC messages. hard to understand, but that's what people are saying. price - $3995. for a Buchla, that's really cheap.
i think the Easel set up is a really useful and actually musical collection of Buchla modules, with all the benefits of the buchla preset infrastructure (apparently, more details to come i'm sure) and portability. the oscillator is unique i guess, and the addition of the 5 step sequencer and some other bits and bob just make it a really unique instrument. hard not to think about saving for one at 3995.
mate_stubb wrote:I really liked the clip. Did you post anywhere what modules are in your box?
thanks! i posted some pictures of the rig in the 'february new gear' thread, but here they are again just because i am a whore:
this is first and foremost a response to the music easel re-release of course, i just had to get my mind off of that thing. and i'm really happy that i did - i think this combo is going to keep me almost as happy for exactly half of the price of an easel (including the ipad!).
i've always been a fan of the 70s Buchla 200 stuff, it's always been my favorite aesthetically and for certain types of music it just sounds really beautiful - very harmonically rich, and very rhythmically oriented to an almost 'new age' degree (i have listened to more buchla bongo + pad music with the word 'space' in the title than i care to admit). it's just a new frontier of synthesis for me, having spent all my time previously with subtractive stuff. now that i have this little guy i can start to understand more about working with that whole 'west coast' thing as a cohesive system, albeit a small one, and see if it's something i want to get into more later in life.
i think in a lot of ways this setup, when taken together with the ipad, is more flexible than the easel - at least on paper. there are several glaring deficiencies in the lunchbox, such as the lack of any kind of random generator - whether for pulses or CV. i got around this somewhat via the ipad, i found several excellent ipad apps out there that can provide quantized random voltages & gates with varying degrees of controllability. it's still not the same as a dedicated non-quantized random source though.
Originally Posted by Metrosonus
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