SONIC TALK Podcasts

We start off with a little speech synthesis courtesy of Expressivo.com, then straight into the meat with the Jasuto modular VST and iPhone synth, the Autogun free VST synth with 4 billion presets, a new SEM module from Tom Oberheim, APC40 hysteria is sweeping the globe, and finally the heart-warming story of Island Records who this year celebrate 50 years in business.

Firstly we talk with Diego about his work and processes and equipment, then we're on to Henry Till and his messy room, Orbital to tour with a whole bunch of analog gear, then its the Rock-afire Explosion and obsolete technology which gets us on to the Epcot Center and Disney.

We start with a couple of mechanical oddities from the Mobius Strip music box, and the bizarre mechanical drum machine from James Taylor, we then move on to the Synplant - an organic instrument from Sonic Charge, Lady GAGA introduces the Virus Ti use in pop and also which instruments are currently dominating music, a quick chat about the Dragon MIDI controller and the ChineeSheng 3000 year old party instrument kicks off a discussion about the art of modeling and sampled instruments in general. Lastly we look at the WolframAlpha search engine and then Rich tells us all about his new M-Audio Axiom Pro.

Dave Robinson tells us all about the Eurovision massive production and the enormous redundancy they put in place, then it's the recent BBC Radiophonic Workshop gig at the Roundhouse in London, after which we suffer a network outage which sees me scrambling around for multiple re-boot - don't worry , we made it back on air, but minus Dave Robinson unfortunately. We then discuss the excellent documentary/interview with Peter Zinovieff of EMS, followed by a bit of a mixed bag from Sony and there new X-Series Walkman announced just at the time when they also post enormous losses. We finish up with Curtis Roads and his digital granular synthesis and what this pre 1970s work means to the modern musician.

Our topics this week begin with the excellent TANK-FX.com reverb processor, then we talk of Imogen Heap's recent improvisations live from Maui, AHNE (Analog Heaven North East) synth fest, then what are Propellerheads releasing on May 9th? We finish up with MOTU's new Volta analog-> Daw plugin which some say is set to set the world alight.

Our week begins with the release of Ableton Live 8, and the realization that we all need some Live in our lives, then it's on to an excellent video interive with NIN 's Trent Reznor, who really does appear to be a very switched on guy, after oggling all his analog gear, we turn our attention to the ridiculous prices that certain synths are getting on eBay and elsewhere, theres an opportunity to play our new Howard Scarr composed Tumbleweed moment as we fail to uncover anything about the new EMU Longboard and Shortboard new synths, we raise a glass to Charlie Steinberg who just got a MIPA Lifetime Achievement Award, then the inevitable inclusion of another iPhone music app - the iSyn from AudioMIDI.com and Virsyn - we also ponder the enormous market for software now that the Apple App store approaches the 1 Billion downloads to getting on for 30 million devices. Finally we offer suggestions on how to tackle the situation when you are asked "what do you think of my music/gig?".