SONIC TALK Podcasts

We start by drooling over the wonderful treasure trove that is the rare gadgets at Wired.com, ponder Leon Theremins thrilling life and why no Gforce-o-mometer and Citroen DS? Then it's on to Metallica and downloads and of course Some Kind of Monster doc, the scary prospect of an MP3 tax in the UK, some real joy with the B52's remix competition and finally Apple clones on sale - good or no? A big thanks to Dave from Richmond Virginia for sending in a snippet of his Evolver and Kaoss pad 3 - keep em coming!

fter discussing the merits of Ostend we move on to the bizarre Beamz laser musical system, then talk boxes get some love - we missed them out last week due to time constraints, then a brief sojourn into music technology spotted at the fair (or carnival if you're US based), Garageband.com get some attention after last weeks Talking Heads topic, Mark's tinitus eq theory, a brief musical interlude from Marc JX8P and a JMJ acapella, then we're homeward bound with 25 top tips for musicians.

Firstly we talk of old Mother Shipton, who may have forseen the collapse of the TC Electronic and Gibson merger, then we're on to Talking Heads - David Byrne spotted on the Heathrow Express, more on Jori Hulkkonen and his 303 orchestra, the Hobnox web browser 303/909 and fx environment, and finally the classic Oberheim OB2 and related synths.

First, Mark tells us of a rather personal encounter with a vibrating chair, then we're on to the cute little drumming, sampling robot, Gibson gun for some of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band cash, then we all fess up on what our first record purchases were and get more than we bargained for, Rich is playing with Micky Dolenz, 128k or 320kbps MP3 test at mp3ornot.com, and at last Gary Kiblers Korg Kaossilaor album gets a viewing.

A moment of silence for Mark's broken phone, the wonderfully pointless Furby Gurdy, a home made and as it turns out controversial, Laser Harp from Stephen Hobley, Waves and SSL, Jean Michel Jarre and his amazing series of Oxygene concerts with many of the original analogues, SSL and Waves plug-ins, Percussa Audio Cubes, and finally Dave Robinson tells us all about the Jean Michel Jarre gig in Dublin, Dave Spiers tells us how JMJ spoilt his wedding, Steve Strange in the queue, Santeri Ojala's excellent guitar parodies, and finally Digidesign's DShow gets some love.

This week, we revisit a couple of topics from last week due to some additional correspondence - MIDI 2.0 is on the way and Shane King sends us an Ultravox inspired track to check out. We then move on to the rather amazing Microsoft MySong technology which allows you to sing in a melody then have the computer suggest the supporting chord - and tweak. We ponder why Apple can get away with some of their rather monopolistic behaviour and then we're done.

We talk this week of the demise of one of London's most prestigious studios the Townhouse, which will close its doors at the end of March 2008. Ray Kurzweil's futurism theories get us started on an esoteric thread, which is brought down to earth by Fade To Grey and talk of Billie Currie. And finally Happy Birthday MIDI.

This week we talk of Create Digital Music who are in fund-raising mode, Nick finally upgrades his Macbook Pro HD to a 250GB one, Noneric's visit to Ableton uncovers a whole mess of speculation about some new secret instrument for Live, vocoders in general, recording Bowie, copyright extension for performers, the Yamaha SPX90 effects unit, then in-ear monitoring and the technology of live performance gets a quick look-in.