[LAU] Synthfest UK

Somewhat off-topic, but I thought people here might be interested in what the 'other' lot are up to. Last Saturday I was at this event from 11am to about 5:30pm. This is a new event organised by the Sound On Sound magazine. As I've got to know a good number of the people there over the years, I was keen to see them as much as all the gear that was on show. The whole event was heavily analogue orientated. The hardware covered a *huge* range, from a couple of refurbished original 1960s modulars, to the new mini-moog and the latest thing from the likes of Yamaha, Korg, Presonus. One that was especially interesting (to me) was a Eurorack synth, with interchangeable modules, that due to a well thought out back-plane, could be run in a variety of parallel or series configurations without patch cords. There was also quite a lot of novel bespoke kit, especially in the realm of sequencers and trackers. Something I've not come across before was an OSC->CV unit. Combined with the greater stability of modern modulars that promises to be very interesting. There were some very interesting talks. One in particular was on how synths came about... *before* Bob Moog! There were a few names I recognised, but just as many unsung heroes I was totally unaware of. Of the commercial synths I noticed a disappointing trend. While there was a jaw-dropping range of sounds, I found it harder to select these than I do with my old SY35, and I was hitting information overload quite a bit. For me, this was also a problem with the multi-rack modulars. Probably with more time and familiarity I would have managed better, but very little was switch-on-and-play. Another thing was the black theme that seems to be almost universal these days. I think it's fairly well known I don't much like this. However, it dawned on me that on a real item there are subtle position, depth and especially parallax cues that you simply don't get when trying to do the same with a GUI. There didn't seem to be much there by way of software (but then it was a hardware orientated show). What I saw was all Apple based. Interestingly I didn't see *any* tablets. If they were there, they were well hidden! I was pleased to get a few enquires from those that know me as to how I was getting on with Yoshimi, and a couple were very complimentary about Lorenzo's recent demo. -- Will J Godfrey http://www.musically.me.uk Say you have a poem and I have a tune. Exchange them and we can both have a poem, a tune, and a song.