Synthesizer

These days, a humble smartphone or tablet can be used to create music that would probably have required a bulky electronic keyboard a decade ago. Having all the controls on a touch screen, however, may not be every digital-music composer's cup of tea.

That's where the OP-1 portable synthesizer by Sweden-based company Teenage Engineering comes in. The device has a minimalist aluminum chassis and modular-looking keys, which should make it look right at home next to Apple laptops. … Read more

When Robert Moog originally pioneered the modular voltage-controlled analog synthesizer in the 1950s and 1960s, I don't think he could have imagined the instrument's tremendous impact on music.

Moog's synthesizers continued to evolve, and his Minimoog became the most popular monophonic synthesizer of the 1970s; it was embraced by bands such as Yes and Tangerine Dream.

Robert Moog passed away in 2005, so I wonder what he would have thought of the Animoog, a fully featured synthesizer designed for the iPhone 4 and 4S. According to the Moog Web site, "The Animoog captures the vast sonic … Read more

Few things are as universally awesome as a cheap keyboard or drum machine. As a child of the '80s, I can vividly remember the first time I got my hands on a toy Casio keyboard and spent the afternoon sampling obscenities into the built-in microphone and playing through all the different preset sounds (I can still hear the Casio demo song in my head).

The Stylophone Beatbox ($25) is a retro music toy of a slightly different breed than my Casio, fusing together the design of a 1967 Stylophone pocket synthesizer with the sampled percussion layout of a modern day Akai MPC or Roland HandSonic.

However you choose to categorize it, the Stylophone Beatbox is exactly the sort of weird, noisy, cheap piece of tech I go nuts for. It's surprisingly sophisticated, too, allowing you to record loops of sounds, route in an MP3 player, and even adjust pitch and tempo. Check out some clever demo videos after the break.… Read more

Eight out of every 1,000 people have a lot of trouble communicating vocally, be it from a traumatic event such as a stroke or the onset of diseases such as Lou Gehrig's (ALS). As recently as the 1960s, it was a big deal for those who were effectively mute to be able to type out their thoughts one key stroke at a time. (Stephen Hawking first used a DECtalk DTC01 voice synthesizer developed by Digital Equipment in the early 1980s.)

Welcome to the next generation. In a great feature article in Scientific American, Larry Greenemeier weighs in on … Read more

Some people are never satisfied with the Nintendo DS. Despite all its success over the years, various gamers can't wait to give it an overhaul, whether it's a Guitar Hero mashup or some ungodly Swarovski treatment.

Korg and AQ Interactive, however, are at least coming up with a new use for the handheld that isn't completely bizarre. (Whether there'll be a demand for it is another matter.) The two are partnering to develop a virtual version of the Korg MS-10--the vintage synthesizer of the big-hair '80s--specifically for the DS.

And lest you think this … Read more

The next time you complain that your keyboard has too many keys, remember that things could always be worse--consider the "Chromatone CT-312."

This one's actually for music, not computing, a synthesizer with hundreds of unlabeled keys that would surely drive us nuts (312, to be exact--hence the number in the name). Technabob aptly describes a "baffling chart" that's supposed to make sense of the Chromatone, but that only makes it worse. There's actually a method to its apparent madness, he says, based on a 19th century concept called the "Janko keyboard" … Read more

Make magazine--purveyor of awesome and amusing DIY projects and kits--has added a new product to its online store -- the Cellular Automata video synthesizer kit. It may look like a hippie guitar pedal, but actually it creates endearingly retro (but mostly annoying) audio and video akin to an Atari 2600 meltdown. The kit offers RCA audio and video outputs, costs $50, and is mostly preassembled. You will have to find your own enclosure (the rainbow-colored wooden box is only a suggestion) and solder on the knobs and a reset button.

The video synthesizer works off a mathematical idea called … Read more

This is how I know I've gone off the deep end. It's not enough that my apartment is cluttered with all kinds of knob-covered music devices. Now I'm actually considering buying little miniature versions to populate my cubicle at work. What is broken in my brain that makes me want to drop $20 on a small paper version of a vintage Arp 2600 modular synthesizer? And that's the budget version! Those of you for whom money is no object can commission Dan McPharlin to create your own Lilliputian fantasy recording studio. Now I just need to … Read more