Synth Museum/Jarre/Tomita/Supernova

From Benjamin A Ward
Sent Sat, Jul 11th 1998, 18:34

Saturday Round-up -

Went into the (working) London Synth Museum this morning. All very
awe-inspiring, and a bit unreal, like being at a Kraftwerk gig.. :-) It's
situated in the corner of a huge s*ampling/DJ area in the basement of
Turnkey.

Not allwed to touch without An Appointment To Sample, though (although I
did mess up the current Memorymoog patch out of spite ;-) First thing I
noticed was that someone had scrawled their name in the wood panelling on
the walls - name of Bob Moog!

Let's see if I can remember what was there (if I say 'Generation Game',
you'll know what I'm talking about!)

Memorymoog
(Blue) Wave
EMS VCS3
An enormous Moog modular
Moog 3P
Emu Modular (off the front cover of Synthesizer von Gestern)
2 x Arp 2500
Arp 2500 wing
Arp 2600
About a 20 module Roland System 100M
Jupiter 8
Oberheim 8 voice + programmer

um...

er, no that's it, Brucie, I can't remember any more. But that's enough to
be going on with.

The modular gear is slightly disappointingly displayed with black plastic
fascias separating off the instruments, so that the cabinets themselves are
not visible. Presumably this is for security reasons. Incidentally, there
is a security guard who works full time in the museum itself!! -
applications for his job to Turnkey (I suppose!)

There is one (unnamed) modular which I couldn't identify at all, although
it looked a bit early Synton to me (forgive me Marc P. and cohorts!) The
first member of staff I approached didn't have a clue what it was.. but it
turns out to be custom built by the guy who sold it to the museum, the
manager told me. The guy then asked if I knew what was sitting below it
(Emu Mod). "Of course! I know them all!" I replied, like you do :-)

The unmarked and unidentified modular was pretty impressive looking, and
fairly standard complement of modules, from what I could see (behind the
roped off area). Watch out for it when you go; it's above the Emu modular,
and to the left of the big Moogs.

They don't have a Roland System 700 though, which seems like a bit of an
omission.

Note for Umair (sorry mate I deleted your London posting) -

Turnkey,
114-116 Charing Cross Road,
London WC2H 0DT
Tel 0171 4975737

Also check out music-packed Denmark Street, which is literally round the
corner from Turnkey, and a few other music shops up and down the street
from Turnkey itself. And Blue Music in Upper Street, Islington, London N1.

>> [Tomita] also held a concert at the same event event as also members of
>>Yellow
>> Magic Orchestra and the cool analogue dudes of Logic System did.
>
>err I don't think anyone from YMO did a concert with him. Tomita does
>occasional huge concert events, like Jarre does.

Tomita is unlikely to do the pub and club circuit, I wouldn't have thought;
he is 65 after all! :-) And JMJarre is 50 this month, although are the
rumours that he's split up with Charlotte Rampling true? Who's going to
want an ugly old dog like Jean-Michel anyway...poor guy ;-) He does have a
top ten record though ('Rendezvous (insert number here'), remixed for the
Football World Cup. It's dire.)

Tried (unsucessfully) to log onto www.moog-music.com, who are the Welsh
Minimoog people. They told me 2 weeks ago that the domain would be set up
within a day or two...

Heard the audio demo of the Novation Supernova on the current Future Music,
which I'm surprised no one has mentioned. Sounds every bit the polyphonic
analogue emulator that it is (it is pretty good, actually, and sounds more
convincing than the JP-8000 to these ears. Expensive though, at 1200 quid).

Bye!

Ben


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jj '97