November 20, 2004

Dr Joe Paradiso's Humungous Modular Synth

Meet the Borg of synths – a fully integrated and patchable room sized assemblage of over a hundred individual synth modules, along with a variety of fully assimilated Casiotone and Moog keyboards. (Full list of modules here.) This beast is the result of 20 years worth of bower birding by Dr Joseph Paradiso. As a result of its complexity, he is able to wire up a single set of patches that will burble away indefinitely, producing sophisticated endlessly varying pieces of music (which do sound surprisingly composed), without any additional human input. A selection of mp3s of these wonderfully old-style analogue concoctions is available on his website. (via Music Thing)

(When he isn’t tending to his modular monster, Dr Paradiso works at the MIT Media Lab, where he designs esoteric musical interfaces. His most recent work of note is a pair of shoes with motion and pressure sensors that can be used as music controllers.)

Posted by Warren at November 20, 2004 01:14 AM | Electronica