Roland/Boss DR 202 - Dr Groove

Boss Dr. Groove DR-202 Drum.
This is one of the very first drum machines I ever bought. I dusted it off the other day with the intention
to sell it. The DR-202 from BOSS was produced between 1998 - 2002.
It's still (surprisingly) holding it's value on ebay. It's really more than just a drum machine. I might just keep it that little bit longer.

How can I best describe it? ... compact programmable rhythm/drum machine that is very easy to use. Runs on batteries (6 x AA) or a 9V DC adapter (centre negative). Small enough to put into my backpack, but not as compact as the modern Korg Volcas. It does have more features like midi out, and the sequencer is more powerful. It's really a drum & bass machine. It's all digital (as far as I know).
This definitely effects the sound. They are not your producer quality 16 bit sample. But it has it's place if you're searching for low-fi sounds.

Midi in / out (selectable to thru). Sadly just RCA outputs and a mini headphone out.
Control changes can be output via MIDI; can also be used as 24-voice MIDI sound module

There are 207 drum & 49 bass sounds arranged into 128 kits.
The drum was developed for groove music styles like hip-hop, jungle, drum 'n' bass, trip hop, new jack, east coast, west coast, house, Latin, etc.

There are over 400 patterns made up of
- Hip Hop 1: 49 patterns
- Hip Hop 2: 34 patterns
- Hip Hop 3: 36 patterns
- Jungle: 16 patterns
- Drum 'N' Bass: 51 patterns
- Techno: 51 patterns
- House: 36 patterns
- Acid Jazz: 39 patterns
- Latin: 24 patterns
- Rock: 34 patterns
- Other: 30 patterns
- User: 100 patterns
- 20 programmable songs

You can find your classic TR 707, TR-808, TR-909 and TB-303 & CR 78, SH 101 sounds, Lo-Fi drum samples, various synth basses, sound effects. ... mainly Roland sounds.

The 13 instrument pads. 

These are marked with a C to C scale and the names of a basic drum kit: Kick 1, Snare 1, Open HH, Hit 1 and so on. The pads can be played like a piano or to trigger the drum sounds.
 What they do depends on the chosen kit. You can change to other preset and custom kits while patterns are running.

The way the pads are laid out gives you 2 kicks, 2 snares, 2 hi hats (one open, one closed), a ride, a crash, 2 percussion, and 3 hit pads. Each pad also has a separate send to the effects & the effects can also be applied to all the drums at once.

Effects - Reverb (8 types)/ Delay (2 types), Flanger (4 types).
The reverb effects range from halls to rooms, each with adjustable decay time and level.
The two types of delay are a panning delay and a stereo delay. The delay time can be set in milliseconds (5-450mS) or in bpm-related time divisions (10 settings from half-note triplets to sixteenth note triplets).

 There are on-board realtime control knobs for adjusting cutoff, resonance and decay parameters (for instant tweaking of individual instrument sounds);
This is actually a bank of 14 individual digital filters. 13 are for the percussion, and one for the bass.
The instrument knob on the left selects which drum, bass or combination of the two is being modified.

A 3-track sequencer  for the rhythm track, bass track plus a external source track for triggering a sampler or other MIDI device. The sequencer offers a 13-part drum track and a dedicated bass track that lets you build a rhythm from scratch in either step or live edit modes. Sequencer resolution: 96 ppqn.
 Up to 20 complete songs can be stored in the DR-202's internal memory.

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For more info on the history of  Roland Drum Machines click here

Decksavers for your 808 & 909

These are awesome !!!
Your drums are precious so look after them.

Things of beauty need protection. Now all I need is one for my 303.

New Sound Waves Meet. Sat, 20th Feb, 2016

A fun arvo hanging out with friends doing what I like best.

Next meeting will be on the 16th March.

Kilpatrick Phenol & BEMI Easel (with a korg volca drum).

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These meetings  are held every 2 months (on average). Subscribe to the NSWaves blog for more details:

http://nswaves.tumblr.com/

The Colossi of Memnon.

These two statues stand on the bank of the Nile, just west of Luxor.
The region was called Thebes at the time of construction. It was the capital of the Egyptian empire.
I first saw them from the balloon. Even from that great height they were enormous.

They have stood on this site since 1350BC.... that's 3,500 years.

The Colossi of Memnon (known to locals as el-Colossat or es-Salamat) depict Pharaoh Amenhotep III, who reigned during Dynasty XVIII.

The statues were identical. The Pharoh is in a seated position, his hands resting on his knees and his gaze facing eastwards (actually ESE in modern bearings) towards the river. They stand guard at the entrance to Amenhotep's mortuary temple.

 Two shorter figures are carved into the front throne alongside his legs: these are his wife Tiy and mother Mutemwiya. The side panels depict the Nile god Hapy.

Very little remains today of Amenhotep's temple. Standing on the edge of the Nile floodplain, successive floods ate away at the foundations.

 A lithograph by David Roberts (1840's) shows the Colossi surrounded by water.

In 27BC they were partily destroyed by an earthquake and following this, the statues was then reputed to "sing" every morning at dawn. This sound was probably caused by rising temperatures and the humidity inside the porous rock playing off a cracked stone. Whatever, the reason, the statues became famous in the Roman world. They took on oracle status with many Roman emperors making the long trip to hear their song.

These mysterious songs stopped in 199 AD, when the "Africian Emperor", Septimius Severus, in an attempt to gain favour with the oracle, reassembled some of the destroyed sections. 

 Little is known about why these statues are named after Memnon and not the Pharoh Amenhotep III. 

Memnon was a King of Ethiopia and son of Tithonus and Eos. He led his armies from Africa into Asia Minor to help defend ancient Troy against the Greeks. The Illiad of Homer describes him as a  brave warrior who was slain by Achilles during the battle.

After his death, his mother Eos (the goddess of dawn) cried every morning. So when one of the statues started to give off a high-pitched sounds, the Greeks, and later Romans, attributed the "singing" to Eos, Memnon's mother, mourning for her son.

 The departure of Memnon for Troy. Greek, circa 550-525 BC. 

Black-figure vase. Royal Museum of Art and History, Brussels, Belgium.

So was the naming of these statues just a bit of wishful thinking on behalf of later Greek travellers?
It seems the name stuck.

When Alexander the Great came into power in 332 B.C.E., he pretty much took over everything (including Egypt). Greeks and Romans started to come in to see the sights, and that's probably how the Greek figure Memnon came to be associated with the place -- and the mysterious dawn-song.

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Click here for more travel postcards

ARP 2500 Patch sheets

This is the way you recorded your patches back in the early 1970s if you owned a ARP 2500.

I thought these were pretty cool. (sorry, this pic is upside down).

Cutouts & Glue. :-)

Pocket Piano - Critter & Guitari

This is a great little unit which does much more that it's looks like it does.
A beautiful union between craft and machine. Polished aluminium vs wood.


They are all handmade in Brooklyn NY.

Features include:
• Vibrato Synth
• Harmonic Sweeper
• Two-Octave Arpeggiator
• Octave Cascade
• Mono FM Synth
• FM Arpeggiator

I haven't got around to hacking this yet.
Begging to be opened up and attacked with a soldering iron.

 There is also a midi version

www.critterandguitari.com
www.facebook.com/critterandguitari
www.twitter.com/critterguitari
www.instagram.com/critterguitari

Pioneer CDJ 1000 Mk1

I think I'm finally going to sell one of my treasures.
No it's not the ARP 2500 or any Buchla! In monetary terms it not in their league.
This is more of a sentimental loss.

I friend wants to buy my Pioneer CDJ 1000. It's a Mark1 .... the first CDJ I bought. This was back in 2001.

I'm trying to create some room so it seems logical to sell, and I have some fine Pioneer 2000 Nexus's
which do everything except cook my dinner.

Back in 2001 I think I paid something like $3000. I only bought one .. it was all I could afford.
But it allowed me to play my own tracks in the club.  I used one vinyl deck & one CDJ1000.

The CDJ-1000 (retroactively known as the mk1 after the release of mk2) is generally accepted as the first CD player that can accurately emulate a vinyl turntable - including the ability to scratch - This is why it quickly became the market leader and the club standard.

 The original mk1 was discontinued in 2003 during the introduction of the mk2 into the market.

 The CDJ-1000 (and its reincarnations) are currently the most widely used DJ-style CD decks to be found in the booths of the world's best nightclubs.

 I'm half hoping my friend changes his mind and decides not to buy this. There are MarkIIs galore but few Mark Is. Like the Technics 1200 is considered to be a icon of the 20th century, I think this will come to be recognised as a icon of the 21st century.

Grand Hotel - Illawarra - Valentine's Dance

I had a awesome time last night. Sat 13th Feb, 2016
The girls took control of the decks at the Grand Hotel in Wollongong.

 DJ Cassandra- Neon Ivy

 It was a beautiful warm night playing under the trees & stars.


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That's Katie Valentine & KLP on the right.

DJ Katie Valentine.

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DJ KLP

Best night in ages. !!!

ARP 2500 - Filter bubbles

Set filter resonance all the way up and use an LFO to modulate the cutoff.
The 2500 doesn't have a dedicated LFO, but the 1023 VCO module has a slow range
which does a fine job here.... though a separate LFO would be useful.

I'm also using an envelope and some random voltages to modulate the LFO speed.
You could also just turn the LFO speed knob by hand.

arp 2500 - SOME LIVE TWEAKING of the 1045

Some more sounds from the 1045 voice module of the ARP 2500.
There are two 1045 modules in this video.

I used a 1023 VCO to modulate the filter of the first 1045.

In low range its a LFO

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The 1016 noise and random nodule is also used to trigger some envelopes of the 1045s.

The full patch is here:

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