SAAB EMS

 My first Car.

 

These pics were taken around 1991

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).

....
...

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

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