Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone!  I hope it's a great one! 

Putting this post up between the cross over as I need to sign off for the festivities!

First of all, I'd like to say THANK YOU! for a great 2011! It was a busy one here in MATRIXSYNTH land.  The site had a record breaking 18755 posts (including this one) for the year.  That's an average of 51.38 posts every single day (not a single day missed, BTW).  I'm hoping to actually bring that number down a little. Before anyone freaks out, I'm not planning on changing much.  I plan on keeping MATRIXSYNTH exactly the same with the exception of raising the bar on what goes up just a little.   I think enough change happens in life and it's nice to have some constants you can fall back on.  I'm hoping MATRIXSYNTH continues to be one for you.   It's odd to think it's only been six and a half years!  I hope to keep the site going for many more to come.   As for bringing the number of posts down and a little history on the site...

When I started the blog in 2005, YouTube, Vimeo, and Flickr were new.  SoundCloud, Twitter and Facebook didn't exist.  The majority of other sites focused on print style news articles, forums, synth databases, and personal websites.  I actually created the original matrixsynth.com in October 1997 to track my favorite sites: http://matrixsynth.com/old/.  You can see how bad it was (the old site, not the list).  In 2005 I created MATRIXSYNTH the blog in its current format.  I wanted to create a site that showcased what people were doing with synths on a daily basis and a blog format seemed best.  I thought it would be an incredible thing to be able to look back at decades from now.   At the time I started the blog not much was going up out there, so everything went up.  Remember, all of the social sites were new and Web 2.0 was a catch phrase.  The site started with an average of about 5 posts a day and continued to grow.  As of this post, in just six and a half years, a total of 70,487 posts have gone up, all by hand.  There is only so much time in the day for us to consume it all.  This is one of three reasons why you'll find the majority of my posts relatively short and free from editorial content - it saves you and me time.  The other two reasons are one, I want to present the content as close to original as possible, and two, I want you to take away what you want from the post without my bias.  This site, as originally conceived, is ultimately meant to showcase what is out there as it is.   Now and then I'll indulge but for the most part everything goes up as is.  It is also a place for people to promote what they are doing in the world of synths exactly as they wish.

This year I thought I'd share the top 10 most popular posts for the year by page views:

10. NAMM: Dave Smith and Roger Linn Create a Tempest
Jan 13, 2011, 15 comments 3,075 Pageviews

9. New Roland Jupiter-80 Pics & Specs Leaked?
Apr 3, 2011, 31 comments 3,286 Pageviews

8. New Moog Voyager XL
Sep 8, 2010, 24 comments 3,349 Pageviews

7. KORG KRONOS Details
Jan 12, 2011, 30 comments 3,891 Pageviews

6. NAMM & NOT NAMM - New Products on the Synth Front
Jan 7, 2011, 8 comments 5,318 Pageviews

5. New KORG Monotribe In the Flesh
Apr 4, 2011, 26 comments 7,149 Pageviews

4. M-Audio Venom Review and Interview with Product Manager Taiho Yamada
Mar 23, 2011, 6 comments 7,182 Pageviews

3. New Tom Oberheim SON OF 4 VOICE
Jan 25, 2011, 10 comments 7,810 Pageviews

2. RIP Mr. Tsutomu Katoh - Founder of KORG
Mar 15, 2011, 6 comments 12,542 Pageviews

And the number one post for the year as far as pageviews go (drum roll please...):

1. New Schmidt Analog Synth Debuts at the Musikmesse
Apr 5, 2011, 22 comments 13,412 Pageviews

Note the above were the numbers for the most popular posts. Categorically some of the biggest news in the synth world would have to include the following (if you have others, feel free to comment):

1. The growth or rather explosion in the modular world. When I first started the site, modulars were few and far between. Most synth heads obviously knew what they were and respected them, but modulars were often seen as luxury items as well as from the perspective of building out a complete system equivalent to any given mono synth. Assessing the price to build one out vs. picking up what appeared to be a more feature rich synth on the used or even new market usually deterred the initial investment to get started. Over time people have begun to realize that a modular can compliment your existing hardware and a complete system is not needed to get started. Also at the time, there were only a handful of manufacturers that seemed to have been around for quite some time, and the physical formats of the modular world were essentially equal in numbers. Now there are tons of new manufacturers with Eurorack having taken off, which I believe is primarily due to a combination of its compact size and price. There's only so much room in the studio for many.

2. Boutique manufacturers and DIYer's offering commercial products. Examples include Mutable Instruments, OTO, Meeblip, EMW, Befaco and more. There has also been some interesting cross pollination with Allessandro Cortini's SuONOIO with The Harvestman, and Neon Indian's PAL198X with Bleep Labs. Apologies to those I missed. If you have a favorite, please comment or shoot me an email. The above were meant more for example.

3. The iPad has grown into an accepted platform in the synth community, both as a synthesizer/audio processor and as a controller. We saw our first full blown Moog synthesizer on the iPad - the Animoog.

4. On the hardware synthesizer front we had a few new interesting synths including M-Audio's first synth, the Venom, DSI and Roger Linn's Tempest, and of course, John Bowen's Solaris. And of course, what surprised everyone, KORG re-entering the analog market with the Monotribe.

Feel free to comment if you have anything to add.


On the unfortunate side of things I thought I'd end the post by paying respect to some of those we lost in 2011. The following is the list. Each link will take you to the post. For those that you may not recognize, the list is about those who have influenced our world of synths in one way or another.

RIP Richard Lainhart & Mel Morley (midimel)
Love You, Dad
RIP Jürgen Haible
RIP Steve Jobs (not directly synth - but he did bring us the technology)
Tim Davis MOOG SONIC SIX Custom Analog Synthesizer
RIP Conrad Schnitzler & Klangfeld (in memoriam Conrad Schnitzler)
RIP Amy Winehouse
RIP Leon Botha
tribute to GIL.
RIP Max Matthews
RIP Roger Nichols - Creator of the Wendel Sampling Computer
RIP Mr. Tsutomu Katoh - Founder of KORG
RIP Milton Babbitt