MATRIXSYNTH Turns 7!!!

Today marks the seven year anniversary of MATRIXSYNTH! The original matrixsynth.com actually launched way back in October of 1997 as MATRIX SYNTH. I never took it down, BTW. Click here to see it in all it's old school glory. If you thought there was too much green on this site, just check that baby out. BTW, check out the manufacturers list under MFG. I stopped updating it about the time I started this site in 2005. You can see what modular manufactures, and of course others were around back then. It's an interesting look back in time... Kind of why I started this version of the site actually. I'll get to that further below.

Last year I skipped the site stats and kept the anniversary post relatively short. I used to post stats for the site and a general blurb on what makes the site tick, but it began to feel redundant so I skipped it last year. Well, I kind of missed it, and I know some of you enjoy the stats thing, so I'm bringing it back. And CatSynth did it for their six year anniversary post yesterday, so there you have it. Actually I was planning on including stats before I read that post, but I do like CatSynth. The site has grown quite a bit and we have a ton of new readers who don't really know the background of MATRIXSYNTH so I thought I would share some of that as well. I've also had a few people ask me to do personal interviews. I always turn them down as I do my best to keep myself out of the site so I don't ruin it for anyone. It's kind of like the whole Wizard of Oz thing. Enjoy the Oz in MATRIXYSNTH, and don't let the wizard ruin it for you is my only advice. That said, I decided this year to reveal a little more about my synth history than I normally do. Don't worry though after this post that's it. This site is about the gear only. I see it as my job to bring it to you unbiased and get the heck out of the way. Seriously though, I really do my best to present what is out there free of bias for you to consume and form your own opinion. I do this for three reasons; one, out of respect for the person that created the content, two, so I don't accidentally prevent you from getting your own experience out of the post, and three, because of how much goes up on a daily basis - it saves you and me time.

But, in the anniversary and New Years posts I do tend to make up for my lack of words big time, so bear with me or just skip to what you like.

Before I begin with the stats I do want to give a big thanks to everyone that visits, supports and contributes to the site. THANK YOU!!! It really is a tremendous amount of work, so all the kind words and support make a huge difference. Every single post you see here is hand posted. There is no automation. The site takes roughly four to eight hours on average a day (closer to eight) and sometimes up to ten hours. This is every single day, including weekends. Out of the seven years running the site I have only missed one day (by accident - more on that below), and the only day I take off is Christmas day when I put up only one post, which surprisingly can be torture in not posting. The posts you see here are a combination of stuff I find out there on my own and stuff people send in, which is quite a bit. The site started as a hobby and has fortunately grown into a small business with the help of sponsors. Note sponsors are always on the right. In the history of the site there has never been a paid post on the main site, and if there ever is, I will be sure to call it out in the post. That said, THANK YOU SPONSORS! It's one thing if the work only consumed my time, but it in turn consumes my family's time, so every little bit helps. THANK YOU! You make the site possible!


First the stats!

We still haven't reached world domination. Everything you see with a shade of green is a visit to the site. Check out Africa! The few in white mean no visit came in. The top map is for the seven year history of the site and the bottom is for this last year. Click on each for the full size shots. As you can see they are pretty much the same. Still no hits from North Korea.

On the other hand we had 122 visits from Syria within the last year along with traffic from other war torn countries. Incredible! Please keep safe out there! You are in our hearts, thoughts and prayers.

The top 10 visits by country:

1. United States 982,943
2. United Kingdom 258,070
3. Germany 183,138
4. France 168,649
5. Canada 142,553
6. Italy 109,605
7. Japan 84,202
8. Sweden 76,948
9. Australia 73,881
10. Netherlands 72,680

And the overall stats:

Source: Google Analytics for the year (July 20, 2011 - July 20, 2012):

6,364,538 pageviews
2,838,084 visits
972,065 unique visitors.

Source: Site Meter for the life of the site:

32,734,610 pageviews (18,557 average per day)
15,658,114 visits (7,822 average per day)

Google Analytics (started April 5, 2006):
30,795,628 pageviews
14,313,210 visits
4,258,879 unique visitors.

Note unique visitors can be a bit misleading as I believe it's based on the individual browser and cookies vs. IP Address or individual, so for people checking in on multiple devices and even multiple browsers on the same machine, each one counts as a unique visitor. The numbers are likely lower.

Unfortunately I do not see a top posts for the last year in Blogger so we will have to go with the top posts for all time:

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

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

New Tom Oberheim SON OF 4 VOICE
Jan 25, 2011, 10 comments 7,811 Pageviews

M-Audio Venom Review and Interview with Product Manager Taiho Yamada
Mar 23, 2011, 6 comments 7,186 Pageviews

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

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And for the background on the site:

For those that have been following the site for some time, much of this will be familiar to you, but a bit of it will be new. It is the seven year anniversary of MATRIXSYNTH and the seven year mark is very important to me. I thought I'd share a little more than I usually do.

So, the 1000 foot view of MATRIXSYNTH - the source of the name matrix, a brief history and why this site exists.

The name and how it all began:

First off, it's not based on The Matrix movies. :) I do enjoy my Matrix influenced mascot on the right though. Thanks Dave! :) As I stated above matrixsynth.com went live back in 1997. The first Matrix film came out in 1999. The alias matrix and the name of the site is derived from the Oberheim Matrix-6 and Matrix-12. The Matrix-12 was my dream synth. My first synthesizer, purchased brand new in 1986, was the Matrix-6. I was into the alternative music scene back then and I begged my parents for a synthesizer. I loved synths. I combined Christmas and birthday presents (six months apart from each other) and saved my allowance. In the end my dad just bought it for me. He was a great father. He passed away in 2006, and his support is a big reason why this site exists. More about that coming up in a bit. In 1986 I had the choice between the Matrix-6 and the DX7. I went for the Matrix-6, while my best friend at the time went for the DX7. We played music together. We had our little feuds on which synth was better, but for the most part appreciated both. I love all synths BTW, analog AND digital. I later ended up getting a TX7 so I could have the sounds of the DX7, but I hated that I couldn't edit it so I ended up trading it for an SCI Multi-Trak at the local Sunset Strip Guitar Center in Los Angeles. I later picked up a Kawai K4r and that was it for years.

I learned synthesis on the Matrix-6. I knew nothing at the time. There was no Internet and I was more of a hands on person so I dug in first and looked at the manual second. I really got into programming it. The cool thing about the Matrix-6 is that it not only has a velocity sensitive keyboard with aftertouch but it also has something called release velocity which is how quickly you release the keys. You can assign each to any number of modulation destinations. The Matrix-6 has a very extensive modulation matrix along with some esoteric features not found in other DCO based analog synths of the time, including Tracking Generators and RAMPs. Not knowing what I was doing I just started exploring. With all the modulation routings and the expressive keyboard I felt like I was creating not only sounds never heard before, but actual musical instruments that never existed before. Yes the interface was a keyboard, but each sound I created required a different technique. Patching release velocity, aftertouch and velocity to different things like release time, filter cutoff and resonance, LFOs, etc, I had to learn how to actually play each patch like a new physical instrument. The sounds that came out were incredible to me. I'd get lost in just playing and exploring sound in a virtually endless feedback cycle of sound and playing style influencing my edits which in turn influenced sound and technique. The funny thing was I'd come back to a patch a month later and wonder what the heck was I thinking? It was because I forgot how to play it.

I believe I first went online sometime in 1994 (this was the beginning of the world wide web - any one remember "The Internet Tidal Wave"). By 1995 I started finding the few sites dedicated to synths. The first forum and my favorite site was Sonic State. Thank you Nick! I signed up on The Gas Station (THE synth forum at the time). Harmony Central came around later and Vintage Synth Explorer didn't come around to 1999. Anyway, I needed to pick an alias so I went with matrix based on my first and favorite synth the Matrix-6 and my dream synth, the Matrix-12. As time went by I discovered other synth sites and in 1997 I decided to create matrixsynth.com to track them and as my portal into the world of synths. It wasn't really meant for anyone but myself, but I did share it with others. Anyone out there use it back then?! :) It was a basic HTML site with two frames. A thin frame on the left for all my favorite sites grouped by category in the order I typically visited them (Sonic State still on top!), and a larger frame on the right that would bring up the site. I could then easily flip through sites. I also listed my synths on the default right page. You can still see them now if you click on the nostalgia link on the right of the old site (I changed the home page adding the blog link in 2005 to let people know). For each synth I used my crappy digital camera to take a picture of it (this was a long time ago folks), I captured the editable parameters, and I captured the introduction for the synth in the manual. I always thought it was fascinating to read how manufacturers presented their synths to owners. It was the one thing I'd read before turning on the synth, checking out the default presets, and then tweaking away.

The birth of the current site and why it exists:

On July 20 of 2005 I started MATRIXSYNTH the blog. There were two primary reasons why I started it. One, the list of links on the old site was just too long to be usable anymore, and two, I realized a lot of the interesting things I wanted to bookmark were embedded deep on sites or in some cases not on sites at all. Flickr launched in February 2004, YouTube launched in February of 2005, SoundCloud didn't exist (launched October of 2008), Twitter didn't exist (launched July 15, 2006), and Facebook didn't open to a wider audience until September 26, 2006. All dates courtesy of Wikipedia. :) This was the birth of social networking and web services - Web 2.0 (when did the use of Web 2.0 die down anyway? It just kind of disappeared). When I started the blog I let a few people know. At the time I had absolutely no idea what it was about to become. It was just a blog where I captured stuff that interested me in the world of synths. It was also a very nerve racking time for me.

If you remember above, I mention that I have my father to thank for the site. It wasn't just for the Matrix-6. At the time, I had recently left my "9 to 5" job (more like 8AM to bedtime) and started doing contract based work in the software industry. I had a stay at home wife and a two year old daughter and I had no idea what was going to happen. It was a huge risk and we'd have to purchase our own health insurance. I told myself the worst case scenario was that I could just go back to the "9 to 5" if it didn't work out, but as much as you tell yourself that, you just never know. My father was always fiscally conservative. I was raised to be very conservative with money and my work ethic; you work hard, leave the ego behind, and one day you will make a secure life for yourself. When I told my father I was thinking of leaving the day job, to my surprise he said I would be fine and that he wasn't worried about me, so I went for it. I don't think I would have been able to make MATRIXSYNTH what it is today had I stayed at my old job; there just wouldn't have been the time for it. My father's support helped me make my new life happen.

When I started the blog I thought I'd be lucky if I had something to post every other day. To my surprise there was always something to post. I missed only one day of posting in the entire seven year history of the blog. That day was August 6 of 2005. I went on a short two day trip and left the laptop behind not realizing I'd never miss a day after that.

So what makes the blog tick in my opinion? It's not just a news site. If you think about it, print magazines focus primarily on professional news releases, reviews and interviews. Professional websites back then primarily focused on the same thing, along with a forum for people to share stuff and converse. Some people had personal websites out there like myself with links to their favorite sites and to showcase what they had, but that was about it. MATRIXSYNTH the blog grew out of the old MATRIX SYNTH in spirit and as an extension of linking to and showcasing what's out there. Instead of just linking to root sites, it became more about showcasing the individual, interesting bits out there, and with sites like YouTube and Flickr available, people could share things without even having a site. Professional magazines and websites didn't really showcase what end users were doing at the time and print magazines simply couldn't due to the physical medium. I realized that was the one thing missing in the synth community. Think of all the history lost starting in the early days until now. The birth of synthesis and what every day users like you and me did back then is lost. MATRIXSYNTH became a place to showcase this moving forward. Not just the formal press releases, but what everyday people are doing with their synths! I didn't realize this when I started the blog though, I realized it later as the site began to grow.

My goal is to continue on and hopefully one day, thirty plus years from now, people will be able to look back in time and see what people were doing with their synths on a daily basis. BTW, realize when you remove your video or audio demo because you think it isn't good enough, don't! It is good enough. It's a bit of synth history!

So, MATRIXSYNTH exists essentially a synth webzine, a historical archive and snapshot of some of what went up every single day of the year, year after year. BTW, whenever you want to have a look back for fun, check out the Archives on the bottom right of the site. Click the arrows to expand each section. In the early days you can load an entire week if you want. Just be careful when the number of posts start going up as it will take forever to load in your browser. Back when I started the site, I captured everything. Today, because of the volume that is out there, I now do my best to focus on the things that stand out, but it will always be about the synth and it will always be about what everyday people are doing with their synths.

Thank you for seven great years! I look forward to the next. This is post number 79830, by hand. :)