An Interview with Bruno Spoerri on Astronauta Pinguim

Update: in case you read this post when it first went up, be sure to give it another look for a few updates.  It's a bit convoluted with quite a few tangents, but that's how it goes sometimes.

Read the full interview on Astronauta Pinguim here.

The following are some excerpts and tie-ins to other bits of synth history.

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Initially a saxophone player, Bruno Spoerri explored electronic music in the 1960s on.

"In 1964 he was invited to a job in an advertising agency and began to work with electronic music using a Ondes Martenot and, after, using lots of synthesizers and also experimenting with electrified/synthesized saxophones..." "As a saxophonist and jazz improviser I always looked for ways to play without a keyboard."

Pictured above is Bruno with his EMS Synthi 100 (videos previously posted here and here).

On the Synthi 100: "I bought the Synthi 100 in 1971. In 1987 I gave it to Felix Visser (Synton) in exchange for a Fairlight CMI; some years he had to sell it at an auction, and I don't know where it is now (I would recognize the instrument, as I did some small changes on it)."  It was listed on Vemia back in 2009 posted here and here. Click though for pics.

In 1974, he recorded the album 'Iischalte (Switched-on Switzerland)'.

Bruno Spoerri - Le Ranz Des Vaches


Uploaded on Jul 25, 2011 Aura Archange Maudit·57 videos

"Bruno Spoerri - Iischalte (Switched-on Switzerland)
1974

Imágenes de la película La lunga notte di Veronique (1966)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0183441/

Video made by Aura Archange Maudit"

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"On 'Voice Of Taurus' (1978), Bruno Spoerri experiments a lot with electrified wind instruments and also with jazz-rock and rock."

Bruno Spoerri - Hymn Of Taurus (Taurus Is Calling You!)

Uploaded on Nov 19, 2009 MrJJBonanza·29 videos
Re-Published on Sep 30, 2014 Bruno Spoerri - Topic

"First track of Bruno Spoerri's 'Voice Of Taurus'
1978 Gold Records, Switzerland
Cat# 11 061 (Vinyl, LP)

Bruno Spoerri on 'Hymn Of Taurus':
"The rhythm track was created with my very first primitive ring modulator (4 diodes and 2 transformers) that is why it is so dirty The voice went of course through the EMS vocoder, the choir was created through the VAKO Orchestron."

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Again, don't miss the full interview with Bruno Spoerri on Astronauta Pinguim here. There's some fascinating history there including Ginette Martenot and the Ondes Martenot, Oskar Sala with his Mixturtrautonium, and Joel Chadabe. Regarding his original gear, "most of my analog gear is sold (most of it to the remarkable Swiss Synthorama of Martin Hollinger), but I still have my first synthi, the EMS VCS-3 (from 1970), the ARP 2600 with sequencer and the Lyricon I and II. I use the lyricon quite often in performances, the other gear mostly for demonstrations to visitors."

I was fortunate enough to visit Synthorama back in 2008. You can find my pics and videos from the visit here. See the Synthorama label for other posts including a one of a kind modular, the Airböurne, created by the curator of the museum, Martin Hollinger.

For more posts featuring Bruno click here and scroll.  Check him out on the Synthophone and Gesture Based Synthesis here.

via Fabricio Carvalho aka Astronauta Pinguim on The MATRIXSYNTH Lounge

You can find links to additional interviews with synth history's early influentials by Astronauta Pinguim here.

Airböurne Laserharp ALH-03 RGB

flickr set by Brättli Airböurne 4
(click for more)

From the maker of the incredible Airböurne Modular Synthesizer and curator of the Synthorama Synth Museum in Luterbach Switzerland (click here for posts from my visit), comes the Airböurne Laserharp ALH-03 RGB.

"The Laserharp ALH-03 RGB is developed and produced by Airböurne Synthesizers in Luterbach, Switzerland in November 2012.

It features the following functions:
- high sensitive light receiver directly built-in in the main cabinet.
- 4 user programmable presets
- up to 33 diferent colours
- selectable beam number from 8 to 14
- user programmable note scale over 7 octaves
- selectable MIDI channel and playing mode
- octave shift up and down over pedals and also over the beams top left and top right
- lasers and receiver are covered with protective glass.

Scaled mode full octave with 13 beams. The semitones are orange, the whole tones are green. All colours can be defined by the user." Click here for more pics.

CLICK FOR MORE »

SYNTHESIZER MAGAZIN Sets up for Musikmesse 2012

You'll find a few more pics on sequencer.de. The write-up is in German, but you can find a Goglish version here.

Four synth-centric booths are called out. The EMC booth including gear from Moog, Schmidt, Radikal Technologies, and John Bowen Synth Design with the Solaris. You might remember the EMC booth showcasing The Schmidt at NAMM 2012 in my uber post here. Radikal had their own booth at NAMM. Buchla 200e is at the SM Pro booth in Hall 5.1, and Ghielmetti (Airbourne / Martin Hollinger) with his AVS04 is in in Hall. BTW, if you haven't seen the AVS04, it's pretty incredible. Click on the Airbourne label below and check out previous posts (don't miss these pics). It's a custom modular by Martin Hollinger of the Synthorama synth museum in Switzerland.

Airböurne AVS04 Modular Synthesizer

YouTube Uploaded by Moogulator on Apr 8, 2011

"Martin Hollingers Modular Synthesizer AVS04, Martin is the guy behind Synthorama Synth-Museum. This synth is based on FPGA.

sequencer.de synth database / news"

Airböurne Modular Synthesizer System

flickr By Brättli Airböurne 3

"Complete Airböurne Synthesizer System. It consists of three parts:
Synthesizer Airböurne AVS-04A (right), Synthesizer Expander Airböurne AVS-04B (mid) and Sequencer AMS-496 (left).
The system will be exhibited at Prolight & Sound in Frankfurt in Hall 8, booth L57 between April 6th and April 9th 2011."

I actually saw an earlier version of this system in person during my visit to the Synthorama synth museum in Switzerland. It is as impressive as it looks. Click on the Airböurne and Synthorama label links below to go exploring.

Martin Hollinger and Brättli Airböurne's friends, Synthorama (Switzerland) in January 2010

flickr by
Brättli Airböurne 3
(click for more)

Be sure to see the Synthorama and Airböurne labels below for more including video and shots of the Synthorama Synth Museum in Luterbach Switzerland.

Airbourne AVS04 Modular Synthesizer (FPGA based) Part 1/2

YouTube via Moogulator

"small overview. it's still a prototype but all working. it's 4 voice polyphonic in concept, more see the synth database www.sequencer.de (data)

hardware: fpga inside, a lot of work, all hand made. Martin Hollinger is the man who did it (synthorama synth museum, switzerland). great work."

Airbourne Synthesizer AVS04 Overview Part 2


See the Synthorama and Airböurne labels below for more.

Martin Hollinger, Synthorama (Switzerland) in April 2009

flickr by by Brättli Airböurne 2
(click for more)

Be sure to click on the Synthorama label below for more including my visit to Synthorama in 2008 and the Airböurne modular synthesizer.

Do not miss this walk through.

Martin Hollinger, Synthorama (Switzerland) in April 2009

flickr by Brättli Airböurne 2

(click for more)

Be sure to click on the synthorama and Airböurne labels below for prior posts featuring Marting, the Synthorama synth museum and the Airböurne modular synthesizer.

Musikmesse: More Pics by Sequencer.de

Synthesizer-Magazin Stand Impressionen

Musikmesse Frankfurt 2009 Batch B

Frankfurt Musikmesse 2009 Batch C

You can find the first batch here.

Pictured:
Airböurne sequencer and modular
Curetronic modular
Moogulator of sequencer.de with KORG Radias
John Bowen Solaris
Klangwabe
DJ

CLICK FOR MORE »

Airböurne Synthesizer System

flickr set by Brättli Airböurne
(click for more)

You might remember the Airböurne from this post on my visit to Synthorama. Be sure to click on the Airböurne and Synthorama labels below for more.

Update you can see a video of the Airböurne modular here minus the sequencer. You can actually see the blank panel case of the sequencer at the start of the video.

New to the system is the Airböurne Sequencer AMS-496.

Update: Martin from Synthorama wrote in with more details. The Airböurne Synthesizer System will be shown at the Musikmesse at the Ghielmetti booth in hall 8, row H, booth 14. Martin will be there throughout the show. The following is some more detail on the sequencer:

"The sequencer has 4 independent tracks with up to 96 notes. You can place plugs in four different colours, corresponding to the four tracks. It is possible to place notes over 5 octaves. Every track you can also transpose 2 octaves down and 2 octaves up, so you have 9 octaves in total.

In the brown rows you can place white plugs if you want a gliding effect between the notes. You can choose every note of every track.

The red rows for Skip and Stop are not implemented yet. The red Repeat row allows to set an end of a melody, from where the sequencer repeats the melody.

The green Duration rows allow calibrated note lengths for every column. If you wish to have different note length at the same column for the tracks you must use the green Gate Hold rows for combining the note lengths.

The blue Volume rows allow to change the volume of every note of every track in 9 different levels. The blue Pan rows allow to define on which channel the notes will sound. You have the possibility to choose left, right, mono and random pan, for every note and every track. There are built in four independent pseudo random generators.

The white pitch rows are splittable in up to three independent sections. Here you can place up to three melodies. For every section you can define how many repeats (1 to 64) they have to run. So you can create small songs with three sections.

The internal beat generator counts from 20 bpm up to 300 bpm and the frequency you can alter with an external control voltage. With an externel quarter note clock the sequencer synchronizes in the limits between 10 bpm and 400 bpm. Later it will be possible to synchronize it via Midi clock (not implemented yet).

At rear you have the possibility to use the Pitch-CV, the Gate and the Trigger Outputs for every analogue synthesizer which uses 1 V/octave. The volume and pan signals are not available for analog synths because they are digital coded for the Airböurne Synth AVS-04 only.

On the exhibited model not all ist working perfectly.

Actually these malfunctions are known:
The bottom row (lowest C) of the pitch panel reacts not in the same column at the other rows.
The functions skip + and skip - are not working properly.
Sometimes some notes disappear or have the wrong pitch or note length. This is a timing error in one of the FPGAs.
The number of pitch plugs you can place on one row is limited, dependent of track, to 3 to 12 plugs.
The LSB digit of the internal beat generator will be only updated if the sequencer is in Repeat Mode :-) This is a real nice software bug in one of the micro controllers."

Synthorama - Entrance Room

This is the next post in a series featuring the Synthorama synthesizer museum in Luterbach Switzerland. See the Synthorama label below for prior posts.

The museum is organized into different themed rooms organized by manufacturer and/or region such as Russian synths. This will become more apparent as I begin to put up the themed flickr sets followed by the walk through videos of the museum.

For now you, click here to see a flickr set of what awaits you when you walk through the entrance of the museum.

As you enter, the Airböurne Synthesizer is directly across from you and to the right. Throughout the room are some synths waiting to be repaired and or on display. In one section of the room are a number of theremins. This is actually the theremin section of the museum.

There is an EMS Spectre Colour Video Synthesizer [pictured], a PPG Commander, PPG 380 Event Generator, Digilab [pictured], and more.

Through a window you can see the ARP room, all just a glimpse of what's about to follow.

CLICK FOR MORE »

Synthorama - Airböurne Synthesizer Videos

YouTube via matrixsynth.

As promised here are the Airböurne Synthesizer videos from my recent trip to Synthorama. Seven videos in total. The first video was literally the first video I took when entering the museum so I strayed just a bit, but I do quickly come back to the Airböurne. There is some discussion from Martin Hollinger, the creator of this modular and the curator of Synthorama. There is audio of the modular. Also note the huge white matrix sequencer on the floor to the left of the Airböurne. This is Martin's current project. Be sure to click on the Synthorama label below for more posts on the visit including more info on the Airböurne Synthesizer.

Synthorama - Airböurne Synthesizer

Click here for the first set of images from my trip to Synthorama.

This set includes images of the Airböurne modular synthesizer by Martin Hollinger, curator of the Synthorama synth museum. Martin has been working on this one of a kind modular for the last several years. The design is 100% his. It is a fantastic sounding modular. I asked Martin if he planned to produce these for sale anytime soon. He said it consists of over 10,000 components so it would not be easy. He does hope to show it at the Musikmesse.

Check out the patch cables. The tips are very similar in look to the patch pin tips used by EMS, but they are much smaller. I asked Martin why he chose them. He said mainly for size and quality. The quality of them is apparently very high - better than the patch pins he showed me for EMS. The one risk however is that if too much pressure is applied at an angle, they can break. If they were to break off while patched in the modular, it could be difficult to remove them. Because of this he is not sure if he would use them again. I can say, they are very attractive and add to the overall character of the modular.

Note the blue patch cable in the shot to the left. You can see what they look like unplugged.

As for the individual modules and what they can do, check out each image in detail. I tried to capture what each can do.

In my previous post, you might remember the shot of the skateboard. The significance? Note the name. :) Also take a look at the Airbourne logo in the bottom left of the last shot below. If you look closely, you will see that it's a skateboard! Pretty cool. Martin had a collection of skateboards as well.

A note regarding the shots: not all of them are the greatest, but rather than filter the bad shots out, I decided to put everything up. I sometimes hate the way images look when using a flash - glare sometimes shows and you lose the effect of the natural lighting. So... some of these shots will be blurry because of that. You will need to use your imagination to get a sense of what the setting was like for some of these shots. I do promise you there are some great detailed shots though. There are different reasons for each, some functional, some to capture mood, and some to capture the grandeur. As always be sure to click on them for the full size. You can click on the "All Sizes" link in flickr. Feel free to grab the shots for your personal use. If you have a website, and you want to use them, do so, just be kind and provide a courtesy link back to MATRIXSYNTH.


Update: videos of the Airböurne coming up. Check back soon.
Update: Actually, the upload is being extremely slow. I'll put up a new post letting everyone know when the Update: videos have been added to this post.

Airböurne Synthesizer auf der Musikmesse

Pictured here is the Airböurne AVS-04 from Martin Hollinger of Synthorama, a synthesizer museum in Switzerland. You can find a video of the AVX-04 at this year's Musikmesse at Synthesizer-Magazin. To get to the video click on the AVS-04 link. It will take you to the page dedicated to the AVS-04 on sequencer.de. Once there, do a find in your browser for Video and you should see it, and of course check out all of the other info on the AVS-04 while there.

Synthorama Swiss Synth Meeting Pics

more images here. The image below is the Airbourne modular synth by Martin Hollinger, the owner/curator of the Synthorama Museum. via yusynth in the comments of this post.

Airböurne Modular Synthesizer AVS-04B

flickr by Brättli Airböurne. Title link takes you to more shots.

"4 Voice Modular Synthesizer, Cabinet B, with 2 VCO, 4 VCF, 4 AHDSR, 4 Stereo VCA, 2-4 Ringmodulators, Noice Sources, 2 Random CV generators and one four phase LFO. This Synthesizer is developed and manufactured by Martin Hollinger from Synthorama, Switzerland in October 2006."

Previous posts on the AVS

Airbourne (Airböurne) AVS04 - Updated Info

Remember the AVS04? Click here for a post on sequencer.de with more info in German.

The following is the Google translated version:

"The second part of the Synths is now also available. Thus it has thus all 4 Voices and 8 filters as well as 8 envelope generators. Also those Noise generators, random CV and the Mehrphasen LFO is ready.

If it is enough to me, I will still adapt the Midiinterface that it also with two pressed keys correctly functions; -/Default-moderately that stands Interface for the moment on mono mode.

The wildest things are written over my VCF. BPF are and were never intended. At present the LPF with 12, 18 functions and 24 railways. I worked to the HPF for a long time and am not not to the goal come with my technology. I assume that the 80 bits Computational accuracy are not sufficient for a HPF. Around the project not still more to retard, I have at present only times the LPF built in that Hope, by reprogramming the filter modules medium-term also HPF realize to be able. I do not have a schedule in addition however.

The Midiinterface is not in the back and takes away from anybody place. The difference between the two Synthteilen AVS-04A and B is in that the right five columns:

CLICK FOR MORE »

FPGA - Martin Hollingers Airböurne AVS04A Synth

Another shot from the Swiss Synth Meeting. Check out this post on sequencer.de for more shots of this particular synth.

What's funny is not too long ago Moogulator of sequencer.de told me about how we were lucky in the US because of all the synth gatherings, and the images that come back from the events. Then we see stuff like this. : ) Hmm...

Update via sendling: "oh yes, and btw the rest is here."

Swiss Synth Meeting Pics

Pic from sequencer.de, from a synth gathering in Switzerland. FPGA modular pictured.

Update via Moogulator in the comments:
"it is completely new, made by martin hollinger.. it is not ready today, but almost closed.. check for "FPGA".. digital based tech, really cool in sound..

I will put a post up somewhere later, but there are ppl that can tell more on the forum.. but since it is very new and somewhat limited to synth geeks, he brought it .. we will do some more on it when it is ready .. some german words can be found in our synthesizer-magazin "dummy" zero-issue which is just an excerpt..

well, there will be more in the next months.. (aka s.o.o.n)"

Update via swissdoc in the comments:
"It is a voltage controlled synth, but the VCO and VCF are internally digitally created and based on FPGAs, so you have an oscillator or filter done in real hardware with very high precission and clock rate. All ins and outs are analog voltages, as well as the pots, but they are digitized at high rates and then used to controll the algorithms in the FPGAs. The envelopes are done in SW by a PICT, the VCAs are modern SSM chips compensated for temp drift. The patching is done with real pro cables, small they are, indeed. Front panel is from special multi-layer paper, not conductive.

It is a no compromise design, stable, no trimmers internally, well 2 for the whole synth.

I was impressed by the concept and the build quality for a DIY synth.

Well, Martin is a PRO, working on this kind of things on a daily basis in his professional life.

Georg."