Sonic Talk Podcasts

We start by drooling over the wonderful treasure trove that is the rare gadgets at Wired.com, ponder Leon Theremins thrilling life and why no Gforce-o-mometer and Citroen DS? Then it's on to Metallica and downloads and of course Some Kind of Monster doc, the scary prospect of an MP3 tax in the UK, some real joy with the B52's remix competition and finally Apple clones on sale - good or no? A big thanks to Dave from Richmond Virginia for sending in a snippet of his Evolver and Kaoss pad 3 - keep em coming!

fter discussing the merits of Ostend we move on to the bizarre Beamz laser musical system, then talk boxes get some love - we missed them out last week due to time constraints, then a brief sojourn into music technology spotted at the fair (or carnival if you're US based), Garageband.com get some attention after last weeks Talking Heads topic, Mark's tinitus eq theory, a brief musical interlude from Marc JX8P and a JMJ acapella, then we're homeward bound with 25 top tips for musicians.

Firstly we talk of old Mother Shipton, who may have forseen the collapse of the TC Electronic and Gibson merger, then we're on to Talking Heads - David Byrne spotted on the Heathrow Express, more on Jori Hulkkonen and his 303 orchestra, the Hobnox web browser 303/909 and fx environment, and finally the classic Oberheim OB2 and related synths.

First, Mark tells us of a rather personal encounter with a vibrating chair, then we're on to the cute little drumming, sampling robot, Gibson gun for some of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band cash, then we all fess up on what our first record purchases were and get more than we bargained for, Rich is playing with Micky Dolenz, 128k or 320kbps MP3 test at mp3ornot.com, and at last Gary Kiblers Korg Kaossilaor album gets a viewing.

A moment of silence for Mark's broken phone, the wonderfully pointless Furby Gurdy, a home made and as it turns out controversial, Laser Harp from Stephen Hobley, Waves and SSL, Jean Michel Jarre and his amazing series of Oxygene concerts with many of the original analogues, SSL and Waves plug-ins, Percussa Audio Cubes, and finally Dave Robinson tells us all about the Jean Michel Jarre gig in Dublin, Dave Spiers tells us how JMJ spoilt his wedding, Steve Strange in the queue, Santeri Ojala's excellent guitar parodies, and finally Digidesign's DShow gets some love.

This week, we revisit a couple of topics from last week due to some additional correspondence - MIDI 2.0 is on the way and Shane King sends us an Ultravox inspired track to check out. We then move on to the rather amazing Microsoft MySong technology which allows you to sing in a melody then have the computer suggest the supporting chord - and tweak. We ponder why Apple can get away with some of their rather monopolistic behaviour and then we're done.

We talk this week of the demise of one of London's most prestigious studios the Townhouse, which will close its doors at the end of March 2008. Ray Kurzweil's futurism theories get us started on an esoteric thread, which is brought down to earth by Fade To Grey and talk of Billie Currie. And finally Happy Birthday MIDI.

This week we talk of Create Digital Music who are in fund-raising mode, Nick finally upgrades his Macbook Pro HD to a 250GB one, Noneric's visit to Ableton uncovers a whole mess of speculation about some new secret instrument for Live, vocoders in general, recording Bowie, copyright extension for performers, the Yamaha SPX90 effects unit, then in-ear monitoring and the technology of live performance gets a quick look-in.

First up, we congratulate Ms Amy Winehouse on her historic 5 Grammy awards romp - Dave Spiers' brother-in-law is bass player and MD for the band and has been round at his partying. Then we get stuck into the Hotz Box - a unique MIDI controller/instrument that was a hit amongst the bigwhigs in the 1980s - I'd never heard of this, but Chris Macleod, had the pleasure of staying with Jimmy Hotz and programming it for Jon Anderson for a Yes tour - he spills the beans. After that, we touch on the art of destruction - with tales of what we have broken - Chris enlightens us with the Keith Emerson L100 on casters story. Then we're on to Virtual Instruments magazine and other favourites, which leads on to a wider discussion of where all this stuff is going.

This week we talk of mergers and acquisitions, in the light of Roland taking a majority share in Cakewalk, Gibson and TC Electronic announcing a merger and of course Microsoft's bid for Yahoo, Helicon technology gets a look-in along the way, followed by Novation's Nocturn controller, Inside Synthesis, our latest IPTV series on FM synthesis and FM generally, then a bit of a Mac-fest with the new Airbook and Mainstage in use. Finally we finish up with Rich having good things to say about the new Apple keyboard - of the QWERTY kind.

This week is a bumper, coming it at just over an hour, and to kick off the new year, we talk of Christmas past (noneric got an SP1200!), the pending NAMM future - including Linn Drum II, John Bowen's Solaris, the new Sharc based DSP synth Plugiator, new control surfaces from Euphonix, 8-core Mac Pros just announced too.

This week, Mark gets a haircut, we get deep with our proudest moments from 2007 and hopes for 2008, lighten up with what we want for Christmas,cloud-busting, ponder the promised FireWire speedbump, Garritans Xmas collection, Noatikl - the generative music plug-in and more. HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!

This week, we briefly skim over the Apple ProAudio tour in Berlin, Crave Top 10 Terrible Gadgets, 303 Orchestra and 303s in general, Michael Jackson's Thriller is 25 years old, Quincy's swively chair, waiting for tape to rewind, Peter Grenader's Secret Life of Capacitors at Analog Live, Akai's and the Top Five Samplers number 1 spot, Workspace and Environment at AudioTrash.