It’s Friday, and you know what that means at Axehole - sex, drugs, rock and roll and maybe even some Jesus and air guitar.

This week, we came across a promotional video from the eighties for the Stepp Guitar Synthesizer. The Stepp was a really interesting, powerful MIDI instrument. It had 12 “strings” - 6 neck strings and 6 strum strings. It has a whammy bar, which doesn’t move the strings; instead it sends a Pitch bend controller message. It also has two assignable rotary MIDI controls assignable. It also had two control pedals, and LCD display and programming controls on the guitar body.

Most impressive, though, was that this was a guitar synth that actually worked, doing things that most of todays guitarists still just dream of.

Unfortunately, the Stepp guitar didn’t sell well and disappeared into obscurity. We think this video may be the reason why:

Note: “You’ve even got the freedom to create your own WEIRD sounds!”

If you have any more info on the Stepp guitar, let me know!

The reactable is a state-of-the-art multi-user electro-acoustic music instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface. Several simultaneous performers share complete control over the instrument by moving physical artefacts on the table surface and constructing different audio topologies in a kind of tangible modular synthesizer or graspable flow-controlled programming language.

If that sounds like a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, just check out the videos below:

Basic Demo #1

By moving and relating these objects, representing components of a classic modular synthesizer, users can create complex and dynamic sonic topologies, with generators, filters and modulators, in a kind of tangible modular synthesizer or graspable flow-controlled programming language.

Continue reading ‘Reactable - A Multi-User Electro-Acoustic Instrument’

SynclavierX By Synclavier Digital is a Mac OS X native application that is designed to control Synclaviers.

Continue reading ‘SynclavierX By Synclavier Digital’

ElectroKraft has announced the MIDI SpaceAxe, a guitar-like synth and MIDI controller.

You wear the SpaceAxe like a guitar, but it’s an electronic synthesizer & MIDI controller with a touch sensitive ribbon controller-fretboard that can be used to create new, spacey-experimental sounds as well as traditional synth and percussion/drum sounds.

Bar-Ba-Rella!

Continue reading ‘Axe from Space gets MIDI’

Kompressor is the name of a high-end Mercedes automobile line. But if you search for Kompressor on the Web, you’ll find that Mercedes has been crushed by Kompressor, the German electronica artist from Ohio.

Continue reading ‘WTF Friday: Kompressor’