The came, they saw, they played concors.
It was great seeing new faces at zynthclub this week, even if those faces showed confusion regarding what was being said. No one promised coherence or relevance! There were various avenues of discussion including:
- Alternative compute modules
- Low cost, large format screens
- Political statement by rubbery figures (known as Spitting Image in the UK)
- We saw progress of @stojos’s Zynthian Mini and discussed the use of PCB production for front panels including considering their rigidity and strength
- PCB sandwiches like the Zynthian Mini reminded some of other devices
- Some lobbying for Eurorack compatible sizing was made with some consideration for tweaking Zynthian Mini to fit (without the use of a large mallet) (FYI this requires the PCB / main hardware be less than 110mm tall and the front pane be 128.5mm tall - remembering to centre the PCB on the front panel.) This guide can be helpful.
- Advice on avoiding PCB fabrication that populates both sides of the PCB as it significantly increases the risk of failure. Get your components placed on one side. Also consider adding through-hole components yourself to reduce cost and chose components wisely - similar components may have different fabrication costs.
- There was demonstration of creating Zynthian chains with multiple effects, inter-chain routing including side-chaining and also the use of mod-ui which looks pretty but doesn’t really offer much that Zynthian naitive chaining doesn’t - indeed the naitive chaining does offer more than mod-ui.
- The building blocks are already coded for a more intuitive UI that shows chains as block arranged in grids but it requires effort to code that view. We may have found a volunteer… Currently the chain is shown in the chain options menu as a series of menu entries with indent and icons indicating the signal type and flow but it could be more intuitive to have (coloured) blocks laid out in a x-y grid. Good luck to anyone who choses to implement this - it would be appreciated.
- The above grid based UI idea may be influenced by other designs such as that used by Line-6 in their excellent guitar stomp pedals.
- Love was shared for our wonderful @oscaracena and his work on integrating Akai APC 25 with Zynthian. Questions were asked about whether similar integration could be implemented for other pad-based controllers. Let’s hope so.
- MIXX combined with the Hercules controller has been used to build a standalone DJ station. There may be lessons that can be learned for Zynthian’s audio player from MIXX implementation of beat detection.
- The recent enhancements to Audio Player were demonstrated including cropping, looping, MIDI note-on/off control with envelope control, speed, pitch and vari-speed (tape) control, arbitrary markers (including regular placement), slicing, beat synchronisation, etc. There is more to do on better integration with zynthian sequencer but the core building blocks are there and it can be fun to play with - especially the splicing.
- Chubby Checker lives - let’s all twist again…
- David Gilmour has a new album and supporting tour starting this year.
- Concert ticket price and availablity can be rather irksome, especially with the monopoly that Ticket Master has with pre-sales, re-selling and venue tie-in. It seems bad for the artists and fans but good for the ticket (re)sellers.
- Is it stealing to obtain a digital version of a recording you own a physical media of? (Officially - yes, but some may have different opinion!)
- Can you sit through 8 hours of organ music composed by Jonny Greenwood (Radiohead, The Smile)? He has created “268 Years of Reverb” but isn’t performing it himself. Maybe that is testament to how much pipe organ one person can endure. Looking forward to it being available as MIDI to play Aeolus…
- Gizmodrome were a supergroup consisting of Stewart Copeland, Mark King, Vittorio Cosma and Adrian Belew. Someone mentioned them for some reason. Maybe they were good???
- If you make triangular acoustic treatment panels you can arrange them to look like the profile view of a Star Wars Tie Fighter
Apparently triangular panels are challenging to fabricate and maybe not quite worth the effort if you don’t want the Star Wars reference. - When you get tired you can start to zoom in on conference member’s backgrounds to discover that it is your own room that has interested you. It must have been time for bed.
