This week in non-music news, a bunch of nerds on Reddit suddenly got rich in what seems to only legal for pasty day-traitors, hanging on their home Bloomberg terminal 24/7 living only on Redbull and Yellowjackets, that are have ruined many amazing companies for short term profits. Which is totally fine. Really. We get it.
In the music world, Native Instruments, a company that was truly ahead of its time, has been sold to tech investment company Franciso Partners for what might be hundreds of millions of dollars. Nothing says, “we understand the needs of artists, sound designers, outcasts, and digital signal terrorists” like:
“WE LOOK FORWARD TO WORKING TOGETHER WITH THE MANAGEMENT TEAM AND THE EXISTING SHAREHOLDER GROUP, UTILISING OUR BROAD OPERATIONAL AND STRATEGIC EXPERIENCE AND M&A CAPABILITIES TO HELP THE COMPANY ACCELERATE ITS GROWTH TRAJECTORY.”
MATT SPETZLER, FRANCISCO PARTNERS
We look forward to new and improved Audio Units and VSTs, focusing on quarterly revenues and para-digms. And remember, kiddos, manipulating the market by placing companies into the hands of people that have no clue about the industry, that have no understanding of the business model, and absolutely no love of the product should only be attempted by professionals that don’t GAF if the company survives so long as they can keep buying their mistresses condos.
https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/music-technology…
As a bit of trivia, Sonik co-founder ‘Vex’ was North America’s first employee and left our fledgling publication to start the Hollywood office.
Gear Announcement: Sequential Prophet 5
Sequential has announced desktop versions of their popular Prophet-5 and Prophet-10 Rev 4 synths. They feature the same authentic vintage sound and front-panel controls as the Prophet-5 and Prophet-10 keyboards, but in a smaller form factor designed for portability and space-conscious studios.
Read more at Future Music.
Sounds: This Cart Does Not Exist
Looking for new DX inspirations for your instrument? This site utilizes machine intelligence to generate new patches for your Yamaha DX-7. One wonders how hard it would be to reverse engineer these patches into the new Kurzweil K2700 6-OP FM algorithms.
If you do not have access to one of these vintage machines, TDCDNE provides links to emulators for all the major desktop and mobile platforms.
https://www.thisdx7cartdoesnotexist.com
Via Engadget
Music History
Everyone knows legendary instrument designer Leon Theramin for his eponymously named instrument, the Theramin. Invented in 1920, Leon created one of the earliest used synthesizers, one that required the performer to stand in front of the instrument without ever actually touching it.
But did you know that Leon was also a spook?
In the waning days of World War II, the United States was given a gift — a hand-carved seal of the United States to hang within its embassy. It was beautiful and was destined to live within the ambassador’s study where top-secret meetings would take place almost daily. Seemingly containing no batteries and no external source of power, the Americans found no reason not to hang it proudly. Little did they know that the KGB tasked Mr. Theramin to create an acoustic microphone that could be attached to a passive capacitance transmitter that, when targetted from a specific frequency from across the street, could find the power needed to transmit the sounds of the room it was in where it remained unknown for 6 years.
Read more at the Cryptomuseum, and be sure to check out the redacted newsletter from the CIA discussing Theramin’s part in this.
What Are We Listening To
The Tilt — Holy Ground
Some synth-pop from Sonik member Vladimir Djedović’s latest band!
The Covid Car Choir
Via Swissmiss
What Are We Watching
Masterclass: St. Vincent Teaches Creativity.
Over the holidays, I was gifted a year of Masterclass and have been watching several courses from this site. It is a little pricy at $180 a year, but for the price I paid…I can’t complain. Each lesson is about 10 to 15 minutes in length, and I have to say I’ve never left without learning something new, even if it will not fit into my workflow.
https://www.masterclass.com/classes/st-vincent-teaches-creativity-and-songwriting
Sonikmatter: Mind + Music + Technology
Thank you again for reading, and be sure to let us know what you like and what you dislike about this newsletter. We are still working out a more formalized structure of this letter, and we are working hard to bring back our forums. But until we do, be sure to visit the links below and comment and introduce yourselves to one another.
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