Sound Technologies

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Trace the history of the analogue-digital revolution, the development of live sound technologies in the 20th century and the impact of digital technology on music production and reproduction.

Novation Launchpad, purchased new by the donor in 2011 (in its original case), and in very good condition. The donor is a musician and composer based in Leeds (http://chrissieviolin.info/ ) and has provided notes on her reasons for buying the Launchpad, how she used it, and why she no longer does (see below). Notes from the donor: “I bought the Novation Launchpad (v1, but it wasn’t called that then, it was just “The Launchpad")in May 2011 for use with Ableton Live 8 (I think). I bought it to get more to grips with the Ableton Live clip-based workflow, but it never really gelled for me - though I did once use it as a looper while playing violin (not ideal really, as it’s finger-operated rather than foot-operated and violin is quite finger-intensive anyway!) at the Sonic Arts conference. What the device spent a lot of its time doing was being a scene launcher for a band I was in called Catscans: Catscans had the usual turnover of musicians, and when we lost a really good bass player (moved down to London), Jonny, who wrote all the songs, decided to use a programmed, synthesized bass-line instead. Only we had no-one to play it as we were all busy with our own instruments - so we programmed the bass lines for whole songs into Ableton - on separate tracks so we could mix them - and then launched the whole scene using the launchpad. We had one scene per song, consisting of 2 or 3 bass track and a click for the lead guitar and drums to play to. You can see the laptop, M-Audio soundcard and launchpad to the left of me on the two gig photos. To be honest it wasn’t ideal and the band split up after a couple of years as the drummer didn’t like playing to click (amongst other things) and the launchpad and Ableton didn’t get used much after that. When Ableton released Live 10 I didn’t bother to upgrade and Live 9 ceased working on my laptop but I didn’t really miss it as I was doing all my recording into Reaper. I did use the launchpad a couple of times for CSMA gigs. I have software I wrote for a Raspberry Pi that I use for those gigs that does the, fairly involved, MIDI routing and preset selection and I used the launchpad for MIDI channel selection for my controller keyboard, and selecting the batch of presets for each synth needed for each piece we played, but that didn’t last long as I went to using the Yamaha Montage as a main instrument & controller and it could do all of those things from the same device - with a little extra coding on the Pi. So the launchpad has been lounging in my store room for a while now. I plugged it into my recent i9 laptop when I tried Bitwig earlier this year but it wasn’t even recognised as a valid MIDI device any more so I decided it was life-expired.”

Novation Launchpad and case

2011

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Sound Technologies

Media containing samples for Fairlight CMI Series 3

Marshall JVM410H-H 100W guitar amplifier head and associated accessories

Booklet for Conet Project: Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations aka TCP / 1111

Sequential Circuits PRO-One monophonic synthesizer. Designed by former West Coast computer scientist

Roland VE-7000 Channel Edit Controller. Part of Roland V-Mixing System

Roland VSR-880 Digital Studio Recorder

Alesis ADAT Blackface Digital Recorder

Watkins Electric Music Copicat Tape Delay

Binson Echorec 2 T7E with detachable lid

Marshall 1960B-H 300W 4x12 switchable stereo base cabinet and mono jack to jack cable

Oberheim OB-Xa Analogue Polyphonic Synthesizer

Fairlight CMI Series 3 Mainframe

Fairlight CMI Series 3 music keyboard

Conet Project: Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations aka TCP / 1111. Quadruple CD set.

Fairlight CMI Series 3 alphanumeric keyboard

Fairlight CMI Series 3 light pen

Fairlight CMI Series 3 graphics monitor

Meter bridge for Midas XL3 Live Performance analogue audio mixing console. This is the original

Midas XL3 Live Performance Mixing Console

Marshall 1960A-H 300W 4x12 switchable stereo angled cabinet and associated accessories

Roland DS-90A monitor loudspeakers

Roland VM-C7200 V-Mixing Console. Part of Roland V-Mixing System

Roland VSR-880 Digital Studio Recorder

Roland VM-7100 V-Mixing Processor. Part of Roland V-Mixing System

Roland VM-7200 V-Mixing Processor. Part of Roland V-Mixing System

Roland VM-7100 V-Mixing Console. Part of Roland V-Mixing System

Alesis ADAT Blackface Digital Recorder

Alesis ADAT BRC Master Remote Control

Alesis ADAT Blackface Digital Recorder

Binson Echorec 2 T7E magnetic disc delay c. 1967/8

Nagra SN tape recorder

Conet Project: Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations aka TCP / 1111: single CD

Midas XL390 power supply unit for XL3 analogue audio mixing console

Socapex power cable

Korg Kaoss Pad 2

Sequential Circuits Prophet 600 6-voice polyphonic analogue synthesizer

Novation Launchpad and case

Military radio microphone and earphones

Marshall foot controller

Bruel & Kjaer Phase Meter Type 2971

Bruel & Kjaer Microphone Power Supply Type 2801

Bruel & Kjaer Twin Channel Power Supply Type 2803

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