TALK 915 - Back From China

Hello everybody, or should I say ni hao?

That's my only piece of Chinese.

I know one other word, but I'll tell you why I know this.

Welcome to Sonic Talk, back 9.15, this is episode 9.15, recorded today on the 4th of

November 2026.

We had a week off last week, the week before we had a pre-record where Gertz and Paulie

talked with myself about this whole firmware hacking thing.

The reason it was off is because I've been in China at Music China and also the Beijing

Modular Commune, which was great, I'll tell you all about it later.

This is Music Technology Podcast, that's what I was doing there, filming music technology

amongst other things.

Want to say hi to the chat room, lovely to see some familiar faces, Awkward Teeth and

Hair Productions, Cheaper Card Company, Wagyu of course, who is always on hand, we much

appreciate it for doing the moderation and keeping things rolling, Geneapier3, let's

see who else we got, Chris4629, there are a bunch of you, so welcome and nice to see

you all.

We get on to our guests, we've got a full panel for the first time in ages, it feels

like maybe the summer drought has broken and we've now got guests aplenty, which is great

to see, so let me just flip over to here, what was I going to say, oh there's stuff

to talk about isn't there, no it's not that, it's this one, yeah I knew this would happen.

Just want to say if you've not been on Sonic recently and checked their YouTubes, we've

got three big shows, we had Matt in Brooklyn Synth and Pedal Expo at the beginning of October,

then we had me in Beijing Modular, and then Music China, and that's it, next week I'm

going to be in Bristol for the Audio Developer Conference for a couple of days, so I'll be

sending even more videos back but it won't be of the same number, so don't worry about

that.

We've got Stylophone On The Fly tomorrow video and lots more to come, we're filming some

more stuff as well, we've got lots of things in the pipeline, so do stay tuned, and for

those of you who were following my videos from China, I also posted a bunch of stuff

to our Patreon and YouTube members, and this is the cue for me to press the button for

you to plug joining our Patreon or YouTube membership, back after this.

Yes, so yes, anyway, back to our guests, I'm going to start over there in the US of A with

Richard Nichol from Pittsburgh Modular, with a smile on his face, I guess big events politically

over there and depending on how you felt about it, you're either really happy or really miserable,

you look happy, so we'll leave it at that, but well done, nice to see democracy working,

and as you're our American representative, I'm going to give you the condraculations,

you get the props.

How are you Richard?

They've stopped hitting your house with hammers I hear.

Yes, it's great, our house is quiet again, although it's temporary because we are getting

new windows in a few weeks, so it's going to be the same thing all over again, but hopefully,

this is, you know, in America, our houses aren't that old, but our house is, it's about

100, I think it's 127 years old, so it was time, you know, it's never had new windows,

it's never had the siding fixed, it's not a big house, but it's exhausting, but right

now it's quiet.

I can tell the age of your house by your banisters behind you, the slightly, the old style banisters,

there you go, that's, I can tell that, lovely Newell post, if you don't mind me saying.

Rich, it's lovely to have you, of course, Pittsburgh modular proprietor, chief designer,

head honcho, all of those things, I'm guessing you've been busy designing synthesizers as

well while it's been possible with the hammering going on, yes?

Actually, for the last six months or so, maybe eight months, it's been a while, I've been

sort of secretly, as a hobby, writing software again.

Before I started Pittsburgh modular, years and years ago, I was a software developer

for about 15 years, and the software I did, I wrote back then was, it was just boring

business software, but nonetheless, it was all in C++ and just, you know, it paid the

bills and it was great, so when I started Pittsburgh modular, it's because I had burned

out hard on doing math, I was just done, I said, I'm never doing math again, but hardware,

and that seemed like a fun, interesting thing to do, and that's worked out pretty well so

far, but over the last eight months or so, I have sort of dipped my toes back into software

design, and we released our first soft synth about a week ago now, and it's, the response

has been fantastic.

We did, it's called Microvolt 3901, it's available, right now it's available on Mac and PC as

a standalone app or as a plug-in, and hopefully, if Apple ever approves the app, it'll be available

on iPad soon, so it's very cool, it's sort of a history, yeah, it's sort of a history

of Pittsburgh modular synths, it has a bunch of our older oscillators and a bunch of our

older modulators, and it's, it's just, it's been, it was so much fun to do, and I'm glad

the response has been really positive to it, and I suspect we'll be doing more, because

I've been enjoying the process.

Wow, that's great, wow, what an exciting change of events, well, lovely to have you Richard,

and as ever, and we'll flip over to the other side, I'm going to finish with our final guest,

but Pauly, nice to see you there, you're rocking the, the Richard Nickel Eraserhead

themed T-shirt, which, yeah, fantastic, we saw that a little while back, it was a great,

what a great, great day, how are you, Pauly, you good?

You know, I've actually written down some things to say in this segment this time, Nick.

Oh my lord.

Can you imagine, but I always, like, get flustered and forget exactly what I'm doing, so firstly

I wanted to say I'm going to be sending you Retrocast Episode 6 today, so that we can

schedule it, it's with a guy called Florian from the German Spy Museum, and we talk all

about Cold War era spy gadgets, audio gadgets, and things like that, stuff like, you know,

EPROM based drum machines, but they're not drum machines, they read off lists of numbers,

you know, German numbers, so that they can get their codes and stuff, so that's brilliant.

Also, it's been a busy time for me, I had my first lecture at the Conservatoire, teaching

the students about scary sound design, and in fact played them some clips from Sonic

Talk of when we spoke to Charlie Clouser, and also, you know, went into my own work

in computer history and how they scared the pants off people in the 80s with, you know,

the first sampled speech and vocoders and creepy stuff like that, so that was good.

And finally, I know, three things to talk about, Arcade Dreams is finally coming out

this month.

It's the film you worked on, right?

It's been development hell for some reason, I think it's been licensing or something,

yes.

So it's coming out on the 26th, and I'm preparing a soundtrack CD, which will be available,

so yeah, that's going to be good.

Nicely.

So very, very busy.

That's the film that you did the soundtrack of, that's like the history of, was it computer

games, or was it?

Most arcade games.

Arcade games, yeah.

Yes, that's right.

So like, the golden age of arcade, up to the modern day.

Nice.

Busy times.

And last, but by no means least, Mr. Gaz Williams, who's there in Bristol, in his Garrett studio,

where he masterminds rack records and modular performances, and no doubt rehearses for Charlotte

Church pop dungeon occasionally.

How are you, Gaz?

Yeah, pretty good.

Just recovering from a late night, but yeah, I had a few things I'd like to mention as

well, actually.

Firstly, is that I'm really pleased to announce that I'm going to be performing as a guest

with Zorch at the Great Gong Gathering.

So this is a three-day gong event in Glastonbury.

Gong themselves are playing on Saturday, here and now on the Sunday.

Legendary space rock band, Jean-Luc Ponty, is he still alive?

Is he going to be there?

No, unfortunately, he's not going to be there, but Didier Malherbe, who was the great saxophonist

and flautist, he's going to be performing on the Saturday, but on the Friday, I'm going

to be performing a guest spot with Zorch, and Zorch, I think, a very significant part

of the British synthesizer scene.

They were one of the first British synth bands forming in 1973, and the great Howard Scarr,

or should I say, Gweo Zepics, as his name was, in Zorch, who's a long-time Sonic listener,

and Basil Brooks, they used to play, I think, with three EMS synthesizers.

Oh, nice.

And they're the only band to have ever recorded at Peter Zinoffi, a CMS studio as well, so

Wow.

So they've got real connections.

They've got some stories.

Yeah.

So I'm going to be doing a little guest spot with them, that's on the Friday, so the date

of this is, yeah, the 27th of November through to the 29th of November.

Oh, fantastic.

Wagos, put it in the chat.

Glastonbury Assembly Rooms.

Oh, thank you, Wagos, that's great, yeah.

So I'm just, yeah, I'm just absolutely thrilled to be asked to have a little, you know, little

guest spot there.

So that was one thing I wanted to mention.

Another thing I wanted to mention was that this Monday, there's just been, I performed

with an orchestra in the Bristol Beacon as part of Kevin Feige's Sound Dimensions.

And what was quite interesting about that was Kevin has made these various compositions

which are heavily influenced by the Italian experimental composers of the 50s and 60s.

It does include Ennio Morricone, Bruno Moderna, Luigi Nonno, and then I think these compositions

then, the kind of synthesizer work that was on them, it's not really synthesizer, it's

more electronic sort of sound.

Yeah, lots of transistor organs as well, I seem to remember.

Oh, right, yeah, but yeah, yeah, there wasn't in this particular situation, but we were

a number of the pieces, everything scored out, except, you know, I was making noise,

like white noise, filtered noises, and try to keep it all sounding something like, you

know, to give it an authenticity, and I actually used my Dreadbox Abyss for it all, and it

was brilliant.

It sounded really authentic in that kind of style, I loved it, I mean, it's such a thrill,

and it was the Bristol Ensemble who were, you know, the orchestral members, and some

really terrific other musicians, Harriet Riley on the tuned percussion.

She's awesome, yeah.

Yeah, incredible musician.

So, yes, you're just getting to basically kind of scribble over the top of these highly

trained musicians.

Like a child with a crayon.

Yeah.

Excellent, that sounds brilliant.

Bizarrely, I watched, last night, I watched the 1974 version of, and then there were none,

the Agatha Christie film, and it had Oliver Reed, Charles Aznavour, what's it, Blum, and

the music, I think, was one of those people that you mentioned, because I remember Jane

looked it up, and said that he'd worked with Ennio Morricone a lot, so.

Ah, cool.

Just thought that was an interesting, he was an Italian composer.

And the final thing, I just want to quickly mention, is I've just created a new website

for myself.

Oh, sure, yes.

Look, I've changed your lower third to the URL now, so it's back into, rather than your

YouTube channel.

There you go.

Yes.

So, I just tried to make a, I just tried to round up various things that I've done, you

know, in my musical life, and chronicle them there.

So, I'd absolutely love it if people would like to have a little look around there.

It's quite, it's quite fun, but it's got a game, even got a game on there, if you can

find it.

Oh, wow.

Easter eggs.

Well done.

Yeah.

But, yeah, that was it.

Thank you very much.

Nice one.

Well, it's lovely to have you all.

We have stuff to talk about.

I don't know where you want to start.

Let me have a look.

What have we got?

I mean, maybe if I start with a little bit of China, because purely this leads on to

some of the other topics, because of the things that are moving very rapidly at the moment

in music tech, and software, and whatnot.

So, maybe, let me see if I go to, see if I can find it.

My first, yeah, Beijing Modular, this is my walkabout from day one.

I'm not going to play all of it, but it'll just give you a sense, and you can see how

good the camera was as well.

So, I've been at Beijing Modular.

So, here I am in the morning.

You can see a bit of the sculpture behind me.

We were here last night with Tammy X and Alex.

I'll fast forward it so we can see some of the art stuff.

Quite the venue to be listening, isn't it?

And there's some more stuff here.

This is one of the venues.

This is called The Cube, which is a bit like the Tate Modern.

It reminds me of that place in...

And just imagine playing in that.

That's just unusual.

So, here there's a...

Let's see what else I can find.

Here's the Atmos.

Or something similar, or a steam pipe or something.

And that's a couple of the Dutch Modular, Belgian Modular guys.

Hang out with them quite a lot.

Anyway, I hope that gives you a flavour.

I mean, it really is a unique...

Anyway, that was it.

So, I was at Beijing Modular.

Beijing Modular organised by Tammy X, who does a fantastic job, together with Alex.

And a load of volunteers, 50 volunteers, they put this together.

And it's literally...

Wow.

I want to give a shout-out to Kino, who picked me up at the airport.

And also a shout-out to the excellently named Shimmer Green,

who took me to the station for my train to Shanghai.

But honestly, it was a really, really eye-opening event.

Absolutely fascinating.

I mean, I shot lots of interesting videos there.

You can check them all out.

But one of the things that came up, I guess, was later in Music China.

Everybody was talking about firmware and the hacking and stuff.

Because things moved on a pace.

We were slightly ahead of the game from our previous cover show that we did with Gertz,

who I also, incidentally, saw in China as well.

He was there.

Really interesting overall, just the Chinese experience,

but all of the other stuff as well.

So, I don't know if I've got any...

I mean, some of you may have watched some of the videos.

I did post a load of blogs and walkabouts to our members as well, which are kind of good fun.

Rich, have you been to China?

It sort of strikes me as that you would have done as a synth designer.

It's the sort of thing that one does these days.

Have you been?

I haven't been to China yet.

I can't wait to go.

Your videos, those walkthroughs were amazing.

I was so jealous.

Oh, my God.

That Beijing show looked like the coolest thing I'd ever seen.

They really went hard on this thing.

And the amount of art that was produced for this

and the scope that they did it at was just...

I was awestruck by your video.

I couldn't believe it.

I actually texted my partner.

I'm like, we have to go to this next year.

This looks so fun and looks really, really cool.

So, I was watching all your videos, super jealous.

The only thing I will say is there were many people there who were first-timers in China,

and them, like me, had all these preconceived ideas about what it would be like.

You know, there'd be people with guns on every corner suppressing the population.

And it really couldn't have been further from the truth.

Really, really very interesting overall.

But that's an aside.

But, yeah, what happened was all of us who'd been for the first time,

we all had this kind of slightly...

It was like culture shock, but it's not that different.

It's just the notion that a country of that size and that economic power

can be run on such a completely different set of parameters.

You know, collectivism and without democracy.

It just sort of blows your mind.

It makes you sort of question all of the things you know about your own society.

We all had this same...

I had that conversation with everybody I met who'd been there the first time and said...

I mean, one of the things that I found is just like I thought,

as the West, we don't stand a bloody chance

because they are so organised, so much planning.

You know, you go to the streets there,

there are 50 kinds of electronic vehicles you've never heard of,

manufacturers we've never heard of,

and you can times that via washing machines, whatever.

Not synthesizers yet, but that's starting to happen.

It's really starting to blur.

Very interesting overall, I think.

I can't really say...

I don't think there was a load of stuff that really blew my mind in terms of product,

but there were some really good things and lots of experimental things.

Things that are just like, hey, what do you think?

This is an idea.

And also lots of manufacturers that say,

oh yeah, we make all the stuff for manufacturer A, B, C, D,

and these are our own things.

There are lots of people there who are making things, OEM stuff,

and that was also quite enlightening as well.

Very, very interesting.

If you can stomach it, it's worth watching as many of the videos you can

because you'll get a sort of sense of it.

While I'm on the brain dump thing,

big shout out to Andy for doing all the edits of that.

That was just mind-blowing.

And all the sponsors for supporting us.

And also all the people who were courageous enough

to speak on camera in not their native language.

That was the one thing I found really challenging

because I speak no Chinese at all,

apart from xie xie and ni hao, which is thank you and hello.

That's it.

And badly.

So many of these people were just –

some of them were terribly, terribly nervous.

Some of them didn't kind of – just gave it a go.

And it was really heartbreaking to see some of the people

who were unkind in the comments because it's just, you know,

screw you, you try it.

Do you know what I mean?

It was really – so fair play.

And I think it's going to be better next time

and we'll figure out other things.

We've got a few videos that we shot in Chinese

because there was just no way around it,

which will be coming up.

I'm just waiting for the translations to be okay

because I want to check all of that out.

So there.

That's my brain dump.

Modular China.

Modular Commune China.

Absolutely fascinating.

And then Music China afterwards.

I've got a video from there as well,

but there's a whole load of stuff.

Yeah, any questions, I'm happy to answer,

seeing as I'm the only person who's been,

I'm guessing as you haven't yet.

I was invited to perform there actually,

but unfortunately we couldn't do it.

So hopefully next year.

So there was an incredible lineup of performers.

150.

Wow.

But I would like to, what it was,

basically what they did is that venue was a gallery

and so those installations were there already

and then they worked around them,

put the PAs in, chose the rooms.

Some of the rooms were a bit large,

so it made it quite hard for sort of techno.

You were the six second bass drum reverb perhaps.

They just turned it up.

That's all that happened.

So it was very much like an EMOM.

So there were lots and lots of local artists

who would come along and do a 20 minute set

and they were going all day every day.

So that's why there were so many.

So it was on the EMOM style.

So they just had, I don't know,

like maybe six rows of tables with 20 people set up

and they just come along, plug you in,

right, your turn, unplug.

So similar, so principle.

And then there were sort of master classes

and other artists.

Anon Bast was there.

Shout out to Mandy Backer from Jungle of Wires.

She was such good.

I met her for the first time.

We really hit it off.

I really enjoyed her company and she was great fun.

She did a little video with us as well.

So they were sort of dotted with other international

sort of slightly more well known artists

and it was very well curated.

Really, really very well made from that point of view.

So I mean, did you, I mean,

it feels like there's a whole new,

a huge amount of people coming into music technology

there in China.

Was that really apparent then?

Was there a lot of people?

Was there a lot of punters there?

Yeah, it's very interesting because the art,

the district that it's held in is like an art district.

So it's, think about sort of a Berlin warehouse district

that's been taken over by artists and sort of modernised

and, you know, poshed up a bit.

That whole area was kind of like that.

So lots of galleries, lots of other things.

So the whole event was free.

So people who were just there for the weekend

when it gets quite busy, they just came in.

So there are lots of people there who had no idea

what they were letting themselves in for.

And also lots of people who came specifically for it.

There are lots of people travelled from outside Beijing.

I met quite a few Westerners who'd been living in China

for sort of 20 years.

A British guy, a guy called, I think he was called Kevin, I think.

I forget his name.

But I spent, you know, I had some very interesting chats

with those sort of people.

So a big, a big sort of, just around, you know,

lots of different sorts of people.

It wasn't like rammed as in really bad, really mad

Synth & Pedal Expo where you can barely move.

But there were plenty of people over sort of two or three days.

So it worked very well from that point of view.

And they were very pleased with the number of people that showed up.

But I can heartily recommend both Gaz and Rich

that you look into going next time.

Because Devin Ballinger was there.

He stayed at the same hotel.

So we hung out a bit.

Lots and lots of fun people to, you know,

just really interesting place to be.

So, I mean, looking at the footage though,

I mean, there were some interesting things.

The Erica Synths graphic sequencer had an interesting approach.

I thought that was kind of cool.

Yeah, that did look good, didn't it?

Yeah.

That was good.

And, uh, anything else?

I liked the look of the wing pinger.

Funny little name.

Oh, yeah.

But he looks really cool.

Yeah.

He was really cool with the two resonant filters

and the kind of touch screen interface.

Like a sort of modern, like an update of this really, isn't it?

Yes, kind of.

Yeah, it was.

Except it was more, there wasn't a resonator.

There were two pingable filters that have very high Qs,

so slightly different things.

Yes.

But, yeah, there was some great stuff there.

And, of course, the most bizarre thing was

I got introduced to a guy called Wang Di,

who is the godfather of Chinese rock and roll,

who's one of the first producers in the 70s, in the 80s and 90s.

And his people came over and said,

do you want to come to my studio?

And normally I'd just go, oh, I don't know, it's, you know, going to be buzzed.

He says, no, it's three minutes around the corner, so we just went to his place,

couldn't speak any English, couldn't speak any Chinese,

showed me his studio and came out.

And it was just, it was a lovely sort of, you know,

it was just all of that stuff.

Just absolutely fantastic.

Brilliant.

Such, such friendly people.

Such friendly people.

And for a city, this is all of the cities,

again, quite like Japan in that, you know,

you could leave your handbag on a bus stop

and it would be there six hours later,

or somebody would have left a note saying it's in the shop across the road.

You know, it's that, just no street crying whatsoever.

Very interesting.

Wow.

So, yeah.

So, yeah, I got accused of China maxing,

which is apparently a thing.

Don't know what that means, but yeah.

I think you would find it very...

So, anyway, that's that.

So, but the other thing that came out of it,

because people, while we were out, there were things that came out.

So, for instance, let me see.

The Akai sample key has come out, which, let me find that.

Yeah.

Which is also open source,

and this seems to be a direct result to the Envave people who I spoke to.

So, I'll just play this quickly.

So, everybody...

Well, actually, it's half past.

I should do an ad.

Sorry.

Scrub that.

I'm coming back for this.

I'll be back after this.

Short, short, short message.

Yes.

And now I'll come back and I'll play the video that I was going to play.

Sorry about that.

Let's do that again.

So, everybody's talking about sample keys,

so we decided to show some more stuff that we can do with this product.

First of all, I asked Claude here to create a polyphonic virtual analog synth

with an oscilloscope UI, and this is what it gave me.

Then I asked him to make a bass sort of instrument and just add it onto my unit.

Next, here we've got the stock software, just to show you that it can actually do lots of really cool things.

So, for example...

Yeah, interestingly, he's not switching the patches within those individual things,

so I don't know how much of this...

But, again, MPC sample.

I really like the look of this.

I don't know how much it is yet, but I think...

What, the MPC key, sorry, the key sample.

Sample key, that's what it is.

But the MPC sample was about £325.30, so this might be more expensive.

But the fact that they've opened it up is a really interesting thing,

and I'd be curious to know whether they've given access to the bootloader,

because as we spoke to with Gertz in the last Sonic talk we did,

one of those things is if you brick your machine, if you don't have access to the bootloader,

there's not much that can be done about it,

whereas if you do, you can just put the original software back on,

assuming you haven't actually fried anything,

and it will just come back to how it was and you start again.

So those are the things that are kind of interesting.

But, I don't know, Gertz, I know the MPC sample and the MPC key, this just looks great.

I love the look of this.

I might have to actually put my hand in my pocket and get this.

This looks fantastic.

I was feeling the same.

I mean, I played around with the MPC sample, and I thought it was a really good product.

It's got a great feel, and it's, you know, for a relatively cheap product,

it's actually got a good quality build about it.

So assuming then that that is going to be the same on the key,

and I don't see any reason why not,

I think this kind of is something that we've wanted for years, really, something like this.

It's like, well, I say that, and then there's this open source aspect to it as well.

But the actual form factor is super pleasing.

Yeah, very little.

Yeah.

So I'm guessing then if, like, with being able to vibe code it or whatever,

you could create your own, you know, really bespoke performance keyboard, say, for instance.

Well, perhaps so.

I mean, it's still quite small.

I mean, it's not full size kind of, you know.

Oh, yeah, I appreciate that.

But, you know, in terms of, like, you know, if you were, like, doing a gig,

and you were doing a load of kind of prog rock stuff or whatever,

and you wanted a, you know, you could have, like, a set list,

and you could have all of the different kind of sounds that you want for the set list.

Yeah.

Yeah, true.

You know, and create that specifically for, you know,

so if you were in a Genesis tribute band or something, you know, you could, you know.

Get an old soloist or something.

Yeah, make it a pro soloist or something like that, you know.

Well, I mean, I suspect, I mean, you know, that it's going to have limitations, you know.

It's not got masses of DSP and spare code that you could just kind of write.

Code is super efficient, you know.

But, yes.

But if you put the samples in, if you put the samples in, and, I mean,

it would be interesting to see.

We were going to talk possibly about the decent samplers kind of auto sample function.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yes, am I.

I love that.

But, I mean, if you had that, if you then sort of somehow add something like that into it,

like an auto sampler, you know, into that form factor.

Could be very, very interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't know, Rich, what do you think about this?

I mean, lovely form factor.

I mean, we've talked about MPCs before, and it feels like this somehow.

I like the fact that it's, you know, the bigger MPCs just look a little bit overly complicated to focus on.

You know, this just focuses on the basics, which I quite like the idea.

I like that somehow.

Yeah, there's something about taking an MPC, like the MPC-1 or the MPC-Q,

and removing the DAW from it, and that's kind of what these feel like.

And I think that's why people really are drawn to them,

because it gives you the instrument without the burden of this huge DAW workflow that you have.

And I think that's what people are really drawn to.

That's what I'm drawn to.

I think this thing, the MPC, the small one, the sample is great for that.

The form factor is fantastic.

I'm not a keyboard player, so I would stick with the sample version.

But, yeah, the keys are great.

And for someone that can play, it seems, yeah, it's a fun thing to have sitting on your desk that you can turn on and just enjoy.

I think that's where a lot of this vibe coding and this open sourcing of code and all that is really getting to,

is it's opening the doors to make it easier to just enjoy your instruments and to play.

I don't think every doubt there is hurry up and download Cloud Code and start coding these things.

But I think for a small community, that's the fun.

But I think for the people that are just going to sort of get these instruments and turn them on and use them, they're fantastic.

And the idea that they're becoming more powerful incrementally,

even if you just stick to what Akai is putting on these things, it's going to be amazing what you can do.

I'm very excited for this stuff.

These little MPCs are great.

And there's a lot of this stuff coming out from a lot of different companies right now.

Some of it is sort of vaporware, and some of it is sort of, oh, just imagine what you can do.

But for actual musicians, I think there's going to be in the next couple of years,

there's going to be a tremendous amount of creativity brought into these.

What would have been sort of beginner instruments just a couple of years ago are becoming professional tools that you can really cater to very specific artists.

It's amazing.

I love it.

Yeah, I totally agree.

I know, Pauly, I can see in the same way that the, remember the, what is it, the MicroKorg?

Was it the original MicroKorg?

MicroKorg was just like, it was on everybody.

Every indie band had one of those that they would play a bit of synth line on it and then turn back to their guitar.

I can see this being sort of the sample equivalent of that and seeing it everywhere.

Do you know what I mean?

Because it will play stems.

Definitely.

It's really powerful.

I love the fact that they've gone back to beige.

Akai needs to be the beautiful beige colour of the old samplers.

So I don't care what it sounds like, you know, as long as it's beige.

As long as it's beige.

And says Akai on it, I'll buy it.

But yeah, obviously, as a professional contrarian these days, vibe coding is not particularly interesting to me.

And I'm wondering if we're almost, you remember that options paralysis we had in the 2000s?

Yes, absolutely.

Where you had too many plugins installed on your Mac or PC.

Are we kind of doing that to hardware now?

Fair point.

We're just stuffing our envaves and our Akais with hundreds of things.

But I am interested in seeing the SDK because I am a big pure data fan.

And there exists great tools, ones called Heavy, to convert pure data patches into C++.

And so that's what I'm excited about, you know.

And I've created a pure data workflow where I can import samples into pure data and then get them into my sense.

You know, I made a bunch for Drumlog and some used FM, some used samples, things like that.

So that's exciting to me.

So, yeah, my point is that it doesn't have to be generated by Claude.

People who actually like to tinker with code, although they're a dying breed, can work on these instruments too if they're open source.

Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it?

I take your point about option paralysis.

But there's also the concept of using hardware because, I mean, all of us do this.

We all have our little setups and we find our little workflows and we maybe use tools in the way that they weren't originally designed.

Or we find something that has a specific function that enables it to work in the way we want.

And I wonder whether or not it's more akin to that.

So you might find that you can turn the Akai, the sample keys, into, like Gaz said, an auto sampler, hardware auto sampler.

Or something that enables you to do something else that is a stepping stone to get to where you need to go.

Rather than just kind of which firmware am I going to – I mean, it's hard enough just flipping patches.

Imagine flipping firmwares because, I mean, each time you do it, you're going to have to reboot.

It's a really long load time.

It's not quite the same sort of immediate thing, is it?

No, it isn't.

I did want to state briefly that if you do completely brick a machine, there are ways back.

But it means you have to buy specialised little headers.

I think it's called JTAG.

Headers are USB to JTAG device and flash the pins on the device to recover a bricked device.

So usually you can't completely – usually there's a way.

But you have to be a bit techie, basically, to do it.

Yeah. No, fair.

Funnily enough, I went to the sort of digital part in Shanghai.

I found like a digital supermarket.

You'd go to the digital zone, and it was like two floors of white goods and second-hand hard drives.

And then you go upstairs, and there's all these little booths with people with just kind of stuff all over the place,

like Blade Runner, soldering on these micro, tiny little circuit boards.

Oh, my God, that's amazing.

It was like, ooh, I really wanted to film that, but I felt very self-conscious of sort of just pointing cameras at everybody.

But I didn't get around to it, so yeah.

I'd really love to walk through there in a clear raincoat looking cool.

It was that sort of place.

It was absolutely that sort of place.

It really was.

I think you could have done that, and nobody would have batted an eye.

Gad, you look like you were about to say something.

Well, I just thought, you know, just whilst we were talking about firmwares and stuff, you know,

PolyEnd have done it now with the Tracker line.

They've just open-sourced that.

Right.

Wow.

Those are lovely physical devices.

The original Tracker, you know, is a really nice kind of form factor.

It's a really cool thing.

So they've also issued a pretty significant update for it as well and now put it out to the community.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

I mean, they're really, really nice.

I wonder, I mean, as a question, I know we covered this in the last show that we did,

but as a question, do you think it might, and I guess, Rich, you might be best placed to answer this,

do you think it might actually lead to sales of more hardware because you can,

you're not only just buying the thing that it does,

but you could buy the thing that it might do that you could download from somebody else

or you could do yourself?

I mean, I wonder whether it might actually increase sales rather than have the opposite effect.

And also, you might have to buy more because you keep bricking them, possibly, I suppose.

I think it will increase sales certainly right now because this is sort of on the –

it's in everybody's mind right now and everybody's talking about it.

But I think once the sort of initial rush of this is over, the idea will be that, yeah,

there will be certain people that will say, I like the form factor of this,

but I want to do something else,

and they will buy it because they know that they can work on the firmware and create something

and do something that's specific to them using this beautiful instrument that they love the look of.

And I think what will happen is there's going to become –

you're going to buy for the form factor and you're going to buy for the hardware feature set.

And really, these are just small computers and they're going to start –

you could program it to do whatever you want.

What it's – what I think you're going to see is then that where –

that's going to diverge is when companies start to say,

okay, here are some hardware things built into ours that aren't available in other things.

So in the world of synthesis, and I don't know why I would mention this, but I design hardware synthesis.

Log filters, for instance.

Yeah, say you have hardware filters built in or you have oscillators

or you have something that is specific to your brand or your image as a company,

that's going to allow you to stand out from the crowd

and to offer something that you're not going to get from these generic boxes

that are now essentially just computer controllers with a computer built in.

Because that's sort of what all these things are turning into,

is just what type of computer controller do I want sitting outside of this computer

and what do I want it to look like?

I think that's very exciting.

But what I think it is is there's a very vocal minority right now

that are sort of praising the idea of this,

where most musicians I don't think are going to be downloading alternative firmwares.

No, not for a gig.

I've got a stadium gig tonight.

I know.

I'm just going to try some new firmware in my workstation.

Why ever not? I don't think so.

Yeah, I don't see that happening.

Yeah, another interesting question is what happens when the hardware has an FPGA in it?

Because you can reprogram the kind of electronics of it.

Is that a thing that you could – I mean, I just don't know.

I mean, I assume also FPGAs can be set up so that you could break them.

You know, you can connect things in a wrong way and it might sizzle or something.

I don't know.

I mean, it's an interesting thought.

That could be an interesting idea.

And then you get the sort of notion of these kind of superstar coders,

DSP coders like, you know, Emily before she sort of retired

and the Sine Vibes people and, you know, some of these –

Plogue, yeah.

Plogue, who will curate and go,

I've come up with this thing.

This hardware has allowed me to realise this amazing idea that I couldn't have, you know.

I wonder if that's what we'll end up with.

There is some news there as well.

Emily has just released the – has open sourced Beads,

which is the final Mutable Instruments module,

and wasn't currently open – wasn't available open source.

Now is.

So that's going to probably be appearing in all sorts of places now.

Yes.

It's Beads.

And this is how fast that stuff works is I already put that in the Microfold software

that I released.

Wow.

I hear she was kind of forced into it because someone disassembled it

and then said to her, oh, can I release it?

And she didn't answer.

And then a week later released it herself.

So she must have been like, the writing's on the wall.

I've got to, you know.

And I think it's fair to say, you know,

there was one example when I was in China.

You know, Soma people were there.

They were one of our sponsors, which I want to say thanks to that.

But they were there, and I filmed a couple of things with Tim Croker.

Really nice guy.

We spent a couple of evenings together.

Really had great fun with him.

And also, so Glenn was there as well,

and they had heard that someone had basically made –

I can't remember what the name of the unit was – one of their units.

And I went upstairs, and the immediate thought was, uh-oh,

does this mean there are people in Chinese factories

ready to stamp these out and undercut us?

And it wasn't actually that at all.

It was a very sweet girl who had just built one because she loved it

and wanted to make her own thing and figure it out.

And she goes, oh, no, because I went up to her and said,

and I said, oh, what's this?

And she said, oh, I made it.

And I said, ah, you're the person that they've been talking about.

I probably shouldn't film this unless I speak to Soma

because it may give the wrong impression.

But she just did it for fun, and they saw her.

I didn't get a chance to go back to her in the end.

And they just saw her, and they said, oh, yeah, that's cool.

That's the spirit of kind of – so it's more of a sense of enthusiasm

rather than an evil genius ready to sort of just completely

rip off your equipment and sell it.

You know, that does happen as well, of course.

But, yeah, it's a different thing.

Nick, did you see the Dreadbox Electo, the new Dreadbox?

I haven't yet.

I mean, literally, I've been – for almost the last three weeks,

I've just been kind of head down in –

I mean, I think it was announced.

Behind a firewall.

It was announced yesterday.

And I think what is quite – it's quite an interesting one

in that it's just the reason why I've mentioned it.

It's like a – yes, but, I mean, it's kind of super simple

in that it's just like two channels.

And it's – I just thought that the way that you program it is great.

It feels very much like more of a modular way of going about stuff.

Right.

Okay.

Interesting.

Yeah.

I think it's worth what – it's worth checking out almost

because it's almost like an anathema to some of the things

we have just been talking about.

It's kind of – you really have to perform it.

Yeah.

Right.

Hold that thought because I need to get another ad in.

Got to pay the bills, folks.

And we'll be back shortly after this.

And we're back.

So I'm just trying to think what else we could go to because, I mean,

we've also got the Behringer KICK.

I mean, I went to see Behringer at Music China.

They had a big booth.

But it's interesting, the way that things work in China is very different.

You don't get, like, the brand showing up.

It's like the distributor with the brands on it.

So, for instance, Korg had a booth about the size of this table.

And it was just – it really sort of blew my mind.

It's because they don't have a distributor in – that does big synth

stuff in China.

So they were there in a sort of much smaller capacity.

The same with Roland.

You know, Roland probably had something in the drum hall but not really much

in the synth department.

It's really fascinating because, for those who didn't know,

Tammy X, who organized Music Beijing – Modular Beijing in Music China,

think about the super booth concept from Music Messa Days, you know,

where it was a big – a huge booth sort of size.

This was much bigger than a booth.

It was, like, an eighth of the hall with just sub-booths in it.

So she organizes that as well, which I find kind of mind-boggling,

to be honest, but, you know, really kind of a big shaker and mover in

bringing all those people together.

So I forgot where that was taking me.

Oh, yeah, and then we went to see Behringer, and she showed me.

But Behringer had a lot of things, and they open-sourced – what was it?

This kick thing, isn't it?

This is on Synth Anatomy.

Tom's been on top of things, as usual.

Let me see if I can find that.

Yeah, I mean, you know, that's an MPC-1, really, isn't it?

But they've open-sourced it.

But again, this is a picture.

It wasn't on the booth.

Who knows when it's going to be ready?

But this is just the sort of speed at which things are moving,

and obviously the way that the Behringer organization just throws

all this stuff out, and some of it may come to fruition.

And in a way, that's quite – must be quite liberating.

I mean, I know there's a lot of other elements to the whole

Behringer business model that are distasteful for some or whatever,

but the point is, if you've got those resources and you can just go,

yeah, give us your ideas, and you throw them out to the public,

one of them just goes, yeah, fantastic, let's make that,

and then it's worth doing, and you take it further.

I saw the Pro-16 there.

I saw a Poly-8, which I'd not seen before.

I saw the BCR-32, which was pretty cool.

So there's – there are a lot – the BCR – yeah, the – that wasn't there.

But this Behringer kick, they're aiming to make it at 150 bucks.

I mean –

Wow.

Again, it's all – well, this point is just words, isn't it?

So it's hard to be absolutely sure.

I think Behringer are streaming the live – they're live streaming every day now,

and they're streaming a factory tour at the same time as us.

I don't know if people are over there watching that,

but it's – maybe they've got two screens up.

But so it just feels like there's a massive pace.

Everybody's just sort of really speeding up,

and there's a sort of interesting new –

Yes.

I don't know.

Richard, I mean, it must be terrifying in a way,

because things take as long as they take.

You make them.

You want to get – put them out right.

You do that.

You know, a concept you have 12 months ago, 18 months later,

you might just be about to release it, and then, you know, the market's –

it's very difficult to plan for, I'd imagine.

But in a way, it's exciting as a consumer to a degree.

As a manufacturer, we're – me and my partner,

we're talking about this stuff every day,

and now what we think it's going to do to our business

and to the market in general.

And, you know, we're musicians as well, so, you know,

how does it affect us as musicians is obvious.

And I think from, you know, a design perspective,

it does take us – 18 months for us is a pretty fast process for a sort of

full-blown hardware instrument.

We've been – we have a drum machine coming out in January,

and it'll be right around 18 months or 19 months when that's available,

and we feel like we flew that through,

and we're very proud of how fast we were able to do it.

Things like the SV-2 took us three years to get it from idea to the market.

And, yeah, the market has sort of moved on from these big kind of battleship

monosynth things.

But as far – you can't – as a manufacturer, you can't sort of follow that.

You can't chase this hot thing.

We can't sit here and say, okay, now we need to make an FM-1.

It's not going to work.

What makes Pittsburgh interesting, and I think what all these hardware companies

interesting is that they sort of follow their muse,

and they build stuff for them that's interesting to them and to us.

And that is what I think we offer as designers is we offer a creative angle

and a point of view instead of just –

I do want to interject.

All right.

Okay.

Go, Paulie.

I do want to interject that I don't necessarily think this was done to be mean-spirited,

but one line of the advertising for the new Behringer Kick was the line,

imagine millions of creators innovating together instead of a handful of engineers

behind closed doors.

Gosh.

Yeah, that's –

God, goodness.

I suppose – yeah.

It could have been an accident.

It could have just been the way in my British accent.

It does sound a little bit like Mr. Bond.

Yeah, there is a bit of that.

I suppose maybe I should rephrase that, Richard.

It's not necessarily the time it takes you to finish something,

but if you have a whole load of ideas and you tell people about them and say,

we're going to make this, what do you think?

Maybe that's what's happening.

So people are just going to go, what do you think?

Should we make it?

And then you make it.

I mean, there's only two of you or however many there are in your company.

Maybe – because I'd imagine that MPC1 concept or that MPC Kick or whatever it is,

the Behringer Kick concept probably has been cooking for several months

or many months or a year or whatever,

but they've just announced it early to see whether or not they should push it

over the next milestones maybe.

So maybe there's that.

Maybe I'm thinking of that rather than just – so throwing it out there before it's ready

to see if anybody wants it yet kind of concept.

There seems to be some one-ups going on between Behringer and MPC right now.

MPC was – or Akai was clearly not ready to start talking about the sample keyboard yet,

but they did that in a response to this Behringer,

which is very clearly a clone of the MPC1 with the idea that it's –

I'm not sure all these companies are throwing the word around open source pre-liberally.

I'm not sure exactly what they mean by that.

They're saying this thing is open source.

Does that mean this goes forward or up on their website that there's an –

or does that mean that there's an SDK that you can go and build towards it with?

There's a lot.

Is the firmware open source?

There's a lot here.

I think people are very excited right now.

People are reaching a new sort of era in what you can do digitally,

but no one's really defined what any of that means yet.

So I think there's a lot of excitement and enthusiasm.

How much really comes out of this I think we'll see in the next 12 to 18 months.

Yeah, I think that's fair.

It's going to be interesting.

That's a fair point.

I should add I did do a video of sounds only of the Korg – not the Korg,

the Behringer Poly 8, which I thought was quite nice, a very simple synthesizer.

I went back and I did shoot a Pro 16 video as well,

but honestly it didn't really sound all that good if I'm perfectly honest.

I was like hmm, the Poly 8 sounded better or was more immediate.

Maybe it just wasn't finished.

I mean it was impressive hardware, but it just didn't really kind of go hmm.

It didn't really sound all that fantastic.

The originals, because it's monaural, it's like with my Prophet 600,

you kind of need chorus to really bring it home, the Prophet 5 and the Prophet 600.

A little bit of chorus, just stereo it,

and of course the Poly 6 already has ensemble built in,

so that might have been the distinct difference you were getting.

No, really not.

If I was going to say one of the highlights was not the effects on the Poly 8,

I mean I didn't even realise it had them.

Really? Wow.

You switch the chorus and the ensemble on and it's all in mono,

so it sort of doesn't make any –

so I'm like well, the point of those time-based things,

isn't it surely to add stereo to a mono thing, but it didn't.

And it didn't on the original anyway,

so I just thought that could have been an upgrade that worked, but it was all right.

Definitely.

I just think – but my impression from that, because I went –

I want a big shout out to – I think it was Kevin who did the walk around.

He didn't actually work for Behringer, he works for the distributor,

and he was just game, he just said yeah, I'll show you around,

didn't have anything, any answers.

He got – again, people just sort of flacked him,

and it's like no, you don't understand how things work over there.

People just want to be helpful.

They don't think they're going to be kind of castigated

for not knowing everything about the unit.

That's not how it works in that situation, but anyway.

I went out and said to him, do you want me to say anything,

because it felt like he was getting a bit of flack,

and it's like no, he said I'm fine, so just to say.

Yeah, I can't remember what this topic was even about,

but it was the Behringer kit.

That was the sort of – so that was interesting.

I mean it was just – and lots of people were talking about this,

and I spoke to Envave.

Envave, you know, obviously the FM1 kind of started this whole discussion,

and again, it's because it's got a bootloader,

which means whatever you do, you can always get it back,

which makes a big difference.

But also they had little keyboard versions with the same engine.

Those are hackable as well.

So there are things with – which is only 80 bucks,

and it's got a load of ADSR and all that other stuff on it,

and that's hackable too.

Just fill your boots.

It's just the FM1 really caught the public's imagination,

and they literally – they said – I spoke to –

I forget the name of the chap I spoke to,

but he said, yeah, we've been making loads of stuff for years.

We make OEM stuff as well,

and this one just seems to have gone doof.

Everybody wants one.

Everybody's getting them and messing around.

It's really interesting how that zeitgeist happens, isn't it?

And then they've got a problem of making enough of them, I suppose.

I've done all the ads, so we can do whatever we like, Matt.

Wild times.

Oh, gosh.

It's five o'clock already.

I can't believe it.

Could I very quickly mention the Plogue thing, the gaming console?

Oh, yes.

Just because I thought it looked cool.

I wanted to – yeah, I wanted to quickly –

and I'll do a shout-out for the decent sampler thing,

because I think that's –

Millions of cheap emulation handhelds

could be turned into musical instruments instead of e-waste.

That was the silly idea I had

while porting our plug-ins to Linux over the last two years.

Turns out it's not that easy.

They often run on limited front-ends, read-only file systems and old keramels.

But since they boot from SD cards,

I thought I could try my hands at designing a real-time sound-centric kernel

without any risk of bricking.

Soldered serial devices and learned so much

that I eventually had mainline Debian running.

When I realized it was powerful enough to run my plug-ins,

I invited other developers to try my prototype host.

What happened next was unexpected.

Their imagination exploded with new gestures and sonic ideas

tailored specifically for that form factor.

We've got a lot of work ahead of us still,

but it's now time for you to check if you already have

one of those cheap things collecting dust in a drawer.

There we are, another example of superstar David Fiennes,

who's one of the superstar coders.

What a great idea.

It just seems like such a, you know, such a fantastic idea.

I mean, I guess you'd want –

the funny thing – there was an article on Peter Kern's thing,

and the thing that I thought was funny, Paulie,

was that they said it's probably going to get MIDI 2.0

before many mainstream synths get MIDI 2.0.

I thought it was quite funny.

I thought it was amazing.

I don't actually have one of the specific consoles

that was mentioned.

They're all kind of listed on a wiki page,

and I think it's the RK something something 36 something chipset

that you need to get it working.

So I went on eBay and had a look,

and most of these consoles are 30 to 40 quid.

With a few of the more expensive ones, 50 quid,

and I just thought, what a great idea.

But most people might, if you're a gamer,

have one knocking around in a drawer that you haven't used in ages,

and I just thought, wow.

And I think all of the chip, all of the Ploke chip sounds,

emulations, you know, the SID, the FM, et cetera,

are going to be on this,

this new console portable controller.

I'm just so excited.

Sorry, that's me.

No, fair enough.

I think that's fair.

I mean, it's great.

I mean, and also, to be fair, as an industry of computer users,

we're sort of being forced into this

because we can't buy computers with enough RAM

or enough graphics cards or enough hard disk space.

We as the public just don't have access to that.

It's wasteful for us to own RAM, Nick.

Who said that?

Was it the guy, was it Sam?

I think his name's Sam, isn't it?

Yeah.

Sam Altman, is it Sam Altman?

Sam Altman, is it?

Yeah, yeah.

What a twat.

Yeah.

Anyway.

But while I've got, what I do want to do...

I've been watching my language on this show for, like, five years.

I think that's well deserved.

One thing I did want to do a shout-out before we go,

Decent Sampler, which is, as you know,

we do a lot of our instruments in Decent Sampler.

In fact, I've just been using it to sample the Morpho Econ 6,

which is out on Friday the 6th.

I've got a review there.

It's been out to members since I went to China.

I just sort of threw it out there.

Let me just play this, because I shot a little bit.

They've added an auto sampler,

so you can sample direct into Decent Sampler.

Let me just show you the interface.

I just wanted to show this.

I've been using this, actually.

So you go to Preset Manager, and then there's a new auto sampler.

So the auto sampler, you just set your MIDI in and out.

You do your business.

You set it up.

I mean, much like something like Sample Robot does layers,

it does intervals, it does multiple things,

and then you record your samples.

You get metering, auto loops,

and then you can just sort of paste it into your template,

so it makes the creation of Decent Sampler instruments much, much easier,

certainly for me.

So this is actually quite a big deal, I think.

I'm going to use the game-changer word here,

certainly in our workflow, because I previously –

Sample Robot, which is an absolutely brilliant thing

and does way more than this.

I mean, they're not dissing it in any way.

You can sample from software and all sorts of things,

but it requires a multi-step workflow,

whereas this one, I just go sample it.

Yeah, that's fine.

Check the loops, take the samples,

paste them into my template, which is the entire UI

with all the effects, all the graphics and everything,

save it, and there's a new instrument.

It's like, wow, that took like three, four, ten minutes to make a new synth.

It's really – or one new patch.

Really powerful, and I think this could absolutely change

the way that Decent Sampler is perceived.

I couldn't find any new – there's a blog post.

Nobody's done a video about any of this.

It's really interesting, and it's a fantastic way to make your own samples.

Really is very, very –

And free still? Completely free, right?

Totally free, yeah. Totally free.

Very, very cool.

And it's also got – it's now got additional building blocks,

so it's got a little granular oscillator.

It's got the virtual analog oscillator,

so you can add those into the key groups and it will be generated.

So I haven't tested those yet.

I might try some of that because it would mean a lot of synth redesign,

and Venus Theory did such a great job on ours.

To change it would require a whole lot of graphics,

which may be something I'll do in the future.

Really cool. I have to say, really cool.

I don't know, Richard, if you need to sample any of your instruments,

that's the way to go, I would say.

Gareth, sorry, you were just about to –

No, I was just going to say the Bento does have that feature built in.

Yes, it does.

And just a quick shout-out, the Bento 1.6 has recently dropped

and is massively improved.

It's massively improved, this is now.

So just – yeah, that was all I was going to mention.

Yeah, that's fair.

It was one of those things where the hardware perhaps came out

before all the firmware was done, and it's a tricky one

because I love 1010 Music, we love all of their stuff,

and I think it just maybe, you know, it was a step too far on initial.

And I hope it's doing well for them.

They're still – you know, it's something they're still pushing.

So, yeah, maybe you could do a video on the 1010 Bento box, Gareth,

on your channel when you do a live stream with all the new features.

I think I will do that.

Okay.

Yeah.

But that auto-sampling stuff, I've been doing it.

I've been sampling various things.

And that idea that you just can specify the key range,

how many velocity layers, and just set it off to do it.

I've been sampling my Integra 7.

It's got some great sounds in that.

So I've been making, like, orchestral samples,

which I then use in the modular rig.

Yeah, that's handy.

The 1010 Bento – no, the BitBox has got that auto-sampling in.

So, yeah.

Well, funny, so when – last NAMM or the NAMM before,

I forget which is the one that's – there's a little – one of the little fireball-y things.

I forget which one it was.

It's the purple one.

That's like a sampler.

And with that and a little battery and a couple of MIDI adapters,

I had this idea that we would just go around and sample all the new Integra 7.

So if somebody had, like, here's a synth, and it would just go,

yeah, we'll sample a couple of patches, release them.

But it wasn't quite – maybe it was very fiddly on that time,

but you could do it with basically just a tiny little Tupperware box

with kind of a few things and cables and plug it in and just go go.

And it would just go da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

But it was a little bit too fiddly to do at that time, so maybe that's improved.

But I love the idea of just being able to sample instruments from trade shows

and say, here's a preview, you know, sort of thing.

But I didn't get it to work.

So, well, thank you so much, everybody.

I know it was a lot of me just brain-dumping China on everybody,

but it was really a fabulous experience.

Brain-dumping China is a great title.

Yeah, that is a good title.

I might use that, actually.

Yeah, thank you for verifying, validating my idea there, Paulie.

Let me just write that down.

I'm going to write that here somewhere.

Brain-dumping China.

Yes, I'll do that now.

So what's next for you, Gaz?

You've got obviously the gig in Glastonbury.

Yes.

And what else?

The Bento Box stream, which you're going to do at some point soon.

Yes, I'm sorry.

Yes, I will do that.

I will do that.

What's next?

I've got, yeah, the Quasimodo album is really shaping up nice.

Oh, excellent.

That's taking quite a bit of work,

trying to just keep to the same sort of principles of what we've been doing

with improvising and then trying to improvise on themes

and then develop those themes.

I tell you, you should talk to Tammy about doing a master class

because the master class format at this place, you've got your own theatre,

and they were like three hours long,

so you could basically go through here's the whole principle,

here's how it works, here's, you know,

you could actually go to really deep, deep into something like that,

so it might be something worth pitching to them.

Yes, I'd be well up for that.

I mean, I've been spending every single day,

like hours and hours and hours every single day,

on a whole bunch of things related to mostly modular, but not just modular,

but to do with developing, like, workflows.

My goal is always to try and make improvised music sound like precomposed,

which is certainly with that Quasimodo thing,

to make it sound like it's already written,

but it's kind of weird because if people think that.

Yeah, yeah.

That you're ready to be listened to, yeah.

Yeah, and trying to work out ways of, you know,

I was trying to think about music that I really love,

what are the elements that make me really love it,

and how can I incorporate those ideas,

and I, you know, and certain things to do with getting more control of dynamics

is something I think is quite hard to do in modular.

A lot of modular stuff, a lot of the things I do tend to come up quite,

you know, like fairly undynamic, and I'm trying to sort of build.

I'm working with Greg as well.

We're trying to learn sort of techniques to do build-ups and drops and kind of,

you know, like a, you know, just sort of these kind of techniques, really,

but I'm putting a lot of time into it, and hopefully, I mean, yeah,

we've got some, we're going to be playing a lot more next year,

sort of, so hopefully these, you know,

we're not in a massive rush to kind of get this stuff out.

I want to just keep refining it and working up these techniques

and just trying just to, I don't know.

It's just trying to bring out more depth,

and in part what inspires me to do that is seeing the lack of that

in a lot of things.

We're going around Super Booth this year

and just really wanting to hear more engaging music.

More quiet bits.

Yeah, quiet bits.

These amazing devices, but also harmony.

Harmony is something I'm absolutely obsessed with

and trying to improve my understanding of harmony

and key modulations and stuff like that,

and, like, that sort of stuff used to be impossible, really,

in, like, say, a modular environment,

but now with the kind of various tools that we've got available,

that sort of stuff is now really opened up.

Yeah, that sounds like a great journey, yeah.

Gigantically, yeah.

So, yeah, but, yeah, so that's the sort of thing I'm up to.

Thank you.

Well, good luck to you.

Richard, what, so I guess you've got, what,

a couple of weeks before the windows go in

and then you can just, have you thought about leaving,

going somewhere else for a little while while it's done,

or do you have to be on site to make sure

they don't leave the house open and all that sort of stuff?

Yeah, it's, this next one's going to be wildly disruptive

because we have to move everything in our house.

Our house has 29 windows and we have to move everything

six feet away from the windows, but our house isn't that big.

It's, you know, we're sort of a row house,

so as you can see, that's one side of the house

and I'm facing a wall right now that's the other side of the house,

so everything's going to be jammed into the middle.

How many floors have you got?

I've got seven.

Two floors in an attic.

I know it seems like a lot of windows.

I was kind of like, really, they can't be that many,

but, you know, every room has essentially

two or three or four windows in it.

Right.

I don't know.

In Pittsburgh, when this house was built,

there wasn't a whole lot of light,

so I thought they wanted to bring as much light in as possible

because we were steel, so it was just dark

and sooty out every day,

so I guess you needed as many windows as possible

to get as little light in.

But I have to be here for that, but I have been.

I'm just going to keep sort of.

We have three hardware instruments coming out.

We're going to do the drum machine,

and it should be available in January,

and then closer to Superbooth,

I've been talking about the Voltage Lab Mini and the SV-1 Mini.

Those will be available and out then,

and because those are sort of already along,

I've had time now to play with software,

so I've just been having a blast sort of working on software projects,

so I suspect there'll be some more of those coming out.

Nice. There'll be more.

Yeah.

That sounds great.

Yeah.

Well, fantastic, and thanks for joining us.

I really appreciate it.

And, Paulie, same with you.

I guess, are you doing weekly lectures?

I mean, how often are you committed to,

do you have to go in and be teach?

It's starting very slowly,

just like one a month or something like that,

and disability workshops,

but, yeah, I've got myself down on the list now.

I've made a good impression,

so hopefully I've got my foot in the door, as they say.

Excellent.

So hopefully more, and maybe I can, you know,

pimp myself out to other organizations now

and do training and things like that.

That might be fun.

Nice.

Masterclasses, as you were saying, that might be fun.

I could probably do, like, a vintage computing,

music and vintage computing session.

Yeah.

At shows and things like that,

so that would be really good to think about.

But, yeah, other than that,

it's obviously episode six of Retrocast is coming out.

I've got the first Love FM synthesizer

in my grubby little hands, which I've been learning,

so I'll be doing a Sonic Lab review of that this month as well.

And, yeah, and then it's also about me not forgetting

to get my wife a birthday present.

That's the most important thing.

Okay.

Consider this a reminder.

You can refer back to it if you forget any time soon.

Yes.

Right.

Okay.

Well, thank you, everybody.

That was Sonic Talk.

Once again, thanks to everybody who was involved in the China stuff.

And we will be back next week,

and ADC stuff will be coming next week as well.

So see you later.

So I think I've almost forgotten what I have to do.

I think it's this one, isn't it?

End show.

That's what the button I need.

See you all next time.

Thanks very much for watching.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.