Got EUR2499 burning a whole in your pocket, eh? Maybe you’re an eccentric hardware synth lover, who made your unspendable fortune on . . . oh, I don’t know . . . genetic engineering or artificial intelligence. Maybe you can both appreciate and afford Jürgen Michaelis’ new synth, the Resonator Neuronium.
There are certainly things about this synth I understand: like it has traditional analog-style ADSR envelopes and does Frequency Modulation. Then, something goes horribly awry and we start talking about “Stimulus Recombination” synthesis, which is the “Recombination of wave segments (DNA) of the stimulus with other neuron#+*#s DNA by mating of the DNA.” Yes, somehow we’ve left the world of classical synthesis and entered the world of neural networks — except you un-futuristically control these new-fangled networks by “turning the respective knob of the receiving neuron.” (Hmm, maybe with a 250,000 Euro model we could have controlled it using our thoughts, or living organic tissue.)
I’d have no idea this thing existed, were it not for our friend James Graham; see his excellent explanation of the device. James builds much more sensible products (many with knobs) at Reflex Audio. James has a fantastic new blog of his own:
We’re obviously on the same wavelength, because from typewriters to super 8 cameras to toasters and Moleskin notebooks, Retro thing looks like my birthday wish list.
CDM Scoreboard time! Current count of websites using the word “thing” in their title that otherwise have no relation to each other: 3. (See also the original Music thing and the more recent Video thing.) In fact, based on our own focus groups and market research, you’ll see CDM re-launched next week as “Create Digital Thing Music Thing Thing” . . . or, to our regular readers, CDTMTT Thing.