Kawaii = Cute in Japanese…. love the ending

I spent half the weekend rearranging my music studio as I found the way I had my modular synth racked up was giving me sore arms & a sore back from leaning over it all the time, see it used to be like this in an angled rack:

When I bought the racks I noticed that I could rotate the angled rack part over so it was facing backwards, so I set to & inverted the Doepfer G6 cases in the rack, and turned the whole rack around & it is SO MUCH BETTER!!! Also being vertical meant I can stand the G6 case on top, rather than lieing on its back & having to use all my long patch cords to connect the two…. So heres it now (click image for bigger version)

I also finally got my monome 64 set up so its sending MIDI via the Analogue Solutions MT16 to trigger the AS drum modules (thats what the nest of yellow patch cables is) which was my intent from the outset…. so I ended up staying up until 2am this morning jamming beats on it & patching the drum modules through all sorts of filters etc… The BD88 kick module is pretty boomy (its a circuit clone of the TR808 kick) but I found a way to make an even more subby kick! I have the Analogue Systems EMS Synthi Filter module and I discovered with the resonance cranked up it self-resonates beautifully! But how to trigger it with the kick? Well I sent an extra trigger out of the Monome via the MT16 and patched that trigger into both the A140 envelope generator and to the A132-3 D-VCA… So every time the kick fires on the Monome, it also sends a trigger to the VCA, which opens & lets the subby oscillating Synthi Filter through using the CV shape provided by the ADSR module. As I discovered this, of course it made sense – this is synth programming 101! But it was so beautiful to be able to fill out the decay of the 808 with a differently tuned sub & have complete control of the envelope of the sub decay….

Heres a closer vertical view:

In no particular order; AntiChrist + Moon + Mother + Ponyo + Synecdoche, New York + The Limits of Control + Thirst + Tokyo! + Tokyo Sonata

What would yours be? If your memory needs prompting there’s a database of 2009 releases here

And 9 films I can’t wait to see next year:

A Serious Man + Chloe + Fantastic Mr. Fox + Map of the Sounds of Tokyo + Micmacs a tigre-larigot + My son, my son what have ye done + Symbol + The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus + Where the Wild Things Are