SONIC TALK - Inside Music Technology

Firstly we talk of old Mother Shipton, who may have forseen the collapse of the TC Electronic and Gibson merger, then we're on to Talking Heads - David Byrne spotted on the Heathrow Express, more on Jori Hulkkonen and his 303 orchestra, the Hobnox web browser 303/909 and fx environment, and finally the classic Oberheim OB2 and related synths.

Sonic TALK Interview - John Van Eaton

First, Mark tells us of a rather personal encounter with a vibrating chair, then we're on to the cute little drumming, sampling robot, Gibson gun for some of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band cash, then we all fess up on what our first record purchases were and get more than we bargained for, Rich is playing with Micky Dolenz, 128k or 320kbps MP3 test at mp3ornot.com, and at last Gary Kiblers Korg Kaossilaor album gets a viewing.

A moment of silence for Mark's broken phone, the wonderfully pointless Furby Gurdy, a home made and as it turns out controversial, Laser Harp from Stephen Hobley, Waves and SSL, Jean Michel Jarre and his amazing series of Oxygene concerts with many of the original analogues, SSL and Waves plug-ins, Percussa Audio Cubes, and finally Dave Robinson tells us all about the Jean Michel Jarre gig in Dublin, Dave Spiers tells us how JMJ spoilt his wedding, Steve Strange in the queue, Santeri Ojala's excellent guitar parodies, and finally Digidesign's DShow gets some love.

Sonic TALK 079 - It's The Work of the Devil I Tell You..

This week, we revisit a couple of topics from last week due to some additional correspondence - MIDI 2.0 is on the way and Shane King sends us an Ultravox inspired track to check out. We then move on to the rather amazing Microsoft MySong technology which allows you to sing in a melody then have the computer suggest the supporting chord - and tweak. We ponder why Apple can get away with some of their rather monopolistic behaviour and then we're done.

We talk this week of the demise of one of London's most prestigious studios the Townhouse, which will close its doors at the end of March 2008. Ray Kurzweil's futurism theories get us started on an esoteric thread, which is brought down to earth by Fade To Grey and talk of Billie Currie. And finally Happy Birthday MIDI.

This week we talk of Create Digital Music who are in fund-raising mode, Nick finally upgrades his Macbook Pro HD to a 250GB one, Noneric's visit to Ableton uncovers a whole mess of speculation about some new secret instrument for Live, vocoders in general, recording Bowie, copyright extension for performers, the Yamaha SPX90 effects unit, then in-ear monitoring and the technology of live performance gets a quick look-in.

First up, we congratulate Ms Amy Winehouse on her historic 5 Grammy awards romp - Dave Spiers' brother-in-law is bass player and MD for the band and has been round at his partying. Then we get stuck into the Hotz Box - a unique MIDI controller/instrument that was a hit amongst the bigwhigs in the 1980s - I'd never heard of this, but Chris Macleod, had the pleasure of staying with Jimmy Hotz and programming it for Jon Anderson for a Yes tour - he spills the beans. After that, we touch on the art of destruction - with tales of what we have broken - Chris enlightens us with the Keith Emerson L100 on casters story. Then we're on to Virtual Instruments magazine and other favourites, which leads on to a wider discussion of where all this stuff is going.

This week we talk of mergers and acquisitions, in the light of Roland taking a majority share in Cakewalk, Gibson and TC Electronic announcing a merger and of course Microsoft's bid for Yahoo, Helicon technology gets a look-in along the way, followed by Novation's Nocturn controller, Inside Synthesis, our latest IPTV series on FM synthesis and FM generally, then a bit of a Mac-fest with the new Airbook and Mainstage in use. Finally we finish up with Rich having good things to say about the new Apple keyboard - of the QWERTY kind.