CDs available!

Exciting times. Both Casting Shadows (Fusion Orchestra 2) and Down Is The New Up (Broken Parachute) have arrived back from production and are looking and sounding great, even if I do say so myself.

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Roland Super JX-10 Review

Back in May last year I got hold of a second hand Roland Super JX-10 and its associated programmer, the PG-800.

This was, I understand, the last of Roland’s analogue polysynths, and in particularly the last of the Jupiter line. It has some well-documented weaknesses with its MIDI implementation, not least of all that you can’t store or edit patches via MIDI. As its interface is via a two line menu and selector dials and buttons, the external programmer is considered something of a must-have for anyone seriously interested in programming it or tweaking it in realtime.

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Fusion Orchestra 2 Video

Just a quick post to say that the David Hewitt, who came along to a Fusion Orchestra 2 rehearsal in November armed with cameras, has finished producing his video of us. At seven minutes, it’s only fractionally longer than our shortest song so makes an efficient way of getting a feel for what the band is like.

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Prophet ’08 PE Review

Note: this review is not written from the usual perspective of examining an instrument and comparing knowledgeably it with its peers in the market, it is written more as a personal journey from a very specific viewpoint. If you’re after the former, the review in Sound on Sound is an excellent place to start.

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The Grand Synthesizer Research Project

I often refer to myself as a Keyboard Player. It’s a convenient shorthand, but closer to the truth would be to say that really, I’m a Hammond organ player and a pianist. I occasionally dabble in other sounds but even then I’m more drawn to electromechanical keyboards (and their emulations) such as the Clavinet, or Wurlitzer and Rhodes electric pianos.

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Discovering the Mellotron

The Mellotron. The great grand relative of the modern sampler. The backbone of progressive rock keyboard playing. The bane of roadies and keyboard technicians everywhere.

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