Booooooom! The 60 inch subwoofer

Peter wrote to tell me about the Eminent Technology Model 17 fan-powered subwoofer. It's all well and good, but I'd personally go for this one-off 60 inch subwoofer: "The cone moves 6 inches peak to peak under full-tilt output... Unfortunately, Tim and his crew didn't realize just how much acoustical power the sub could generate, and didn't build the vehicle to contain it appropriately. Even at less than 1/2 output, the doors were blown off the tracks, and the entire vehicle ballooned in and out several inches."

John Frusciante, lover of gear

I've never really felt strongly enough about the Red Hot Chilli Peppers to develop an opinion about them, but I enjoyed this piece in Guitar Player. After a lot of blah ("the force and the drive of Mars, the warrior, which is the planet of manifestation of what you feel is right from inside"), it gets into extreme geek detail about how he played guitar throug a Doepfer modular synth all over the last album. He's using all the good stuff: Numerous Moogerfoogers, reel-to-reel tape phasing, EMT digital reverbs, the new-ish Electro-Harmonix POG, Deltalab delays. Towards the end is the wonderful line: "When we started rehearsing the songs for live performance it was a real bummer, because everything sounded so empty without the modular synth." (Yes, that's his live setup in the picture. Yes, he's got three Moogerfooger low pass filters.)

Ben's 3D webcam-to-MIDI converter

Here is the Sourceforge page for a useful-if-you-like-that-kind-of-thing program for turning a webcam image into MIDI data. At the moment it's Alpha, but I'm sure you won't let that put you off...

Seq24: Free MIDI sequencer for playing live

Seq24 is a great-looking minimal MIDI sequencer, specifically designed for playing live. Until recently it was Linux only, but developer Rob has just released a Windows version here.

Splice: Free online audio sequencer

Splice is an online audio sequencer, a bit like Cubase in your browser. You can import sounds, or browse a bunch of CC licensed samples. It seems to work OK, could be useful if you're stuck in a boring office. It was developed by Sean Mulroney, a Chicago lawyer, musician, promoter and brother of Dermot.

"Creating musical magic from thin air and solid state electronics"

Here is a really wonderful clip of Giorgio Moroder, uploaded from an old Casablanca Records promo tape by Josh. It opens with Giorgio playing with a Roland MC-8 - the £4,500 digital CV/Gate sequencer introduced in 1977 and used on records like 'Dare' by the Human League (all you ever wanted to know about the MC-8 is here). At the end of the clip is a shot of Keith Forsey, who drummed on Giorgio's finest moments before going on to produce Billy Idol's big '80s albums. (More Giorgio here, of course)

Peter builds analog synth controller from PS2 handset

Peter is rightly proud of his hacked Playstation controller, which he uses to control his MS20. It was built for him by Dave Krooshof (who also built this) Peter explains it in this video, with more here on his blog and here (in Dutch). Presumably, this would work on any modular synth, with a little modification?