Southwest Synth Fest is a brand new, annual synthesizer event, coming up Saturday, June 15th, 2019. The day-long festival focuses on creating community and education among synthesizer manufacturers, electronic music enthusiasts, and artists.
In its inaugural year, Southwest Synth Fest will feature a full day of activities and performances, and will include a synth kit-building workshop, talks by synth experts, and a gear expo where manufacturers and attendees can showcase systems, learn about new technology, and connect with other members of the synthesizer community.
Daytime events at the Austin School of Film (2200 Tillery Street, Austin, TX) are free and open to the public. The Expo floor will open at 10am and close at 6pm. Manufacturers exhibiting at the event include Alright Devices, Delptronics, LXZ, Starling, Synthesis Technology, and Warm Star Electronics. Spaces are limited for the kit-building workshop at 10:30am. You can sign up for the workshop at https://swsynthfest.com.
Evening events begin at 6pm at the Museum of Human Achievement. Modular On The Spot will present performances by modular synth virtuosos, and will be free and open to the public.
Later in the evening, at 8pm, synthesizer powerhouses Dylan Cameron, Acid Jeep, Bragglights, and The Viewer will begin their performances at the Museum of Human Achievement. Sliding scale donation admission (suggested donation: $10 – 20). Tickets will be available at the door.
Visit the Southwest Synth Fest website and the festival’s Facebook event page to learn more.
Seen Dylan Cameron play one time, certainly no synthesizer powerhouse when he was fuddling with patch cables and playing unfiltered, unmodulated oscillators through his modular’s output – but whatever helps the hype, yeah?
Yeah, hate on someones first performance. Never show vulnerability. Typical. What’s your name? We can talk about this in person.
Unfiltered oscillators have a place. It’s all in how well you play it. I’ve always enjoyed Dylan’s performances, and his LP, Infinite Floor, is excellent. Did you see him play at ACL Live recently? He’s been killing it. I think it’s fair to call him a powerhouse, even if a set of his that you saw one time wasn’t to your liking.
Dylan is a talented guy. He’s already made great music (check out Infinite Floor, or his Purgatory EP), and he continues to expand in creative new ways. His stuff is exciting and danceable and thought-provoking, really growing the family tree of the early “braindance” stuff from the Warp / Rephlex crew. Sorry you saw a set you didn’t like, but you should give him another chance (or at least chill on the internet hate; he definitely doesn’t deserve it).
And I kinda like some unfiltered OSC sometimes. And I sincerely doubt that it was unmodulated (since even changing pitch is a modulation).
Hope to see a bunch of y’all here!
Every eurorack only performance I’ve seen lately is either boring techno or random bloops and bleeps or a combination thereof. It’s like these dudes spend thousands of spacebux on this stuff and don’t know what to do with what they just bought or don’t know how any of it works and just start plugging cables in. The worst ones don’t even move the cables around because I guess they are scared of their equipment?
Modular musicians are geeks, rarely songwriters. Different brains, mostly incompatible.
No instrument automatically makes someone talented, nor does it make their music interesting. Modular is exciting because of the possibilities that haven’t been explored, not because every person who plays it is immediately great. I’ve seen boring things done on guitar, too, and on all sorts of fancy non-modular synths.
I don’t think almost anyone can make any kind of coherent music if they “just start plugging cables in.” Have you… played a modular?
And not moving cables around is not the same thing as not playing the instrument. Do you change the routing of the sections of your synth mid-performance? A modular system can have hundreds of knobs, switches, sliders etc. Those are also a way of playing. In fact, live-patching (in my experience) is a relative rarity.