It was time again to visit the annual "Musikmesse" (music fair) in Frankfurt; Germany. All the years before I went there only for testing new equipment or for "breathing" the athmosphere of this important fair.
Yesterday I had a more concrete reason. I had an appointment with Gabriel Seher and Marcel Achim of GenoQs, the company who has created the famous "Octopus Sequencer". I mentioned this machine earlier in this blog. And the Octopus was indeed the reason for our meeting. Based on my experiences with my Octopus during the past months in my studio, I made earlier this year some proposals about optimization of the usability of this machine on stage. As users surely know, the Octopus is housed in a very stylish wooden case which is very sensitive against damages. In my opinion this makes it impossible to use the sequencer on stage. Gabriel and Marcel seemed to have the same opinion because they prepared the prototype of a "roadversion" of the Octopus. This prototype was now ready for presentation at the musicfair. We discussed some details and we will meet us again in early summer of this year to get more grip on open questions but it is definetly fact that the Octopus roadversion - the official name is "Octopus - The Shell" - will be ready for sale on the beginning of
july 2009. First pictures of the prototype can be seen now on the "GenoQs" website. It is great to see how my ideas become reality and I am sure that this cooperation will be intensified.
...with Marcel Achim and Gabriel Seher
...the Octopus - The Shell prototypeAfter this important meeting of course I visited the guys of the "Synthesizer-Magazin" and I had some nice talk with Mic "Moogulator" Irmer. We also talked about some new contributions from me for the magazin. An experience report about the Roland Fantom G8 could be one.
...with Mic "Moogulator Irmer
...with Klaus-Hoffmann Hook in front of the MemotronAfter this nice day I found my personal highlight of the day. The "Club Of The Knobs". "COTK" is a little but fine company from Portugal founded by the german Gerd Peun aka Kazike. COTK is specialised in analogue modular synthesizers. It is a little bit difficult to me to use the term "Moog clone" but after listening and testing the system which was presented on the fair, I would describe it as the "perfect Moog clone". The sound is unbelievable true and original and I will definetly have one and I will use it on stage. This is clear after this day.
UPDATE: please check this little Video on Youtube. You can discover some nice people in it.
...with the Club Of The Knobs Team Rajele Jain, Gerd Peun and Georg MahrNow I am back in Berlin full of nice impressions.
It is spring again folks...!
