It was bound to happen, and happen it did. No, this Eurorack synthesizer did not become mine, but I started down the path of buying components for a synth that would become mine. Part of yesterday and again this morning, I was talking with the guys from Make Noise, WMD, Bastl, and, of course, Rick Burnett of Erogenous Tones, who has probably spent nearly two hours with me by now. So without a case to mount anything in and zero idea of how any of this stuff works yet, I take the plunge and buy my first Eurorack modules. First up were the Make Noise Pressure Points, 4MS Spectral Multiband Resonator, and the Black Market Modular Colour Palette filter. An hour later, I grabbed the Noise Engineering Loquelic Iteritas oscillator, WMD DPLR Delay, WMD Aperture filter, and the Erogenous Tones Levit8 mixer. Ten pieces of never-before-played equipment and no real knowledge if I’d gather enough skills to feel that my purchases were worth it; I did it and will try not to look back. They say Eurorack is one of the worst and most expensive habits to acquire, and I’m learning the truth about that.

While it was difficult to focus on the workshops I’d signed up for as I was in a purchasing frenzy, I really did make an effort to attend. This one is from Michael Garfield, who is leading a live looping workshop.

Jaron Lanier was here today for the second keynote of the festival. Jaron’s career started for me back in the early ’90s with the first go-round of virtual reality. At one point during his talk, he gave a demonstration of a “khaen” instrument from Laos, which dates back to the Bronze Age; I’m tempted to buy one if I can find it.

I was busy talking synth modules again while Caroline took in a performance by Reggie Watts. I also bumped into Richard Devine and Jaron Lanier while in the synth demo area.

We have finally seen The Orb live and in person, and they even played a bit of Little Fluffy Clouds!

This is Church of Space, and they were here to introduce us to HYPNOTIQUE SCÉANCE. An old friend from Germany, upon hearing that I was going to MoogFest, told me to catch these guys. glad I did, as magic, the occult, and absurdity nearly always make for some interesting entertainment. After this, I headed over to part two of the IBM Watson talk about cognitive technology for developers while Caroline was signed up for a masterclass with Daniel Lanois and The Orb.

After lunch, it was time for our first keynote on the subject of “The Future of Creativity,” given by Martine Rothblatt, founder of Sirius XM and author of Virtually Human. Just before walking in and taking our seats while outside chatting with someone, Suzanne Ciani walked up and joined the conversation, as the person Caroline was talking to was a friend of Suzanne’s. At the time, Caroline had no idea who had joined them, but after Suzanne walked away, the person shared with Caroline that it was, in fact, one of the true musical greats of synthesizers.  Martine’s talk astonished me with how much I resonated with her and promised myself I would reach out to her after the conference; she gave me her business card to do just that, but somewhere along the way, it was lost. Her talk, though, will never be lost on me. Watch the talk by clicking here.

Antenes makes her own synths from old telephone switchboards! Watch this video to learn more about her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM44D_2w8cA

Grimes is another badass of the music world like Antenes above. I’d first become aware of Grimes maybe two or three years ago and was enamored with her producing her work by herself, as far as I could tell. This place was packed, and as much as I would have rushed to the front 20 years ago, today, I’ll leave that to the 20-somethings.

Max Ravitz, a.k.a. Patricia, was at the Pinhook tonight and made me fall in love with music made with modular synths. I heard a sonic quality and timing I’d not heard in other live music tied to a groove that made me want to dance for the first time in over 20 years. Take a listen to one of his tracks here: Around Town. Missed Odesza at another venue as Patricia’s performance and theirs overlapped, but I’m not complaining.

Robert Hood of Underground Resistance was at The Armory and put on a great set. It was during Robert’s performance that Caroline learned that you could quickly rack up a few thousand steps on the Fitbit by dancing. Halfway into MoogFest 2016, and both of us are thoroughly enjoying everything from the workshops to the live performances and the people we’ve been meeting along the way.