This was my first synth fest here in Phoenix, Arizona, where I live. Nearly four years ago Caroline and I attended Moogfest in Durham, North Carolina, and then last year I went to Synthplex in Los Angeles, California, and Superbooth in Berlin, Germany. Phoenix doesn’t have a large community but I came to appreciate that we do have a rather healthy scene here in the desert. While I didn’t count the actual number of visitors here at the Phoenix Synth Fest I’m guessing that between 60 and 80 people from around the valley and even as far away as Tucson showed up for the event.
Meeting Chris Meyer of Learning Modular for the third time was great but watching him demo his performance case was certainly a highlight of the past three days. I first learned of Chris and his wife Trish over a dozen years ago when I wanted to dig deeper into learning Adobe’s After Effects: they were the go-to team for all things compositing software at the time.
Then a few years ago I started watching everything I could about Eurorack Synths and there was Chris. He influenced my case choice, taught me a lot through his online tutorials, and still does, he even asked me for a photo of the Synthtech E370 VCO which got me a credit in the book that he and Kim Bjørn co-authored. That book titled Patch & Tweak is on the table below Chris’s case, which happens to have been built by the inimitable Ross Lamond.
On hand for a second day was Steve Roach who left his gear setup from the night before so he could demo it to the attendees of the Synth Fest. Turns out that this Grammy-nominated artist doesn’t have far to go this afternoon as he lives just about 100 miles south of us in Tucson.
After the day’s presentations and visiting with the various people who brought synthesizers with them to the meetup side of the fest it was time for the evening’s entertainment program. I was late getting out of the facility at Paradise Valley Community College to go fetch dinner and so I got back with Caroline in tow to watch and listen to a few of the artists presenting. The first person we caught was Marci.dh who performed what seemed like a stochastic melange of sounds that tipped into the atonal.
Tony Obr, the organizer of this Synth Fest, performed with collaborator Dr. Seth Dominicus Thorn who played violin to Tony’s synth foundation. While there were a good 60-80 people attending the first half of the festivities there were hardly 30 people who stuck around for the live performances. I note this as a constant lament regarding the city I live in and the apathy here for things fringe, cultural, or more than 10 miles away from where people live.
Today I learned that Justin Olson, Tony Obr, me, and Garth Paine who also performed tonight and owns the synth pictured are all owners of the Orthogonal Devices ER-301 Sound Computer. I would have never guessed that there are no less than four of these relatively rare synths right here in Arizona. The module I’m referencing sits on the far left of the second row from the top.
I now wonder: if Arizona and the Phoenix area were to be able to organize a larger electronic music festival featuring everything from Bitwig and Ableton to VSTs and hardware synths, might it be able to draw in a few hundred or more people from across the state? Or maybe electronic arts in general where graphic design, video, audio, and 3D stuff were all part of a program to help educate those interested but then again I remember a small conference held by Lynda.com years ago that might have drawn in about 100 people so on second thought, probably not.
I still believe that if this were properly funded and promoted by schools, government, and local media it would pull people in just like those groups working to draw people to professional sports; our community gets great attendance at those events. Why not the same efforts for those things cultural where billion-dollar franchises don’t exist yet?
