Yesterday, I caught the train up to lovely, leafy Sheffield and had fun wandering around Synthfest UK 2016.
Now, pretty obviously, there were many synthesizers there. Rare old analogue beasts like this EMS Synthi:
And the latest digital doodads like this nifty Modal hunk:
There were three areas, all of them packed with geeks playing and prodding and eyeing the stacks of modules available for sale. I had a play on the above Modal synth as well as fiddling with various modular setups as I passed. It was just *beautiful* to be able to see so much gear, much of it esoteric, in one place and there to use.
I felt a bit stunned, to be honest and I'm sure more than a few fellow geeks I passed had the same glazed expression. We were like tiny, tiny children who'd been let into a toyshop and told we could play with anything. Where do you start?
The main hall was filled with the most incredible burbling, bleeping, warbling cacophony of sound. It sounded like Bebe and Louis Barron scoring a Krell riot.
The most popular bits of gear had lengthy queues of fidgety suitors, the least popular had a couple of people sitting behind a table, issuing the occasional desultory squawk.
I got to meet a couple of Sound On Sound peeps which was lovely, actually putting faces to names. We had lunch and ranted about various things but I admit, I indulged in a lot of shop talk because, hey, music tech geeks! I couldn't resist!
Then, later, I bumped into my old mate Stephen Bennett who I know from waaay back when I was living in Norwich. And he introduced me to his mate Jarrod, from I Monster. We coffeed and, again, argued vigorously about music tech. It was lovely to catch up with Stephen and meet Jarrod. Got to love someone who can appreciate a fine organ.
Then, back upstairs and back to the stridulations and twiddling. Oh, so much twiddling. By the time I left, I was knackered and slightly deaf thanks to some geezer doing really heavy tweaking of the Oberheim at the GForce booth. But I was very happy to have been at such a vibrant event, crammed with gear and geeks. There's a Flickr gallery here that will give a tiny slice of the day.
I wonder what they'll do for Synthfest UK 2017? :-O
