John Bowen Synth Design

NAMM 2013 Booth location

The 2013 NAMM show was held January 24-27th. We were again in Hall B, but a slightly different location, booth 5406. Dave Smith Instruments was right next door again (booth 5400), and we also were behind the Bob Moog Foundation booth (5307), with the Moog Music booth one aisle over from Dave at #5300.

This was my 40th year of attending NAMM shows....hard to believe! My first show was actually my 'audition' for Moog Music, at the Chicago NAMM show, June 1973. Time sure has flown by!

Solaris Owners Forum

If you are a new Solaris keyboard owner, make sure you register as a Forum Member, then send me an email with your user name, so that I can add you to the private Solaris Users Group. This group covers several topics, such as Future Feature suggestions and Bug List, as well as any OS updates, new Preset files, and any other data files and samples that users wish to upload and share with each other. (Note that this is for the hardware Solaris, not the Scope plug-in I make.)

NAMM 2012 IS OVER!

Another year, another great NAMM trade show...the main difference this time was that, for the first time, I no longer had to talk about when the Solaris might be shipping, but that we have been shipping for some months now! It was really a great feeling...

I also had coverage from some online blogs and communities, such as this video from soundsandgear.com:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3TnV6KNBms

Then there is this section from Chris Randall's blog about the NAMM show:

"I got a full demo of the Solaris from John Bowen and Bernard Wong. The Solaris is the logical progression of the Prophet VS and Wavestation. It takes those concepts and just extrapolates them out in to what a DSP-based synth can pull off in 2012. The panel is really well laid-out, and super playable. Some very crafty features internally as well, and the many mod routing possibilities, coupled with an extensive oscillator and filter library (and user samples, natch) gives it a really broad palette. I think this is going to be my next synth purchase."

You can read his entire NAMM coverage here: 

http://www.analogindustries.com/blog/entry.php?blogid=1327036554783#comments

Demo from Howard Scarr

Hi All,

Howard Scarr, sound designer for Hans Zimmer, Urs Heckmann (Zebra2, ACE), Access Virus, and many others, has made a short piece to show off some of the sounds he’s did for the Solaris. Here is “Solaris Plexus”, which you can find on the Audio Demo page, http://www.johnbowen.com/audio-examples.html

Video from Synthesizer Meeting, Munich 2010

Here is a video of the entire presentation I did at the Munich Synthesizer meeting:
http://vimeo.com/16004667

Videos from Music Messe 2010

I was having fun showing off some of the new features of the Solaris that were completed just a day before Messe, and Nick Batt from Sonic State came by the first day of the show to catch up on Solaris developments. If you'd like to see the latest on the Solaris, please head to the following link:
http://www.sonicstate.com/news/2010/03/25/messe10-john-bowens-solaris-on-video/

A few days later, Delamar.tv came by with their cameras, and did a fairly long session with me going over what had changed since last time they saw the Solaris. You can catch both parts of their video review here:
John Bowen Solaris Video by Delamar.tv - Musikmesse 2010

Music Messe 2010 coming...

I have received our booth assignment, and I will be sharing a booth in Frankfurt. You can find me in Hall 5.1, booth C47. Please drop by and say hello if you are there!

NAMM 2010 quick takes

A few photo links to start with: First is John & Brian Kehew, next is Larry Fast getting a run-through of Solaris and a photo of John, Larry Fast.

A few more added starting with Jordan Rudess getting a tour of Solaris, next is Jordan Rudess checking out the oscillator section plus Jason Miles came to hear Solaris and finally Herb Deutsch, Moog pioneer, stopped for a visit.

Tutorial videos added

I've started in on my planned series of tutorial videos to introduce the Solaris user interface. There's an added tab for Videos (at left) to access these.