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!