Last week, we watched Jamie Lidell show us how to use an Ableton patch he created called the Needle Drop. The patch chooses sample-sized sections at random from songs listed in an iTunes playlist of your choice, helping to inspire players to break the blank slate phenomenon by giving them something to work with.
This week, James is talking with us about another topic that's come up on his podcast, Hanging Out With Audiophiles, during a segment he reserves for discussing studio ideas he's had. In episode 10, he broaches the topic of turning a monosynth into a polysynth, inspired by the monosynths he has in his own studio like the Korg MS-20 and MS-50, the Oberheim SEM, and a Doepfer modular setup.
What you might notice about all of these units is that they aren't equipped with MIDI. To tackle this boundary, Jamie picked up a Kenton Pro 2000—a box used to sequence machines that aren't MIDI-capable—and connected each monosynth to it to serve as one of the five total voices (the four mentioned plus his Minimoog Voyager) of this Frankensteinian monster synth.
Be sure to watch the full video above to see Jamie demonstrating the unified monosynths and let us know what you think of the idea in the comments below.