Today I’ve been listening to this podcast from the BBC – The Documentary called “Rocking the Stasi” which talks about the role of music (specially rock and punk) in the fall of the Berlin Wall. Very interesting and well explained. If you have free time (or not) give it a listen.
Last September I stumbled upon this:
I instantly fell in love with this little machine. Those beeps and glitches were too much for me. Her name was Pocket Operator Arcade or PO-20 for short, and she was (still is) a beautiful 8-bit synthesizer coming from Teenage Engineering, Sweden. Look at these buttons, the colors, the profile, those funny animations… She is so retro and barebone!
As you may expect, I bought one and I learned how to use it. It was incredible fun and easy to play! I wonder why I’ve never seen anything like this before… Like everyone does nowadays when is buying a gadget, I searched YouTube and found tons of video tutorials showing how to start using this masterpiece and her 6 little sisters (by now) in a few minutes.
I was so impressed with the quality of the sound and the usability of the synth that I decided to buy another one, so my PO-20 won’t be alone anymore. So last month I chose PO-12 or Rhythm, a drum machine. Now I can connect both and jamm small melodies I hope I’ll share with you soon.
But, you know, after #2 comes #3, and right now, I’m deciding who will be next. Probably PO-14 Sub, but I’m not sure, could be PO-28 Robot… I’ll let you know 😉