Make Noise announced their new piece of gear today, the Strega. It’s in the same form factor as the 0-Coast and 0-Ctrl, and was developed with musician Alessandro Cortini (who is associated with Nine Inch Nails but has quite an impressive catalog of his own solo instrumental work on modular synthesizers).
Mr. Cortini was interviewed by Sonic State and also played a couple of live sets on Instagram with it. It’s a lovely analog synthesizer with a noisy “karaoke delay” (probably the PT2399) on the back end. There are a lot of PT2399s out there, including in the Lyra-8, but this one also has a filter, reportedly three delay lines (assuming that’s for longer delay times but possibly other shenanigans) and seems modulation-friendly. The instrument also has some touchplates to temporarily connect modulation sources with destinations, and we haven’t gotten details yet about the waveshaping or whatever else is going on with its oscillator, but some great textures were emerging from those demos.
This honestly feels like it was aimed right at my heart (and my wallet). It’d fit in great with the music that I make. After the first demo and interview I had mixed feelings, but my resolution to stick with my current gear in 2021 is a guiding principle here. I can get some similar, though not identical, sounds with the gear I have and there is no lack of inspiration to be found there.
The second demo convinced me that I would really enjoy one of these.
I’m going to be firm though. I might figure out where to put one in 2022, but I’ll worry about that when the time comes.
Gretta is recovering nicely from her surgery — getting onto and off of furniture and up and down steps without assistance. She even trotted through the snow a little this afternoon, which was really encouraging to see!
