Alex Ball - Making The ARP Synth Documentary

Hello and welcome to the Sound On Sound podcast channel about Electronic Music and all things synth. I'm Rob Puricelli and in this episode I talk to Alex Ball, an electronic music technology historian whose YouTube channel is a goldmine of synth documentaries and demonstrations, most recently a film called Electro Motive, the story of ARP instruments, a meticulously detailed look at the legendary synth manufacturer produced on behalf of the Alan R Pearlman foundation. So I'm here with Alex Ball, um, who you may know from, uh, his YouTube channel, Alex. Hello. Welcome. Hello, how are you doing? Thanks for having me. I'm very well, and how are you? I'm good, thank you. I'm sat surrounded by synths, though. That's always good, isn't it? Alex, before we go into detail about the art video itself, can you just give us a little bit of background about what you do, what the whole channel is about, and, you know, your background in music technology? So the, I work as a professional musician, I'm a music producer in the advertising industry. So I compose and produce and source and license music for TV commercials. I've been doing for, oh, 13 years or something like that, um, and I, uh, I'm very lucky to do that and I love that, but I started a YouTube channel about five years ago, I guess, just as a place where I could do little projects that were mine because I was working in music every single day, but I was always working for someone else. It's always someone else's project. Other people have say, and I just wanted a place where I was doing my thing. So I started off doing some videos. Originally, there was just some guitar stuff. And then I did some things with, um, virtual orchestras with VSTs. I did some recreations of film soundtracks with virtual orchestras. I did some, tried to recreate some 1950s recordings with virtual orchestras and that's where it started and that was what I just was doing Um, and so if you go onto my channel, the first things you'll find is that and then a little while later I got into synths in a well in a ridiculously big way, but it I had been into synths for many years, but I just I didn't own any hardware since I didn't have the space or the money um, and it finally got to a point in my career where I could get some stuff and I thought, you know what, I'm going to do this. So I bought like a bunch of synths in one go. Like I thought, I think I bought three or four to start with um, and you think that'll give you all you need, but as you know, you then wind up with 20 don't you? Um, and so I started doing stuff with synths and then through that I started meeting other people and uh, who who live near me or who live abroad all over the place who started kind of collaborating with me, lending me stuff if they were local, uh, or I could go and get it or, um, filming me stuff for me and sending it to me so that we could make videos with kind of a lot of vintage classic synths the kind of things that you saw as a kid, you saw on Top of the Pops or on whatever and thought, what's that amazing thing and then you always wanted it and couldn't. So it's became that, and it's kind of grown and grown and it's like an avalanche. It's becoming an uncontrollable monster. And now it's become an uncontrollable monster. So now I've got to the point where I'm making massive documentaries about, you know, famous synth manufacturers like the art film, so. Dream job. So, you first came to my attention on a personal level because of your Terminator 2 video. Somebody said, hey, this guy's done a great video and it's all about the Fairlight. And I'm like, okay. Because half of me is excited because I get excited about stuff like that. And the other half is like, has he got it right? And... Because they're a passion of mine, you know, I'm, I'm always on the lookout because there is so much misinformation out there, but boy, did you get it right? I mean, you did a great job. I have to say now I've got you here. I have to say that you did a fantastic job on that one. Thank you. Well, I've got to say, as I was just saying, with people helping me out, two people in particular helped me with that one was Chris who runs the channel Python Blue, and he, he is the guy, the genius who reverse engineered some of the hardest sounds. I figured out a number of them, but some of the really difficult ones that are like a combination of a bunch of sounds, he was the guy who, so he was a huge help. And then also Mike in Australia. So it was a truly international production. And it was great, you know, yes. And you've got the guy that did the voiceovers as well, you know, in the, in the army, it was just great. Yeah, so I was working with him. Yeah, I think that's kind of how I got the idea actually, cause we were doing this campaign where he was the Arnie impersonator and, um, I said, Oh, would you be up for doing this? And he said, yeah. So he, we did a couple, we did that one and we did one on the Predator score as well with the synclavier as well, which Mike has also got. So yes, that was, uh, that works out very well. I don't know if I've ever said I wound up speaking to Brad Fiedel on the phone off the back of that. Yes. Um, yeah, I don't know how much I can say but yeah, because it's uh, but we we did have a phone call and he did see that and so did um, the other guy whose name Ross ah, I forgot his surname now the guy who Levinson, Ross Levinson who played on that score as well. I spoke to him as well so that was pretty cool. It is cool how you, when you're doing this sort of thing, you do get to meet some of your heroes and you know, I mean, yeah, it's, it's, it's really cool. It's a really nice little bonus on the side of doing such, such stuff. Yeah. I, yeah, I think only a few years ago that would never happen, would it? But yeah, nowadays, uh, it can. Yeah, absolutely. And of course these videos I guess helped bring you to the attention of a wider audience and I just wondered if you could run us through how the whole ARP video came about, you know who instigated that did, did you approach them, did they approach you? How did that all happen? So I'd, it goes backwards how I even started doing kind of synth history documentaries was kind of an accident in itself. So a Linn LM-1 came up for sale and I know they're obviously ridiculously rare and I knew there was no way I'd win a bid on it, because everyone was after it. So I spoke to the guy who was selling it, said is there any way I could sample it, if I paid you, before it disappears, never to be seen again, um, and he agreed to meet me in the street to check I wasn't a weirdo, uh, and obviously I am so and he, he said he didn't want any money, which is really nice of him but I went back to his and sampled it filmed a little bit with it and then put a video up on it on YouTube Just uh, just a short video about the Linn LM-1 and I didn't know at the time but nobody had ever given the samples of that drum machine away because it's so rare and I guess why would you if you were yeah, you've got one, um, and that was the first video i'd ever made on YouTube that anybody actually really watched. Up until that point my videos had you know, 87 views or something like that, you know and all of a sudden that I think, I think it's had 400 and it's hundreds of thousands of views which was just you know night and day so I thought okay, hang on a second. I enjoyed that and people watched it, so I thought I'll do another one. So I did one on the Prophet synthesizers, so it was obviously about Sequential Circuits, but rather than being about everything Sequential Circuits did, it was, I tried to narrow it down a bit and I just did every Prophet from the V to the X, which was the one that was the latest one out at the time and that did equally well, so I thought, great. So somebody who was helping me, me with that had quite a big collection of Roland synths and said, why don't you do a Roland one? I thought, well, that's pretty huge, but why not? So I gave that a crack. So I did, I did, uh, it wound up being about 70 minutes long or something. So each, each film was getting kind of bigger and bigger started from a five minute film, and now we're over an hour and during the filming of that a guy called Ian Livingstone got in touch with me. He's a very successful Film, TV and game composer and he'd seen my channel and he said do you want to borrow some synths to which the answer is yes. Yes, I do. So I drove over to him, he's a couple of hours away and I was working on the Roland I was just finishing up the Roland film at the time and he had a couple of Roland synths I hadn't managed to get hold of, so I borrowed them off him to use them, uh, to finish off the, the Roland film and at the same time, he said, do you want to borrow my ARP 2600? Which is, I mean, what a thing to lend someone you've only just met. Uh, but he did, he lent me his ARP 2600 and I've, I'd seen them before, but I'd never played them, um, they were just always this... amazing looking thing that you would go, what does that do, you know, in the corner of a studio. So, um, I brought that back, I finished off the role in film and that's a whole, you know, story into itself, which was a wonderful thing. And then I turned to this 2600 and I thought, right, what's this all about? And I made a track with that 2600 and in the little demo track I did with that 2600, I just flashed up a couple of little old images of, of vintage 2600s and I found this image online and it was an unlabelled image of a guy in a suit standing with a Blue Marvin 2600, the original like prototype and I, this image was unlabelled. I said, I don't know who on earth that is, but that's pretty cool and I just flashed it up in my video for a couple of seconds, kind of cheeky because it wasn't my image. It turned out that guy was Don Muro and weirder still, it turned out he saw it. What are the odds? And he sent me a message and say, I just saw your, he just seen the Roland film and then he'd seen the ARP film, the little ARP 2600 demo I'd seen and he said, oh, that image you flashed up just for a couple of seconds of a guy with a Blue Marvin, that's me. And I said, what? So we had this conversation and it turned out he knew ARP personally, he was there. He got that from David friend of ARP directly, it was the last Blue Marvin. They were, it was their prototype. They'd moved onto the production models and uh, he couldn't afford one, so they, uh, gave him the last, sold him the last blue Marvin, um, and he had a whole, he had recordings of it, he had photos of it, he had all this stuff and then it turned out he'd worked with ARP and he bought, it turns out he actually bought, uh, one of the, I think it probably is the last thing that came out of ARP. We found out that it actually was the final day of ARP. Um, in 81, he got, um, he bought their MSL, um, project from them and got some of the last bits through on that final day. So he was, um, a fascinating person to speak to and, uh, and in general, but because of what he'd done with ARP, I had this 2600, um, Alan Pearlman had obviously not long passed, so the story was in the news as well. So everything was kind of staring me in the face to say, why don't you do something about ARP? So Don said, why don't you speak to Mark Vale, who of course has written, uh, Vintage Synthesizers, um, and many other things about, um, about synths, um, because, you know, he, he's obviously done a lot of research on that already and I spoke to Mark and he said, why don't you speak to Dina who is, uh, it's her family story. It was her father. And so I thought, okay, well, I'll ask if she'll answer a few questions thinking, you know, maybe she'll give me a little bit of her time. Yeah. Um, and it turns out she was absolutely amazing and just opened doors that would have been impossible to open. And throughout the next year, I wound up speaking to all these original ARP engineers and salespeople, um, and making an absolute monster documentary from, you know, thinking I'll make a short film about ARP. So how long did it actually take from, you know, that, that, that, where you would put that beginning that you've just kind of described to the point where you said, that's it, it's in the can, we're ready to go. What, what was that length of time? Exactly a year. Yeah. Exactly one year. Wow. And so it was bubbling away constantly for a year and I had a lot of help, um, because the first question was, where on earth do you find a 2500? Um, and I put them, I put a message out on the synth boards and I put one up on the Facebook group and I said, has anyone got a 2500 to which I just got a load of sarcastic replies, you know, oh yeah, I've got seven. I've got, yeah, I've got one in my garden, one in my, you know, all that. And I thought, oh, this is, this is not going to end well, uh, and then a friend, uh, hooked me up with another of his friends who hooked me up with his friend, you know, it was a friend of, a friend of a friend kind of thing. Uh, this guy Tony, who had Oh yeah, a 20, you know, Tony, of course I know Tony, um, everyone knows Tony. Uh, 20. He had a 2002 at the time, which is, that's right. You know, the, it's not, it's it's pre 2,500. It's, it's part of that, that umbrella of synths, so a few months later, I was sat in his, in his place in front of, uh, the, uh, it was a 2002 serial number zero zero eight, uh, recording a demo with it and by the end of the film, we had three 2500s in it. So that's crazy isn't it. And everything else, I think there were about five 2600s in it, umpteen Odysseys, Omni's, Solina's, you know, and we wound up doing some of the first interviews with, with ex-ARP, ex-ARP people, people who've never spoken about it before, like Jeremy Hill, in particular, what I didn't know was a project manager on the 2600, designed some of the circuits on it designed the pro soloist, people like that, um, and if you just said that to me on that first day, when I was thinking, oh, maybe I could do a film about ARP that I'd be speaking to these people, you know, I wouldn't have believed you. So it really unfolded into something amazing. Very serendipitous. Yes, absolutely. Well, funnily enough, it's funny you should say that the, when I first looked at the 2600, I found an interview, the NAMM oral history interview, which I wound up being able to use because obviously Alan, uh, passed, um, and in that interview, he talks about serendipity, like you're saying, and then he talks about it. He used the word happenstance, which I know is a common word, but I just, for whatever reason, I hadn't heard that word before, so I wound up calling my 2600 track Happenstance and when I first spoke to Dina in about the first five minutes of speaking to her, she used the word happenstance, which made me laugh. It's, uh, and, uh, that has been the theme of the... Yeah. Yes. It's like it was all meant to be Yes, yeah. I mean, I, I've done similar, you know, I, I like to dabble in, in, in research and histories. I, I, I'm kind of very specific, obviously with things like the Fairlight and, uh, and others. What, what are your research methods? Do you, is it, is it purely going on the internet, starting off with a Google search, finding some information, something that then backs that up, and then burrowing down that rabbit hole and, and like you said, having that kind of fortunate chain of events where one friend passes you on to someone else, and is there lots of reading involved? You know, what do you, what do you do to, to research this stuff? Well, so it's, it's something that I've just kind of had to figure out for myself and the more you do it, the better at it you get and of course you make mistakes along the way, which you have to learn from so that each time you do it, you don't make those kinds of mistakes before. So, um, again, so, um, the internet will get you started but there is a lot of stuff on the internet that is absolute nonsense. Yeah. Um, and it's not vetted in any way, so you can use it to kind of signpost you to things, but you've, if you can get to at least someone who knows what they're talking about, who can help you, which on the ARP film, compared to the earlier films, the technical information was, uh, far superior because I didn't write it. I got people like Nathan at Synthchaser who has had his head inside hundreds and hundreds of ARPs was able to, uh, word things for me or help me. If I said, is this right, he could say usually no, um, and in fact, some stuff he was, he was able to, you know, you find some bits on, uh, on probably very well known websites that say, state things about ARP, which I know are now completely wrong. So you do have to be very careful. And then, yeah, people like, you know, David Friend or Jeremy Hill who actually designed these instruments. If you get them to tell you how they did it, well then you can't argue with that. Did, did you find when talking to those people, because I found this when, when talking to people in Fairlight's history that there are slightly different versions of the same tale and when you end up coming to, you know, this is the thing that I, this is the, the narrative I'm going to use, it's a little bit from here and a little bit from there and a little bit from there. Absolutely. I had this conversation, so, um, the GForce guys, um, helped me, helped me out and I had a conversation with Dave and Chris and they were saying when they've made documentaries like Bright Sparks, um, that they realized that you could tell the same story a lot of different ways depending on how you edited it, so you do need to be careful that you don't put your own spin on it, um, and, and yes, there are times where someone's account of something didn't marry with someone else's and then you have to without saying are you sure about that? Cause obviously they were there and I wasn't you do, um, just have to kind of navigate through that and in a couple of instances there were some bits and I went back and spoke to someone they said oh actually now you say that I think this. Generally, yeah, I guess not really things being wrong, but people will always perceive something from their perspective way, so, uh, yes, we did, I did have some different opinions on how something played out for sure. Nostalgia, nostalgia has a funny way of colouring things in, in your favour. You know, it makes things that were good, nicer and things that were bad worse and, and, and I've, I've, you know, experienced that when talking to people who were in the same room 30 years ago and their version of events is somewhat different and then there's an altercation between those two. Well, it didn't happen like that, but it did happen and then you have to, look guys, let's agree on the common truth here and we'll take that as the, uh, as the line. So, um, did you have any trouble? I mean, you, you mentioned that there's, there's lots of gear in this and there is a lot of gear and I have to say that it is a two hour long film and I was slightly daunted by that because, you know, two hours is a, is a long time, uh, in any kind of movie documentary perspective, but I do find that with films that are of a particular interest to myself, those two hours whizzed by, and these really did whizz by. And the whole film is full of, um, the instruments, um, all the different types. You, you mentioned that you, you spoke about the different versions of the 2600, the different iterations and the other prototypes and stuff. Was it difficult to track down, um, all of that gear? I mean, you said you were offered a lot of this stuff and people came out and helped you and were, were there anything, was there anything that you couldn't find? Uh, I thought, I thought the 2500 was gonna be impossible to find, but, uh, that wound up happening, um, and the 2600, uh, I, I, with some of those we didn't actually film. Like the Blue Marvin, we just had recordings and photos of one. So, um, through doing things like that, we did manage to find everything. There were some things because of the pandemic that we were going to be filming, which I had to abandon because we weren't going to be filming them. So we had to drop a thing with a Quadra, uh, although I had some Quadra footage. And a Solus, I had to drop the Solus and what I was going to do with the Avatar has had to be put off. So I think I might follow those up with some little extra bits, but, um... Is that how you're going to do it? Just like addendums to the main thing or do you, would you do a director's cut maybe? Um, I think little addendums, I think like, uh, so the Avatar is, uh, it's next to me, you can't see it, uh, and you certainly can't see it on a podcast, um, so that, that is a, so it's really, really fascinating to me, the guitar side of it, which nobody uses it for, uh, and I, we got lucky, so I'm trying to get mine fixed up so I can actually play it with a guitar because I think that needs a video. Because that's very, very interesting and it's such a weird sound. Yeah. Um, but we got lucky because it turned out that there was an album done, uh, with Drew Schleichinger and David Torn in 1978. The Avatar from a Guitar. I think they must be the only people who did it and, um, they just happened to digitize it and release it a couple of months ago. So we wound up being able to use that, but I, I think there's another video that could be made actually showing people because nobody knows what it sounds like really, this weird hexaphonic guitar thing that comes out in stereo. Yeah. I mean, I knew the name and I, I, I, I, if I saw one, I'd say, oh yeah, that's an ARP Avatar, but I wouldn't, couldn't tell you how it sounded, uh, or, or, or what exactly it did or how it did it and, and the way you covered it in the documentary, certainly, you know cleared a lot of that stuff up. But yeah, I mean there's definitely uh, there's more to be had from that one. You've just reminded me there is a central, there is a central six recording which is so the, the massive six voice poly, which is a fascinating story because it shows you how close ARP came to making basically like the Prophet V or, you know, the Oberheim OB-X or something, you know, they were looking at a poly synth with full articulation per voice with the digital scanning keyboard and they were combining with the guitar synth thing, but it was just too early. They weren't using integrated circuits. So it just wound up being this absolutely massive thing that was, I think it was 15 grand in parts, which I converted and it's like 60,000 dollars or 60, you know, it was just never going to happen, um, but yeah, so they tested it out and then they had to just dismantle it and get rid of it. I think it's still, I think the chassis still exists somewhere because photos of it have cropped up and I know, um, from someone at ARP that they, um, sold off, you know, they auctioned everything at the end when it closed down, so I think someone took that. It was just an empty chassis. I know it had been cleared out, but that that's somewhere someone's got probably. Yeah, The Central but it turns out Bill Singer, who was the demonstrator recorded something with it before it was taken apart, never, you know, never to be used ever again and it's on a reel-to-reel and he found it, but his reel-to-reel player wasn't working. So that needs to get fixed, but then obviously that's all been, so there's all that stuff, well, fascinating stuff as an addendum. Yes. Yeah, or even a part two, an entire part two. This time it's personal. Yeah, um, well they have all those instruments down there, like Axxe two Omni two. Other people who've got stories like Pete Townsend, it would be amazing to speak to him if we ever could. Cause his story would be a film on its own. Yeah. Um, yeah, so, who knows? So it kind of leads me on to my next question, um, about synth documentaries, I mean, there are so many stories out there, um, that, that I think not only just satisfy the nerd in all of us synth nerds, but also there's real life stories, you know, you talk about, you know, I was just re watching, uh, part of your, your ARP video before we came on, um, and, you know, that that first section, you know, talks about how, um, Alan got to where he got, what he was doing and all these different things and his family and everything and there are some really fascinating stories just there. So where do you see synth documentaries going in the future from now on? Because we've had a few, um, and they're, they're usually niche, so, um, you know, you mentioned, um, Dave and Chris's, uh, Bright Sparks, which I think is fantastic, um, and you referenced that in the film, obviously you get some footage from them, um, there was, there's been at least one Moog documentary and there's another one that's in the works and hopefully coming soon. I hope so, yeah. Yeah, um, I hope it's cause I've backed it. Um, so, uh, and there's, um, there's a Mellotron one, there's an 808 movie and they're slowly, they seem to be picking up and there's, I Dream of Wires, of course, the whole modular scene. Um, Do you think there is a market for these videos commercially, or is it always going to be, you know, just tickling our sweet spots and that's that? What I like about what you do is, apart from obviously the two hour ARP documentaries, those 20 minute, half hour little mini histories and they're great in a way as well, you know, because they, I mean, I go back to that Fairlight one, or the Terminator 2 one that you, you know, talks about the Fairlight. It's, it's there for Terminator fans, film fans, scoring fans, Fairlight fans, you know, um, fans of Arnold Schwarzenegger voiceovers. It's all, you know, where do you see the whole synth documentary thing going in the next few years? Yeah, I think with the ARP film, I think we went, there's the human stories, which are really interesting, which I hadn't had access to with my other films. I've been making them, you know, from a distance. I didn't interview Roland engineers. I did get some help from Roland, but I didn't speak to anybody in Japan who was originally there, um, ditto, uh, the other films, so that part of it is fascinating, but a lot of what I do just goes really deep into the technology in a way that would just not be appropriate, I don't think, for like a, a general viewing thing, um, so I think they will remain, that kind of film will remain very niche, um, so I just don't think you'd get a market for it. But something that's broader appeal, I think the, the Terminator one is a, a great example because, and that's had a lot of views, it's had a lot of views twice because it got pulled for copyright and I well they I had some stills from the film and I didn't use any footage I just had stills but you know, it's their prerogative and they, the studio deems that I'm not allowed to do that. So I remade it with a Terminator action figures. That was my work around, which is... That's a lesson you've learned, isn't it? You know, I've fallen foul of stuff like that before and you just think, okay, right, next time we don't use footage or we don't use pictures. You know, maybe we'll come up with a unique thing and you came up with a really unique idea, use the model action figures, which is great. That was my workout and then I wound up and thought, well, I'll make that a thing. So in, when I did one about escape from New York, which Alan Howarth did an interview for amazingly, which is absolutely fascinating, I then, yeah, I used a model Snake Plissken for that, yeah, so that I didn't, didn't fall foul of the, um, the studio there. But yeah, I think things like that, that are linked to a film or, or some bit of history that you, uh, might have a connection to without necessarily being into the tech is, is much more marketable because I've spoken to my friends who have absolutely no interest in synthesizers whatsoever and they've all watched my Terminator film and all said, oh, I found that really interesting and they could follow it without needing to really what a Fairlight is, uh, you know, that, you know, you don't need to go into the tech of that. So what's next in the world of, of Alex ball documentaries? Um, at the moment I'm, I'm not starting another documentary right now because, um, I wanted to let the ARP thing sit because it was just such a huge thing. You don't want to go and that's done, so let's move on, you know, let's enjoy that, um, it was a huge project. A lot of people helped, uh, and, and gave a lot to make that happen. So I'd like to just let that sit for a bit. Um, yeah, I've got quite a lot on this year. We're having a third child soon, so thank you, um, so I don't want to, uh, stretch myself with, with things I don't have to be doing. So, um, no immediate plans. I've got, um, you can see them, obviously people in the podcast can't, but I've got some bits behind me that I'm doing shorter videos with, so I've just done a couple of videos with a huge Roland System 100M, um, four cab system. So I'm doing some bits of that, which I think is really interesting because, um, there's not that much stuff out there with a big system. You can see two cabs behind me. There's actually, had to move it, but there's uh, I've had five in, in uh, which is awesome. Uh, and then I've just got, just borrowed these which are some AMS, um rackmount things the uh, RMS X16, yes, which is like the 80s reverb, isn't it? Yeah. That non-linear thing, so, um and the delay which is on the other side which, yeah, apparently does sampling. I haven't even turned it on yet. Yeah, that's how it does the delay isn't it? You know? Oh okay, right. So you can use it as a sampler apparently. Yeah, that's right. I think, um, was it Martin Hannett was using it as, as such when he was doing, you know, Joy Division and, and early New order and stuff like that. Right. I might be wrong, but... So if you couldn't afford a Fairlight, you used them. Yeah, quite. Yeah, so I was going to say, yeah, so basically at the moment I'm just doing shorter videos about particular pieces of kit that are of interest. So I think with the RMX, um, because it's like the 80s reverb, I think that could be a, like we were just talking about, a topic that's generally interesting. It's like the reverb sound of the 80s. Well, I mean, there's a couple, isn't there, but it's one of. Yeah, absolutely. The defining kind of 80s reverb sounds and then I can demonstrate why so I think yeah, in the, in the future that's what I'm, the immediate future things like that. Very quickly just to end up on you know, what's the one piece of gear that you would love to make a documentary movie about in the future, one, just one? Oberheim, but you mean a gear or gear? Yeah, I think, I think... Yeah, but there's an individual piece of gear or brand, you know, just that one thing. I think the Oberheim story, uh, those seventies SEM based Oberheims are something else. And I think there's a, I mean, again, Dave Spiers has done like the video on the eight, the Oberheim eight voice, uh, and I had a very quick go on that, but, um, I know from having spoken to everybody who knows, you know, that is a, you know, a heck of a thing, even the two voice. And then there's the whole world of the, you know, the OB-X, OB-XA, OB-8. So I have played an OB-8. Then there's the DMX, which is a whole story of its own. So there's, I think that's something I would love to explore at, if I can at some point, but um yeah, I think I've got, I've got an Oberheim DX which is awesome. The, the little brother of the DMX and I've played with an expander and an OB-8 but I'm, and then the modern OB-6, but I've barely touched it and I'm aware that it's, it's a, a universe unto itself. Quite. Well, we look forward to that whenever that appears, but you've got a lot on your plate, so... 20, 2029. So Alex, it's been absolutely fantastic talking to you and to meet you in this virtual sense. It's been fascinating hearing about how you, you made, uh, the ARP video, which is available on YouTube still, yep? Yep, there's two versions of it. There's the one I uploaded and then there's a slightly updated cut, which is on the Alan R Pearlman foundation page as well. So take your pick. Yeah, go and look at that. And your YouTube channel is... It's just YouTube.com/AlexBallMusic. Brilliant stuff. Alex, thank you ever so much for joining us today. No, thank you for having me. Thank you for listening and be sure to check out the show notes page for this episode where you'll find further information along with web links and details of all the other episodes. Oh, and just before you go, let me point you to the soundonsound.com forward slash podcast website page where you can explore what's playing on the other channels. I'm Rob Puricelli and this has been a Failed Muso production for Sound On Sound.