I've been working on a new album titled, Fabric and Dreams composed of songs that I've written over the past year or so. I feel like this is some of my best work. Some of it was written under duress, during times of stress. Other parts were written using some of my latest software tools. It's been a good year for writing.

The entire album is available for free at FluxOersted.com. I decided to release it for free as a normal mp3 file, and then later to make higher resolution copies available in stores and from other pay-optional sites like bandcamp.com. Strangely, the artwork may take longer to finish than some of the songs.

I went the extra step to register the album with ASCAP though on my web page I am using a Creative Commons license so that people can do what they want with it. You can download it, share it, remix it, and nobody will complain, especially me.

Now, on with the show . . .

In the 1970's Radio Shack sold a Moog synthesizer that they branded as "Realistic MG-1 Concertmate." It is essentially the same synth as a Moog Taurus or the Rogue with a few differences. One of the more interesting features it has is an auto trigger that you control the frequency with the LFO. It also has a continuous filter setting that would be like playing a Juno 6 with hold button on.

I've got one of these and it has suffered the ages rather poorly. The plastic end caps were held on by hot glue and these have popped off or are loose. I swapped the actual keys with my Moog Prodigy to restore the Prodigy. So the MG-1 has some broken keys. At one point, I tried to lower the pitch by an octave, and inadvertently changed its tuning so that the frequency change between an octave was off.

I bought a nylon tuning kit consisting of a set of plastic rods that fit into the little groove of an electronic trimmer pot. I have been successful in re-tuning the MG-1, but it has some other problems keeping pitch, possibly from the old broken keyboard, or some component on the main circuit board I'm not sure.

I still really like sounds it makes, so I'll have to keep working on restoring it now that I've become reattached to it again.