In 2006, during a short gap between travels and projects — and shortly before I left for Australia for what would become several years abroad — I had the chance to collaborate as a guest keyboardist with Fire Makers, an independent heavy metal band from Italy.

The contact came through Massimo “Dingo” Candido, who involved me in the recording sessions for material connected to the band’s Metal Empire project. I recorded my keyboard parts at ACME Studios in Abruzzo, near the Sulmona / Raiano area: a compact but serious recording environment that, at the time, gave the session the right balance between underground metal energy and professional studio focus.

This article explains the principles behind Leslie-type loudspeakers and goes on to describe the construction of a generously proportioned system intended for use with a home constructed electronic organ. The article could provide the starting point from which individual readers could build up a rotating loudspeaker system to suit their own particular requirements.

Rotating System Loudspeakers for Electronic Organs

The most obvious and the routine method of radiating sound from an electronic organ is by means of one or more loudspeakers, suitably and conventionally baffled. In a single-unit instrument, the loudspeaker(s) are mounted behind cutouts, usually in the front panel below the keyboard and above the pedal clavier. While compact and convenient, this arrangement usually suffers some limitation in the effectiveness of the baffling which can be provided and the efficiency with which the sound can be propagated.

Rock in Progress 2002 was an important progressive rock festival held on October 19, 2002, at PalaTricalle in Chieti.

The line-up featured:

• Osanna
• Goblin / Daemonia
• Premiata Forneria Marconi

The event brought together three central names in the history of Italian progressive rock: the Mediterranean theatricality of Osanna, the cinematic atmospheres of Goblin through Claudio Simonetti’s Daemonia project, and the international dimension of Premiata Forneria Marconi.

Osanna

Osanna are one of the most representative bands in Italian progressive rock. Formed in Naples in the early 1970s, they quickly stood out for a musical language that combined rock, jazz, Mediterranean folk influences and a strong theatrical component.

SCALOROCK 3 took place on 21 June 2002 in Piazzale Guglielmo Marconi, the square in front of the railway station of Chieti Scalo, Abruzzo. It was a summer night of local rock, blues and metal, staged in a place that was never just a transit point for us: it was a meeting ground, a familiar border between the hillside city of Chieti and the flatter, louder, more improvised life around the station.

This is a transcription of my High-school Diploma thesis simply titled “Visual Communication” written in June 2000.

At the time, visual communication was emerging as a compelling and novel field within computer science. Personal computers were just beginning to gain enough processing power to approach — albeit slowly — the capabilities of the mainframes of the era. Digital signal processing was still out of reach for home computers, but the direction was clear: we were heading into a visual era. A few decades later, the “unthinkable” can now be performed on a standard notebook.

A relic from my late high-school years in the late 1990s. Remarkably, the electronics are still technically functional today, although the original display board disappeared long ago. One day I may attempt a complete restoration. The display shown in the photographs is only a mock-up reproducing what the original dashboard looked like.

“Car’s got a lot of pickup.” — The Blues Brothers (1980)

Like many teenagers of the era, I spent countless hours riding and tinkering with my 50 cc scooter. Mine was no exception: over time it became so heavily modified that it was probably no longer road-legal.