Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Another Weird Snow Leopard Quirk?

Has anyone run into this one? Sometimes, when I come down to the studio and take my computer out of Sleep mode, the computer will wake and launch some random iLife app. I know it's not me hitting the Dock accidentally when I wake the computer as I have tons of applications on my Dock and it is only ever iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, etc. that do these random launches...

Cool Meat Beat Manifesto Mini-doc




New Track from Burial

Octave Plateau Voyetra 8 on Ebay

Most famously used by New Order and my friend Steve.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Playing Hooky

I was poking around online and came across this interesting thread about Peter Hook's (if you don't know which bands he was in, you probably won't care...) distinctive bass tone and how it's achieved.  Although I think it leaves out the vital tip that it won't sound the same unless you sling your bass so low that it's bouncing off your shins.

Meatscience Releases Free "Bitsmacker" AU for Mac

I saw this one get mention over on Synthtopia.  Meatscience is a new name on my radar.  Always good to see more and more people developing audioware for the Mac!  Anyway, here's what they have to say about their new "Bitsmacker" effect:

"The Bitsmacker is digital distortion swiss army knife for adding that certain digital crustiness to your pristine audio signal. Can simulate vintage samplers, classic video game systems, and other lo-fi paraphenalia. At extreme settings, it warps your audio with power you can't get from a stomp box or full stack. "

Synare S3X Drum Synth on Ebay

Info at the listing...

Monday, September 28, 2009

Cool Logic Flex Time Tutorial

One of the things that has me excited about Logic's new flex time feature is the potential for abusing it to do things it wasn't originally intended for.  Here's a cool tutorial video from Electronic Musician covering just this sort of thing.  (Be sure to watch until the end, as that's where most of the interesting stuff happens...)

Getting Unstuck

It's happened to all of us at one time or another.  You sit down to work on that new track you'd been making so much progress with and you just hit a wall.  Try as you might, you just suddenly run out of ideas and you're at a complete standstill.  Times like these can be incredibly frustrating.  The real danger, of course, is that you get so frustrated that you end up giving up and abandoning what had the potential to be a really cool song.  So today, I thought I'd share some ideas for getting yourself unstuck when you find yourself in this scenario.

1. Change the Tempo
This is such a simple thing, but it can make a really big difference in the mood and feel of a song.  Maybe that dancefloor stormer you're working on would really work better as a ballad.  Or would that slow, contemplative track benefit from the increased energy levels a higher tempo can provide?  Doubt this would make a difference?  Keep in mind that both New Order's "Blue Monday" and Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence" were originally intended to be ballads.  After speeding them up, both turned out to be not only some of the biggest hits either of those bands had, but indeed some of the biggest hits in popular music period.  A tempo change can make for an interesting remix idea, too.  Front 242 did an instrumental remix of their track "Religion" on the maxi-single of the same name that was simply the track slowed way down.  You'd be surprised how different the song feels with just a simple tempo change.

2.  Frankenstein's Monster
I'm a musical packrat.  As I've mentioned before, I always have an active 'ideas' folder on my computer where I can quickly store musical ideas that I can later come back to and hopefully flesh out into songs.  Of course, a lot of these ideas end up going unused either because on second listen, they aren't that inspiring or maybe they just don't fit the sound of a certain project.  But no matter how sure I am that an idea will never make the cut with me, I always hang on to these little song snippets.  There are a lot of benefits to doing this, but one solution they can provide is a method of getting up and running again when you're stuck.  Sometimes the verse structure of a song comes out great, but you can't figure out an appropriate chorus to go with it, or vice-versa.  Having a library of unused ideas allows you to audition some of them in just this sort of scenario.  Sometimes an idea that seems "blah" on its own takes on a whole new life if inserted into a different context.

3. Shuffle Your Sounds
Many songwriters underestimate the importance of arranging when it comes to how a song sounds.  The sounds you use and where you place them make an enormous difference in how a track sounds.  If you're stuck on a song, try saving a second copy of the song and going through and changing every single synth and drum sound on the track.  You can always go back to the original if this proves fruitless.  If you have doubts about this, try tracking down some old Depeche Mode demos or the demos from Nine Inch Nail's "Pretty Hate Machine".  Some of them sound painfully lame before the right sounds and studio magic were applied.  Don't be afraid to get crazy and experiment with sounds you wouldn't normally use, either.  Sometimes the 'wrong' sound in the right context can turn out amazing.

4.  Get Lost
Although I am primarily a keyboard player, I also have a bass and an electric guitar.  I'm not a very good bass player and I am even more useless with a guitar, but I like having around a couple of instruments I am not as familiar with as the keys.  When you've been playing an instrument for a long time, I think it can be quite easy to get into a rut and have certain 'default' intervals, keys, or chord shapes that you fall into time and time again.  Having an instrument on hand that you are not as familiar with almost forces you to go in different directions than you would on your 'home instrument'.  Try some unusual stuff too, like mapping your drum pads to trigger notes on your favorite synth.  Anything to break you out of your normal way of playing can be a really valuable method for coming up with new ideas.

5. Move On
When you're stuck, probably one of the worst things you can do is to just sit there listening to your track over and over again hoping some miracle happens and a great idea pops into your hear.  You're only going to get sick of the track and feel less inspired to finish it.  So if you've tried a couple of the above ideas and it still isn't happening for you, take a break and work on something else.  Sometimes you just need a bit of a musical 'palate cleanser' to reset things.  When I'm working on an album, I usually have at least 4 or 5 songs I am working on at the same time.  That way, if I get stuck on one, I can simply move to another and still be moving forward on the album.  I realize this sounds pretty unfocused, but it's worked wonders for me and I often find that after working on another track,  I'm more eager to come back and work on the track I was stuck on in the first place - sort of a creative 'reset' button.  Remember what they say about absence making the heart grow fonder.

So what about you?  How do you get yourself unstuck when you're at a creative standstill?

Korg MS-50 on Ebay

Info at the listing...

Friday, September 25, 2009

Microsoft, Microsoft, Microsoft *palm to face*

It's crap like this and the ridiculous SongSmith promos from a while back that is the reason they portray the PC as a pasty, chubby nerd on those Mac commercials everyone hates so much. Seriously, THIS is your marketing strategy?! Isn't Microsoft one of the biggest companies in the world? So why does this look like something from QVC?  

Free Sample Friday: Wax Trax Bass


Here's another freebie for you. This is a sound I made on my Waldorf Microwave XTk modeled after the metallic bass sounds favored by a lot of bands in the Wax Trax Records era, particularly A Split Second (sunglasses not included). Samples are 24-bit, 44.1k mono WAV files. Root keys are in the file names. Not the smoothest splits between key zones, but so long as you're not using it to play scales, it should work just fine.

Macbeth M3X Synth on Ebay

Info at the listing...

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Korg Polysix | demo by syntezatory.prv.pl

Another fantastic demo from Jexus...

Try It Out: Step Time Programming

When it comes to sequencing, there are basically 2 types available to you in most DAWs. "Real Time" sequencing involves physically playing a musical part into the sequencer. The alternate is "Step Time" sequencing, in which notes are played or drawn on a grid one at a time (or knobs are turned/sliders slid on an analog sequencer). Back in the early days of electronic music, step time was your only option if you wanted to program a sequencer and the sound of electronic music in that time period is at least partially a result of the use of this method. The driving synth lines of Giorgio Moroder, the robotic precision of Kraftwerk, and even the chaotic basslines of early EBM bands like DAF all owe their sound to the method in which they were programmed.

Indeed, a lot of people still use step time, but because it is a bit more intuitive and less work intensive, most people who are able to play do their sequencing in real time these days. If that's the case, have a try programming some parts in step time. You may be surprised at how different the results are from your usual music.


In Logic, you have two basic ways of step programming. The first involves opening the Piano Roll Editor and simply drawing notes on the grid. This is probably most useful for drum programming, but it can be a lot of fun to experiment with on melodic material too, if you're not used to it. The second method involves actually playing the notes on your controller, one at a time. Here's how to do it in Logic:


1. Create a new Software Instrument Track and assign your favorite soft synth to it. Select the Pencil Tool and click somewhere on your Software Instrument Track in the Arrange Window to create a new region.


2. Double click on the new region to open the Piano Roll Editor.


3. At the top of the Piano Roll Editor window, you'll see a row of four buttons to the left of the Piano Roll menu bar. The rightmost of these two have an image of a MIDI outlet, one marked IN and one marked OUT. Click the IN button until it turns red. This allows you to enter notes in the Piano Roll grid from your MIDI controller.


4. Make sure your playhead is at the beginning of the grid in the Piano Roll Editor and play a note on your keyboard. You should see your note appear on the grid and the playhead advance by one note. What note value this is depends how you have your note value is set on the transport bar. You'll find it right beneath the time signature. It defaults to /16 for sixteenth notes.


5. Once you've programmed in a bunch of notes, press the space bar to hear what you've just created. Maybe it's something kind of cool, or maybe it's terrible, but either way, you should experiment with changing the pitch of individual notes, deleting notes here and there, changing the timing and so on until you find something cool.


Taking this sort of 'blind' approach to programming can lead you to much different places than you might have gone if you tried playing the same part in real time. And likewise, if you're not much of a player and have always entered notes on a grid, have a go at playing stuff in real time. You don't have to be perfect, that's what quantize is for! So which do you prefer? Real time, step time, or a combination of both for specific purposes?

Rheem Kee Bass on Ebay

Info at the listing...

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Sampling Goldmine Part 3: Hundreds of Old Soul Records




















Via the Music of Sound:

Got some free time and feel like doing some sample-hunting?  A blog called Beat Electric recently posted over a thousand MP3's of old soul, R & B, disco, and funk 45's that were apparently digitized by a rare record dealer. Some of the recording is a bit dodgy, and most of them cut off before they are over, but neither one of those things precludes some good old fashioned sample mining...

Gear Talk With Robert Rich

Found this one in my travels around the interwebs the other night...  Robert Rich is a highly-respected ambient artist with a 30 year career and an impressive discography to match.  Earlier this summer, he added a small technical forum on his website where people could post questions and he would answer them.  There's a lot of good advice there regardless of the genre you work in, but the next time you need a big, lush, atmospheric feel to a song you're working on, have a look.  Lots of good stuff.

Yamaha FS1r on Ebay

Late 90's Yamaha FM synth with 8 operators and formant filters for unique, vocal like sounds.  I remember it being pretty popular with Goa artists for awhile...



Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Thoughts on Logic 9

So, when my computer died a couple weeks ago and I ordered a new one, I figured now was as good a time as any to pick up Logic 9.  If I'm starting over from scratch, I may as well upgrade everything.  Plus, I just finished an album, so even if something did go wrong, I've got some time to sort it out.  So, it's been about a week that I've actually been able to spend using Logic 9 and I thought I'd share some first impressions.

As many have noted before me, this isn't the whopping upgrade the Logic 8 was.  But then again, Logic 8 got so much right as far as the interface goes, why mess with it?  There are a few subtle cosmetic changes, but everything works like you're used to.  One small improvement I liked is the new progress window that comes up when you are loading a project.  Info that used to pop up in multiple windows as you loaded a project now comes up in a single, unified window that also shows the names of the plug-ins Logic is loading in real time.  This could be very helpful in tracking down problematic plug-ins.

There are quite a few of these little changes, and the ones I've run into so far have been for the better. Much more streamlined.

What I like:

• Flex Time - I haven't played with this a whole lot yet, but it looks like it's going to be a lot of fun.  It's much the same idea as warping in Ableton Live.  Logic detects transients and allows you to quantize the audio like you would MIDI, and even move the markers to stretch, move and compress individual slices.  I'm anxious to try using this for aligning multiple tracks of vocals. I used to just cut and move stuff around, but this will be much easier.  I really like the potential for abuse too.  This should deliver a lot of really cool beat-mangling abilities.

• Selective Project Importing - Now, you can import parts of a project rather than the entire thing.  Want to import some effects settings from a track you already did?  No problem.  Just want to import a handful of tracks to do a remix?  Logic's got your back.

• New Orchestral Samples - I never heard anyone mention this in talking about the new features, but the EXS-24 sample library has been expanded to include a very well-appointed orchestral library.  It's kind of surprising there was so little of this kind of content until now, but these are great, so all is forgiven.  

• Warped Space Designer Impulses - A nice array of new impulse responses of a more experimental nature are included in the new Logic.  These are not aimed at imitating real, natural sounding acoustic spaces, but instead produce very strange... uh, "warped" results.  These will be a lot of fun for sound designers since you can really do some pretty severe sonic manipulation with these.

• Bounce in Place - This is another one I have been waiting for ever since Logic introduced the ability to use softsynths.  Whereas previously you had to bounce down your synth track, import the audio, and drag it to an awaiting audio track, now you can simply bounce it and Logic does the rest for you automatically.  Long overdue!

• Bounce With Effects Tails - It always used to drive me crazy when I would spend the time to bounce down a track only to discover I had chopped off a reverb or delay tail at the end of the track because I hadn't set the Bounce End time late enough.  Now, by checking a box, Logic will ensure your Bounce End time includes those tails.  

• New Guitar Amp and Effects Plug-ins - I haven't played around with these too much, but you've probably heard that Logic now includes two new plug-ins called Amp Designer and Pedalboard.  I am a sucker for sending synths through guitar amps and effects, so I'm looking forward to playing with these.  So far my impression is that these sound much better than Apple's previous attempt at modeled amps. It'd be nice if these two were integrated into a single plug-in, though.

• My most-hated bug seems to be gone - So far, I have not run into the bug that drove me crazier than any other: the dreaded "processor overload" that would happen the first time you played a project with lots of soft synths in it.  Now, part of this may be because the processor I have now is about eleventy billion times faster than my old one and the 'ceiling' is just higher, but even using some high CPU plug-ins like Alchemy and DCAM Synth Squad, I haven't encountered it yet.  I'm still not totally convinced yet, though.

What I don't like:

• No printed manuals - Yes, I know Apple is a 'green' company, and I can respect that, but come on.  When you have a program this deep and complex, your customers deserve printed documentation.  I personally like to read manuals when I'm traveling or just relaxing somewhere.  Maybe I'm just behind the times, but I find that to be kind of a drag on a laptop.  

• Overwrites Older Versions  - I've been using Logic since version 4.  As such, a lot of my old projects are from before the major file format change introduced in version 5.  This means that if I want to load up an old project, I have to have at least Logic 7 installed on my machine to convert these older projects so they are openable in the newer versions.  No problem.  I've got the space.  What is a problem, however, is that Logic 9 installs itself as Logic Pro, which happens to be the same name Logic 7 installs under.  So if you try to install one, it will erase the other.  A simple name change remedies this, but it would've been nice if Apple took this into account, as I had to install Logic 9 over from scratch when I discovered this quirk.

• Soundtrack Still Defaults to Saving Project Files and Not Audio FIles - This is probably just a pet peeve of mine, but it really makes using Soundtrack as an audio editor a pain in the butt.  When you edit a file in Soundtrack and go to save it as a new sample, Soundtrack defaults to savings it as a STAP (Soundtrack Project File), meaning in order to save your sound as a WAV or AIFF, you have to mess with the dialogue box settings each and every time you do it.  So far as I can tell, there is no way to change this default.  This makes editing multi-samples or tons of drum sounds so much more laborious than it needs to be.

•  No New Instruments - I expected at least one new soft synth in the new upgrade, but nope.  Granted, Logic's built-in instruments are very good and still hold their own, but some of them are pretty long in the tooth.  A lot of new possibilities have opened up.  What gives, Apple?  I want more toys, dammit! (And this time with decent interfaces, please).

What about you?  What are you liking most about the new Logic?  What don't you like?

Vermona Perfourmer on Ebay

Info at the listing...

Monday, September 21, 2009

Music is Everywhere Part #3,971

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

A gentleman in Brazil was reading the newspaper and saw a photograph of birds sitting on an electrical wire and noticed how much it resembled notes on a musical staff. So he decided to transcribe it and hear what the music made by the birds in the image would sound like. He developed it into a full orchestration and this video is the result.

Arp 2600 on Ebay

Info at the listing...

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Korg Delta on Ebay

The source of all those great old "A Flock of Seagulls" synth strings...

Info at the listing...

Friday, September 18, 2009

Gotharmans deMOON Synth Reviewed

This Can't Be Real... Can it?

Apologies to Mr. O'C for being a playa hata.

I'll be durned...

So, I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that my laptop's hard drive was completely hosed.  Try as I might to reinstall the OS, it kept failing and telling me the disk was too damaged to install on.  

So last night, just as one last, desperate hail Mary, I tried wiping the hard drive and doing a completely clean install.  And like the legendary Phoenix from the ashes, my laptop breathes again! Did a scan of the disk with Disk Utility and it made no indication of damage to the drive itself.  I'm still a bit skeptical, but for the time being, I'm not going to sweat it.

Free Sample Friday: Metallic Hits















As a thanks to my readers, here are 30 metal hits all coming from the unlikely source of one of those gift tins of popcorn people give each other at the holidays. When emptied, it actually had a pretty nice sound to it. I hit it with both my hand and a drum stick, both with the lid on and off. Most are straight hits, but when I was shuffling stuff around in my hands I'd occasionally get some kind of interesting rhythms, so there are a couple of those in there too just waiting to be warped and synced in Live (or Logic 9).

All samples are 24-bit/44.1k mono WAV files. Total download size is about 7 MB.

Eketron Monomachine on Ebay


Info at the listing...

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Jomox Reonsator Neuronium on Ebay

Definitely one of Jomox's more unusual creations. Only 45 were made...

Info at the listing...

Tales from the Front Lines of Snow Leopard


I'm not what you'd call an early adopter. If there's one thing I absolutely hate, it's wrestling with a computer to make it work right when I just want to make music. As a result, I usually stay at least one revision behind whatever OS is current. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Unfortunately, my computer DID break and that meant a new machine. As timing would have it, I bought that new machine right after Snow Leopard came out. Welcome to Early Adopterhood by Default! I was understandably nervous about being forced into this, but figure if it was a total disaster, I could always install an older version myself. As it turns out, though, the transition has been relatively painless.


Snow Leopard isn't a giant overhaul, as you've probably heard. The most significant feature is that the OS is 64-bit, allowing, among other things, for programs to address larger chunks of data (I'm sure a 3 Terabyte acoustic piano sample is being worked on somewhere out there...). However, this feature isn't going to make a huge difference until software is adapted to take advantage of it. Indeed, the Mac defaults to booting up in good ol' 32-bit (you can switch to 64-bit by restarting and holding the 6 and 4 keys down). I tried this, and most of my softsynths and plug-ins wouldn't work, so I didn't bother exploring it further.


That aside, most of the changes are small and aimed at refining the user experience. It certainly feels a lot more zippy and the tweaks to the finder really did make all manner of file operations more efficient. The new Quicktime is especially nice with a refined interface and much more flexibility than previous incarnations.


All has not been without problems, however. As I mentioned earlier this week, I updated to 10.6.1 (which fixed a Quicktime problem) and suddenly my Liquid Mix wasn't being seen by Logic anymore. I also found my printer didn't have drivers for Snow Leopard yet, although an update was finally released this week. There have been a few oddities with the file browsing within programs. I was editing some sound files and saved the edited versions as new files. When I hit 'open' in the file menu, those files wouldn't show up even though they were right there on the desktop. I've had the same thing happen within Photoshop and Word as well. The only other annoying thing that's been happening is sometimes I'll be working in a program and the screen will just go blue and the computer basically goes through it's restart routine, quitting the program and losing whatever I was working on. This doesn't happen often, but it happens enough that it pays to save frequently (not like it doesn't normally, I'm just saying...)


Overall, my first week with Snow Leopard has been pretty good. I keep discovering new small tweaks from day to day and so far, I really like all of them. That may change further down the road, but so far it seems like Apple really did make the new version an actual improvement over the old OS and not merely 'new' for no practical purpose. Any other brave souls out there using Snow Leopard? Share your experiences, good and bad, with us!

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

D16 Announces Shioitor Softsynth

Following in the footsteps of their previous emulations of classic Roland gear, developers D16 have announced their latest an SH-101 emulator with the unfortunate name "Shioitor" (SH101-TOR).

People will stop snickering at the name when they hear it, though. I'm a happy owner of a real 101 and have always wished someone would make a decent emulation. TAL-Bassline is a fine instrument in its own right, but it just doesn't have the same warmth and bite as the original. If the
sound samples are anything to go by though, it sounds like D16 nailed it. As you can see from the interface, this is obviously greatly expanded in terms of abilities including extensive layering abilities and the ability to play sounds polyphonically. There is no specific info on pricing or a release date just yet, but expect a review here when it does.

(Oh, and there are skins that let you change the color of the plug-in to any of the colors the original 101 was available in! That makes my inner dork happy.)

Billy Corgan is Cooler Than You

Via Matrixsynth:

Because he has THIS thing. It's a custom Mattson modular built especially for him and it looks like if you plugged in the right cables, you might be able to shoot down satellites with it.

Review: Zenhiser Dirty IDM Glitch Beats Vol. 1

Library: Dirty Glitch IDM Beats Vol. 01
Format:
WAV files
Genre:
IDM, Industrial, Experimental
Distributed by:
Zenhiser
Price:
Download $7.99 AUD ($6.92 US)
Demo:
On the
product page

Although they've apparently been around since 2005, I have to admit that this was the first I had heard of Australian sample developers Zenhiser. Frankly I'm a bit surprised, as they offer small sample packs for absurdly cheap, and with the economy just about everywhere in the dumps, I'd think thrifty musicians everywhere would know this company well. So if, like me, you hadn't checked their stuff out before, do take the time to check it out.

The library I'll be looking at today is called "Dirty Glitch IDM Beats" and consists of 45 16-bit stereo WAV files. All beats include multiple variations to help build more interesting arrangements in a full song. Ideally, I would've preferred the files be in 24-bit and include REX files, but given how completely inexpensive these are, it's really hard to sweat stuff like that. The files are named with the BPM in their filename for your convenience. I didn't try it, but most of the beats seem like they'd REX up pretty easily and flexibly across a decent range of tempos.

The beats throughout are indeed glitchy, but if you're expecting the IDM bit to be like the warm fuzzies of Boards of Canada or the metallic abstractions of Autechre, think again. As the title indicates, these are very hard-edged, dirty beats. In fact given the danceable, straight-forward feel of most of these beats, I'd almost be more apt to lump it in with the more intelligent side of industrial (think Skinny Puppy). Categorization aside, the beats are all very clever and infectious with a healthy dose of groove to them. The programming is efficient and interesting throughout.

Soundwise, these are very aggressively compressed and harsh. A quick dash of any of these loops will instantly add a harder, darker tone to whatever you're working on. The sound choice is good too, although I personally would've like to have heard a bit more timbral variety. Many of the kits used throughout sound kind of similar and the processing is more or less the same on all the loops. On the plus side, it makes mixing and matching different beats together effortless, but some may be disappointed not to hear a wider variety of sounds and processing techniques. After all, there are SO many ways to make a sound dirty these days.

I think Zenhiser has a really good idea with their sample libraries. Sometimes a musician just needs a handful of loops at most for some inspiration or to revive that track they're stuck on. But most sample libraries are pretty large and pricey. By offering small sample packs for just a few bucks, Zenhiser has given musicians another option for when they don't need the Super Size option. Overall, I was quite impressed by this library. Despite the lack of sonic variety, what's here sounds very good and the programming is excellent. (8/10)

Oberheim OB-Xa on Ebay

Although it was used on much more famous albums (Van Halen, Prince), I will always identify it most closely with Laurie Anderson's "Big Science" album.

Info at the listing...

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Stereo Widening with Logic's Sample Delay

Many months ago, I made a post about using ping-pong delay as a method of widening mono sounds. This can sound nice, but as one reader rightly pointed out, it only works well with certain types of sounds like pads since more percussive sounds make the delays themselves obvious.

A much older method of fattening up a mono sound with a stereo image is to make a copy of your mono track and delay that copy by a small amount. Of course you can do this manually, but Logic's Sample Delay plug-in does a pretty spiffy job of it too. This is a delay plug-in that has settings at the actual sample level instead of milliseconds.


Simply select the mono track you wish to widen, apply an instance of Sample Delay (make sure you select the Mono->Stereo version or you won't get any effect), and delay one of the channels. The higher the value, generally, the wider the effect. There is a point of diminishing returns, however, where the actual delay itself becomes apparent (although this can produce some cool John Lennon like vocal effects). Try anywhere between about 200-2500 samples to taste. The great part about this effect is that the shorter delay times allow you to widen percussive sounds like synth bass without the delays being perceptible.

Octave Cat SRM on Ebay

Info at the listing...

Monday, September 14, 2009

Problem with OS 10.6.1 and Focusrite Liquid Mix

Just a note for any Focusrite Liquid Mix users out there using Snow Leopard - DON'T update to the Mac OS 10.6.1 revision. This is a small revision anyway, apparently to fix some Quicktime problems, but it also doesn't get along with the Liquid Mix. I was able to get it back again by downgrading to 10.6, but it took a lot of messing around.

This is apparently a known issue that Focusrite is working on.

Are You Freakin' Kidding Me?


So, Technology's ongoing war against me continues.

After just having replaced my studio computer, the hard drive on my laptop decided to turn in its resignation yesterday. I'm fairly certain just replacing the drive will fix things, but SERIOUSLY. I GET it, Technology. You reign supreme and I am but a lowly human. You win. Enough.

Interesting Documentary About KLF

Via playtherecords.com:





Oberheim OB-1 on Ebay

Info at the listing...

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Ensoniq SQ-80 on Ebay


Man, I can't believe the prices I've seen these going for lately. Don't get me wrong, it's a great synth, but I bought both an ESQ-1 and later an SQ-80 and didn't pay more than $150 for either. It's kind of funny to see different pieces of gear rise and fall in price as different things become 'cool'.
Anyway, this one is definitely cool.

Info at link...