Plug: Subversive Studios

If I may be crass and do a plug for a friend of mine for a moment...

Subversive Sound Studio is a Philly based facility that specializes in the production, mixing, remixing, and mastering of electronic music. The head of the studio is Isaac Glendening of the band Cesium-137. I've been to the studio before and it's much nicer than mine. haha At any rate, one of their selling points is that they try to keep their rates as reasonable as possible, so if you're looking for any of these services without having to sell a kidney, give 'em a look!

Ton of Free Dub Samples

via AudioLemon:

Ton of dub oriented samples... beware that a lot of these appear to be lifted from records, so the copyright legality is iffy...

GO GET THEM!

Interview: Ralf Hutter of Kraftwerk - 27 Sep 2008 - NZ Herald: Entertainment News, Reviews and Gossip from New Zealand and around the World

In my recent post about the Kraftwerk documentary I lamented the lack of input from Ralf & Florian.  Lo & Behold, today there was an interview with Ralf in the New Zealand Herald.  Thanks to Matrixsynth for the link.

Interview: Ralf Hutter of Kraftwerk - 27 Sep 2008 - NZ Herald

Posted using ShareThis

Lowcoders & bitplant Release Free Dub Delay Plug-in For Mac!

Happy weekend! Poking around on Synthtopia, I see that Lowcoders have teamed up with bitplant to release The King Dubby Tape Delay (if you don't get the pun in the name, you don't listen to enough dub... go buy some!) is a free Universal Binary Audio Unit plug-in for Mac users. I don't know about you, but tape delay is one of my all time favorite effects and I've always got room for another! And dry your tears, Windows users... they are apparently working on a VST Windows version. Please note that this is a beta version, so you may encounter some glitches, but I've not heard of any problems so far...

GO GET IT.

Free Compressor Plug-in from Audio Damage

Critically-acclaimed plug-in creators Audio Damage have an early Christmas present for you! Rough Rider is a new, absolutely free compressor plug-in . This would be cool enough on its own, but fortunately, it also happens to sound great! What I like best about it (aside from the nice looking GUI...) is that there are no numbers on any of the dials, so you are forced to use your ears to find the ideal settings instead of plugging in the 'right' settings from some post on the internet or something. Oh, and for those familiar with 90's industrial music, Chris Randall from Sister Machine Gun happens to be one half of the company.

Here's the details from Audio Damage themselves:

Rough Rider is a modern compressor with a bit of "vintage" style bite and a uniquely warm sound. Perfect for adding compression effects to your drum buss, it also sounds great with synth bass, clean guitar, and backing vocals. Definitely not an all-purpose compressor, Rough Rider is at its best when used to add pump to rhythmic tracks. Of course, you can use it however you'd like. The Compressor Police aren't gonna come to your house and give you a citation. Slap it on a track and crank some knobs.

The front panel layout is done the same as many hardware compressors, so it will be immediately obvious how to use it. A brief overview of the controls:

Ratio: The ratio knob is logarithmic in operation. Completely anti-clockwise is 1:1, and completely clockwise is 1:1000. The 12 o'clock position is 1:10, so everything to the left of center is single digits, and everything to the right is "atom bomb squish," essentially.

Attack and Release: We left off the actual time values, so you're gonna have to use your ears, like the he-men did it in times of myth.

Meter: That honking big dial in the middle of the UI is the gain reduction meter. It basically shows how much compression is occurring.

Sensitivity: usually called "threshold" now, but we think "sensitivity" always made more sense. Turn to the right, you get more compression, essentially. Turn it all the way to the right, and you've got a distortion box, the sound of which is tuned by Ratio, Attack, and Release.

Makeup: 30 dB of gain to compensate for the attenuation caused by the compressor.

Active: From the front panel, this is simply an off/on switch, but if you automate it, strange things happen...

MIDI Learn: Like all of our products, the VST version has MIDI Learn. Download any manual from the current product line for an explanation of how this works, as it is common among all our VST products.

Rough Rider is available as a VST effect for Windows, and an AU or VST for OSX. The OSX versions are Universal Binaries, and require OSX
10.4.0 or later.

Directions:

OSX: Unzip the folder, and place RoughRider.VST in library/audio/plugins/VST and place RoughRider.component in library/audio/plugins/Components.

Windows: Unzip and place RoughRider.dll in your VST plugins folder.

GO GET IT!

Some Thoughts on the New Kraftwerk Documentary

When it was first announced, I was very excited to hear about the new Kraftwerk documentary "Kraftwerk and the Electronic Revolution". And judging by the long wait there was for it on Netflix, I was not alone. Now that I've watched it, though, I have to admit to being a bit disappointed. Not because it's a terrible film, but because it actually offers very little insight into Kraftwerk. Where the film succeeds is in its very thorough history of the Krautrock movement that preceded Kraftwerk. Indeed, nearly half of the film is talking about other bands such as Amon Duul, Can, Popol Vuh, Cluster, etc. This is all important in understanding how Krafwerk happened, but it actually almost eclipses the Kraftwerk content at times.

Also disappointing (although not surprising) is the lack of any interviews with Ralf or Florian. Karl Bartos is interviewed extensively, but I think most Kraftwerk enthusiasts have heard his perspective numerous times by now (since he seems to be the only member of the 'classic line-up' who will talk to press). The other interviews and commentary are from a variety of critics, musicians, and academics and actually get a bit long-winded and boring after awhile.

The ending is a bit odd, as well, skipping entirely over Electric Cafe and only briefly mentioning Tour de France Soundtracks and barely mentioning the band's reunion tour and concluding "Well, even geniuses run out of steam". It seems a very odd, down note to end on. That said, this is the first extensive documentary on Kraftwerk that I am aware of and it must've been quite a feat to get the info they DID get on such a reclusive group. Still, the whole thing feels like a missed opportunity to me.

DVD Recommendation - Made in Sheffield

Saw this one last night. Excellent documentary on the music scene in Sheffield, England in the late 70's and early 80's which spawned bands like ABC, Clock DVA, the Human League, Cabaret Voltaire, and... uh... Def Leppard (who apparently played a show with the Human League when they were first starting out... still trying to make sense of THAT line-up). Most of the story is told through interviews with members of the bands and archival live footage. If you're a fan of this era of music, this should be required viewing.

Free Mac Tape Saturation Plug-in

1-Time (one-time) is a FREE mono tape saturation plug-in. It can smooth out harsh transients, add weight to kicks, and more. There is only one setting and only one knob that adjusts the gain. It is a handy and useful tool and it’s free! Download it today!

Another Thought on slotMusic

I think this slotMusic idea is dumb to begin with, but what do you want to bet that Sansdisk rolls out the new format with an ad that uses M's "Pop Music" with new lyrics? Slot...slot...slot music! Yeah. Let THAT haunt your dreams.

Major Labels Announce New 'slotMusic' Format

Future Music is reporting that EMI, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, and Sony have teamed up with SansDisk to introduce the new "slotMusic" album format (whoever came up with that name should be kicked in the groin and fired). The format will make available albums for purchase in a compact memory card format like the one used in your digital camera.

I'm not entirely sure what the point of this is, especially since it costs the consumer the exact same amount as an album in CD format and the files on the slotMusic card are in MP3 format. Why on earth would someone pay $5 more for MP3's just because it comes on a tiny, easy to lose memory card? I think these companies are in for the same sort of thing that happened when they tried to release albums on Minidisc format - ie no one bought them and the format died a quick death as a consumer format.

Am I wrong on this? Does the idea of this format appeal to people?

Free Jomox Airbase 99 Bassdrums Samples

Cyberworm does it again, offering up 100 analog bassdrum sounds created on the Jomox Airbass99.

GO GET THEM!

Shatner Goes Electro

Via shatnerrulz on You Tube:



This is from awhile back, so I am probably the last to have seen it, but it's quite clever and well done. Reminds me of stuff like Coldcut's "Timber" or Emergency Broadcast Network's "We Will Rock You". Just goes to show there are good sounds all around you if you've got a mic and a sampler...

Rare Interview With Yello

Via Bazhuddy on YouTube:

The interview doesn't start until about 4 minutes into the first clip, but if you're a fan (this band was so much more than 'Oh Yeah') it's a rare chance to hear the band talk about their early history, studio techniques, artistic philosophies, etc. In four parts...

D16 Group to Release Decimort Bitcrusher

The gang who brought you Nepheton and Drumazon are working on a new bitcrusher plug-in. Here's what they have to say about it:

"Electronic music producers (especially in Hip-Hop) have always been aware that classic samplers (such as early Akai and EMU units) had a character and sound of their own. They added a "grit" and "colour" to the samples and loops they played back which made them sound "Fat" and sit well in a mix.

This sound colouration was due to the encoding techniques, lower sample rates, lower bit rate and conversion circuits which these early samplers used.

Decimort recreates this colouration and adds the vintage sampler magic to any loop, bass line or sound played through it. It also acts as the perfect bit crusher with filter.

Low quality sometimes is desired

The Decimort effect unit is from the SilverLine family of plugins. It is a premium grade bit crusher. The complex and advanced signal processing algorithms within Decimort simulate the behaviour of the whole sampling path which exists in every AD/DA converter.

Decimort has no internal aliasing. The only aliasing effect present in the system is the modelled aliasing of the classic samplers we modelled when creating it. Undesired artefacts are not present in the processed signal. Only wanted artefacts remain. A further very steep low-pass filter, synchronised to the signal frequency, can be applied at the end of the signal path to absolutely ensure that no unwanted out-of-band signals remain.

Two in one

Decimort is also equipped with analogue like filters with adjustable resonance that allow further sculpting of the signal. These can be used to smooth the sound or remove more of the sonic artefacts introduced into the signal path by the modelling process.

Totally independent

Decimort can process the right and left channels of a stereo signal completely independently. This allows all path parameters to be set differently for each channel. This can be used, for example, to create the impression of a wider stereo stage.

Alternatively, both channels can be linked to set path parameters to the same value for both right and left channels.

Requirements

Decimort is available in VST and AU format for both platforms (PC and Mac). It's a dynamic library (.dll file) for PC (VST only) and Universal Binary bundle for Mac (VST and AU).

To use the product you need Windows 2000/XP or Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later. It's not a standalone program so you need a VST or AU compatible host application to use it."

GO TO D16's PAGE