Poll Shows Young People Prefer the Compressed Sound of MP3's Versus Uncompressed Music

Oh, this does not bode well at all.

According to an article on Gizmodo, a professor of Music at Stanford conducts a yearly survey to students where he plays back music in various formats to find what the students preferences were. After 6 years of studying, the results showed that the students actually preferred the sound of crappy quality MP3's (a bit rate of 128, for example) over the original, uncompressed audio or even the other MP3's at higher rates.

I don't know what this means for the future of music, but it's nothing good, that much is sure.

Devo Reuinites for New Album

UK newspaper The Guardian reports that new wave legends Devo have reunited to work on a new album, their first in nearly 20 years. Based on the promise of the "Watch Us Work It" single they did in 2007, I'm cautiously optimistic. I haven't been nuts about too much of the band's later work (although each album usually had a good track or two...), but maybe the band feels enough time has passed that they can revisit their classic style? That would certainly fit their de-evolutionary schtick, wouldn't it?

Synthesizers.com 66 Space Modular System on Ebay

If you've been wanting a modular but wanted to get a head start on building a monstrous wall o' synth instead of buying it piecemeal, here you go!

Info on the included modules at the listing...

Logic's Little-known Enveloper

Maybe it's a hazard of living in a musical age of plenty, but with my plug-in folder stuffed to the gills with all manner of crazy effects, sometimes I forget about some of the cool plug-ins that came built-in to Logic. For whatever reason, it seems that some of the effects get more love than others, but there are probably a few that you would use if you just knew what purpose it serves. Logic's Enveloper is one such plug-in. Transient designers seem to be all the rage these days with tons of companies releasing their own versions, but Logic comes with a pretty cool one right out of the box.

The Enveloper basically allows you to reshape the amplitude envelope of a sound using a simple Attack-Release envelope and gain settings. To use it to add some snap to a synth bass or drum sound, do the following.

1. Set the THRESHOLD to -100. This controls when the effect kicks in, and for the purposes of this demonstration, we want everything to trigger it.

2. Turn your first GAIN (the attack gain) up to around 70-80%. What we're doing here is to increase the volume of the initial attack of the sound, thus giving it a bit more bite.

3. This doesn't sound like much yet, but turn the attack pretty much all the way up, to lengthen the amount of time that initial loudness lasts, and you should hear a significant difference in the attack of your sound.

Play around with different settings and you'll see this plug-in can be useful not only for adding snap to sound, it can also work the opposite way if you use a slower attack. This might come in handy if you, say, had a guitar recording where the pick noise is too loud.

Here is a 'before and after' clip demonstrating the plug-in on a synth bass sound.

Roland MKS-80 Super Jupiter on Ebay

The MKS-80 is sort of a hybrid of the Jupiter-6 and Jupiter-8 polysynths. Not as fun to program as the keyboard version, but an optional external programmer (the MPG-80) made things much easier.

More info at the listing...

Make Old School Video Game Music in Massive

(Click the image above to enlarge.)
Native Instruments Massive is an amazing synth. I'll admit, I wasn't sold when I first tried the demo, but once I got beyond the presets and started delving into programming it myself, I saw the light. I'm a modulation freak, and Massive is brimming with it. I especially find the Steppers and Performers to be a lot of fun, and used correctly, you can use them to make complete music arrangements (albeit simple ones).

Today, I'm going to show you how to use these modulators to make a little musical loop that sounds straight out of a 1980's arcade game.

1. Open up an instance of Massive and select File->New Sound to give you the init patch to start from.

2. On OSC1, select the Plysaw1 wavetable. If you play a few notes while fiddling with the WT-POSITION knob, you'll hear that it's a sawtooth wave that adds overtones and eventually, multiple harmonically related notes. We're going to use that characteristic to make a little melody.

3. Turn the AMP knob of OSC1 all the way down to zero. We're going to use a sequencer to control the volume automatically. Do this by heading down to the modulation section, clicking on one of the green square marked 8 LFO, and change it to a STEPPER using the little grey pulldown menu right below it. Make sure SYNC is selected, and that the stepper ratio is 1/16 for sixteenth notes. Use the RNDM menu to RANDOMIZE ALL to generate a random sequence. You can, of course, program the values manually as well. Now grab the modulation crosshairs (that cross-shaped icon next to the text in the green 8 STEPPER box) and drop it into the modulation slot under OSC1's AMP knob. Click and push up in the modulation slot to turn the amount of modulation all the way up.

4. Go ahead and turn OSC1's WT-POSITION knob all the way down and, in repeat the above process in the 7 LFO slot. Drag the modulation crosshairs from here to the modulation slot for OSC1's WT-POSITION. You should now here a cheesy little melody. Let's add some rhythm to it.

5. Turn on OSC2 and call up the SMOSQU wavetable. Use the 5 LFO slot to call up another stepper and program a sparse sequence. Just a trigger here and there. Drag the modulation crosshairs from 5 STEPPER to the slot under OSC2's AMP. Turn the AMP level here all the way down, and then increase the modulation amount to aabout 60%. This doesn't sound like much yet, but give me a second.

6. Go down and turn on the NOISE oscillator and select the WHITE noise type. Head on up to the 6 LFO slot and this time change it to PERFORMER. If you've never used it before, the PERFORMER is just like a fancier version of the STEPPER. It allows you to draw in different shapes for more complex modulations. It defaults to a simple, straight 16ths pattern which is perfect for what we need to do. Just make sure SYNC is selected and that the ratio is set to 1/16.

7. Now, drag modulation crosshairs to both the AMP level of the NOISE section (the AMP knob should be set at zero with modulation amount cranked all the way up), and to the PITCH modulation slot of OSC2 (with the pitch range set to 5.00). This turns OSC2 into the goofy sort of synth drums that were so prevalent in those games. If you've done everything right, you should have something that sounds like this:


This is really just the beginning. Want to add a little more authenticity? Call up a BITCRUSH effect on one of the inserts. And we haven't even turned on OSC3, so you can add still more complexity if you want. Have fun!

Download "MoonPatrol" patch for Massive.

Arp/Rhodes Chroma on Ebay

Originally designed by Arp, and then picked up by Rhodes after Arp went under. Only 3,000 of these were made.

More info at the listing...

Review: Loopmasters Deep, Tech, & Minimal House

Library: Loopmasters Deep, Tech & Minimal House
Format: Available as download or DVD.
Genre: That'd be Deep, Tech & Minimal House
Distributed by: Loopmasters
Price: DVD (with instant download too, so you don't have to wait)£39.95, download £34.95
Demo: Audio demos on the product page.

Today I'll be taking a look at one of the latest sample libraries from Loopmasters: Deep, Tech, & Minimal House. The title pretty much tells you all you need to know about what's on offer here - a ton of loops, percussion, stabs, and basses specially designed for use in the techier, futuristic side of house. Altogether, there is 1.2 GB of original content offered in just about every format known to man. Seriously, if you've got a soft-sampler, there is an option for you. Just load up the finished patches in your preferred format, and you're up and making music right away. I really wish more sample libraries did this. I think if you have to interrupt you music making to take the time to map out the instruments yourself, it sometimes counteracts the creative spark libraries like this are meant to provide. Oh, and all the source files are 24-bit.

Overall, this library gives you everything you need to make convincing sounding tracks in the tech styles incredibly fast. In addition to a large selection of standard drum loops and glitched drum loops, there are a variety of bass loops, lead loops, chord & sequence loops, and a few vocal loops. The key of each musical loop is listed in the track name, so it's very quick and easy to mix and match elements. The drum loops all contain multiple, very useful variations of each beat, allowing you to build a complete rhythm track for your song entirely out of loops should you wish to. The sound quality is great and amazingly consistent, which means all the loops compliment each other and work together effortlessly. It's also worth noting that the sounds and sequences all sound very current and up-to-date and that the melodic loops were actually quite good. With most sample libraries I've tried, no matter how good the other content is, the musical loops always seem to lack something. This is happily not the case here and the musical bits ooze authenticity.

If using loops isn't your thing, there is also a variety of drum sounds, bass sounds, pads, heavily effected vocals, stabs, and other sounds for making your own. The quality here is consistent with that of the loops - fantastic! The drum sounds in particular are very nicely produced and mesh together very nicely.

Honestly, I really can't find anything to fault with this collection. The sound quality is superb, the loops are convincing, and the individual sounds are as excellent as they are abundant. If you do any sort of futuristic house, this could be provide some great inspiration, but I could see this also appealing to people who do any sort of funky IDM, techno, or even industrial types looking to add some Haujobb-y type sounds to their mixes. I'm giving this one a 10/10.

Here's a quick demo I threw together in about 20 minutes using their loops. Tracks are coming straight out of Stylus RMX with no additional effects, EQ, or compression, just the loops as they come:

Oberheim Matrix-6R on Ebay

Rackmount version of the highly regarded Oberheim Matrix-6. Shares the same sound architecture as the Matrix-1000, but the 6 is actually programmable.

More info at the listing...

Daft Punk to Do Score for Tron 2.0?

According to the L.A. times, French robo-rockers Daft Punk are rumored to be doing the score for Disney's upcoming sequel to the 80's groundbreaking computer movie Tron. I personally am not a fan of Daft Punk at all, but even I have to admit that would be an inspired choice, if true.

Free Impulse Responses for Convolution Reverbs

KVR forum member vieres has taken great pains to sample some nice sounding reverbs from Lexicon and Quantec and posted them online to share for those of you with convolution reverbs that can make use of such things. Be sure to throw him a donation if you find them useful!

Arp Pro Soloist on Ebay

"Up for auction is an excellent example of an ARP Pro Soloist Analog / Digital Synthesizer. These are very rare and almost impossible to find in this condition. I am the second owner. The first owner put it in storage in the early 1980's and it has been there until a couple months ago when I purchased it. Since then I have replaced all the keyboard bushings with new (not NOS) and properly lubed bushings so the keyboard action is like new. I've also properly cleaned and lubed all the sliders and cleaned all the contacts. All functions work and the synth sounds excellent. Cosmetically it is in outstanding condition for its age. The wood end caps are original and are tight and have no major scratches or gouges. It has the original slider caps as well as all the originals switches. Even the bottom is clean and unmarred."

More info at the listing...

Rolling Your Own Lead Sounds: Hard Sync Lead

Hard Sync is a popular feature on a lot of vintage analog synths. The technique involves using one oscillator to 'force' a second oscillator to reset its cycle (no matter where it is in its own cycle) to share the same base frequency - putting the two oscillators in sync, as it were. By itself, this doesn't sound like much, but when one alters the frequency of the synced oscillator dynamically (by modulating its pitch using an envelope or LFO), it results in an aggressive 'barking' timbre that can be quite a lot of fun to play around with. The synth leads in the Cars hits "Let's Go" and "Hello Again" are probably the most well-known examples of this type of sound. Old schoolers will also recognize Jean Michel Jarre's famous 'Laser Harp' sound as being a hard sync lead as well.

This is not a feature you're going to find on every synth. It's not quite as common to see around today as it was back in the 80's, so your best bet for finding it in software form is to look for emulations of old synths such as Native Instruments Pro-53, Gmedia's Oddity, or Arturia's Jupiter-8V. I'll be demonstrating this technique using Oddity today. The exact steps will vary a bit depending on what synth you're using, but the general technique is the same: select sync mode and modulate the second oscillator's pitch.

1. Call up an instance of Oddity. It should default to the 80's Bass sound, but if not, load up that sound from the factory bank as your starting point.

2. This particular sound has the second oscillator tuned down a fifth, so the first step will be to slide the COARSE FREQUENCY slider of OSCILLATOR 2 up to +0.00 so it is in tune with OSCILLATOR 1.

3. Next to the FREQUENCY controls for OSCILLATOR 2, you will see a little switch for turning SYNC on or off. Move it to the ON position. Right now it doesn't sound very interesting because we're not modulating the FREQUENCY of OSCILLATOR 2. You can play a few notes and move the COARSE FREQUENCY slider on OSCILLATOR 2 and hear the effect in action, but we're lazy electronic musicians, so we're going to automate the process.

4. Before we do this, go to the lowpass filter and open it up by sliding the VCF FREQ all the way up so we can hear the effect more easily.

5. Now, right below OSCILLATOR 2's FREQUENCY settings, you'll see the FM controls for OSCILLATOR 2. FM stands for 'frequency modulation', which in this case refers to simply modulating the pitch (aka frequency) of the oscillator. This is where you might add vibrato, for example. Push the yellow slider here all the way up, and select 'ADSR' on the switch directly below it. This is telling the synth that was want to change the pitch of the second oscillator using the ADSR ENVELOPE.

6. Head over to the ADSR envelope and set the SUStain level about 1/3 of the way up (-17.5 dB), the RELease value all the way down to 0, and set the DECay value a little over halfway up to around 585 ms. Play a few notes and you should hear your new hard sync lead sound!

There is a lot to experiment with when programming these types of sounds. Different waveforms will produce different timbres, different envelope settings will have great effect, different modulation depths in the FREQUENCY MODULATION section change the timbre, as will messing around with different frequency settings on your oscillators. Note too that you can use an LFO to modulate the pitch instead of an envelope.

To get closer to the famous Cars sound, lower the COARSE FREQUENCY of OSCILLATOR 1 by an octave (-12 semitones), change the waveforms of both oscillators to a SQUAREWAVE (the switches marked VCO 1 and VCO 2 under the AUDIO MIXER section) and bring down the yellow slider under OSCILLATOR 2's FM section to about a third of the way up. (You can click on the picture above to enlarge it and copy the settings). If you've followed along correctly, here's what it should sound like:

Moog Documentary to Air in the U.K.

Just a quick note to let my readers in the U.K. know that there is a documentary called "Moog: The History of the Synthesizer" that begins airing on SkyArts this Friday. More info and times of other showings available here.