Voltage-Controlled

Roland TR-505 Drum machine for sale

2012-02-28T21:51:00.001Z

Roland TR-505 drum machine for sale on eBay. I'd love to buy this myself but I currently don't have the funds to buy new gear at the moment so I said that I'd post a link up here on Voltage-Controlled.

Description from the eBay auction:

"It has been stored for a few years now, so I am looking to sell. When I first acquired it, some of the pads were sticky, and the battery contacts were fairly corroded. I therefore set about dismantling, cleaning, and getting it back into full working order. The result is a fully-working machine, with a few cosmetic scratches (which can be expected from a 25 year old Roland) and it will work from batteries (contacts cleaned up well) as well as from the optional power supply socket. It has been a pleasure to own this machine of the classic Roland TR series, but I'm saving up for my current photographic hobby hence the sale. This will also be sold with the original manual, although the manual is available for free download from Roland."

If you're interested in buying the 505 please head over to the eBay auction via this link.

The machine will be up for auction until March 2nd, 2012 (15:57 GMT)

If you have any further questions then please get in contact with @JohndMcCormick on Twitter or Via the eBay seller page.

Stochastik Drum Machine for iPad

2012-02-27T01:16:00.000Z

Stochastik Drum Machine for iPad is now available in the iOS AppStore. The app lets you use a probability engine to program your beats, allowing you to create dynamic rhythm patterns and endless variation to to your drum loops.

Say goodbye to boring, repetitive drum loops and welcome a little randomness into your life.

The best thing about this app is obviously the probability engine. You can program a simple straight forward drum pattern into this thing and then use the probability engine to add a subtle variation to a drum part (say the hi-hats). This helps to give the beat that evolving feeling without making it sound completely random. That's not saying that it can't do random, if you set all of the steps to a low probability then this awesome little drum app will spit out a constantly evolving drum pattern (perfect for genres such as IDM).

I love how useful this thing is for fills and subtle changes. Say you're programming the drums for your new track but don't want to use that same loop all the way through the track. You want subtle variations to a snare fill or maybe that odd bit of percussion randomly coming in and out to keep your listeners on their toes. To program all of these little surprises by hand can take hours but if you program your beats on your iPad with Stochastik you could get this same effect in minutes, seconds even.

Of course the probability engine isn't the only thing that this app does well. It's packed with over a thousand high quality drum samples that can make an awesome addition to almost any genre of music that you can think of. Programming drum parts in Stochastik is really simple too, so even if you're not too familiar with programming drums then it should be pretty easy to learn how to use this thing. The app also has background audio, audio copy and WIST support meaning that you can wirelessly sync it with other iOS devices.

If you're taking your music seriously then you might want to use your own drum sounds or maybe even a hardware drum machine. At the moment Stochastik doesn't yet support MIDI in and out. But fear not, this will be included in the first major update to the app. Also that update will include other features such as multi channel exporting of drum sounds and mute/solo for each drum part.

All in all this is a solid drum machine app that not only offers you high quality sounds and simple programming but it also offers a truly inspirational way of programming beats and coming up with ideas. In fact I'll go as far to say that it's one of the best iOS music apps that I've seen in ages.

Here I've uploaded a video of my playing around with Stochastik, showing of a quick D&B pattern and an over the top mad glitch sequence.

Get Stochastik from the AppStore here.

SFX Collection 02 by Wave Alchemy

2012-02-25T15:36:00.003Z

Wave Alchemy has announced the release of their new sample pack SFX Collection 02, a collection of samples geared towards cutting edge dance music, cinematic sound design and game audio.

The pack contains 826 royalty free sound effects samples.

Here's a list of the kit that was used to create the sample library:

Roland Jupiter 8
Korg MS-20
Future Retro XS
Arp Odyssey
Oberheim OB8
Nord 3
Moog Voyager + CV Expanders / Moogerfoogers
Access Virus TI
Schippmann Ebbe und Flut
Oto Machines Biscuit
Eventide DSP-7000
Eventide DSP-4500
Eventide H3000
GRM Tools V3
Cecilia Csound
Soundtoys Native Bundle
NI Reaktor
Metasynth
API Preamps & Compressors
Empirical Labs Fatso
Elysia Xpressor
Thermionic Culture Vulture
Additional equipment for Foley recording / live sound
SFX Collection is available from the Wave Alchemy site for £44.95.

How to create a custom background for iElectribe for iPad

2012-02-23T21:14:00.002Z

If you've watched the video that I posted on youtube of me creating a beat with the iElectribe drum machine for the iPad you'll have probably noticed that I had a custom background image on my copy of the app.

This is a really simple feature in the app and it's really easy to do. I've had a few people ask me how it's done so I thought I'd do a short screen cap video of me changing the boring red background to something a little cooler.

As you'll see this is a fairly simple feature. But this is here just in case. You know.

Dubspot Animoog Tutorial part 2 of 3

2012-02-23T15:46:00.004Z

The folks over at Dubspot have uploaded their second tutorial video on Moog's io for the iPad. This video takes you a bit deeper into what sounds are possible with this awesome little synth.

I posted the first Dubspot Animoog turorial back in January. If you missed it click here and watch it.

Here's part 2.

Check out the Dubspot site for more cool tutorials and don't forget to subscribe to their YouTube channel here.

Rhythm Studio updated with WIST & a brand new synth

2012-02-20T11:31:00.001Z

Rhythm Studio has just been updated to version 1.06 which includes a few cool updates including a brand new synth for us to play around with. Rhythm Studio is a pretty cool little app, it's sort of like a toolbox of synths, drum machines and effects for the iPad.

The latest addition to the line up of synths is Phoenix. Phoenix replicates that classic supersaw sound from the legendary Roland JP-8000.

Rhythm Studio also included support for Korg's WIST technology in this update. This allows you to wirelessly sync Rhythm Studio with other iOS devices running compatible apps. WIST seems to be becoming the standard in wireless syncing on the iPad so there's no sjuppurise that this was included.

Background audio has been included in this update and also song sharing over Bluetooth.

Pulse Code have been quite regular with their updates to Rhythm Studio, to be honest it's good to see an app that gets updated this regularly with so many new features. Lets hope they continue to add more devices and keep making this better.

Free Kong drum kit samples

2012-02-15T10:19:00.004Z

For this free sample pack I've been messing around with the analog modules from Reason's Kong drum machine. As I said in my last post, I use Kong for all of my drums when producing music.

This free sample pack contains:

4 one shot kicks samples
4 one shot snares samples
4 one shot hi-hats samples
4 one shot percussion samples
6 bonus loops

All the samples were made using the Kong drum machine and further processed with various VSTs in Ableton live.

Get the samples here (.rar)

All the samples that are available here on Voltage-Controlled are available completely free of charge. They are also royalty free, which means that you can use them in any creative protect (commercial or non-commercial) without having to clear them.

Creating drum sounds using the noise and tone generator in Kong

2012-02-13T18:30:00.002Z

Mattias Häggström Gerdt from Propellerheads software shows you how to create some cool drum sounds using the tone and noise generators in Kong. I use Kong for most of my drums when producing both music and samples. It's a great tool for beat creation and coming up with some original sounds to use in your projects.

Making a simple dubstep bass with Korg iMS20 for iPad

2012-02-05T19:54:00.003Z

The Korg iMS20 was the first app that I ever installed on my iPad. I love the Korg apps (even if they are a little on the expensive side), they just sound completely awesome.

Now, the iMS20 might seem a little confusing at first but once you get into it, the possibilities of this thing are amazing. Don't be too put off by the semi-modular patch bay or the analog style sequencer, a little knowledge of analog synthesis will help a lot but to be fair it's pretty easy to pick up.

Here's a short screen cap video of me making a pretty simple dubstep style bass sound & showing off the sound of this brilliant synthesiser.

Creating a beat with Korg iElectribe + free iElectribe samples

2012-02-02T16:18:00.007Z

The Korg iElectribe is a beast of a drum machine. It was the first app that I brought for my iPad but for some reason I've never really got around to uploading anything about it on Voltage-Controlled.

Anyway, here's a short video of me constructing a simple drum beat using the iElectribe, I love the sound of this app.

I've also uploaded some iElectribe samples for you lot. It's only a small pack, it contains 8 one shot drum hits from the custom drum kit I used in the video.

You can get your hands on the samples here (.zip)

Hopefully I'll get around to posting a bit more about the iElectribe on Voltage-Controlled soon.

Dubspot Animoog Tutorial part 1 of 3

2012-01-31T23:03:00.003Z

Dubspot have some amazing tutorials on their YouTube channel which are very useful for producers of all levels. I noticed that they've uploaded the first in three tutorials covering my all time favourite iPad synthesizer, the Animoog by Moog Music inc.

I thought that the readers of Voltage-Controlled would be interested in an in depth look into the capability's of this awesome little synthesiser so I've embedded the first part of the Dubspot Animoog tutorial below.

Check out the Dubspot site for more cool tutorials and don't forget to subscribe to their YouTube channel here.

I'll post the second and third Animoog tutorials to Voltage-Controlled as soon as they are uploaded by Dubspot.

FutureMusic sampling special 'making of' videos

2012-01-31T20:22:00.006Z

FutureMusic magazine have uploaded two 'Making Of' videos to go along with their Sampling special edition. Part one is hosted by Cyclick and part two by Groove Criminals (Both regularly supply the free samples that can be found on the free CD that comes along with FutureMusic Magazine).

Part one focuses more in foundsound (eg, recording every day objects) where as part two talks about creative ways of getting cool sounds out of your synthesizers and drum machines. To be honest I preferred part two as I'm a huge synth nerd.

They're about 20 mins long each but you might find something interesting/useful. Watch part two if you just want to look at lots of cool synths.

Click here if you're interested in lots of free samples from Voltage-Controlled

NodeBeat HD iPad screen capture demo

2012-01-31T16:13:00.005Z

Here's another video of me playing about with the display recorder tweak on my iPad. This time the app I'm using is the NodeBeat HD app, which is a fun little generative music sequencer.

I'm hoping to get lots of these iPad display recorder videos up on the site, they're fun to make and it gives me a good chance to show off some of my favourite music making apps.

What is ReCycle?

2012-01-31T01:06:00.003Z

I love using .rex files in my music, it's an easy way to take your loops and create something completely different. ReCycle is a stand alone program by Propellerheads that lets you take your audio loops (say a basic drum loop) and chop them up into different segments that allow you to craft them into something unique that you can use in your productions.

Heres a short video by the folks at Propellerheads; it talks you through ReCycle, Rex loops and how you can use them to add something special to your music. I'd recommend using ReCycle to help make your audio loops a little more manageable and inspirational.

iPad display recorder & DM1 drum machine demo

2012-01-30T00:27:00.007Z

iPad demo videos have become a pretty big part of Voltage-Controlled over the last few months. I've uploaded quite a few videos that I've taken using the camera on the back on my iPhone. That's all well and good but the quality of the videos have obviously suffered, so I got thinking about how I could go about making my videos a bit better.

At first I thought about investing in a decent camera but Voltage-Controlled rakes in little to no money from ads and donations so I couldn't really afford it. I remembered someone telling me a while back that if I jailbreak my device I can use third party software to take screen captures directly on the iPad. I looked into it but found out that the iPad 2 that I was using couldn't be jailbroken on iOS5.

However, I heard a week or so ago that it's changed and I can now hack my device and install the screen capture software. So I did it, I jailbroke the iPad and brought a tweak called display recorder.

It's a pretty basic app but it doesn't record audio which is a shame. That's not too much hassle though as I can record the audio into my laptop using my Saffire 6 interface and then sync it later.

Anyways, I thought I'd try it out and upload a video to YouTube. Here's me messing around with Fingerlab's DM-1 drum machine, one of my favourite drum machines on the iPad. DM-1's available in the appstore for £3.99 but I think I picked it up a few months ago when the price dropped to 69p.

Broken sample links are now working again.

2012-01-26T21:11:00.006Z

I mentioned in the last post that some of the sample packs on Voltage-Controlled were hosted on the file sharing site MegaUpload. As MegaUpload was recently shut down the samples were made unavailable for you guys to download.

I've just finished re-uploading the lost sample packs to minus.com and they are once again available for you to download free of charge. The sample packs that I've had to re-upload are:

Voltage controlled sample collection vol.1
Free FoundSound percussion loops and one shots
Punished 909 kit (MC-303)

Luckily I haven't been using MegaUpload for long so only three of the packs were lost but it's still a bit of a hassle have to re-upload them.

Just to make it clear, all of the samples available from Voltage-Controlled are copyright free. I created them so that musicians, sound designers, film makers, etc. can use them in their productions and creations for free of charge.

If you have any other questions or problems then please get in touch with me at DanWeatherall@Voltage-Controlled.com

Samples unavailable at the moment

2012-01-24T18:12:00.005Z

Right then, since megaupload has been shut down some of the samples on my site have been made unavailable. Until I can find a suitable replacement site to host my samples they will be temporarily unavailable to download. I'll try and fix this as soon as possible and apoligise for any inconvenience that this has caused.

I know megaupload has been used by some to upload pirated material but some of us actually use it to host our own material. If anyone can suggest another free file hosting site that I can use to host my samples and loops please post a comment below or email me at DanWeatherall@voltage-controlled.com

iPad multi-track recording with VST support

2012-01-18T14:57:00.005Z

Wave Machine Lab’s Auria studio offers a 48 track digital recording experience for your iPad with VST support. Well it seems that the VSTs will have to be purchased through the app itself so don’t get yourself too excited about importing your favourite VSTs to your iPad. Also, with Auria studio being an audio recording app it looks like it supports effect VSTs only (So we won’t be running NI Massive on our iPads anytime soon).

The promo video looks really impressive though, by far one of the best studio apps for the iPad I’ve ever seen.

Auria studio will be avalible in the first quarter 2012

http://www.auriaapp.com/

Shakie - Pellet Percussion for iPhone & iPod Touch

2012-01-12T18:05:00.008Z

The beauty of Shakie lies in its simplicity. You’re not confronted with endless menus and settings; it does what you expect it to do. It’s a percussion instrument for your iPhone or iPod touch that’s controlled using the accelerometers and gyroscope that are built into your iDevice.

Shakie relies on a realistic physics engine, when you tilt or shake your iDevice the on-screen pallets will respond and trigger a number of samples. This gives the app a really natural feel and makes playing really fun.

The UI consists of just three pages: the main shaker page, the menu page and the info page. Everything is clean, simple and ready for you to pick up and play.

The app comes with 10 high quality built in sounds:

Bells
Castanet
Chimes
Maraca
Rattle
Shaker
Shaker Dry
Shaker Gritty
Spoons
Tamborine

Get Shakie from the app store now

www.shakieapp.com

Bitwig, Ableton live killer?

2012-01-12T16:21:00.005Z

The first thought I had when I saw the teaser video for Bitwig was "This is pretty much just a copy of Ableton", The similarities are remarkable but it's mainly the clip launcher and UI that remind me so much of Ableton. Apparently a few of the guys working on Bitwig are ex Ableton employees which would explain the similarities between the two DAWs.

By the looks of things the guys at Bitwig have crammed some pretty cool features into their new studio. General tracks (audio + midi), online collaboration, per-note automation and modular instruments are just a few of the features included in Bitwig.

Could this be an Ableton killer? The software will soon be going into the Beta testing stage so only time will tell. I'd love to get my hands on a copy though, just to take it for a test drive.

For a full list of the features of Bitwig Studio check out their site here.

Punished 909 kit (MC-303) - Free samples

2012-01-06T20:05:00.008Z

OK, so they're not actual 909 samples. The samples here are taken from the 909 kit on my MC-303 groovebox (Which are recorded from an original 909).

The MC303 has a really nice gritty sound to it (especially when you turn up the low boost), to add to that gritty flavour I ran the sounds through some plugins (Drive, EQ and Compressor).

There are 17 one-shot samples in this kit in .wav format. As always the Voltage-Controlled samples are completely royalty free so you can use them in any project you want without having to clear them.

>>>Download the samples now (.zip)<<<

Moog reveals MINITAUR analog synthesizer

2012-01-05T17:27:00.006Z

Moog Music inc. Have revealed the new addition to the Taurus family. The MINITAUR is a standalone analog synth, it looks perfect as a desktop synth.

"Minitaur is a powerful, compact Analog Bass Synthesizer that features a classic one knob per function design. It is the first instrument in the Taurus family that does not have foot pedals. At only 8.5" x 5.25" and less than 3lbs, the Minitaur puts legendary analog Moog bass into a package designed to fit seamlessly into today's performance and production environments. There are no confusing or convoluted menus to dig through. Plug in a MIDI controller or hook it up to your computer and start playing immediately.

Don't be fooled by it's size. Minitaur delivers all the growl, snarl and low end assosiciated with the Taurus family of Bass Synthesizers in a rugged performance package that is small enough to take with you anywhere."

This thing looks and sounds incredible. It’s stated on the Moog website that it will be sold for just $679.00 (Roughly £440) which is a pretty fair price. I can just imagine this thing sitting on my desk next to my laptop. Looks like I’m going to have to save up some money for its launch at winter NAMM.

Voltage-Controlled MicroKorg Ableton rack by LynchAudio

2012-01-03T19:35:00.004Z

I've been meaning to post this on here for a good while now. Matt from LynchAudio has made an awesome Ableton Live rack using the MicroKorg samples from the Voltage-Controlled sample collection Vol.1 sample library.

Go check out his site, download the free Ableton instrument rack and watch this demo video that he's made.

If there's anyone else out there that would like to share what they've created using the Voltage-Controlled samples then please get in touch (DanWeatherall@Voltage-Controlled.com) and I'll post a link up on the site.

Animoog hits the iPhone

2011-12-27T15:59:00.003Z

Animoog is my current favourite synth on the iPad, it's beyond awesome and it sounds really cool. Moog recently released it as an iPhone app so as you can probably guess; I brought it. The iPhone version is currently on sale for 69p so it's pretty cheap for such a cool little synth.

With the iPhone version I can now have the power and awesomeness of Animoog with me at all times. The iPhone app is pretty much exactly the same as the one on the iPad with the layout slightly modified so that it fits nicely on the smaller screen.

Your probably getting sick of hearing me complain about this but this app isn't universal, I don't understand why some companies think that people should buy their apps twice. I know it brings in a little more money but many people aren't going to buy something twice anyway. I've only made an exception here because of the low price and the quality of the app, but I still feel slightly cheated here. Universal apps are the way forward, stop scamming your customers out of their money.

Happy holidays from Voltage-Controlled

2011-12-26T06:39:00.002Z

Have a great Christmas and New Years, all the best for 2012.