rekkerd.org

Short links for November 6th, 2009

ronnie — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:55:01 +0000

Some interesting things I found recently:

Marc Nostromo developed the Arduino Piano Squealer Synth for the Arduino Pocket Piano, an arduino shield produced by Critters and Guitari.

The engine implements a small monosynth with a few waveforms, a HP/BP/LP continuous resonant filter, decay and a few little own tricks that generate a LOT of aliases, making a great dirty digital synth. Since the Pocket Piano has only 3 potentiometers available for control (the 4th one being hardwired to the volume), I use a “page” system to implement series of 3 parameters to fiddle with. To switch “page”, use the rightmost note of the A.P (NOT the one under the led, the one left to to it). To help you know which page you are at, you can use the led: it will flash a number of time equivalent to the current page you are at.

The source code of the Arduino Piano Squealer synth is available under GPL License V3.

# Flux Twitter Syrah give-away quiz

Flux is giving away some Syrah licenses to three lucky Twitter users:

To celebrate 200+ followers of FluxPlugins since mid May 2009, we are introducing a little Syrah give-away quiz. Fill the form and answer both questions correctly, and you are participating in the give away of one of all in total three Syrah licenses.

Answers need to be in before the end of the day on Monday 9th October.

# Digital Mixtape

Digital Mixtape

Justin Cole writes:

My new design uses a small mp3 player that I disassembled and placed inside a cassette tape adapter for an ipod. This allows for mp3's to be played back through a tapedeck. This has all of the ease and technology of an mp3 player with the retro coolness of a mix tape.

# Waveformless: Free Sample Friday: Sample Pack from Portion Control!

Tom Shear writes:

I've got something very special for Waveformless readers today. As you may remember, a couple weeks ago, I featured an interview with electro-industrial music pioneers Portion Control where I hinted that we might have something special coming from the band. So here it is… a 16MB sample pack of loops and one-shots from the band themselves.

# Lackluster: Portal EP

A lovely free album available to download in high quality mp3 and lossless FLAC formats. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License

The Portal EP was supposed to come out on another label in 2008, but the label went bankrupt and closed up shop. In email conversations with Lackluster, I offered to master the EP and do a net release on Cornwarning. So, 4 years after its original intended release, it is finally here.

Covering a variety of tempos and styles, from the beatless epic "Eons" to the mutant techno of "Lubiszewski Beats", "Portal" covers a lot of musical territory. What unifies the work is Lackluster's musicality. For me each track here is deep in emotion, despite their lack of lyric or explicit program.

# JSGB v.0.02: a JavaScript Nintendo GameBoy Emulator and Debugger

Play GameBoy games in your brower. Recommended browser: Chrome/Chromium 4+ Other browsers may be slow or don't work at all!

# How to build an Air Guitar with Arduino, aka the AIRduino Guitar

The idea here is to build a wearable virtual guitar that is to be controlled with two hands much like playing Air Guitar. It has been created and prototyped during a two weeks project at ChalmersUniversity (Sweden) for a Physical Computing class.

The aim is to get the feeling of playing a real guitar. The AIRduino Guitar is made of one glove and one stick. The glove is used to set the tone and the stick to trigger the sound.

# Digital Sales Up, But is Apple Monopoly the Price? NPD, Mint Data, Editorial Analysis

Peter Kirn writes:

Mint.com, the online financial management tool, has put its numbers together with market researchers NPD Group to analyze music spending. The results: when it comes to consuming recorded music, digital music continues to rise. At the same time, so does Apple’s grip on the music consumption market, a combination that includes proprietary control of a music store, a music player, and the leading mobile device.

# Is this the ultimate male playroom?

For many men, their house is their castle. For one Canterbury man, his play room is a submarine complete with working periscope.

Wayne Eyre has turned part of his Spencerville property into a wrecked submarine featuring "plutonium-leaking" torpedoes, at a cost of $100,000.

In the rusting interior of the submarine, which appears to have beached on a deserted island, Eyre has all the creature comforts reclining chairs, a three-metre big-screen TV and a top-notch surround-sound system.

# Novation Releases All MIDI Details for Launchpad

Novation’s Launchpad, its affordable (<$200) "grid" controller, may have a big Ableton logo on it. But underneath, it's just a MIDI controller. Bi-colored LEDs, containing a red and green element for red, green, and amber output (amber = red+green), can be triggered using simple MIDI note and control messages. That means, whether you're looking forward to Max for Live or you're sequencing in a tracker or writing Processing sketches, you can use the Launchpad just like any other MIDI controller.

# Qeve: Free Live Visual – VJ Software, Built in Pd

From Create Digital Motion:

Qeve is a promising-looking, open-source visual performance tool built in visual patching environment Pure Data (Pd). It was built primarily on Ubuntu Linux but should also run with some adjustment on Mac. (Pd itself runs on Windows, but some of the visual dependencies are not available on that platform. I’d still recommend Linux.)

# SampleRadar: 703 free grime samples

A fresh batch of samples from SampleRadar.

The samples are split into seven self-explanatory categories: Bass, Beats, FX, Guitar, Kits, Synth and Vox. All the samples are supplied as 24-bit WAV files so can be imported directly into your DAW of choice. Because they're royalty-free, you're welcome to use them in your music in any way you like – all we ask is that you don't re-distribute them.

# Eric Beam Nebula Programs

Eric Beam has recently posted some programs for Acustica Audio’s Nebula: Tube 1500 “instant analog” & MCI Heritage EQ “I like it dirty”

Review: Soniccouture Glass Works

ronnie — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:44:01 +0000

Sample libraries have become quite a commonplace. Every other day you see new titles popping up in various genres and formats, many of which seem to be almost copies of one another. If you are looking for drum machine sounds or Fidget House loops there certainly is plenty out there to satisfy your every need.

But what if you want something else… a unique sound, a unique instrument?

Fortunately there are still some companies offering fresh sample and instrument libraries you are not likely to find anywhere else. Les Productions Zvon, Cinematique Instruments, Tonehammer, and Soniccouture are some that come to mind.

With their latest release Glass Works, Dan and James of Soniccouture have delivered yet another stunning example of the beautiful, rare and unusual instruments that are less commonly sampled.

The Glass Works library includes three glass instruments: Le Cristal, The Glass Armonica, and Cloud Chamber Bowls.

For the first two of these instruments Soniccouture went to Paris to meet with Thomas Bloch, a musician and performer of rare instruments whose notable collaborations include Radiohead, John Cage, Tom Waits, and Daft Punk. The Cloud Chamber Bowls, an instrument by maverick American composer Harry Partch, was so hard to find that Soniccouture had to recreate it.

Le Cristal – designed by Bernard and François Baschet in 1952

Upon first sight Le Cristal (or Cristal Baschet) doesn’t really look very “glass”. It has a huge alien face shaped plate called the “flame”, and a large part of the construction is made of metal.

On closer inspection (click the image to the side) you’ll notice a number of glass rods, which produce sound when rubbed with a wet finger.

The vibration of the glass is passed to a heavy block of metal, which itself is tuned and in fact determines the ﬁnal pitch. The entire mechanism is ampliﬁed by a large steel plate called the “ﬂame”. There are also three small ﬁberglass cones that amplify the higher frequencies.

Just over 4 octaves of notes were sampled with various articulations:

Piano and Forte: soft and loud sustained playing.
Marcato: A sudden accent.
Percussion: 2 different mallet strokes and 1 special effect set.

The samples are mapped across 11 Kontakt instruments. All articulations – triggered by keyswitches – are available in the Complete instrument patches. Modwheel or velocity can be used for crossfading between soft and loud samples. The articulations are also available as separate instruments so you can save on memory usage and process each articulation differently if you like.

Le Cristal instrument in Kontakt

The Kontakt interface features a number of controls to further shape the sound of the Cristal Baschet. You get lowpass and highpass filters, attack and release, delay send, and some controls for the flame. Soniccouture sampled some impulse responses from the flame on the Cristal for use in Kontakt’s convolution processor. Sweet!

A second page on the Kontakt interface lets you assign all of the knobs on the front panel to MIDI CC so you can modify parameters in real-time with a hardware controller.

Glass Armonica – invented by Benjamin Franklin

The armonica is an instrument that also generates sound by rubbing a wet finger on glass, this time a series of glass bowls in various sizes.

Glass Armonica (with limescale build-up caused by water)

The Glass Armonica recorded by Soniccouture is a recreation of the original Ben Franklin instrument built by master glassblower Gerhard Finkenbeiner. This particular model has 37 nested bowls that range from F3 to F6. Note: the Kontakt instrument is mapped an octave lower for convenience.

Each note of the Glass Armonica was sampled three times at two different dynamics, soft and loud. The Kontakt instrument panels feature the same controls as the Cristal Baschet, except there is no flame. Instead you get some other convolution reverbs and there’s a Keyoff control which lets you modify the level of the sound produced when releasing a note.

Besides two regular Glass Armonica instruments (with Modwheel and velocity crossfade control) there’s also a Doubled Synth instrument.

Glass Armonica Doubled Synth

This instrument is more appropriate if you want to use the Glass Armonica as a synth pad or something less natural. We provide a lot more front panel control, as well as Filter Envelope (FEG) and Delay.
Also, in this version, instead of using a Round Robin sample alternation we layer two different Glass Armonica sample sets together, which can be detuned using the Detune knob in the middle (this also defaults to the Mod Wheel in this instrument).

Cloud Chamber Bowls – an instrument built in the 1960s by Harry Partch

This instrument consists of 14 bowls — sections (tops and bottoms) of 12-gallon glass carboys — hanging in a wooden frame. Soniccouture created its very own Cloud Chamber Bowls instrument, having all the glass and wood parts made from scratch.

The name “Cloud Chamber Bowls” arose from the fact that Partch found the original tops and bottoms at a Radiation Laboratory at UC Berkeley in 1950. The bowls were originally used for cloud chambers used in tracing paths of subatomic particles. The original pitches of the bowls are basically random, as were Partch’s (“It has been impossible for me to tune the bowls – I must accept what I get.”). The varying thickness of the carboys and unpredictable overtone structure make it pretty much impossible to cut a carboy to an exact pitch.

Soniccouture’s Cloud Chamber Bowls features an instrument with original pitches (random like Partch’s instrument) and a chromatically tuned version. The instruments feature the sounds of all 14 bowls
played with soft mallets and 13 bowls hit with hard mallets (unfortunately one bowl broke).

Cloud Chamber Bowls – 10 velocity levels and 3 round-robins for each bowl

The instruments have some of the same controls we’ve seen on the other Glass Works instruments. Additionally there is also a Jammer panel available (see image above).

This lovely KSP script is also available in a number of previously released products like the Pan Drum and the Skiddaw Stones so might already know what it does.

The Jammer is a kind of random arpeggiator that chooses from the notes you play into it at random. Hold a chord down on your keyboard, and Jammer will randomly play notes from that chord.

A third panel allows for setting MIDI CC for the various parameters so you can use your hardware controller to modify parameters in real-time.

So what do I think?

Product: Glass Works by Soniccouture
Format: Kontakt Player Instrument (PC/MAC) – VST/AU/RTAS/Standalone
Price: 99 EUR
(Bundle with The Skiddaw Stones for 139 EUR)

Glass Works won’t have the same wide appeal as the drum machine sounds or Fidget House loops I mentioned earlier, yet Glass Works is truly a stunning collection of instruments. The sampling is done to Soniccouture’s usual high quality standard and they have managed to really capture the beautiful sounds of these rare instruments.

The Kontakt instruments are very well done (plenty of velocity layers and round-robin) and include lots of useful controls to further shape the sounds. The Cristal Baschet is probably my favorite instrument, although I am also really liking the sounds of the Glass Armonica Doubled Synth.

Glass Works will no doubt find its place in many cinematic and experimental works.

The Soniccouture website has a video of Thomas Bloch doing an improvised perfomance on Le Cristal so head on over there to check it out.

More information: Soniccouture / Glass Works

Splurgo Audio releases Rock Ballad Drums and Free Mixed Guitar Pack

ronnie — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:33:47 +0000

Splurgo Audio has announced the release of Rock Ballad Drums and Mixed Guitar Pack, two new sample packs.

Rock Ballad Drums is a collection of drum loops.

Whether you’re working on a romantic acoustic ballad or some hard rock tune. If it is in 3/4 time signature and you still are looking for drums, here’s your solution. 96 perfectly beatmapped loops. 10 basic loops, that can be divided in hihat loops and ride loops. Besides that we created a bunch of drumfills and rolls to add some more creativity.

Rock Ballad Drums contains 96 loops perfectly beatmapped at 90 and 100 bpm (3/4). This pack is available in Sony Acid WAV and Apple Garageband AIFF formats, priced at $11.95 USD.

Splurgo’s Mixed Guitar Pack is a free collection of guitar loops.

If you’re not sure what guitar samples you’re after, checkout the Splurgo’s Mixed Guitar Pack, containing loops in all different genres, acoustic and electric.

The Mixed Guitar Pack contains 50 samples and is available as a free download in Sony Acid WAV and Apple Garageband AIFF formats.

More information: Splurgo Audio / Rock Ballad Drums / Mixed Guitar Pack

Ueberschall releases Sounds of Berlin

ronnie — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:19:36 +0000

Ueberschall has announced the release of Sounds of Berlin, a new Elastik Soundbank featuring 75 construction kits.

The musical-metropolis Berlin influenced the Electro and Minimal Scene like no other city in the world. Ueberschall is capturing this exact spirit with its release „Sounds of Berlin“. Providing a localized source of inspiration and a professional, standout production device for sound masters worldwide.

The first part of this series features the two top artists Ruede Hagelstein and Asem Shama. Both DJs are well known for their releases on labels such as „Upon You“, „Lebensfreude“ and „Sportclub“ and delivered their unique spirit to clubs and festivals like Watergate (Ger), Womb (JP), Fabric (UK), Berghain (Ger), Cocoon (Ger) and Sonar (Esp).

With the release „Sounds of Berlin“ Ueberschall covers the different sub-genres of minimal sound — from 120 BPM Afterhour-House to 130 BPM Dancefloor-Techno — and is oriented around labels and themes such as „Kompakt“, „Mobilee“, „Vakant“, „Boxer“ and „Cocoon“. The 1 GB content is built for professional club sound needs. 1258 Loops & Samples provide enough material to be invited to countless sessions and hours of inspiration and creativity.

Sounds of Berlin features

1 GB, 75 Construction Kits, 1258 Berlin Loops and Samples.
Each of the 75 construction kits is broken down into its single lines, each kit offers bassloops, synthloops and drum and percussion loops which can be integrated easily into every liveset.
Elastik Soundbank for Mac/PC/AU/VST/RTAS/StandAlone.
Elastik Player included – no sampler required.

Sounds of Berlin is available to purchase for 99 EUR.

More information: Ueberschall / Sounds of Berlin

Dave Smith Instruments releases Poly Evolver Potentiometer Edition

ronnie — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:57:48 +0000

Dave Smith Instruments has announced that the Potentiometer Edition of the Poly Evolver Keyboard Synthesizer is now available.

The new version boasts 60 potentiometers among its complement of 78 rotary controls. “The response to the pot edition of the Prophet ’08 has been overwhelmingly positive,” said company founder Dave Smith, “so we decided to extend that functionality to the Poly Evolver, as well.” Unlike endless rotary encoders, potentiometers allow the full range of a knob’s values to be accessed in a single turn of about 300 degrees. That simplifies filter sweeps and other more performance-oriented gestures. A kit with potentiometer-equipped panel boards is available to convert older Poly Evolvers.

There have also been some cosmetic changes. “We needed both lined and unlined knobs to distinguish between the pots and encoders, so we’re using Prophet-style knobs,” said DSI’s Andrew McGowan. “And we’ve updated the panel graphics a bit without changing them significantly.” The wood end panels are now made from bubinga.

Poly Evolver Potentiometer Edition features

Each voice is a complete Evolver with four oscillators per voice, two analog and two digital.
True stereo signal path with separate Curtis analog low-pass filters in each channel for each voice. Each voice has its own independent effects (feedback, delay, distortion, high-pass filter, etc.).
Highly accessible sound control for easy, intuitive operation: 78 knobs (60 of them potentiometers) and 58 switches.
Clocked, pulsing blue LEDs and hardwood end-panels.
Each voice has an independent 16 x 4 step sequencer. Everything (sequencer, LFOs, and delay) syncs perfectly to MIDI.
In Program mode, all four voices play the same sound. In Combo mode, voices can be allocated however desired: stack all 4 for a huge unison sound, split or layer the keyboard in any configuration, and/or play one or all sequences at the same time. Each voice can respond to a different MIDI channel.
Each voice has its own stereo output in addition to the mix and headphones outputs.
Stereo audio input that can be routed to any or all of the voices, enabling parallel audio processing of external stereo or mono signals. The output of one voice can be routed to the input of another for interesting double-processing effects.

The Poly Evolver PE Keyboard Synthesizer is available now with an MSRP of $2,899 USD and an MAP of $2,599 USD. The conversion kit requires nothing more than a screwdriver for installation and is available directly from DSI for $399 USD or factory installed for $449 USD.

More information: Dave Smith Instruments / Poly Evolver PE Keyboard Synthesizer

DETUNIZED.COM releases DTS008 – The Casiopeia Synthesizer

ronnie — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:27:02 +0000

DETUNIZED.COM has released DTS008 – The Casiopeia Synthesizer, a new sound library for Ableton Live featuring the Casio Rapman.

Do you know the RAPMAN? A little plastic toy with some plastic 80ies drumloops, some basic plastic standard sounds and a plastic disc for basic standard scratching. Pretty boring at the first glance.

So please DO NOT listen to the audio samples! Otherwise it may happen that you don´t agree.

DTS008 – The Casiopeia Synthesizer features

Instruments: 2 (Synthesizer, Drum Box).
Oscillators: 23×2 (Velosens + Blend2FX).
Noise Modules: 5 (selectable waveforms).
22 original Beat Loops.
Keyrange: full (C-2 to G8).
No. of samples: 534 (24 Bit, 44,1 kHz).
Disk space needed: approx. 125 MB.
Installation instruction included.

DTS008 – The Casiopeia Synthesizer is available as an instant download for 6.98 EUR. Subscribers pay 4.98 EUR.

More information: DETUNIZED.COM

Zero-G releases Dark Skies – Cinematic Ambiences

ronnie — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:17:43 +0000

Zero-G has released Dark Skies – Cinematic Ambiences, a 2 DVD set packed full of ambiences, soundscapes, drones and FX and is the perfect accompaniment for any professional film, TV or video game producer and sound editor looking for something extra.

Including everything from huge, luscious, panoramic soundscapes to the mysterious, eerie and downright scary and everything in between this enormous library is made for people who are serious about their sound design.

It contains over 1000 instruments in EXS24, Kontakt and NN-XT format as well as standard Acidized Wav files and Apple Loops all recorded in stunning 24bit using top of the range equipment by one of the world’s leading sound fx producers. This is state of the art sound design.

In addition to hundreds of ambiences, soundscapes drones and fx which are themed into sections, there are over 50 construction kits which present sounds within the context of a short musical/sound design piece under the general headings Ambient Score, Dark Score, Science Core and Textural.

There is also a themed collection of individual samples, ranging from beautiful washes of ambient bliss, to harsh digital blasts and granular FX.

All of the samples have been pre-cleared and are 100% original & royalty-free for your musical use without any additional licensing fees!

Dark Skies – Cinematic Ambiences features

940 Acidized WAV files.
940 AIFF Apple Loops.
1027 Kontakt Instruments.
1027 EXS24 Instruments.
1027 NN-XT Instruments.

Dark Skies – Cinematic Ambiences is available to purchase for £89.95 GBP / $149.95 USD / €99 EUR.

More information: Zero-G / Dark Skies – Cinematic Ambiences

SampleOddity releases Thrash: Metal Rhyhtm Guitar

ronnie — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:50:00 +0000

SampleOddity has released Thrash: Metal Rhyhtm Guitar, a metal guitar sample library for Kontakt.

Thrash is a multisampled guitar library for Kontakt that focuses on sounds and techniques associated with thrash metal and black metal. A six-string Schecter Blackjack C-1 guitar is presented with distortion and processing already applied, in E and drop-D tuning. An extensive variety of round-robin variations and effects gives you the tools to create intense heavy metal.

Thrash: Metal Rhyhtm Guitar features

561MB of samples / 307MB .rar download.
Many atriculations and effects
- Powerchords (4xRR)
  - sustained intervals of min./maj. 3rd, 4th, tritone, 5th, and minor 6th
- Palm-muted staccatos
  - powerchord palm-mutes (8xRR)
  - single string palm-mutes (8xRR)
  - two extra layers of palm-mutes for open D and E strings
- Single note sustains (4xRR)
- Crazy vibrato
- Tremolo (powerchord min. 3rd and 5th, and single string)
- Lots of effects: note-offs, slides, scrapes, string noises, and harmonics
- Metallitextures: five textural pad instruments
.wav files are open for you to browse/alter/use as sound effects.
Kontakt 2.2.4 / 3.5 full version required.

Thrash: Metal Rhyhtm Guitar is available to purchase for $49 USD.

More information: SampleOddity / Trash: Metal Rhythm Guitar

TeamDNR releases Synplantation Volume 1

ronnie — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:29:49 +0000

TeamDNR has announced the release of Synplantation Volume 1, a collection of presets for Sonic Charge Synplant.

TeamDNR Collaborative Designs announces the release of Synplantation Volume 1 for Sonic Charge Synplant, which is a package of 32 unique and usable sounds, as well as a bank of the same sounds with all FX removed.

This first volume focuses on punchy basses, dynamic plucked/emulative sounds, and dark, emotive pads.

Synplantation Volume 1 is available to purchase for 5 USD.

More information: TeamDNR / Synplantation Volume 1

Sonic Academy announces Making a Synth in Reaktor

ronnie — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:05:50 +0000

Sonic Academy has announced the next release in their video tutorial series, Making a Synth in Reaktor, a course on how to create your very own synth in Native Instruments Reaktor.

REAKTOR is a music software program that turns your computer into an incredibly powerful and versatile audio processing system. REAKTOR can be used as a synthesizer, sampler, effects processor, groovebox, step sequencer, and much more. It’s completely modular structure ensures that no limits are imposed on your imagination in creating and utilizing electronic instruments and sound effects.

The first set of tutorials on synthesis introduced you to Native Instruments REAKTOR. We continue on with this in the 2nd part of our course, covering macros, lists, filters, panning and switches to name a few, and then finally finshing up our simple 2 oscillator synthesizer.

Making a Synth in Reaktor is now available for subscribers. Subscriptions for access to all Sonic Academy videos (100+ and counting; plus sample packs, resources etc) including the ‘How To Sound Like’ tutorials, are available for £59.99 GBP / $99.99 USD per year.

More information: Sonic Academy / Making a Synth in Reaktor

rekkerd.org

Short links for November 6th, 2009

Related posts

Review: Soniccouture Glass Works

Le Cristal – designed by Bernard and François Baschet in 1952

Glass Armonica – invented by Benjamin Franklin

Cloud Chamber Bowls – an instrument built in the 1960s by Harry Partch

So what do I think?

Related posts

Splurgo Audio releases Rock Ballad Drums and Free Mixed Guitar Pack

Related posts

Ueberschall releases Sounds of Berlin

Related posts

Dave Smith Instruments releases Poly Evolver Potentiometer Edition

Related posts

DETUNIZED.COM releases DTS008 – The Casiopeia Synthesizer

Related posts

Zero-G releases Dark Skies – Cinematic Ambiences

Related posts

SampleOddity releases Thrash: Metal Rhyhtm Guitar

Related posts

TeamDNR releases Synplantation Volume 1

Related posts

Sonic Academy announces Making a Synth in Reaktor

Related posts