Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Japanese electro-pop producer performs with the new Korg Electribe

Hercelot Wake Up Fake Pop

The Korg Electribe has always been an underrated piece of gear in my opinion, and the new one looks like a logical step forward, but keeping to the original idea of a tabletop workstation with a wide pallet of sounds to work with. Check out Hercelot’s clean beat style. I like it a lot actually. Some youtubers seem to think it’s too clean, but what do youtube commenters ever like anyway?

What the bitter youtubers don’t realize is Hercelot has some pretty amazing tunes on his bandcamp page. Check it out below to get a good feel for his upbeat, fun electronic workings!

Saturday, February 21, 2015

Amazing pack of midi manipulation plugins! Change audio to CC data, delay notes and CC with feedback, and more!

midi

I found a free motherload of amazing plugins for midi that allow you to do all kinds of cool stuff with midi data! The whole thing came about from me just wanting to change a midi assignment in EnergyXT that isn’t changeable, then a forum poster pointed me in the direction of these. I was blown away and thought I’d share em!

pizmidi2 pizmidi

Complete list of plugins and features:

midi16CCRouter – Changes up to 16 CCs to 16 other CCs.
midi2qwerty16 – Use MIDI to trigger fake keystrokes to the focused window.
midiAlias – Note values are reflected between a “Nyquist Note” and a “Zero Note,” similar to the effect of audio sample aliasing.
midiAudioToCC – Converts audio amplitude to CC messages.
midiBlackKeyFilter – Separately adjust velocity of black and white keys, and/or send them on different channels.
midiCCModulator – Use one CC to modulate another CC (or note velocity) in various ways: add/subtract/multiply/etc, plus logic gates (AND, NAND, XNOR, etc).
midiCCReset – Remembers CC values and sends them out again at selected times.
midiCCStepper – Quantize CC events by value or in time.
midiCCToggle – For changing momentary CC buttons into toggles.
midiChannelize – Transforms everything to the selected channel.
midiChordHold – Sustains a chord until another one is played.
midiChordSplit – For splitting polyphonic material to multiple midi channels based on selected note ranges for each voice.
midiChs_noGUI – Channel filter/changer like energyXT1 “MIDI chs” component.
midiConverter3 – Change and convert between CC, Channel Pressure, Poly Aftertouch, Program Change, Pitch Bend, NRPN/RPN, Note On/Off, and other messages in various ways.
midiDelay – Delay notes and/or CCs with feedback.
midiDuplicateBlocker – Remembers all MIDI message values it gets on each channel, and blocks any repeated values until a different value is received.
midiExactDelay – Simple delay (no dry signal, no feedback) with flexible and precise delay time.
midiFingered – Selectively sends standard portamento on/off CC messages to emulate “fingered portamento” for synths that don’t have it.
midiForceToKey – Enforces a scale, and transposes within the scale (optionally based on MIDI notes on a selected channel).
midiForceToRange – Transposes notes by octave into the selected range.
midiInvertNotes – “Mirrors” notes centered around the selected note.
midiKeySplit – Simple keyboard splitter.
midiKeySplit4 – Four-zone keyboard splitter.
midiMultiProgramChange – Uses input program change to trigger selected program changes on all channels.
midiNotchFilter – Isolate, remove, or channelize specific MIDI messages.
midiNoteGroups – Assign play and/or choke groups to MIDI notes.
midiNoteMap – Simple 1-to-1 keyboard mapper.
midiNoteRepeater – Repeats every Nth note a set number of times, or blocks it.
midiNotesToCC – Converts note number and velocity to CC messages.
midiNoteToggle – Notes (optionally within a selected range and/or channel) are toggled… play a note once to turn it on, play it again to turn it off.
midiNRPNConverter – Converts between NRPN/RPN and CC messages, with 16 conversion slots.
midiOverlappingNoteKiller – Prevents overlapping notes at the same pitch.
midiPitchBendQuantize – Quantizes pitch bend messages to up to 25 values.
midiPitchBendToNotes – Changes pitch bend plus note messages into notes at the “bent” pitch (may be useful for using Suzuki QChord with non-multitimbral instruments).
midiPolyphony – For spreading polyphony across MIDI channels, i.e. if you play 4 notes, each one will go to a different channel. Polyphony per channel can be set from 1 to 16 notes for more flexibility. You can also use it to convert polyphonic input to monophonic output.
midiProbability – Add probability-based effects to incoming MIDI events, optionally synced to host timeline.
midiProgramChange – Send Program Change and/or Bank Select messages.
midiSimpleLFO – One CC LFO with some “simple” options.
midiScaleChanger – Transposes notes by individual scale degrees and/or globally, to change one scale into another. Among other things, this allows you to play any scale using only the white keys.
midiSostenuto – Like a piano sostenuto pedal, but for MIDI notes instead of piano dampers.
midiStrum – Sequentially delays notes of an input chord to simulate strumming.
midiStuckNoteKiller – Sends note-off messages to end hanging notes when the host stops (for hosts that don’t do this themselves).
midiSwing – Delays and/or offsets velocity of and applies probability to notes (and optionally also CCs) at every other step of a selected note value.
midiTriggerList – Use one note or CC to trigger up to 8 other notes and/or CCs.
midiVelocityScaler – Scale/reverse/offset velocity of input notes (Note On and/or Note Off).

Download

Mirror if above doesn’t work

[adblockingdetector id=”3″]

Sometimes you just need a simple low pass filter plugin! Here's one for free, and some other stuff :)

karmafx

 

That’s what I needed when I found this. I was working on a song and all of my filter plugins had LFOs and way too much crap on them. I just wanted a low pass filter with with a cutoff and frequency knob so I could program the automation myself and map it to my NanoKONTROL. Okay, well this one has a couple more knobs than that, but was still pretty simple and did what I wanted it to do. Also, it sounds pretty good and comes with a pack of 4 plugins, reverb, delay, EQ and the filter. All of which sound pretty good, and yep, they’re free!

Download here

Mirror if that download doesn’t work

 

[adblockingdetector id=”3″]

Friday, February 20, 2015

Roland TR-505 sounds, twisted, looped, and sounding insanely awesome!

Roland_TR-505_drum_machine

 

Loopmasters has released an amazing pack of TR-505 loops and one shots that sound pretty damn awesome. I actually think I might get this pack for myself. The TR-505 was a really smooth sounding machine and has held up really well for today’s music. If you check out their demo loops, many of them have a great 80s, tropical vibe to them.

If you’ve never heard of Loopmasters, they’re a company that produces tons of amazing sounding high quality loops to use in the software or hardware of your choice. I found out about them from using Energy XT, since they created the loops that come with it. I was blown away by their quality. Many different formats are supported, and they often have several different pricing options per loop pack. You can hear great demos on their site before you buy too.

 

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Free Akai MPC type Sampler VSTi, Groovebox plugin! Freeware!

free MPC type sampler

 

It took me some furious Googling, but finally found a free MPC-ish type drum machine, sampler, sequencer online that runs as a VST plugin! Nasty Looper is a really awesome piece of software that is fully free and will run on any windows DAW. The title is very misleading, since it’s not a looper at all, but is really a cross between an MPC sampler and a Roland Groovebox.

You can easily assign samples to different “pads” then just as easily map them to your midi controller of choice by simply right clicking each pad and selecting map from the submenu. It also has a filter, fx, and a groovebox function. I personally don’t see much use to having a sequencer in the plugin itself since you’ll already be loading it into a host DAW anyway, but still cool I guess if you wanted to run a very simple host and use Nasty Looper for live performance.

Either way this is exactly what I was looking for and it works amazingly. It’s free but the developer is asking for donations. I think it’s really worth it to donate since its really quite good! I’ve already started using this in a new song. Can’t wait to play with it more!

DOWNLOAD HERE

[adblockingdetector id=”2″]

Monday, February 16, 2015

NAMM 2015 | Yamaha announces their first Native English speaking Vocaloid, Cyber Diva!

mmd cyber diva vocaloid

We may be hearing a lot more Vocaloid music here in the states very soon. Yamaha was showing off their new Cyber Diva (a native English singing Vocaloid) At NAMM 2015 and their great new integration with Steinberg’s Cubase Digital Audio Workstation. Vocaloid has an obsessive cult following in Asia and parts of Europe. Will we be seeing the same thing happen in the USA? Vocaloid 4 was just released and has a total of 5 voices (if you include 3rd party voicebanks) so far in.

It’s actually kinda crazy it took this long to get noticed over here, but I’m welcoming it either way! Looking forward to hearing more from Cyber Diva and Vocaloid 4!

 

[adblockingdetector id=”2″]

Friday, February 13, 2015

Check out this great video on creating cinematic MIDI realism!

Check out this really great video tutorial by Andrew Gerlicher on how to make your MIDI compositions sound real for film score or orchestration music! This is a simple video with very practical and useful tips. Definitely worth the watch!

 

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Mothman VST Synthesizers | Download Free | Mothman Z3000 1000 2000 1966

Several years ago, I made some VST software synthesizers for Windows called the Mothman Series. The Mothman 1000 was the first one. It combined subtractive synthesis with FM synthesis and an oscilloscope to make some really unique sounds. Shortly after that I released the Mothman 1966 and then the Mothman Z3000 which is a Casio CZ-3000 emulator (BTW, I made my CZ emulator years before it became trendy) hehe. Now everyone seems to be making one. The Mothman 1966 is a really unique simple subtractive synth with custom waveforms. Later I reworked the original Mothman 1000 and added some improvements and called it the Mothman 2000 (my personal favorite of the 4).

Anyway, the original download links went down and many people have been asking me for them. I’ve been meaning to put them up somewhere, but wanted to wait until I got a real site up and running again. I have that now, so here is the entire mothman plugin set to download for FREE!! They’ll run on Windows or Linux (with wine). DOWNLOAD HERE AND UNRAR TO YOUR VST DIRECTORY! password if needed = themothmanreturns

 


 

Need a sweet MIDI controller for these synths? Check this one out!

Sunday, February 8, 2015

Add this to your VST collection! | Free Roland Jupiter 6 inspired VST plugin for windows!

Jupiter 4 running in Energy XT

 

Here’s a cool free plugin I found online. It’s geared to be a Roland Jupiter 6 type plugin. Though I’ve heard the sound isn’t exactly like a Jupiter, it still sounds really cool and has a lot of great presets and easy editing. The above pic is me running it in Energy XT with no problems! Get it here http://www.vst4free.com/free_vst.php?id=1196#c


Updated drum lesson playlist

It's hard for me to update this website constantly with all of the new drum lessons I am making, so I figured I would make a playlist wh...