Ableton made a pretty cool mini-documentary on the band Battles

Pretty cool little 18 min documentary put together by the nice folks at Ableton about the band Battles. Check out their process writing and recording and see how they all work separately, but then together.

Free Oberheim OB-X Emulator VST for Mac and Windows

I recently stumbled across this amazing free softsynth and thought I’d share. If you love those thick Oberheim sounds (who doesn’t?) this is an absolute necessity.

Download it for free here

“Obxd is emulation of famous ob-x, ob-xa and ob8 synths.
While not copying originals , some of the features were taken to a better point.
Continuous blendable multimode filter (hp-notch(bp)-hp in 12 db mode and 4-1 pole in 24 db mode).
VAM button is last played note allocation mode.
32 and 64 bit versions included.”

Robert T. - Spectrum Review ★ ★ ★

Robert T. describes Spectrum as:

“Spectrum is a series of tracks that have glossy synths and foreboding basses gurgling alongside analog beats. This is a varied album hence the name, featuring many different instruments and tones which showcase my constant search for new sounds and textures. Vinatge samplers and analog hardware meld together in this sonic voyage.”

This sounds fairly promising, but for the most part I don’t hear many interesting sounds or textures going on through much of this release, there are some bright points though which I will go over, so read on.

The album starts off with Format XII, which contains some mid tempo electronic beats that sound like maybe Robert was going for a Synthwave type feel, but the choices of sounds are a little too dry and sound a little too preset-y to make a lasting impression. The second track Cyberfeeder, dives more into minimal house territory, and I think this realm is much more comfortable for Robert T. There’s a nice chill pulse with just the right amount of melody to make you want to move (if I could dance, which I can’t).

L/4,5 is another slightly dancy one, but doesn’t hold up for me as well as Cyberfeeder. Again, there’s the very dry preset sounding sounds that just do not sound very interesting to me. Weisbaden 455 has some pretty cool sounds going on, but doesn’t ever seem to develop into anything concrete. FormatXI starts out as a promising dark ambient piece, but again just seems to develop to full maturity in the first measure, then never really blossoms into anything emotional or that conveys much feeling.

Finally at 380mm, Spectrum starts to deliver. This and Format9 are easily the two best tracks on the album. 380mm it starts out with a purely sinister sounding drone that becomes wrapped in various pulsating arpeggios and hi hats. Unlike most of the previous tracks, this one pulls out a few surprises, sounds morph and fade in and out. And even though they are all still very dry, there’s a more overdriven sound on the snare drum and overall it’s just a cool driving beat.

Format9 takes the overdrive to another level and maybe is the best track on the album. It seems the meaner and dirty Robert gets, the better he is at true experimentation. This track almost sounds industrial at times, though doesn’t fall into the stereotypical trappings of the genre.

One thing I should mention is that Robert T created all of this music in real-time, which can be fun for the performer and at a show, but doesn’t always sound like the most carefully constructed music as an album. Mostly because it wasn’t constructed at all, but more like improvised using various electronics. So for this I give Robert some credit for making and at least listenable album this way. I do think however if he is going to continue on this path, to invest in some multi-fx units to ad some more depth to his textures, as well as maybe creating some more structure ahead of time to keep things from getting too meandering.

3 out of 5. Worth having for the last two tracks along. So go ahead and download it here!

Atlantis Falls with Cyber Diva and Hastuni Miku

Here’s a brand new song of mine that I made in Ableton Live Intro and Vocoloid with Cyber Diva and Hasuni Miku. The drums and bass were heavily influenced by the song “Key” by Yellow Magic Orchestra. The lyrics were inspired by the comic book, The Atlantis Chronicles by Peter David and Esteban Maroto published by DC Comics 1990.

The basic concept was simple, make a YMO inspired track with Vocaloid singing. The Atlantis concept came afterwards. I’m always obsessed with the legend of Atlantis anyway, and I recently read The Atlantis Chronicles (highly recommended). So when I was trying to think of things to write lyrics about, that’s what I came up with.

For the video I used about 15 or 20 stills I took at various oceans, aquariums, beaches, and watery places I’ve been to over the years, and a couple of my drawings, then used footage from the PC game Atlantis: The Lost Tales – 1997, played by youtuber PeteRoy. I first took all the stills and animated the TV simulator plugin in Sony Movie Studo Platinum, then chroma-keyed the footage from Atlantis:The Lost Tales, over it in what I thought was interesting ways.

The music was composed and mixed entirely in Ableton using Ableton’s synths, samples, and plugins, then I mixed the vocals right in the Vocaloid editor. I mastered it in Audacity.

I hope you enjoy it, if you want to download the track, you can here https://demonicsweaters.bandcamp.com/track/atlantis-falls
Lyrics:

A dome above the sky
A million reasons why
We’ll take another way to the ocean

And if you want me to
Go to the cave with you
I’ve got a magic spell for the ocean

Atlantis falls into the depths of the sea now

Our science is so strong
Become amphibian
We can breath underwater like the fishes

The best scientists
And the strongest wariors
Atlantis is the home of technology

Atlantis falls into the depths of the sea now

Atlantis falls into the depths of the sea now

A dome above the sky
A million reasons why
We’ll take another way to the ocean

And if you want me to
Go to the cave with you
I’ve got a magic spell for the ocean

Atlantis falls into the depths of the sea now

Atlantis falls into the depths of the sea now

Atlantis falls into the depths of the sea now

Atlantis falls into the depths of the sea now

Evans Hydraulic drum heads on concert toms review

Source: Justin Wierbonski | Drummer | Recording Artist: Evans Hydraulic drum heads on concert toms review

I’ve been playing a concert tom drum kit for the past several years (since 2009 or so) It’s a cheap kit originally. A made in Taiwan Pearl knock off with Luan shells that I literally sawed the bottoms of the far too deep rack toms and refinished the whole kit in a rich walnut oil stain. I then had the shells bearing edges re-cut by none other than Bill Detamore of Pork Pie Percussion.

It has been my main kit for several years, it survived being submerged in water, not once, but twice. Once during hurricane Sandy when my rehearsal space was flooded, and another time when I was in a service elevator in Bushwick that malfunctioned and plunged into a watery basement (this is another story entirely)!

Anyway, since I’ve been using concert toms, I’ve tried many different heads on the toms to see which ones I thought worked the best. I’ve used everything from remo black dots, to attack single ply coated, pinstripes, coated emperors and ambassadors, and finally just yesterday, Evans Hydraulics. It now is obvious to me why this particular head was so damn popular in the 1970s. Since the 70s were the age of the concert tom, it makes sense that a head that works so wonderfully on them would be widely used.

I had tried Hydraulics years ago but it was in an inappropriate setting, on regular drums poorly tuned that weren’t mine at a party. My impression of them then was pretty horrible and I just always written them off as being too dead and thick. But concert toms are a totally different animal. When I first started using them, I tried black dots (CS heads) they sounded nice, but after touring in a band again, I didn’t want to spend so much money on heads, so I started using the Attack single ply coated, which sounded nice but wasn’t very durable. I then tried coated pinstripes which sounded absolutely horrible. They were a weird, boingy sounding head that just didn’t work at all on my drums. It’s odd that a pinstripe is another head similar to a hydraulic, but the sound was drastically different. The Pinstripes actually had more high overtones than the single ply Attack heads, which was pretty crazy.

I wanted to re-head my toms and I was almost going to buy some black dots again, because up until now they were the best I’d tried on this kit. But I thought I’d try something different and remembered reading several places that the Hydraulics were good on concert toms, so I thought I’d give them one more chance. Plus they seemed to be a bit cheaper than black dots and more readily in stock.

It turns out that all the things that make Evans Hydraulics a horrible choice for toms with resonant heads are the exact things that make them great for concert toms. Like, being insanely thick, having a ludicrous amount of oil sandwiched between the two layers, and a complete lack of high overtones, all work amazingly well as soon as you take the bottom head out of the picture.

I first put them on and noticed how quickly they seemed to set and tune, much quicker than any Remo I’ve used. The thick blue oil filled layers gave a nice medium sustain, but much warmer than any other head I’ve put on a concert tom. High dissonant overtones are just gone. The floor tom especially was troublesome with other heads, but with the hydraulic it sounds nearly perfect with a warm sustain, clear note projection, and the sharp attack of a concert tom. There is also a much needed added bass presence to these heads, which is something that can seem lacking in concert toms.

I think the Evans blue hydraulic may be the perfect head for concert tom drums and will be what I use from this point forward on the toms. Its got me a bit curious about trying one on the kick too!

Vaporphonics #6 | Live Vaporwave | MPD Controllerism

I think I’ve finally finished the geeky gigs series. I realized after making this last video that the past 5 videos before that were fitting together more so than the rest of the geeky gigs series. So I took those vids and this brand new one and put together a new playlist titled “Vaporphonics”. This is mostly my take on Vaporwave/Plunderphonics. I think Vaporwave is a genre that is still being developed, and that’s one of the reasons I’m having so much fun with these.

There’s still a lot of people out there that don’t take it seriously. I will admit to getting annoyed with the genre myself when I kept hear so many poor examples or it, or just ones that weren’t really serious in themselves and simply slowing down other tracks from the 90s.

That’s not what I’m doing in these tracks. Yes there’s a lot of pitched down samples, but I’m trying to use more original material for mine, as well as chopping the samples in unpredictable ways. Like using odd spaces in between beats and tails of hits rather than the hits themselves, which is how most beats are chopped. This song, as well as the rest of the tracks in the Vaporphonics playlist will be part of a new album I’m putting together.

Generative Midi Plugin!

Midi Madness, an algorithmic melody generator, in its original form ran as both standalone software and plug-in.

The announcement a few months ago that it was making a comeback revealed that some problematic aspects of the first iteration will be addressed. The most obvious of these was that you couldn’t hear any of the generated musical ideas in real time, which made the process somewhat laboured.

“This new version is a better realised product in numerous ways (and is free to owners of v1)”

Let’s rewind a little and see how the melody generation process works. Midi Madness generates MIDI phrases based on probability weightings set by the user in series separate modules.

The Notes module, for example, features a series of sliders above each note of a chromatic scale. Dragging the slider upwards for a particular note increases its chances of being included in the final melodic phrase.

A common scenario would see you push up the sliders for notes that fit the current scale. This is made a little easier by accessing the Chord Selector, which automatically assigns note weighting based on nine different chord types.

By specifying a key signature, the programme then highlights relevant commonly used chord types. The Length module uses a similar system of sliders to select the probability of a range of note lengths (or rest). There is also a range slider for staccato vs legato notes.

The Velocity, Octave and Humanise (note timing) modules use distribution curves where you drag the lowest and highest values and shape to determine the probabilities. A more elaborate variation on this is used to create controller curves for up to four simultaneous CCs and Pitch Bend.

The Sequence section is where all the magic comes together and provides a visual display of the final phrase (of between 1 and 32 bars). Longer phrases can make use of multiple note weightings to facilitate changing chord progressions.

The final phrase can be dragged from here into your DAW. However, if you’re using the VST version of the plug-in, its output can be routed to a MIDI or instrument track, and this is where the process comes alive.

This new version is a better realised product in numerous ways (and is free to owners of v1), though we still have some reservations about the size and usability in some areas.

Midi Madness claims to be the “latest, sickest tool in EDM”, but in our view this does somewhat oversell the software. However, while you won’t necessarily get instant gratification, it is both interesting and useful – with a distinct leaning to the experimental end of electronica. Take the demo for a spin and see what madness ensues.

via http://www.musicradar.com/reviews/tech/midi-madness-2-622916