wire to the ear

D16’s Drumazon and Devastator. from wiretotheear on Vimeo.

Here is a screencast I put together showing a few features of D16’s incredible Roland TR-909 emulator Drumazon and their new distortion plug-in Devastor. I really like both of these. After watching the video I encourage you to head over to the D16 website and download the demos.

I’ve owned a real Roland TR-909 for many years. In fact I bought mine from Chaka Kahn! I can honestly say Drumazon is a better replacement. It’s a joy to use and you get all the nicesties of software (presets). You also get features a real 909 doesn’t have like random and automation. When you add a quality multiband distortion unit like Devastor to it you can’t help but smile. This is audio software at its best.

http://www.d16.pl/

Do you own any of D16’s products?

I’ve been in the studio a lot lately. I finally finished a string of remixes and now I can take the rest of Spring and Summer and complete my next album. I already have a few songs done and about 30 half finished songs. I’ll now go and listen to those ideas I started and pick about 10 to complete.

The song I am working on now is called “I Know Your Pain”. I get a certain audience at my shows… people like myself. I can really relate to them. I guess they feel the same way and thats why they show up! This song is more or less how I say “Yes I know how you feel”. I know when I go to a concert of a band I really like I feel connected with everyone else there. Everyone there has something in common. This song walks around that concept.

The following audio sample is completely at the demo stage. Just pure simple drum, bassline and vocal. I usually work this way without much trickery until I get a full arrangement done. The kick is my new Jomox Mbase 01, a snare sample being smashed by D16’s Devastator and the bassline is a secret (sorry). Nothing is on my voice except a little compression.

I’ll step away from this song now and not listen again until next week. When I do put my ears on it next I will be ready to move parts around and add fills and effects. The first new fresh listen is critical because I will hear it as “new”. Only then can I be a proper judge of what’s good and what sucks.

In the Nitzer Ebb song Let Your Body Learn one of the lyrics is “The Music of Drums!”. I always liked that line and concept. You can make great songs with just a drum machine and a few effect boxes. I often make songs by creating sounds solely from effects. Ableton Live’s Beat Repeat plug-in can take any audio and spew it into something wild and worthy. Here are three presets I created for Beat Repeat that you may like too:

Lazer Station

Four Four Echo

EBM Sequencer





I like to automate the Mix/Insert/Gate options. Don’t forget to adjust the filter and pitch decay to your liking.

Download the presets: click here

I really like all of AudioRealism’s plug-ins. They sound really good and have features like randomize which I covet. I gave an artist endorsement to the original ABL and I am happy to see they have updated this excellent Roland TB-303 clone. If your doing any kind of modern music the swing parameter is really import (ex. minimal techno). I recently did a post about swing you can check out here: Global Groove and Swing parameters in Ableton Live. So what else did that add? Take a look:

Since 2003 ABL has established its sound as the industry standard. In 2007 ABL2 achieves important improvements in several key areas. Amongst new features the most important thing is the sound: The bass is improved for less muddiness. The filter has been improved to incorporate subtile nonlinear effects for additional squelch. The distortion unit has been improved with less aliasing. The controls have been calibrated to better match the response of the original. Moreover several new features are present: The new pattern analyzer which can be used to edit patterns and will even detect patterns from audio files. - audiorealism.se

It’s 95 Euro, Upgrade your old one for 25 Euro. VST 2.4 for PC, Audio Units and VST for Mac OS X.

Most new laptops have webcams (or as Apple calls them iSights) built in. So it’s great to see music applications starting to use these cameras. The above tech demo from the Deep Listening Institute is designed for people with disabilities but there’s no reason anyone can’t benefit from this technology. I can imagine some guitar samples hooked into the interface and a long haired metal guy moshing away!

A commercial ready music webcam application is Cycling 74’s VTheremin:

Another example of our unique approach to instruments is the VTheremin plugin. Using your webcam, you can control a pair of oscillators by moving colored balls in the air. - www.cycling74.com/products/hipno

Vtheremin is part of Cycling 74’s Hipno plug-in package. Audio Unit, RTAS, and VST. $199. Available as download or CD-Rom package.

There is also an open source webcam controller called Peripheral MIDI Controller from Ben Tan (Windows only so far):

Peripheral MIDI Controller (pmidic) is a software program that intends to act as a MIDI controller by using various peripheral devices. The initial release(s) will be focused on using a webcam as a MIDI controller with 3 dimensions (XYZ). - http://sourceforge.net/projects/pmidic/

When I perform live I have a video that plays in sync with my music dual screening from Ableton Live (remember this post?) to a video wall behind me. I just realized that I can open iChat, click the video preview window and drag that over to the video window too. This way the audience can see my face as I control Ableton. More reasons to go to the gym everyday!

Want to see a futuristic use of webcams? Check out seesmic.com. On this site people have public video conversations using recorded video messages. Anyone can read the conversations then post a video and jump in. There are already several music threads with people playing live music to each other. It’s sort of a video version of Twitter. You have to sign up for a beta invite but they send it to you within a day. If you sign up send me a video message, my screen name is: thingstocome

Lastly, on the webcam video note I have been considering doing some video posts to Wire to the Ear. I’m not sure if it’s something I want to do yet. What do you think?

p.s. “Metal Fan” T-shirt: available here

Do you remember my post “Feedback as a sound source.“? I talk about how it can be useful to add feedback into your sterile digital recordings. Up until now I have had to aim my microphone at my speakers and hit record. One major thing I don’t like about doing that is the chances of blowing a woofer are pretty high when using Yamaha NS10Ms. So I was really pleased to see a new plug-in called Acoustic Feedback by Softube which simulates feedback.

I wanted to try the demo today but when I got to the download page I realized it requires an iLok. This maybe a deal breaker for me because I’ve lost dongles and USB Flash Dives in the past. I’m also out of USB ports on my Macbook Pro. I don’t want to get into the whole copy protection debate. I don’t steal or pirate software. Companies have the right to use iLok or Syncrosoft if they so choose.

Release your inner beast with the first realistic guitar feedback simulator on the market. Go from moderate and subtle to rampant and wild by the twist of a knob (or two). To break new musical ground, try inputting a synthesizer, a violin, or even your mother’s grand piano. - www.softube.se

I really want to hear a drum machine and vocals run though this plug-in. Acoustic Feedback is $99 USD and is available in Native formats for VST/AU/RTAS, Mac/PC.

Spectrasonics has been creating a series of videos for it’s upcoming super soft synth Omnisphere. The latest video is quiet excellent. Eric Persing knows how to get you excited about a product. The video takes a time line tour of arpeggiators in vintage synths. You get to see a Moog Modular, Roland Jupiter 4, Jupiter 8, Juno 60, Sequential Circuits Prophet VS, Roland JP-800 and Access Virus all “arping” away.

I like the implementation of the step sequencer/arpeggiator in Omniphere too. The “oh nice” moment comes when he drops a Jazz midi groove template into Omnisphere and the arpeggiator locks to it. The Omnisphere arpeggiator also has a swing parameter which is vital in today’s electronic music.

To see the video click on “Continue Reading…” because it’s a Quicktime I didn’t want to have it slow down the main page of this site (it autoloads). Read “Superb arpeggiator history video from Spectrasonics.”

Musikmesse is one of the best music gear trade shows. It takes place in Frankfurt Germany this week. There are many websites covering Musikmesse down to the very last detail. I’d like to only list here what I personally think are the most interesting new products. So without further ado here is Wire to the Ear’s MusikMesse 2008 hot picks:

Korg DS-10. This is a Korg MS-10 synthesizer for the Nintendo DS! This is a fully sanctioned product from Korg itself. You use the DS’s touch screens to control parameters. There is a sequencer and you can sync several units together via WiFi. I am really looking forward to getting this and using it live! link

Melodyne Direct Note Access. This has to be on top of the list because it’s a revolution in the audio tech world. This fall when the next version of Melodyne is released you will be able to edit individual notes inside polyphonic sounds! There is no doubt about it, what Celemony has done is amazing. To grasp this concept head over to Celemony and watch the videos on their site. link

MFB Synth 3. Manfred Fricke from Berlin (MFB… get it?) has a new synth ready for 2008. I really like the MFB stuff because it’s affordable and sounds good. These units are a lot smaller than you think. You could throw everything MFB makes into a backpack easy and head to a gig. The new Synth 3 will make sound without you patching any cables into it. But of course the fun starts with wires! 3VCOs, full analog, 37 patch points, midi and CV for only 580 euros! link

Rob Papen RG. Dutch sound designer turned software developer Rob Papen makes really useful synths. I find myself turned to Blue quite often. His new release looks interesting and my guess is it will find it’s home in an unintended market. What do I mean? Well it’s a virtual rhythm guitar plug-in matched with Rob’s synth engine and sequencers. So will rock n rollers be using it? I doubt it, my guess is whatever sounds this thing churns out will be in dance clubs by October. link

Solid State Logic Matrix Superanalogue Mixer. When you think of 16 Channel mixers of the 8-bus type the you think of Mackie or Soundcraft maybe? Imagine a small sized console from SSL? Each channel strip would represent a boutique quality strip. You know the class-A vintage looking things you lust over? Now imagine that small SSL with a digital output for about $25k. Come on your car costs more than that right? This is the kind of gear monthly payments were made for. link

The Nord Lead Anniversary Model Ltd. Edition. The Nordlead really made me believe that software could emulate hardware in a convincing way. To top it off the Nordlead was built like a tank and had a wicked cool stone mod wheel and wood pitch bender. There’s nothing new feature wise on the Anniversary Model. It is essentially a Nordlead 2x but those reverse keys are pretty. There will be only 299 of these so run to Sweden now and get yours before it’s to late. link

OrangeVocoder 10th Anniversary. What? Anniversary edition software? Sure why not. I must have used Prosoniq’s vocoder on twenty songs or more over the years. The new version finally brings us an Audio Units, new sound modes, voiced/unvoiced detection linked with a noise synthesizer, a filterbank freeze option and a HF passthru mode. link

So what are your Musikmesse picks? Anything hot you think I missed? The show’s not over so by Monday I think I will update this post a little.

Here is an interesting plug-in. It’s been available for PC for a few months but now that I can use it on my Mac it’s worth a post here. It’s a four channel drum machine plug-in that uses samples (PCM) and analog modeling. What’s unique is the fact that this virtual machine has been “virtually” circuit bent!

You get four pads and individual outputs. Each pad allows the usual stuff like pitch, decay, tone, pain and volume. You also have chaos and chance sliders. Chaos sets is the amount of bending and chance sets how often chaos occurs.

Inspired by a combination of several old school beat boxes and the circuit-bending culture that revolves around cheap, and old, hardware musical instruments (such as the “toy” Casio and Yamaha keyboards of the 80s), Broken Drum Machine brings the lively, “ever changing”, circuit-bent drum machine sounds to your DAW. - NUsoftting.com

You can use your own samples and even alter the GUI. When you do so you can save your changes in what NUsofting calls “Modpaks”.

Here’s a few audio samples of BDM in action from the NUsofting website:

This plug-in is 35 euros/about $50. There’s more audio samples, demo songs and a demo version of BDM at the NUsofting website: click here

Here is a Wire to the Ear video of an absolutely must have plug-in that has just been released. Effectrix is a VST/Audio Unit which sequences effects such as XLoop, Scratch, Reverse, Stretch, Tonal Delay, Stutter, Vinyl, Crush, Filter, Phaser, Chorus, Delay and Reverb. Sugar-Bytes from Germany has done a really fantastic job here.

Tweak your beats, create new rhythms, turn your stuff into colorful grainclouds….reverse parts, stretch others, apply delaylines or even create melodies out of atonal material. - Sugar-Bytes.de

I’ve been waiting for a plug-in like this to appear for Mac OS-X. On the PC side there has been Illinformed’s Glitch. In this video I set up a simple Roland TR-808 drum loop using Audiorealism’s ADM. I added the Ableton Compressor and Saturator to make the 808 more like “hot chrome”. I go through some of the presets, adjust a few parameters and alter some Effectrix sequence bars. As I recorded this I noticed a few parameters I need to figure out. For example, how to adjust the sequence step length and have one effect line modulate another. I also see there is a random function which I absolutely love.

There is a 30 day demo. Be warned: to try is to buy!