Well there’s another social network. I don’t post about sound libraries here too much but I have started a Pintrest “Interesting Sound Libraries” board you can choose to follow. Keep in mind these are interesting to me so expect a high dose of 80s, screams and springs.

“Pinterest is a vision board-styled social photo sharing website and app where users can create and manage theme-based image collections. The site’s mission statement is to “connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting”.” – Wikipedia

For more info: pinterest.com/thingstocome

Sweet sounds from an interesting instrument.

“Hand carved over the last 10 years. Gaeoudjiparl has created his own unique mechanical birds with which he performs live.” – SYGNOK

For more info: SYGNOK

One of my favorite city’s streets has been recorded into 55 takes and 10 Ableton scenes. Download the City Traffic set over at Detunized. The set is 4.80€.

“City Traffic brings the daily noise of Berlin to the your library. The Pack contains recordings of main roads during the morning rush hour, when the trolley car rumbles over the rails and the trucks are roaring through the kettles. In between a bunch of honking mopeds and cars with broken exhaust pipes are fighting for their space. Commuter trains are crossing every minute, the omnibus arrives just in time and the long-distance trains pass the station with squeaking brakes. In the evening it is rainy and at least the suburb calms down a little bit.” – detunized.com

For more info: detunized.com

photo credit: cattleclasstraveler

I’m pretty excited about this plug-in. While aimed at Filmakers NI’s new plug-in Damage has my inner Einstürzende Neubauten feeling happy. Beyond the sound set the plug-in has a lot of tricks up it’s sleeve such as an Rhythmic patters, AMP sequencer, filters, compression, saturation, trigger effects (yay), 3 mic mixer, etc… $339 and 30GB of space required will keep the amateurs away which is a plus. Be sure to check out the sound sources gallery on the NI site to see all the places they went to record all the klanging.

“Dark, aggressive, thrilling and threatening — DAMAGE is breathtaking cinematic percussion with a tense, epic edge. DAMAGE gives you 30 GB of drama, fusing industrial sounds and orchestral drums into a devastating electro-acoustic barrage. Percussive Kits provide more than 200 deeply sampled percussion sources, and over 500 single-shot elements, recorded in up to seven velocity layers and with up to nine round-robins per drum. Over 700 beat-sliced loops come as menu-style loop suites or as single loops for detailed tweaking. Even the most complex sounds are instantly usable, and it’s all in hair-raising, big-screen quality.” – Native Instruments

For more info: native-instruments.com/powered-by-kontakt/damage

Every musician knows by now Soundcloud is a great way to share and explore music. I share my own tracks to Groups and often explore them. Here are 14 that are non-genre specific but more “pro-audio” based. What are your favorite Soundcloud groups? Have you started a Group of your own?

1. The Singer/Songwriter Group link
2. Analog or Modular Synthesizers link
3. Samples link
4. Sound Concepts and Experimental Feeds link
5. Hardware Samplers link
6. iOS Music link
7. Creative Commons link
8. iOS Musicians link
9. Hardware Synthesizers link
10. Circuit Bent link
11. Synth Samples link
12. The Sound of Airports, Planes, Trains & Train Stations link
13. Vocoder Love link

“SoundCloud was originally started in Stockholm, Sweden, but was established in Berlin, Germany in August, 2007 by sound designer Alex Ljung and artist Eric Wahlforss. It had the intention of allowing musicians to share recordings with each other, but later transformed into a full publishing tool which also allowed musicians to distribute their music tracks.” – Wikipedia

Follow me on SoundCloud: soundcloud.com/thingstocome

AfroDJMac is a songwriter and guitarist/electronic musician from New York. Besides his interesting name he creates free and very inexpensive Ableton Live Racks. Some Racks include “Brostep” inspired by the Jersey Shore, RapMan (Casio VL-1, Teenage Engineering OP-1), Gameboy Glitches and Synth, Ensoniq SQ-80, Glitched Piano, Glitch Machine, Nu Wave Synth (sounds from his oven!) and about 20 more so far. Any Live user should give his website a good look over!

“Futuristic, yet nostalgic. New York’s AfroDJMac is a live electronic musician, drawing influence from the genres of indie garage rock, classic rock, video game music, and modern electronica.” – afrodjmac.com

For more info: afrodjmac.com

HSS3i by thingstocome

A few weeks ago I purchased a Hard Soft Synth 3i or HSS3i from Bleep Labs. It’s a creation of a Dutch man know as Gieskes. The unit creates analog video and audio. As you can hear in the recording I made above it’s quite interesting. You will know instantly if your the type of person who will like this thing. It’s very THX1138. For some more photos of what you get: click here. Expect to see some of the video output from the HSS3i in my live shows.

“The Hard Soft Synth 3i is an indescribable audio / video generator by noisemaker extraordinaire, Gieskes.” – Bleep Labs

For more info: gieskes.nl

In case you were wondering WE are the aliens.

“A modem (modulator-demodulator) is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded to reproduce the original digital data. Modems can be used over any means of transmitting analog signals, from light emitting diodes to radio. The most familiar example is a voice band modem that turns the digital data of a personal computer into modulated electrical signals in the voice frequency range of a telephone channel. These signals can be transmitted over telephone lines and demodulated by another modem at the receiver side to recover the digital data.” – Wikipedia

photo credit: Koluso DX

via laughingsquid

Blood and Guts Sound Library Preview CRFX-013 by crussom

477 samples of Blood and Guts for $50. These were created using pumpkins, yogurt and other gut like sounding products. I wonder how much more this sample library would be worth if they used really living humans?

“Recorded and produced in collaboration with Sound Designer Rob King, this is a collection of gore, stabbing, and impact sounds. Use these sounds as source effects to layer into your fight scenes, zombie feasts, dismemberments, autopsies, or anywhere else you might need to add a little bit of blood, guts, flesh ripping, or bone breaking sounds.” – chuckrussomfx.com

photo credit: g000nz0

via synthtopia

Dither of course. The video above shows you why. It’s been a while since my last album so in preparing the files for the new baby I realized I need to get things from 32bit to 16bit. As per some Gearslutz advice I’m going with the Pow-r type.

“Dither is an intentionally applied form of noise used to randomize quantization error, preventing large-scale patterns such as “banding” in images. Dither is routinely used in processing of both digital audio and digital video data, and is often one of the last stages of audio production to compact disc.” – Wikipedia

For more info: wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither