wire to the ear

Do you remember one of the first posts on wire to the ear titled “Would you work at Guitar Center?“. A few weeks ago I was in New York and stopped by the flagship Guitar Center Store on 14th Street and took some photos for you. My friend Dan works there and he says he loves his job.

They do have a pretty well stocked Pro-Audio department including some interesting pieces like the Chameleon Labs 7602 Preamplifier/Equalizer (a Chinese made inexpensive Neve clone). There are times when you need to see and hear something in person before you buy it. I spent a good amount of time playing with the Moog Voyager. I’m getting close to getting one of these amazing synths.

The Chauvet LED-EQ visualizer thing was pretty nice. You have to see these in person to appreciate how bright and flashy it is. They have a ton of nice microphones, a decent speaker room and scattered around are posters of vintage gear including this one which shows the history of Eventide.

Please click here to enjoy the full photo set from Guitar Center. Please note I put a Creative Commons license on these images so feel free to use them as long as you link back to this article.

Last night I finished a remix for 80s Belgian EBM band Absolute Body Control. The lead singer is Dirk Ivens from The Klinik and also Dive. The keyboardist Eric Van Wonterghem can be found today in several projects including Detune-X. Most of the music they recorded together was over two decades ago and they recently got back together to re-release material and perform at some of the huge festivals in Germany such as Wave Gotik Treffen.

The song I was asked to remix was Neverseen. It usually takes me about a full week to do a remix but Eric was on a deadline and I was able to get this done in four long days. The original song was recorded on a 4-track. I was given the vocals and the full song.

One key part of the remix is when I combine my Yamaha CS-5 and a clip of the vocals in Ableton Simpler with the start time automated and have them micro-tune against each other. You can click the screenshot above to see my Ableton screen in full size.

Here is a clip of the original song:

The Horrorist remix of Neverseen:

Look for an interview with Eric from “ABC” in the upcoming issue of Sonic Seducer Magazine. I also answered a few questions in the same interview explaining how I met Eric and how the remix came to be.

I used to own a blue Roland SH-101 with the cool modulation handle and shoulder strap. These days I use the Powercore01 which is a SH-101 emulation. There is a new free emulation for Mac and PC called TAL-Bassline. Not much more say here because this one is totally free so go an try it yourself! Here’s the details:

• VST Mac (Universal) and PC
• Band-limited oscillators (saw, pulse)
• Sub-oscillator: square -1 oct., square -2 oct., pulse -1 oct, pulse -2 oct
• -18 dB/octave low-pass filter (resonant/self-oscillating)
• LFO (frequency: 0,1 .. 30 Hz, waveforms: sin, tri, saw, rec, noise)
• Very fast nonlinear envelope (A: 1.5ms..4s, D: 2ms..10s, S: 0..100%, R: 2ms..10s)
• Simple Arpeggiator (up, down, one octave mode)
• 2x Unisono Mode
• Panic button
• MIDI automation for all sliders and pots
• Precise fader control while holding down the “Shift” button
• Supports all sample-rates
• 2x oversampling
• 23 presets
• Tutorial PDF
• ~2.5% CPU (Intel Core 2 CPU 6700, 44.1KHz, 24Bit, buffer-size 1024 Samples

via futuremusic

Did you think I would go to the coolest analog synth store in the world and not take a few photos? To go along with my last post here is a photo set from Schneiders Buero. Berlin, Germany. Feel free to tag and add notes to the photos if a synth or module isn’t labeled. I dare you to even attempt to label the Doepfer Modular!

To view the full set: click here

Last week I took a walk to my favorite store in the world Schneiders Buero. Herr Schneider is a really cool Geschaftsfuher (store owner). When you enter his palace of new analog synthesizers for sale a Theramin greets you by sounding off as you enter the door. Scattered around the shop there are postcards and adverts from some of our favorite gear. I grabbed some of them and scanned them for you. Remember when viewing images in flickr you can click “all sizes” to see larger versions of the scans.

To view the full set: click here

Analogue Solutions is a wonderful UK company who creates new analog synthesizers. If your not aware of what they offer head directly to their website and check out some of their cool toys. This week they released a new rack mount monophonic synth called Leipzig.

• Pure analogue voice circuitry.
• Fat Moog style filter.
• 2 VCOs with Glide and Sub-VCOs.
• Plenty of modulation routing possibilities.
• Extra tone controls and circuits for more sound variety e.g. LFO, CrossMod.
• Rugged steel construction and ‘vintage’ wood design.
• MIDI In for software sequencer control

It’s in stock and ready to ship for £549 +vat & shipping.

For more info click to: www.analoguesolutions.com

via Matrixsynth

One of the greatest things about working in modern DAWs is the ability to stretch or shrink audio with ease. Warp markers and the variables that go along with them are incredibly useful tools which should be looked at carefully. Here is an example how I used these features to perfect the timing of an analog synth I recorded.

Sometimes to make my first vocal in a song stand out I make an intro that pulls the ear away from center. Then when the first verse begins I bring the notes and sounds into a center space. I know this sounds a little abstract so listen to the audio sample below to know exactly what I mean:

The bright bell like synthesizer melody that plays before the vocals begin is my Electrocomp-101. What you don’t realize is that the last note before the vocal begins is actually only half as long. I used Ableton Live’s Warp Markers to stretch the that last note. This is something wonderfully easy to do. Inside the Clip View click the Warp button on. Once it’s lit yellow you can now double click on various places over the wave form to create Warp Makers. All you have to do now is drag the markers around to change the length of the individual areas. Use you ears to get the timing you like.

But most people stop there and that’s not using the full potential of this feature set. You can improve and tailor the sound of the Warping engine on a given clip by adjusting the Warp Mode. The following audio sample is the Electrocomp-101 melody Warped to fit my song but with the default Warp Mode “Beats” selected:

Do you hear that last note? Not smooth or natural sounding is it? Ableton can do better. To get there I clicked the Warp Mode drop down menu and selected Texture Mode. I also now experimented with the Grain Size and Flux setting until the last note sounded like it came from the Electrocomp directly at that length. Keep in mind that the last note was really only half as long. Take a listen now:

Most other sequencers now offer similar features. Of course you can get wild and mangle your audio on purpose. The next time you wish you held a note longer or screamed “GO!” for just a few more seconds select a Warp Marker!

Musikinstrumente & Design is a small vintage music instrument shop in Berlin. In fact, it’s directly three doors down from where I live. This means everyday I walk by and have to force myself not to buy anything! It’s a typical Berlin “Geschäft” meaning it opens “whenever” and there is usually three or four people just hanging around drinking and smoking cigarettes.

Please click here to view a small photo set from inside Musikinstrumente & Design. I’ve never seen some of these pieces so please feel free to comment or tag the photos in flickr. Please note I put a Creative Commons license on these images so feel free to use them as long as you link back to this article.

Here’s a quick beginner tip thats important for everyone making music with computers. Polyphony is when two or more notes are being played at the same time. An instrument capable of doing this is called polyphonic. This is opposed to an instrument which can only play one note at a time (monophonic) such as a Moog Voyager. While it may seem strange to limit the amount of voices in your synth there are a few good reasons to do it.

For one, roaring prog rock keyboard solos rely on each note getting the full ear’s attention. Taking a keyboard into mono makes sure that when each new note is hit the last one stops playing completely. If your using a software synthesizer another good reason to limit polyphony is to save CPU power. Each note you play at the same time is practically another complete instance of the plug-in running. Be aware that each note of sound with a long decay such as pads or strings continues to register until every piece of the sound completely fades out. Some plug-ins let you set the polyphony globally and others save the amount of voices within each preset.

Drum machines also use this trick to have the closed hi-hat cut off the open hat. In Ableton’s Impulse plug-in, put your open hi-hat in the last drum slot and the closed hat one slot to the left of it. Now click the Link button at the bottom left of the plug-in. Depending on what I am looking for stylistically I will leave Link on or off. Of course you can even Automate the Link button!

There is a fantastic new Doepfer module expected to be released in May. The A-189 Voltage Controlled Bit Crusher / Modifier makes some serious noise. It has a A/D converter which takes your incoming signal and makes it digital. Once in the digital realm it reduces and shuffles the bit order of the incoming sound.

It offers several voltage controlled algorithmic functions like voltage controlled bit crunching, bit shifting (with/without carry over), bit exchange, rectifying, absolute value and calculating operations like addition, subtraction, multiplication or division. - Doepfer.de

Because it’s part of a modular synthesizer system it has various inputs. You can send an LFO or ADSR into the module to effect different parameters. Voltage control over the bit crusher and sampling rate is awesome! Analog control into this digital module is xxxx. The digital module has 16 different modes which all sound different from each other.

Here are two audio samples from the Doepfer.com homepage:
A1891_sampling_rate.mp3
A1891_playing_around_01.mp3

To see a great video of Dieter Doepfer at NAMM 2008 head to Sonic State. The A-189-1 show begins at 4:55: click here

The projected price is 80 euros (no brainer!). For more audio samples click to: www.doepfer.de

photo credit: kedasc