A great interview with Rob Acid about his Mastering career including his thoughts on smashed (square) waveforms. He also talks about his modified vintage gear and giant sized spring reverb.
Yesterday a box arrived from Neuton who distributes my record label, Things to Come Records. It was the new release from Ionic Vision called “Club Isolation”. Ionic Vision are a well known EBM (Electronic Body Music) band from Belgium. They contacted me about releasing remixes for two songs off their new album “Sweet Isolation”. When they told me they already had mixes from David Carretta and Millimetric I knew I had to do it.
So back to the box and the point of this post. I always love opening a box of new records and I knew Andy de Decker from Ionic Vision wouldn’t be getting his records for a few days so I decided to videotape myself 
opening the box to show him. Then I remembered all the Macbook Pro box opening videos there are on YouTube and the light went off in my head. So you see the creation above. Don’t forget to blast the music behind your show and put links to places you can buy the release!
Belgian EBM band Ionic Vision releases 12 inch single on Things to Come Records with remixes by David Carretta, The Horrorist, Millimetric and Stamba! This is Electronic Body Music! The Carretta & Millimetric remixes of Sleep & Die Macht are set to be giant hits in Darkwave clubs and Industrial Goth events. The Horrorist remix will scare the living daylights out of you. Stamba from Bordeaux shows off his studio skills in a slick production. As with all TTC releases: MUST HAVE! - Neuton.com
There are more things you can do than a simple unboxing as far as video promos go. Find one of the first stores selling the new baby and do a video walk in and show the record on the shelf. Get two nice looking ladies to play frisbie with the new 12 inch single (in slow motion of course). The skies the limit. I wonder how to make a video promo of a Digital Download unboxing?
Vimeo, Viddler or Blip.tv are all video hosting sites which look much better than YouTube. The video above which is hosted on Vimeo alows me to customize the color of the text overlay. But which ever site you choose to host your promo also add the video to YouTube because of the shear volume of viewers on that site. Don’t forget to add tags to your video so your promo shows up when someone searches “ebm” or “Things to Come Records” for example.
Be warned that like blog posts people can comment on your video. Some people will think the idea of a record box opening completely stupid. However, fans want to know the behind the scenes stuff and record collectors are a special bunch who will drool as they watch the shiny new vinyl appear!
More info about Ionic Vision “Club Isolation”: click here
Miro Pajic who records under the name Hypnotizer for my label was in my studio today. I hooked up my Nintendo DS and let him rock out with Jam Sessions for a while. To make it sound even better I ran it through Izotope’s incredible Trash plug-in.
Miro is a legend in the techno scene with over 80 releases, many on the infamous PCP label and these days on Klikhaus. Check him out here:
www.myspace.com/pajicmiro
I’ve been stuck in the studio catching up on several remixes and songs for my next album. I would never forget about my blog readers so while I was there today I shot three videos of my Roland SH3 in action.
The Roland SH3 was produced in 1974. It is more rare than the SH3A which was put into the market after Moog sued Roland for the original SH3’s filter design. This is one reason the Roland SH3 sounds so incredible. Rumor has it that less than 100 of these were ever made.
You can hear pure Roland SH3 accompanied by an Electrocomp-101 in two of my songs: Room of Posers and Sex Machine.
Be sure to check out the other two Roland SH3 videos I put up here:
http://www.vimeo.com/user442527
Qoob.tv is an Italian video website that partners with MTV Europe. It has it’s own internet shows and networks and it also allows users to upload content. One of the gems on the site is an in house show called Tech Stuff. They have produced ten excellent electronic music related videos.
Some of the subjects covered so far include a visit to Jomox in Berlin, Sherman Filter, Moog Music, Analog Synthesis, Theremins and more. The videos are all well produced and worth a visit.
Tech Stuff is a documentary of 10 x 4 mins episodes on the techniques, the artists and the most
bizarre instruments which have made the history of electronic music. Why is it that bands such as Chemical Brothers and Daft Punk use equipment from more than 30 years ago? What are Theremin, Moog and generative music? How does a filter work? How is sound digitalised? Who were Robert Moog and Lev Termen? Did electronic music already exist in the 1920s? How is a vinyl record pressed? And what about the future? These and many more questions find their answer in Tech Stuff, with rare footage, performance excerpts and interviews made to appease the needs of the International sound enthusiasts. - Tech Stuff, qoob.tv
Here is the 5 minute Jomox video interview with founder Jürgen Michaelis. In the video he mentions they still have a shop open in Berlin. I’m going to have to make a trip over there as soon!
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.”
There is a website called Animoto that lets you upload or import a set of photos and music and then it will churn out a slick music video for you. Usually when I get back from a live performance the promoter or fans will send me some photos of the show. Why not get these into music video form onto YouTube? Great promotion no?
Of course you can take the time to create a music video from still images in Final Cut Pro, iMovie or Adobe Premier but Animoto is super easy, fast and effective. Here’s how it works: Head over to 
Animoto.com and sign up for an account. Click “create video” on the top left of the window. Next, you choose “30 Second Video - Animated Short” or “Full Length Video”. The 30 second clips are free to make. If you want to make something longer it will cost you $3.00. There is also a yearly subscription fee for $30.00 which allows you to make as many full length videos as you like. Now you either upload your photos or import them from flickr. Remember my post “Why every musician should have a flickr pro account.“? Here’s another reason why! You can also import photos from Facebook, Picasa, Smugmug, and Photobucket. You can choose a few photos to be featured by adding a “Spotlight” tag on them. Then you add your music and hit “finalize” and Animoto does its magic. A great new feature they just added is the ability to send your creation directly to YouTube.
You end up with a pretty neat music video. Fancy transitions with zooms and pans make your static photos come to life. The thing I personally like is how fast the process goes. Take a look at this short clip I put together from still photos from my show in Espenhain, Germany at Praezisionswerk and my song Now Destructor:
There’s nothing stopping you from using promotional photos and a talking soundtrack or an interview. Why not create a video of your album covers or event flyer’s?
“Animoto is definitely a slick, fun, easy way to compile your photos into energetic videos.” - Harrison Hoffman, CNET
There is one thing I don’t like about the service and that’s the fact that they slap the Animoto logo at the end of the video. The logo appears even at the end of full length videos you pay for. I contacted them to see if there was a way around it and they told me no. Oh one more thing: use Firefox, Safari gave me trouble.
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!
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
In the early 90s I was in several techno acts. To toot my own horn a little I have over 75 12″ singles out there. This video reminds me how John Selway and I as Disintegrator used to make music. The guy in this (awesome) video is covering the classic track Energy Flash by Joey Beltram. I really loved watching this. Seeing the Akai discs and Mackie mixer being muted/unmuted again was cool. Thanks for the flashback attack!
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