wire to the ear

The next release on my record label is by French DJ and producer Stamba. I am remixing one of the songs called Deviation. All the tracks on the release are what you would call darkwave, ebm, techno. Don’t you love all these sub-genres? Take a listen:

I recreated his original song in Ableton Live, keeping his vocals but using all my own sounds. Some of the gear and plug-ins used include a Jomox Mbase-01, Vermona DRM1 MKIII, Audiorealism Bassline, Korg Legacy, PSP Nitro, Fabfilter Volcano 2, assorted TC Powercore dynamics and Sugar Bytes Effectrix.

We have released the remix samples under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License. If you want to grab the samples for your own fun head to the discography page for this release at Things to Come Records:
thingstocome.com/discog/TTC-017

The full release will be available on August 4, 2008.

One of the nicest sounding software filter plug-ins has just been upgraded to an all new version. I really like all the Fabfilter stuff and use it quite often. I bought all their plug-ins during a Logic Users Group Buy last year. Highly recommended.

We have just released FabFilter Volcano 2, the successor of our popular filter effect plug-in. It has been redesigned from the ground up and includes tons of new features, modulation options and a highly improved user interface. Volcano 2 is now not only capable of high quality filtering, but can even be used for phasing, flanging, chorus and many other effects! - Fabfilter.com

Demo version available. Mac/PC: click here

Gearslutz is a probably the most populated pro-audio forum on the net. There is a serious amount of traffic going on there. You find find threads discussing the minor details of a five thousand dollar micpre that go thirty pages long.

Yesterday I started reading a thread started by someone who just found on a vintage Roland RE-201 Space Echo to purchase. The RE-201 is a fantastic vintage tape echo machine. Soon after Mike Manthe’s first post claiming he finally found one another person “tstu102″ answers him also mentioning he just located one and how happy he was. Do you see where this is going? Yep. It didn’t take too long for them to realize they both were talking about the same unit. Seems like the seller said yes to both because the second guy was willing to pay more money.

At first Mike thought thought tstu102 had read the thread and went after the unit. But then tstu102 did a good dead and told the seller he wasn’t going to buy the unit and he should honor his first deal. I thought it was a pretty interesting read about the Space Echo and human nature. Read the thread yourself: click here

I’ve used a real Space Echo and they are very meaty. If you can’t get a real one there a nice emulation for the UAD-1 or the new Boss Space Echo RE-20 hardware pedal. Although not quiet the same beast I find myself turning to Fabfilter’s Timeless for a effects in that ballpark.

photo credit: Lorenzo Desiati

This is a 20 minute Screencast showing Cognitone Software’s Harmony Navigator. You will get to see different “palettes” and accompaniments producing wonderful music. We show you how to create a verse and chorus and then export the midi into Ableton Live. Once inside Ableton Live you will see how to set up your imported data in a meaningful way. The video is nicely sized so be sure to click the TV icon under the player to view the show in full screen mode.

You can also read an interview with Andre Schnoor the developer of Harmony Navigator here: Interview with Andre Schnoor of Cognitone Software.

Be sure to check out Harmony Navigator at www.cognitone.com and Ableton Live at www.ableton.com.

Direct download links:
Download MPEG-4 Video (.m4v)
Download Flash Video (.flv)

Here’s a way to get a highly unique sound. You probably won’t want to use this technique on every song you record. I guarantee when you do people will ask how you did it. Take a microphone and aim it at one of your speakers. Carefully turn up the volume. When you start to hear feedback hit record on your DAW. Move the microphone around. That’s the basics but now let’s play more. Add a distorion or reverb plug in as an insert on the microphone channel. Now we have more flavors of feedback. Using these recordings in your purely electronic songs adds some real life.

I have a song called from 1996 called Dark Invader. It was the first release on my record label Things to Come Records. I was searching for bat sounds but instead I did the following. I had a Shure SM-58 microphone aimed towards a large nightclub style speaker. The mic was going through a Korg SDD-2000 digital delay. I had the delay times in sync with the tempo of my song. I recorded the feedback. Lastly, in an Akai S950 sampler I reversed and cut up the feedback and stragedically placed it in the song. Here is an audio sample:

Early this year I was recording a song about Gary Ridgeway, The Green River Killer. The song is called The Grip of the Cobra. I wanted a dark feedback effect to Read “Feedback as a sound source.”