Here’s the first Roland product that has peaked my interest in a while. R-Mix Tab for iPad lets you filter our areas from music. Watch the video above for a good demonstration. If it works well enough it should be a nice tool for remixers looking to get acapella versions of their favorite songs. $9.99 USD.

“View the instruments or components of the music which imported from your iPod library as color-coded clouds of energy and harmonic matter onscreen. You can lower the level, keep or move the panning position of the selected instrument on the screen. You can use R-Mix to easily create “minus-one” type play-along tracks. You can also isolate guitar sound, for example, and solo that phrases for study.” – Roland

Download: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/r-mix-tab/…

French company Arturia will release a software recreation of the Oberheim SEM on October 25th. The original SEM’s trick was a 2-pole multimode filter which along with low-pass had high-pass, band-pass and band-reject settings. This gave the unit some wicked sharp sounds. For a while the SEM sound could only be had if you hit eBay. Then Tom Oberheim followed in Bob Moog and Dave Smith’s footsteps and got things going again. I have to mention my favorite SEM sounding synth the Analogue Solutions Telemark which I had a chance to play with recently. It adds a few tricks to the mix including in my opinion a very important feature: noise. It’s good to see Arturia back in the game emulating classic synths because I think it’s what they do best. It’s going to be tough for them to get the sharp filters right on the SEM. That said, the plug-ins are a good stepping stone to get people into hardware or for when you need SEM on an airplane, beach, hotel room, etc… They sure look very pretty too!

“After years without any addition to their Synthesizer Anthology series, Arturia has announced that it will soon bring back to life in software format one of the world’s most sough-after synthesizers. The Oberheim SEM V accurately emulates the famous sound and interface of the original Synthesizer Expander Module introduced by Oberheim Electronics in 1974. Faithfully reproducing the tone, waveshapes, multi-mode 12dB/octave filter and other detailed characteristics, the Oberheim SEM V also brings the benefits of polyphony, MIDI control, arpeggiation and some innovative functionalities such as the 8-voice programmer, or the advanced keyboard follow.” -kvraudio.com

For more info: arturia.com, tomoberheim.com and analoguesolutions.org.uk/v2

via kvraudio

Last night i picked up an Amplitude iRig from Best Buy (about $40). It wasn’t too long until I had some old gear going through any music Apps that allowed input. The photo above shows a Boss Dr. Rhythm DR-110 into the Moog Filtatron app. iRig works as advertised and I was very impressed with Filtatron. I think that Moog hired some good coders because it sounds right. I also think it was smart of them to release this on touch devices and not as a plug-in that you would have use a mouse with. This thing begs to be played with. The feedback and tape delay effects are great. I tried to plug a Shure SM58 directly into the iRig but I think I need a pre-amp to get my signal much hotter before it will be of any use.

“Simply plug the iRig interface into your mobile device, plug your instrument into the appropriate input jack, plug in your headphones, amp or powered speakers, download ‘AmpliTube FREE’ version for iPhone or for iPad, and start rocking!” – ikmultimedia.com

For more info: ikmultimedia.com/irig

Moog Music is about to release an iPhone/iPad App called Filatron. It’s a Sampler with a Filter, LFO, Feedback Generator, Delay, XY Pad and Moog GUI. You can also use the mic in for live input. Like the recent Minimoog Voyager XL I have mixed feelings on this release. On one hand Moog should be applauded for moving itself somewhat into the future. On the other hand it goes against the analog purity that was Bob Moog design. I guess it’s good we can have both.

“There’s no question this could be a gateway drug to Moog’s genuine analog gear for the mass market on iOS.” – Peter Kirn, Create Digital Music

For more info on Filatron head over to Create Digital Music who has the full scoop: click here

Oh by the way here’s another leak this time via Synthtopia. A rack mount Little Phatty for $799:

“The Moog Slim Phatty is reportedly priced at $799. This is about $700 less than the Little Phatty keyboard, making it a pretty killer price for a real analog Moog synth!” – Synthtopia

For more info: moogmusic.com

I can’t see why having one of these new Vermona MONO Lancet analog synths around can be a bad thing. Be sure to watch until 2:50 to hear the quality of the resonance. I like it.

“The voltage controlled lowpass filter has a slope of 24db per octave. On high resonance settings it starts to self-oscillate and produces a stable sine wave that can be played in a range of about 2 ½ octaves.” – vermona.com

For more info: vermona.com and twitter.com/Vermona

Voice of Saturn Synthesizer and Ekdahl Moisterizer by thingstocome

Today I decided to record using my Voice of Saturn Synthesizer and Ekdahl Moisturizer. I really like both of these boutique boxes. I’ve already used both machines on various Horrorist songs.

“Basically, the Ekdahl Moisturizer is a spring reverb where the springs are exposed so they can be played/hit/fiddled with.” – sdiy.org

For more info: curiousinventor.com and sdiy.org/knas/products/moisturizer

Thickening Up the Moog Voyager from Calvin Cardioid on Vimeo.

Calvin Cardiod from the cl516 blog plugs his Minimoog Voyager into a Macbeth Moroco and Malekko Barker B:assmaster.

“I don’t think the Voyager needs its tone altered in any way, it’s just that the mixer out jack makes it easy.” – cl516

For more info: cl516

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_YEGZzhUsE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCKzFr0F-IQ

“WOW’s Modulation System is versatile but intuitive. The modulation signals can be mixed individually for each parameter – but they can just as well modulate each other! So for example, the LFO-rate can be modulated by the Envelope Follower, while the Stepsequencer modulates the Envelope Follower´s Gain. So besides a new way to get exactly the sounds you want, you will as easily be able to see surprising effects and something new every time you get your WOW on!” – sugar-bytes.de

SugarBytes WOW is also my go to filter. If you watch the second video above about half way in you will see why. The only other ITB filter I really like it my TC Powercore’s Filtrator.

What are you using for filtering?

I was flipping through the latest issue of Sound on Sound and came across a cool looking hardware box called the Fucifer from Evolaudio. It’s a distortion synthesizer, mic-pre and EQ. I like what it does and how it looks but how it sounds will determine if it’s worth $2600. More and more I have been returning to hardware lately. Has anyone played with one of these?

“The Evol Fucifier is a distortion synthesizer & sound shaper, designed to give you many colors with which to create and shape your palette of sounds. Everything in the signal chain, from the Mic Pre, the Vintage Germanium Preamp, the Filter, and the inductors in the Equalizer to the output transformer, is designed to be overdriven, saturated, overloaded or distorted in a pleasing way. Mix & match the Vintage Germanium Preamp for a little warmth or overdrive, the Tape Saturation overdrive for a little compression and limiting or a bit of saturation, the Filter/Crossover (which in itself sounds great overdriven or even pushed into self oscillation with a sufficient amount of resonance), the Dual Band Distortion which allows you to mix many different kinds of distortion, and the vintage-style inductor based equalizer to shape the overall tone and color of the sound.” – evolaudio.com

For more info: evolaudio.com

I love the sound of spring reverbs. The Ekdahl Moisturizer is a pre-amp (with 100 x gain), spring reverb with wet/dry slider and a filter. There are two absolutely brilliant things about this unit. First, the springs are exposed for you to smash. Second, the Ekdahl Moisterizer is only $300. Needless to say I put my order in for one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g86o5FkwiM

“Basically, the Ekdahl Moisturizer is a spring reverb where the springs are exposed so they can be played/hit/fiddled with. As well as being capable of creating sound in itself, you can of course also play sound through the springs like a regular spring reverb – this makes for happy-fun-time finger-modulation of the reverb on whatever audio that’s going through it. On top of this there’s an analog multimode filter that can be used to attenuate or exaggerate certain frequencies in the sound, this is real handy while playing the springs as you can – for instance – cut all the highs and just make thunderous doomy sounds or do the opposite; cut all the lows and make that ear piercing high frequency special love. Also, it incorporates an LFO that’s internally routable to the filter and that also has some external routing-stuff. The Ekdahl Moisturizer has tons of CV / Expression pedal options on the back for even more hillarious moments. The Moisturizer is a mono unit. ” – sdiy.org

The “E.M’s” designer Karl says he’s a bit backlogged so I’ll have to wait until September for my unit so if you want one you better get on the list. Be sure to also check out “Bob’s atomic experiment” on their website for some old USA style industrial music. For more videos and audio samples of the Ekdahl Moisterizer: http://www.sdiy.org