Well Merry Christmas from Native Instruments! Stephan Schmitt the “father” of Reaktor put together SKANNER which combines a sampler and synth. Two oscillators ‘scan’ a sample to sort of scratch it. It’s free and will work with Reaktor or the free Reaktor Player. It comes with samples but you can also load in your own. Thanks NI! Go download.

“SKANNER ingeniously mixes sampler and synthesizer. The two oscillators ‘scan’ a sample; at low frequencies you get the ‘scratch’ sound of the sample being read back and forth, while at higher frequencies the dominant force is the oscillators being shaped by the sample waveform. The resulting sounds are raw, dirty and highly unpredictable – from simple sine waves to walls of noise. Two views offer different levels of interaction: The ‘A’ view features four macro controls that are mapped to multiple parameters – even subtle tweaks can create dramatic changes.” – Native Instruments

For more info: native-instruments.com/powered-by-reaktor/skanner…

Even if you don’t want to get into creating your own instruments and effects both Reaktor and Max for Live are worth getting for their user libraries of Ensembles and Devices.

“Dubspot Electronic Music Production and Sound Design Instructor Evan Sutton explains how to make basic connections and building a subtractive synthesizer using Native Instruments Reaktor’s Built In Modules in this new tutorial.” –
youtube.com/user/DubSpot

For more info: native-instruments.com/reaktor-55…

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

I absolutely love audio mangling software. I cherish plug-ins like Effectrix, The Finger and Stutter Edit. The amount of wiring, tape splicing, copy, cutting, pasting, and effort you would have to go through to get some of the output these plug-ins can produce is massive. While you can go nuclear using these tools with wet at 100% I also love to kill loop monotony in subtle ways with these tools. The video above is a demo of the new kid on the block Linplug’s Relectro. I’m not sure I like the loop used but you can hear this plug-in definitely can produce some interesting stuff.

“If you’re looking for a new kind of beat/sound mangler you really should check out the manual or the description on their site. It sounds completely different than one would imagine. If you like hardcore, noise, glitch, power electronics, idm… this is a neat tool too kick the crap outa your ol’ drum loops!” – salzmanufaktur

For more info: linplug.com/instruments/relectro

One of the great things about the Traktor S4 system is it’s Loop Decks and multicolored/use wave display. From a producers standpoint who DJs the DJ PowerTools sound packs could be interest. They are basically sounds specifically created for use within Traktor. We are at the point where Traktor can be used as a studio remix tool. In some ways it’s more fun than a carefully planned DAW session.

“DJ PowerTools are the world’s first sound packs designed for controllerists. Using cue points and effects, any DJ can play synth instruments inside DJ software and remix songs on the fly.” – djtechtools.com

For more info: djtechtools.com/store/dj-powertools.html

Native Instruments have teamed up with Berlin based electronic musicians Errorsmith and created a new software synthesizer called Razor. Besides the wobbling sound you can hear in the video above it has a nifty animated graphic display that lead Chris Randal to post on Twitter, “Man, the UI on NI Razor is really fucking nice. #jealous #gonnastealthatstyle #watchme”. I personally haven’t been touching software synths that much lately but this NI promo is cool enough to make me want to try Razor out. More discussion about Razor: kvraudio

“Razor is a synthesizer i developed in collaboration with Native Instruments. It’s programmed in Reaktor, a modular software synthesizer. You don’t need to own Reaktor in order to use it. Razor can be loaded in the free Reaktor Player software.” – razor.errorsmith.de

For more info: native-instruments.com

Kinect “AiR” Scratch Dj n’ with Traktor from dustin o'connor on Vimeo.

At the recent Tekserve Future of Music V event the discussion went beyond iPads and an audience member brought up Microsoft’s Kinect. I made the joke that the future of music would be air guitar. Well in just less than a month later we have Air Scratching via Kinect. So far I’m not so hot on no surface controllers but friends of mine who have used Kinect say it’s amazing. Is this a novelty or something we are going to be actually using in music creation?

“here im using the kinect to control dj software. its no joke in air gesture scratching.” – dustin o’connor

photo credit: Creative Tools

via Matrixsynth

I will be speaking on a panel with Peter Kirn (Create Digital Music), Micah Frank aka Kamoni (Sound Designer & Founder of Puremagnetik), and Julie Covello aka DJ Shakey (DJ, Creator & Promoter of the Warper Party, Music Collector) on Saturday, September 25 at the SAE, 1293 Broadway, 9th Floor, New York NY 10001.

The IMSTA FESTA is free and should be good fun and of great interest to anyone who reads this blog. It’s a pro-audio manufacturer get together and panel series. It’s from 11:00AM – 7:00PM. Some of the exhibitors include Ableton, Arturia, Bias, SSL, Celemony, IK Multimedia, Image Line, Native Instruments, Pianoteq, Propellerhead, Rob Papen, Steinberg and Waves.

UPDATE: Over 1,000 people are registered. Come on down!

“IMSTA FESTA, a celebration of music software is coming to the heart of New York City. The First IMSTA FESTA started in Japan where it was highly successful for technology companies, producers and hobbyists alike. IMSTA FESTA brings a collection of the top audio technology companies together in an environment where they can interact with music makers face-to-face. If you use music software you will benefit from this event in a number of ways.” – http://www.imsta.org

For more info: http://www.imsta.org

I’m surprised it took so long for Native Instruments to come up with a full hardware solution for Traktor. I’ve always been intrigued by M-Audio’s Torq and Xponent but I never actually saw anyone using Xponent in an actual nightclub. I think we will be seeing a lot of Kontrol S4s around. The hardcase with laptop stand is a very smart move by NI. I’m always making my own mixes using Traktor maybe this will finally push me to do it in front of people. $999 and $189 for the hardcase. If the hardware is rugged they have a winner.

“Custom-tailored for TRAKTOR, the S4 fuses a premium-quality 4 channel DJ mixer, a built-in 24 bit/96 kHz soundcard, an intuitive controller, and the flagship TRAKTOR PRO S4 software…” – native-instruments.com

For more info: native-instruments.com

Humans are born with a musical instrument attached to their face. All they have to do is mush their lips together and blow to make pretty sounds. Germany’s Best Service has released Whistler. A Native Instruments Kontakt library full of real human and bird whistles. I think this is pretty interesting. Why not add a background layer of whistle at the end of a song now and then? Sitting on the Dock of a Bay (iTunes link) by Otis Redding comes to mind.

“With the help of talented whistler Eduardo Tarilonte and a few birds, Best Service has released Whistler (19.99 EUR or approximately $30), a comprehensive library of every type of whistle tone you can imagine. No synths were used to create this library” – gearwire.com

Whistler is about 20 Euros. For more info: www.bestservice.de