Living in NYC I hear my fair share of massive bass rumble from ghettoed out automobiles. I guess it’s fair considering I tortured the suburbs in the 80s blasting Nitzer Ebb on my hand me down Cadillac Sedan DeVille’s Alpine stereo. The young rule the earth.
“Bass describes tones of low frequency or range. Played in an ensemble/orchestra, such notes are frequently used to provide a counterpoint or counter-melody, in a harmonic context either to outline or juxtapose the progression of the chords, or with percussion to underline the rhythm. In popular music the bass part most often provides harmonic and rhythmic support, usually playing the root or fifth of the chord and stressing the strong beats.” – WIkipedia
via deadfix
This entry was written by , posted on July 3, 2011 at 7:15 am, filed under political and tagged bass, Cadillac, cars, neighbors, noise, sign. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Pure analog electronic snares, snaps and crashes are what the new Jomox M.Brain 1_1 is all about. If your like me and have spent countless hours searching for the snap sound in Soft Cell’s Tainted Love (iTunes link) then this seems like this box is for you. I know I’m going to grab one to sit next to my MBase. If you haven’t already seen it be sure to check out my visit to Jomox and interview with Jürgen Michaelis: click here
Audio demo: MBrane11Demo-01Master.mp3
“Analog Membrane Modeling. Two analog T-bridge oscillators become electronic membranes. Why? Because they can be coupled. And because their dampening can be controlled. Then add a little noise, add a little envelope, and the brand new electronic percussion synthesizer of Jomox is ready.” – Jomox.de
For more info: Jomox.de
This entry was written by , posted on January 11, 2010 at 5:38 am, filed under hardware and tagged drum machine, Jürgen Michaelis, Jomox, noise, snare. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
TOPLAPapp and GRID from Oliver Chesler on Vimeo.
Here’s a video I make of two terrific iPhone Apps that make random digital sounds. TOPLAPapp (iTunes link) and Grid (iTunes link) are must haves for any noise nerds out there.
“TOPLAPapp is a sonic puzzle based around a virtual machine for sound synthesis. This machine only accepts a few valid instructions, and you control it by placing each command letter within a grid, along with setting some associated parameter sliders. The machine runs through the grid, following the instructions to create the output sounds, which are usually of a somewhat noisy character, hopefully interestingly so. The historical antecedents include instruction synthesis as pionneered at the Institute of Sonology in the 1970s, and the live coding movement, of modifying a running program as it acts.” – Nick Collins
For more info: Nick Collins and Kin
This entry was written by , posted on January 8, 2010 at 7:13 am, filed under iPhone, sounds, synthesizer and tagged Grid, iPhone, Kin, Nick Collins, noise, TOPLAPapp. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Mr. Alias Pro is a broken screwed up synthesizer. Mr. Alias was designed that way and it’s a perfect soft synth for anyone into ciruit bending, noise or headaches. I actually think this synth is very useful when it comes to creating easy interesting intros or breaks. It has an Auto Randomizer so I am happy. Mac/PC, AU/VST plug-in or Standalone. It’s Donationware so any amount gets you the pro version.
Audio samples:
http://www.thepiz.org/mralias2/ProRandom.mp3
http://www.thepiz.org/mralias2/pro.mp3
http://www.thepiz.org/mralias2/1.mp3
“Mr. Alias Pro is a fully professional software synthesizer which exploits the properties of digital audio to achieve extremely bad sounds.” – thepiz.org
For more info: thepiz.org
This entry was written by , posted on December 29, 2009 at 5:43 am, filed under plug-ins, synthesizer and tagged Mr. Alias Pro, noise, random, software, synthesizer. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I’ve been trying to remember who the famous producer who said something to the effect, “Keep a fan on in your studio while mixing. The light background noise will aid you.”. If anyone knows who I’m talking about or the direct quote let me know. I never had that problem on my old Power PC Mac’s as the fans were always raging. Today though my Mac Pro is silent so here comes a website to help! Ridiculous? Yes. Cool? Kinda!
“The best free white noise generator on the net”. – www.simplynoise.com
via Musicradar
This entry was written by , posted on July 3, 2008 at 7:53 am, filed under sounds and tagged noise. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
A few months ago I performed at a club called Rumours in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands. This required us to get picked up from Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam and be driven about two hours north. In the car I was shocked to see there was no CD player or MP3 jack. Staring me in the face was a cassette deck. Looking around some more I 
noticed about 50 cassettes stuffed in various places. About an hour into the drive I realized how good these cassettes sounded. There was some very nice high end going on that I had not heard in years. The bass sounded warm and sincere.
There is hardware software that will emulate tape saturation. On the hardware side check out Robert Neve’s 5042 True Tape FX unit.. Software wise there are lots of options including Digidesigns Reel Tape Suite and PSP’s Vintage Warmer.
But what if you want to bring back some good old fashion tape noise? Adding a few seconds of noise before your song starts will trigger your listeners mind into believing your song was recorded in the 1980s or earlier. My favorite plug-in for the task is Izotope’s free plug-in called Vinyl. Here’s a list of some of the “sounds” you can add into your song using Vinyl:
You can also adjust “Warp Models”, year and RPM of the Vinyl emulation. Lastly, there is a mono/stereo switch. Using the Dust and Scratch settings you can get a nice Portishead sound. I have to say I really love this plug-in and if it cost money I would buy it. Big thanks to Izotope!
There are many other ways to get some noise into your tracks. Sometimes I turn off a synthesizer’s Oscilators and turn up only the Noise Generator. Adding a filter modulated by the LFO to the Noise makes some nice wave or storm sounds. Sonic Charge has a superb software drum machine called uToniq. I use it as a noise generator by clicking the oh so ever awesome random button. Or why not record some real noise with a microphone? Even aiming a mic at your computer’s fan while it edits a large Photoshop document will do the trick!
photo credits: Lee Jordan and Breakfast for Dinner
This entry was written by , posted on December 21, 2007 at 10:51 am, filed under plug-ins, sounds, synthesizer and tagged cassette, izotope, LFO, Neve, noise, plug-ins, rpm, Vinyl, warp. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
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