Ableton has released The Orchestral Instrument Collection. Ableton is not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Orchestral music. But of course these instrument can be used for other types of music. I think the strength of this collection is how well it integrated into the host. Most other collection like this are not going to fit right in as well as this unsurprisingly. If you follow the link the video on the site show it off pretty well. It is $600 for 24Gb of $160 for each instrument group.
Nine Inch Nails have released another album and it is free to download. The Slip is available in multiple formats MP3, FLAC, M4A & amazingly 24/96 wave. Better than CD quality is a surprise from any downloadable music especially a free one. It also comes with a pdf album art again. Nine Inch Nails used a Creative Commons License for the album. Once again I find this great news and think it is cool.
“thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years - this one’s on me” -Trent Reznor
I love that. A very successful artist appreciating his fan base that allow him to do what he loves for a living and most likely living a pretty good life style. This is better than a lot of acts that try to milk it for every dollar.
Of course NIN are selling CD and Vinyl versions of the album that will be available in July. So, I imagine they will do alright financially they have a lot of very obsessive collector type fans. Do something good doesn’t always mean giving away the farm. Plus this is great free publicity in advance of their summer tour.
I am still waiting for my download link. So, I have yet to hear the album. I imagine their servers are getting pummeled again.
I thought I would start off with some gear porn. You can find some more images of the tape recorder above here.
Cycling 74 has this cool article. Expand Your Guitar, Vol. I hope there is a vol. 2. think of the craziness max/msp could do to live guitars. It is a really good or really bad thing I have forbid myself from acquiring anymore software depending how you look at it.
The next free Propellerheads Reason Refill (.rfl) is available from Line 6. I haven’t got a chance to look at it but it is from bandmatelopps.com. I hope it is more than some cheesy demo.
Bluenote has released Droppin’ Science. It is a collection of their most sampled tracks all on one CD. I am sure you have heard most of them. Go ahead and sample them everyone else has.
With all the fancy modeling mutli-effects units for guitar out there guitarpacthes.haax.se had the good idea of creating a site where they can be uploaded and downloaded.
I have always like concert poster and here is a nice collection.
Ableton user should check out Vitamin L from Tonearm. If you haven’t heard of it here is what it is and does:
Vitamin L is a system of over 100 shortcuts and tools developed for speeding up the workflow in Ableton Live. It combines accelerated access to most frequently performed tasks with many functionality enhancements. The features include:
- a set of ergonomically placed “smart” single-key shortcuts
- context-sensitive mouse wheel assignment
- easy keyboard access to many clip properties and envelopes
- quick modes for adjusting clip gain, pitch and BPM from the timeline/session
- keyboard timeline navigation, play-from-mouse-cursor, etc.
- a quick and simple solution to recording and combining multiple takes
- power-zoom: mouse-wheel zoom, accelerated zoom, vertical zoom, zoom presets
- precision editing (nudge, move/copy to an adjacent track and more)
- automation tools, including working with lanes and editing the tempo envelope
- sample-audio-to-midi-track function and shortcut
This really corrects one of the weakness with Ableton. I have not been one for shortcuts. I played all those old school RTS games to develop mad point and click skills right? Well it is like learning to type correctly. It is slower going at first if you have been hunting and pecking but pays off huge in the long run. I am not that great at remembering shortcuts. My brain is just wired to make that easy. But it something I need to get better at if I am serious about getting more done. More doing and less time clicking about sounds good to me.
