Electric Guitar Review Telecater Relic project is getting further along and lookin’ good. I was apposed to relicing as phony but my mind is changing. I like to give it a try if I get the chance.
Amptone has about a list of about a zillion books about guitar sound.
NPR had a cool piece on composer David Morneau. If you follow the link you can listen to the story and a few pieces of his music. Basically he he set out to create 60 seconds of music a day for an entire year. He somehow succeed. OK, digging out garage band samples and the Amen Break might be a little cheap but it had to be hard just due to the nature of life if nothing else.
Once I get settled I want to try something similar only more like a piece of music a week. I have no trouble starting it is finishing that is the problem. I will give it a go when I able.
I wonder what Watt would have though about the steam punk business going on now. They have done everything else why not a guitar. Though this does look like something that BC Rich would have sold in the 80’s. It might be the flying V. Maybe a little to Randy Rhodes for steam punk.
Robert Babicz gives this excellent talk on mastering and a few other things in the video. Plus shows off some cool gear.
Instructables has this cool hack to light up you keyboard. Good if are working in the dark and touch type as poorly as me it might be an idea.
Just a vid of the charming Drum Buddy that I ran into.
Mediacoder Audio Edition is a pretty cool little app. It will encode about any audio format and will run off a usb stick. It is going to go on my list of portable apps. From the site:
MediaCoder Audio Edition is an audio transcoding tool based on MediaCoder. It nicely integrates many audio codecs and tools into an all-in-one software. It decodes almost all popular formats of audio files as well as audio stream in video files and encodes them with all its supported (and even some not claimed supported) audio encoders. All the codecs are included in the standalone software. With CUE Sheet and DVD/VCD/CD support and many additional features, audio enthusiasts can convert all their favorite music freely to any format on-the-fly and in batch
Nick Cave wants to erect (no pun intended) a statue of himself nude on horse back in his hometown. It more of a blurb than an article but it does say he intends to raise money for it. Serious I like Nick cave Ship Song is one of my all time favorites but if you want to build a statue of yourself you could probably just pay for it yourself. Pay for it himself is not any ego maniacally than wanting to do it in the first place and with Cave’s long career that is doing especially well of late I am guessing he has the $60,000. Whats up with male Australian celebrities. They all seem to have issues Angry raving Mel Gibson. Heath Ledger, punch ‘em up Russel Crowe, death wish Steve Iriwn.
I ran in to this video that someone put to a Daniel Johnston song. Thought it fit really well. If you have never heard of Daniel Johnston you can find out about him in the fascinating documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston. I am not a rapid fan as some people but it one of the best music documentaries ever made. Even in the crazy world of rock music Johnston is one of the strangest and remarkable character you can find. But if you forget the music angle it is still a damn good film.
I love free stuff and like anything that can help me be more organized. Naturally the Wusik Vm caught my eye when it became free just recently. It is a VST organizer. Basically you load all your preset from all your plugins in it and organize them however you want. From example you could group all the preset that sound like synth leads from the 80’s. Then select a preset called Flock of Sea Gulls and the right preset in the right instruments will load and you have everything but the crazy hair. You can see the possibilities. You can have say all you digital bass sounds together regardless of the actual plugin they use.
A new version of the KarmaFX Plugin Pack, version 2.0, has been released. During the hectic months up to the release of the KarmaFX Synth Modular, development of the KarmaFX Plugin Pack was heavily down prioritized. Therefore it is now time for an update of this useful pack of VST effects. Bugs have been fixed and features have been added or improved. The main change however, is the inclusion of a brand new 15 page User’s Manual.
I think this a good collection. I use the EQ often and worth be worth a donation alone.
NOVAkILLER uses the FM Oscillator found in ANGSTkILLER but addsHard Sync and a few other goodies to it’s arsenal. Envelopes are simplified, slider-driven ADSR jobbies and Envelope modulation can be inverted for long, evolving pads.
It is as much an exercise in style as substance but still has plenty to offer.
UPDATED to Version 1.5 - more filter features, enhanced VCa envelope and tweaked UI.
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.
Years ago I remembering seeing a news story on the Sony 777 sampling reverb. I though it was a great idea but it was expensive and a lot of work to get more than the presets that came with the machine. Thank goodness for software. Entry into the virtual world made these convolution effects available to many more people.
I think I have mentioned it before but you can find more impulse responses at the noise vault & echochamber (use google translate if you don’t speak German. ) I have found these reverbs(and other effects using impulses) dependant of the impulses and having enough CPU to do the really big math problems. Any new impulses are welcome because that really determines the effect you can have. You can’t have a hall reverb with out a hall impulse.
The odd thing is convolutions produce the most convincing realistic reverbs and room sims out there but I like best that it can mimic gear that doesn’t sound like a real spaces but might sound good. Like an old revrb unit that may sound artificial but in a good away. But that is just me. And you can get an impulse from anything almost. Speakers cabs, stairwell, silos or whatever. It is way to have a all kinds of spaces and gear in stored on your hard drive. It can really open up creative avenues.
If you own Altverb or Waves IR you know what I am talking about(and I can’t believe you are reading this blog it is about getting by on a shoestring half the time. Kidding.) If you have not experimented with this type of thing you can try out SIR 1 for free and if you like that you might consider the more reasonable SIR 2 or other commercial apps.
“Groove Analogizer is an “audio controlled drum synthesizer”, it means that like a vintage electronic drum tone generator (e.g. Simmons) the percussion sound is triggered by an audio input, not by a MIDI message. This also means that you must not load, in the host, Groove Analogizer as a VST instrument, it loads as a VST effect, usually in an insert slot.”
