Found Via Chip collection:
Here is some video of one of those cool Korg Nano Controllers. More at SOS also.
Tag Archive for 'recording'
Crowd Chamber is a new plug-in from QuikQuak. It is not exactly your normal effect. I may never hear a enormous crowd cheering for me but a can simulate one. Actually more appealing is the weirdness you can create with this. From the site:
* Simulates a crowd of up to 2,000,000 voices.
* The perfect new tool for sound design.
* Voices vary in spectral content and delay.
* LFO’s for temporal changes in voices.
* Fast visual editing, with parameter randomisation
functions.
* From simple chorusing effects, small crowds and
stadiums, and on to impossible situations.
* Creates massive stereo sound washes, and extremely
weird animal effects.
* Low Cost
Some plug-in news form two devs with good stuff.
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.
NOVAkill releases the NOVAkiller:
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.
That should make for some good FM fun.
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.
I found this good collection of Impulse response:
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.
Guitarist silenced by ALS is making music again. A human interest story like this makes me feel like the local news. It something like Dr. Stephen Hawking the music produce I quess. It is pretty cool though and the best thing about PC’s is uses like this. Film at 11.
Call it LastTV. It is a good idea mashing you YouTube and LastFM. It works ok. I entered my profile and it did a fairly good job of finding video that I should like.
Also youtube related is ListentoYouTube. It will make mp3’s of YouTube videos. There is of course other ways to do this but this way is fairly painless. It makes it easy to sample YouTube easily. If you want mp3 of teenagers lip syncing and people creatively injuring themselves this will be your new favorite site.
Hometracked has 10 Myths About Normalization which is often misunderstood.
NPR has this interesting story(audio too) about a interesting mic builder reconstructing classics found via The Rambling of Some Audio Guy.
Now some cool DIY Stuff:
The 25 minute, $25 acoustic panel (or $42.00 bass trap) from the Recording Studio Design Forum is great way to economically make your space sound great. I never new why commerical option were often so expensive.
Make your own Gorilla Pod & Third Hand++: A multi-use helping hand for electronics and other delicate work are great Instructables for giving you a extra set of hands at your work bench. The are cooler than my helpings hands but it works too.
Another Instructable is this Isobaric Subwoofer for those that want to build there own floor rattler.
I found this “Ikea” guitar on Guitar Noize it is kind of what you think. Maybe. More info here.
Celemony Software’s Direct Note Access is making news outside of music making circles. Technology Review has a pretty good 2 page article on it.
I have written a guide to having a key chain studio. The idea is basically turning a USB memory stick into a DAW. Even if this doesn’t sound that appealing to you there is a lot more info on applications that run off portable drives that would be useful to almost anyone. It is a little too long for these pages so you can find it at here.
Music Think Tank has a great set of 9 tips for recording an album. The are all great common sense type that we always forget or ignore. My favorite:
7: Less Is More
These days home studios can be augmented with a dazzling array of plugins that enable you to have thousands and thousands of different sounds and instruments at your fingertips. You are limited only by your imagination, but remember that this cuts both ways.
If you find yourself on this page you most likely know about the so called “loudness wars” and the over compressed state of music. You probably have read about on the Internet and could have an encyclopedic knowledge of this phenomenon. You might like me be sick of it of the whole a want to stick your head in the sand every-time it comes up.
Well The Word still have a good article about it from a couple weeks ago that I just discovered. I am glad I pulled my head out of the sand to read to it. It was written by Tom Whitwell of Music Thing. It sums things up nicely. The piece even leaves a light at the end of the tunnel which I too feel maybe could come to be. The part I found most interesting is it brought to light a little more of the reason this happens.
Form the article:
Playlists of Hot Adult Contemporary stations are determined by a computer, most likely running Google-owned Scott SS32 radio automation suite, which shuffles the playlist of 4-500 tracks, inserts ads and idents and tells the DJ when to talk. The playlist is compiled after extensive research. Two or three times a year, a company like LA-based Music Research Consultants Inc arrive in town, hire a hotel ballroom or lecture theatre and recruit 50-100 people, carefully screened for demographic relevance (they might all be white suburban housewives aged 26-40). They’re each given $65 and a Perception Analyzer; a little black box with one red knob and an LED display. Then, they’re played 700 seven-second clips of songs. If they turn the knob up, the song gets played. If they turn it down, it doesn’t.
If a station needs more up-to-date information (bearing in mind that they’re “designed to appeal to general listeners rather than listeners interested in hearing current releases”) they can run a call-out test, where people from the right demographic are cold-called and interrogated about 30 seven-second clips played down the phone.”
Focus groups are worthless. For example “Seinfeld” and “All in the Family” were the two worst tested shows in television history and both have the distinction of being long running #1 shows that were loved by critics as well as the people. Letting focus groups and who ever the people that do phone surveys(testing music over the phone is one of the worse ideas I have ever heard of) are choose what music gets on the radio is not a good idea. Big Music will maintain its sorry state of affairs. Having come in contact with some market research people in my line of work they seem a pretty swallow cynical self absorbed group of people that are at least as dumb as they think they are smart. Remember these people came up with such brilliant ideas as New Coke & Clear Pepsi.
A few of my own notes on this phenomenon:
You if you start looking at you music collection graphical(use what ever music software) you can actually see the music get “louder” if you go from oldest to newest. You can see the music of some artist get “louder” which each successive release. Of course this is a generalization but it is generally true.
You can find older tracks in leaving a lot of dynamic range on the table. While not as bad as the over-compressed songs of today in a lot of case it could have served the song to take advantage of a little more headroom.
The idiots running the business and new tools that are easy to abuse are most of the problem. But I think seeing the track graphically on the screen compounds the issue when combine with human nature. The is going to be more of a tendency to see all that empty room and want to fill instead seeing a song is slammed to the limit and choosing to dial it back. People start using their eyes instead of their ears which is always a bad idea in music.
I do think things will improve at least with some music. And still think there is really good new music out that is master well and sounds awesome. But…
As long Big Music’s decision are made by MBA’s that even if there are the President of the label are essentially middle management in a Mega Multinational Corporations. Things are going to be screwed up. Pushing a song because it will translate well to a ring tone or because it sounds exactly like another recent hit or pushing how a song is mastered is never going to help. The songs will remain the same as long as Big Music is Big Music and consumer stand for it.
