ReCycle gets a needed facelift
Propollerhaeads has just updated the ReCycle product DVD and website!
ReCycle now ships with a detailed, hour-long tutorial from ASK video to help users get started with the ReCycle toolkit. In the tutorial, ASK Video’s Mike Baggley takes users step by step from installing and setting up ReCycle to turning concrete-rigid loops into musical modeling clay in no time.
About ReCycle
Imagine that you have a sample of a drum loop that you want to use in a track you are working on. The loop is 108 bpm and your track is 90 bpm. What do you do? You can of course pitch down the loop, but that will make the loop sound very different, and what if there are harmonies in the loop that you want to match to your song. You can also time stretch it. That will keep the pitch, but will make the loop sound different. Usually it means that you loose some ‘punch’ in the loop.
Enter ReCycle and the smart way to make loops tempo independent. Instead of stretching the sample, ReCycle REX files are sliced into little pieces so that each drum hit (or whatever sound you are working with) gets its own slice. When you then change the tempo of the loop, the time between the slices is stretched, instead of the slices themselves.
When you load a sound into ReCycle, the program will “look” at the file, analyze it, and break it up into its rhythmic components. The process itself is fully automated, but the slices are yours to move, audition or delete, using the programs on-screen tools and controls.
Other tools allow you to set the length, attack and decay of the slices, and to change your groove’s overall tempo or pitch, without one affecting the other. It’s not magic, but it’s probably as close as you can get.
Slicing a loop also gives you individual control over both the sound of the slices and the timing. You can rearrange the loop, change the feel of it, replace parts of the loop with other samples, pitch it, and much more.
ReCycle turns concrete-rigid loops into musical modeling clay, allowing you, the loopist, to do pretty much what you desire.
Are we not men? Exclusive DEVO performance
Devo is an American rock group formed in Akron, Ohio in 1973. They are best known for their 1980 hit “Whip It”, which made it to #14 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Their style has been variously classified as punk, art rock and post-punk, but they are most often remembered for their late 1970s and early 1980s New Wave sound.
Devo plan, for the first time ever, to do a a one-off performance of their classic Brian Eno-produced 1978 album “Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!” at the London Kentish Town Forum on May 6. Two days later, Devo will perform a greatest hits concert at the ATP Festival in Minehead.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbt30UnzRWw]
Under the hood of Arturia Origin Sonic LAB
A great overview of the Arturia Origin that goes into very good detail.
And what great sounds it can provide, just watch the video, well that is if you like electro bass/trance sounds 
of course
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVj0Kah7bas&eurl]
However, do remember this if you lift the lid on this beast you will soon realize that this is NOT a hardware synthesizer it is a computer softsynth disguised as a hardware synth. But even if we have a PC synth trying to be an analogue beast the fun bit is building new patches – dive deep in to that really nice vintage toolkit. You control the whole process through one one those big encoders with a push switch. I also like the little design features such as the Yamaha filters look like knobs on a CS80.
In essence The Origin is a wonderful thing but it is too digital for an analog fetishist and too analog for a sound experimentalist.
Having a hard time getting your friends to understand what you do?
Whether it be your kids, friends or dates in the pub one often run into the problem of describing what the heck you do when you’re in the studio playing around with your Prophet 5, Oscillators, plug-ins, mixer boards etc, than this little video might come in handy, LOL. It features the veteran sound designer and synth nerd Suzanne Ciani explaining sound, synthesis and music on 80’s childrens TV show ‘3-2-1 Contact’.
Well even you and I might learn something
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_tjcshEurc&eurl]
Cheers, even though it is Mondayyyyy, shit four more days before another great weekend
It's not just about paint in the AB-synth
Continuing from yesterday’s focus on weird stuff, for those who didn’t visit the blog yesterday check out the release of the Erectifier, here’s another one. See what you can make of this:
the AB-Synth combines a dual-stage cascading fuzz gain circuit (copped from the Algal Bloom fuzz) with an oscillation mode and an octave down control. What this yields is a pedal that can do Jimi-style super-saturation to stable synth-like bass tones to utterly out-of-control pulsing white noise to everything in between.
Controls include Gain, Level and Texture (from “blistering” to “splattery”). A toggle switch engages “Oscialltion Mode” which adds the “Trip” control for oscillation frequency. Oscialltion Mode turns the insane fuzz into and insane synth fuzz pedal.
Crystal clear isn’t it? Well I will give you some more food for thought – check out the video below of the AB-synth in action:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSmIyEGMcx8&eurl]
Still interested than go here >>
New awesome (and free) plug-in – Erectifier
Without doing any associations on the name I am happy to announce that my friends in Rusty Trombones has released a new and intriguing plug-in adn better yet it’s free.
Since I have not had the chance to try it out myself yet it would be nice to get some feedback on it so post away >> awesome or sucks
Listen to it here: mp3 sample
So what does it do really…??
So this works as a doubler, or demented phaser, it is designed to widen and phatten. Of course you can misuse that as well. you have an LFO that controls how long back an echo is. You can set the length and speed of this LFO. Then there is a filter that can be LowPass, HighPass or Allpass, and a cut Hz so that you can control where the cut is. oh-yeah!. The distortion is to gritt up the sound a little, or a lot, it’s not the worlds bestest distortion. Then you can amplify the signal, if you want to. The filter can cut away a lot of the volume, that’s why we have it. Then finally there is a on/off. There are two to the left side and two on the right side. and finally one dry through parameter. So if you’d like to test one of your settings, turn the other three off (via on/off parameter) and then tweak away, baby. There are a few presets (yeah, we didn’t feel like making a lot of them, so we forced that shuriken.se guy to make a random-function and make a lot of presets there).
Creating cool sounds on the microKORG
As most of you probably already know I am big fan of KORG and therefore when I saw this on Youtube I just had to make a mirror of it here on my blog, enjoy!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgleogs_ll4&eurl]
Here’s what the authour has to say about it:
“This is my first attempt at creating a program for the microkorg, so I picked up a sound that is easily recognizable. This is certainly not the best Synthex “laser harp” sound recreation around, but it should provide a good start for tweaks and improvements. The idea should work with any two-oscillator analog or analog-modeled synthesizer with oscillator sync, filtering and some kind of pitch envelope for the sync sweep. Actual values used in each parameter are shown in parentheses.”
And here is JM Jarre’s take on it:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAxjzFnEe78&eurl]
New EQ from Blue Cat – but yikes its expensive!!
Blue Cat Audio has announced a massive update of all its commercial EQ plugins. The new versions are now available for Mac in VST and Audio Unit formats, and also bring multiple improvements to the existing Windows plug-ins. The Liny EQ series have been completely redesigned for this new release.
The Blue Cat Audio EQ plug-ins include the Liny EQ series (linear phase graphic equalizers), Parametr’EQ series (digital and analog parametric EQs) and the Triple EQ plug-ins (semi-parametric visual EQs). They all come in three flavors, offering a wide variety of capabilities. In particular, the Widening versions propose mid/side processing for frequency selective stereo narrowing or widening.
New for all plugins :
– Mac Audio Unit support.
– Mac VST Support.
– New Windows installer (you should uninstall any previous version before installing this new one).
– New documentation.
New for the Liny EQ series :
– New user interface design.
– The plug-in now offers two types of EQ curves.
– EQ range is now customizable.
– Undo/Redo support.
– Preset import/export in a host independent format.
– Window opacity control for plugin transparency.
Das Ich and Gothminister announce 2009 tour
In support of both Das Ich’s and Gothminister’s new albums (Kannibale and Happiness in Darkness, respectively), the two bands are teaming up for their “Happiness with Cannibals” 2009 tour. Shows kick off April 1 in Vienna, Austria, and continue throughout Germany in the month of April. The bands will also perform May 22 in Templeuve, France and July 14 in Leiden, The Netherlands, as well as July 3 in Mulheim, Germany at the Castle Rock Festival, and August 6-9 in Utrecht, The Netherlands at the Summer Darkness Festival. Please follow the links for a complete concert itinerary.
Nintendo plays Electroplankton
This is really cool, make sure to check it out. Orginally posted by RanKirlian.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoLwQWypfIQ&eurl=http://www.synthtopia.com/content/&feature=player_embedded]
Nintendo plays Electroplankton Lumiloop over the XP filter module, while a Doepfer oscillator does first a drone and later a sort sequence through the Xtreme filter. The result gets some delay with kaoss pad 3 and then is recorded to minidisc.
DATAMASKIN
