Alter Note/Alter Pattern functions and using the ReGroove Mixer
Propellerhead’s James Bernard offers tips on getting creative with Reason + Record:
All of us have experienced some sort of writer’s block at one point or another… and I have found that there are some features of Reason and Record that help to break me out of that block and get back to composing. This week I talk a bit about the Alter Note/Alter Pattern functions and using the ReGroove Mixer to inspire new ideas.
This is the latest in Bernard’s series 52 Reason and Record Tips. See the link below for more episodes in the series.
Link:
Libox allows users to sync and share media through its desktop applications
Founder Erez Pilosof says he started Libox, after thinking about his biggest annoyances as a consumer. Managing media and sharing it “seemed very limited and tedious and problematic,” he says. Pilosof wanted to build a service that provided a consistent experience no matter how a user wanted to access her media.
Libox allows users to sync and share media through its desktop applications and a Web application that can be accessed from a browser. The Web application uses HTML, a Web technology that can be accessed by Apple’s iPhone and iPad, as well as Android smart phones and a variety of other mobile devices. Within a few months, Libox plans to launch native mobile applications optimized specifically for the iPhone, Android, and the iPad.
To use the basic service, which is free, a user has to install Libox’s software on a desktop machine. This software finds and processes all media files on the machine and processes new ones when the user loads them. Unlike many other syncing services, Libox does not move users’ data to its own servers. Instead, the company uses peer-to-peer sharing algorithms to distribute data across a user’s devices. For example, when a user accesses a song from a smart phone, Libox might stream that song to the phone from the user’s desktop machine.
Retronyms are releasing Outer Spaces
Retronyms are releasing Outer Spaces, an EP in which all the tracks were made using the app DopplerPad as one of the instruments. Eskmo, Exillon, Jneiro Jarel, and Starkey contributed tracks to the project, and Retronyms tell us that they all did an amazing job. Here’s what Retronyms have to say…
As far as we know, this is the first EP of its kind, and we’re really excited for its release. Outer Spaces will be available as a free download, and DopplerPad will be 20% off during the launch as well.
Pricing and Availability:
Free download
More information:
Listening in on micro-electronics
Weren’t Long – 5:36
from Under New Manna
Called Out of Time – 4:10
from Route Canal Diary
Plate Radio – 4:42
previously unreleased
Mother of X – 3:14
from “The Princess of Nebraska” Score
Kent Sparling is a visual and recording artist living on the Northern California coast. He was born in San Francisco in 1966, and began composing at the piano after having been asked to leave his elementary school orchestra for inventing harmony counter-melodies on his saxophone. He formed the pop band Eyeland in 1983, acting as singer-songwriter, keyboardist, and co-producer, and the group became popular over the next decade with their cassettes, live performances and radio airplay in the Bay Area.
In 1985 Sparling began composing experimental music, creating longform works of up to 45 minutes, employing the classic musique concrète methods of manipulation and montage. With the use of electronic devices and electro-mechanical constructions such as oil drum reverbs and modified speakers, he alters the sonic character of a broad range of recorded sounds, from environmental noises, raw electronic sound and radio reception, to more traditional ‘musical’ sounds created by familiar instruments. He has created several ‘system music’ compositions, where, as the composer, he sets up mechanical and electronic possibilities for sound creation, and then sets the ‘system’ in motion, allowing it to create the ‘musical result’. The pieces created in this manner are recorded ‘live’, and represent a kind of improvisation, where sound character becomes the principal means of expressing the emotional content of the work. Recently he has been exploring the world of micro-sounds which he calls ‘picophonics’, vibrations too small to move enough air to be perceived by the ‘naked ear’, wherein he has found a whole new palette of emotive sounds. He has six CD releases of experimental electro-acoustic music to his name: 1997’s ‘Route Canal Diary’, 2000’s ‘Under New Manna’ and ‘Camphor and Caraway’, ‘Leaf Spring’ from 2003, and ‘Evening Air, Freeway Birds, No Wind Birds’ and ‘Indian King’, both released in 2006. His music was included in the soundtrack to the Canadian Nation Film Board documentary ‘In the Flesh’, and he has composed original scores for Wayne Wang’s ‘Princess of Nebraska’, ‘Seven Fallen Objects’ by AD Liano, and Eduardo Sanchez’s ‘Seventh Moon’ with Antonio Cora. He has just completed the score for Frazer Bradshaw’s ‘Everything Strange and New’, in collaboration with Daniel Plonsey.
the full feature is available for download as a pdf.
Ever wondered whether country mixes well with electro
Geoff Reacher makes strange and wonderful music. He filters guitar licks through a sampling keyboard and drum machine, and then warbles country-ish songs over the tracks in a twangy Texas accent. If you ask Reacher to describe his songs, he’ll probably call them a mixture of country music and electro / rap music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbI5K9V4U1w
“I’m trying to play back music the way I hear it,” he says during a gray, overcast afternoon in downtown Athens, where he lives with his wife. It sounds more like indie-electronic music, but that’s just how his music comes out. “I don’t even listen to electronic music,” he says. “These days, it’s pretty much a steady diet of Southern hip-hop. And I don’t know, I think hip-hop is electronic music.” On his website, www.reachers.com, he accurately describes his songs as “electro-country.” And in the liner notes for his new album, Avec Reacher C’est Plus Sûr, he thanks rockabilly pioneer Hasil Adkins, rap producer DJ Screw and folk singer Dave van Ronk for inspirations.
Avec Reacher C’est Plus Sûr, which will be released August 22 on Orange Twin Records, is Reacher’s fourth album and first with national distribution. He says the title is inspired by a flyer his wife picked up while she was in the Peace Corps. “This was a piece of a campaign cloth that [Gabon president Omar Bongo] would hand out,” he says. “It showed his face, and it said ‘Avec Bongo c’est plus sûr.'” Colloquially the title means, “With Reacher, it is more certain.”
Great analog bundle
G-Sonique has introduced the Analog Bundle, a collection of its “analog” effects plug-ins for Windows.
G-Sonique Analog Bundle includes
- XBass4000L – Analog Bass saturation / Enhance processor: Designed to facilitate the maximization the bass frequencies, enriches your kick-drum & bass to give them the energy you need to drive your track.
- Pultronic EQ-110P – Vintage vacuum tube equalizer: Equalizer emulating classic professional parametric vacuum tube equalizer from ’50s and ’60s. It can add real and hearable warm, color and dynamics of the vacuum tube devices into your music.
- FSQ1964 – Vacuum tube high frequency / transient vitaliser: With this plug-in your records gain professional, expressive and crystal clear sound. It is capable of giving them a true sound, sharpness and boldness, everything the modern records should have.
- Twisthead VS-206 – Vintage vacuum tube preamp: This machine behaves like a real analog hardware, it behaves in non-linear way and unexpectedly. Combining the quality and possibilities of digital sound with a heat, grandiosity and charisma of vintage analog vacuum tube machines.
The Analog Bundle offers a 25% savings on the regular price when purchasing the plug-ins separately. It is currently available to purchase for 58 EUR (additional 10% discount in G-Sonique’s Summer Sale 2010).
More information: G-Sonique
The MorphWiz in action
Experience the darker side of the sonic potential iWIthin MorphWiz.
I like 
Need any more synths?
A full jam session using Roland SH-101/MC-202/TB-303/TR-606/TR/707/TR-909/KORG MS-10
Tour the new Moog factory
Moog Music – Recently, Moog Music relocated to Asheville NC. I found this cool video on the Moog site that gives a tour of the facilities.
A quick walk through the Moog factory in Asheville, NC. This is Moog Central. It’s all made here!
Sometimes we spend so much time enjoying the end result that we forget all the hard work, confusion, labor, and time that goes into making these devices. Guys like Bob Moog, for instance, come from such humble roots, are driven by a unique curiosity for sound, and devoted their lives to create some of your favorite toys. So next time you are wailing on your favorite guitar, stomping on your fuzz box, or creating some wacky tones on your synthesizer, take a second to appreciate what goes into making these products. Because without these masters of experimentation and the masses of people who help realize their ideas, the music as we know it wouldnt have gotten very far at all.
Thanks to MTZ
Setting up a cue mix and a crossfader in Ableton
Nice tutorial for Live 8, perhaps one could wish that it had been somewhat more extensive
DATAMASKIN
