Fiddling with the iPad
Smule has released Magic Fiddle, a new music app for the Apple iPad.
Hello. I am your fiddle. I am programmed to make you a musical prodigy. Your untrained fingers will play beautiful music in a matter of minutes. Seriously, in the amount of time it took you to read this you could have learned ‘Ave Maria’. I kid you not (fiddles never joke).
Use my magic to earn high scores, medals and badges for your performances. I understand that you humans like to win. Well then, can you get a gold medal on every song?
You, my friend, are not just someone with an iPad. You are a virtuoso.
Magic Fiddle features
- Pick up and play:
- Pick up and play beautiful songs by following streams of colored light in my SongBook, no skill required!
- Impress your friends by playing any of my 20 songs I have in my SongBook, from video game theme songs to ‘Ave Maria’ and everything in-between.
- Bow, pluck, trill, and play vibrato and glissandi right from your iPad.
- Take it to the top:
- Earn scores for every song, and medals for playing well. I will be the judge of ‘well’ (not your mother).
- Show off your newly found musical aptitude to your fellow fiddlers by competing for a spot on the global leaderboards.
- Earn badges as you accomplish new heights of fantastic fiddlery.
- Learn fiddling techniques easily:
- Learn basic and advanced fiddle techniques through fun learning adventures with me – my StoryBook takes us on an 8-chapter interactive journey to teach you different techniques with activities and step-by-step instructions.
- Practice your new techniques on real songs as you improve.
- Listen and share with the world:
- Listen to other magic fiddlers play on the globe around the world.
- Broadcast your masterpieces for the world to enjoy.
- Show your support for fellow fiddlers by ‘liking’ their songs.
Magic Fiddle for iPad is available to purchase from the iTunes App Store for $2.99 USD.
More information: Smule / Magic Fiddle
Ellatron – virtual Mellotron for iOS
This is a quick demo of Ellatron – an iOS virtual Mellotron – being controlled via MIDI.
Here at the details:
A small group of people will remember our first MIDI video about 10 months ago that needed a jailbroken iPhone. Well here is the real thing.
Filmed by iPod Touch, here are a few of the features of the Ella MIDI implementation – 3 voices at once (upper, lower and pads), all can be played concurrently if you have enough hands or somebody else around/on stage who can hit the pads. Programmable keyboard split for upper and lower, programmable chord pads if your keyboard supports it (and the Axiom 49 has 8 of them – mighty useful). Ella can be seen responding to controllers on the keyboard with on-screen information keeping you up to date, and controllers are used to change voices, volume, pitch, tone, reverb parameters, and level/pan for each of the upper, lower and pad instruments.
Ellatron and the Lite Trons now all feature the same rich reverb unit first seen in M3000, and the MIDI Ellatron is going to hit the shops with a handful of the real Tron voices from M3000, albeit with the usual limitations – shorter loop times, major third sampling intervals etc. Mellotron purists, or indeed anyone who wants a real Tron will still want the M3000, but people who just want a handful of Tron sounds for occasionally spicing up a song will love the new Ella.
Plus the MIDI implementation is ultra-responsive, despite this being a debug build and having a dozen printfs per played note – printfs going over WiFi to the Mac, because you can’t really printf with an attached dock accessory…
A bit more work to do on the user interface to de-stupid it (e.g. “What is” … “This For?” on the left!), an upgrade to the saved/restored preferences file, and we will be ready to roll out for testing. If all goes well we should be good to go by early December.
Hampshire Jam 9 this weekend
If you happen to be in England this weekend don’t miss the Hampshire Jam 9 on Saturday 13th November 2010 in the Millennium Hall, Liphook, UK.
Electrolyzium – a Progressive Electro, Tech sample pack
1.1 GB royalty-free compilation of latest Progressive Electro, Tech-House, mixed with Trance elements for Producers and live DJ sets.
Electrolyzium blends the modern electro and trance elements, focusing on exotic leads, electro basslines and groovy progressions while provides the pumping contrast that makes the real excitement and vibe of the dance floor.
Electrolyzium is the essential full package for your Electro, Progressive House or Trance track destined to be “da bomb” in the clubs!
This package is a mix of progressive electro and trance samples, loops and sampler sounds from the Anjunabeats superstar Sunny Lax, cautiously selected and mastered by Samplerbanks. BPM range is between 128-134, all with precise key indication to keep up the speed. ELECTROLYZIUM blends the modern electro and trance elements, focusing on exotic leads, electro basslines and groovy progressions while provides the pumping contrast that makes the real excitement and vibe of the dance floor.
Detailed and groovy multi-layers of modern crushing basslines perfectly match the included 130 kick drums. Accurately crafted melodic chord-sequences, arpeggios are all there to evoke the aura of aliased and dirty Electro sounds whereas providing the uplifting floating passion. All the 270 drum loops are made in “No-Kick” style to give you total flexibility in the creation, also providing hundreds of one shot Drum Samples to spice up the grooves. There are some classic upward / downward textures in the powerful FX section, but this is also the place of some more esoteric and evolving crazy stuff perfect for Electro, Techno, Trance as well.
As a bonus, you will also get some multi-sample sets of the finest of new and old-style synth sounds for the popular software samplers. We made every sample ready to mix for you, thus the majority of sounds are far from over-processed to make more space for your effect arsenal. All you’ll find here are royalty free sounds only, so you do not have to pay any licence fee for further use.
If you are a producer or DJ in the need of busy no-kick grooves, modern basslines, shaky leads and crazy uplifting pitch-bent chord progressions for your next track or DJ SET, Electrolyzium will prick up your ears!
FORMATS:
ACID WAV: 378 manually sliced ACID WAV, 378 manually sliced REX2 loops, 48 Sampler presets in EXS24, HALion, Kontakt, SampleTank and sfz format, 929 one shot samples, 1754 samples, 450 multisamples
Reason ReFill: 378 manually sliced REX2 loops for Dr.Rex / OctaRex / NN-XT, 48 NN-XT patches
Ableton Live Pack: 375 warped WAV loops, sorted by keys or bpm, 2×30 multi-sample presets in both Simpler and Sampler formats, 18 Drum Racks, 1 Live Set example. Requires Ableton Live / Lite 8.1.3 or later!
Apple Loops: 378 Apple Loops, 378 manually sliced REX2 loops, 48 Sampler presets in EXS24, HALion, Kontakt, SampleTank and sfz format, 929 one shot samples, 1754 samples, 450 multisamples
A quick demo of the Blip Blob 2
The Bit Blobs are designed by Dr. Bleep and The Loud Objects (Kunal Gupta andTristan Perich). By connecting their pins together, you are able to explore a huge range of evolving drones and noise loops.
Bit Blob 2
– 1/8″ output dongle included.
– Internal speaker.
– Pulse width control.
Bit Blob Jr
– Same sounds and controls as the Bit Blob 2.
– Internal speaker.
– 1/8″ output jack.
– Available as a kit or assembled noise synth.
Original Bit Blob chip
Use this chip with your Bit Blob 2 or Jr for all the sounds of the original Bit Blob (pulse width control not compatible). More info in the Blob FAQ.
Arranging tracks in Cubase 5
Brief tutorial from Steinberg on track arrangements
Let’s say you have prepared a number of audio files that form the base of a typical pop song, with introduction, verse, chorus and bridge. Now you want to arrange these files. The first step is to create an Arranger track. On the Arranger track, you define specific sections of the project by creating arranger events.
Native’s Maschine in action
David “Fingers” Haynes demonstrates his drumming skills on Native Instruments’ Maschine.
DHaynesakafingerrs playing the native Instruments “Maschine” live.
Weldroid has released a beta of Synesthesia
Weldroid has released a beta of Synesthesia, an effect plug-in for Windows.
Synesthesia is a combined waveshaper / EQ / dynamics processor that is designed to be very light on the CPU, but sounds hi-fi enough to be put on the master buss without hesitation. A special combination of frequency-dependent harmonics generation and oversampling reduces aliasing way below audible levels, allowing smooth coloration of input material free of unwanted artifacts.
Synesthesia features highly flexible – per harmonic definition of distortion / waveshaping characteristics, opening up possibilities to emulate static distortion of many nonlinear devices. It is also possible to use it as a dynamics processor by setting up the dynamic waveshaper curve with respective attack and release time constants.
Synesthesia features
- VST 2.4 effect plugin for Windows (32-bit).
- 2 channels in / 2 channels out.
- All parameters subject to automation except for the distortion characteristics graphs.
- Demo is fully functional but injects some white noise every 40 seconds.
Synesthesia for Windows (VST) is available to purchase at the introductory price of 30 EUR. All “beta” licenses are full licenses (available for reduced price until the product reaches revision A).
More information: Weldroid / Synesthesia
Documentary on Kraftwerk
Made by Malik Bendjelloul for Swedish TV:s Pop i fokus in 2001. Interviews with Karl Bartos, Wolfgang Flur, Bjork, Moby, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Peter Saville.
Side-Line Music Awards 2010: get your favourite band nominated
Make sure to cast your vote
The time has come to start compiling the best of 2010! In this first round we’ll shortlist the nominations for each section. Our staff will then collect the votes of the 5 most chosen releases, bands etc to launch the final voting on December 6th. Readers have exactly 5 days left now to enter their nominations.
Visit our Side-Line Music Awards 2010 page to cast your vote!
Nominations will be made in the following categories:
- Best band
- Best album
- Best single
- Best label
- Best concert
- Best print magazine
- Best online magazine
- Best e-shop
DATAMASKIN
