Tight demo of the VIBRAPHONE
Now available at http://www.optigan.com/shoptigan
A new release in our line of Vako Orchestron discs, VIBRAPHONE. It’s unlikely that there will be sufficient demand to do a second run of 25 of these discs, so your best bet is to buy as many of these as you need while you can! Any future additional copies will most likely be done as one-offs, which are twice as expensive to produce, and thus will cost twice as much.
VIBRAPHONE is an entirely NEW sound for the Orchestron. This sound, like our earlier PIANO disc, is not really intended to be played melodically. Each note is actually a simple rhythmic pattern, and when you play chords, these patterns interlock in complex ways to created a hypnotic effect. Great for getting Steve Reich style minimalist textures. This disc also works well played upside-down, as you can hear in the second part of the demo. Please excuse my awful playing here, which is just a quick noodle to demonstrate the sound!
SPECIAL THANKS to Mark Greenberg (http://www.mayfairworkshop.com/) for playing an recording the vibraphone!
PLEASE NOTE: This disc WILL NOT play properly in an Optigan! They WILL play, but the sounds will NOT be mapped correctly to the keyboard- they will be mapped mostly haphazardly across the chord buttons. Please don’t order this disc expecting to easily use it in an Optigan. In the future we will be porting the Orchestron sounds to the Optigan- please be patient! 
Stay tuned for more Orchestron discs, both new and remastered titles!
Kairatune – crisp and tight electric sounds
Developer Matti Jokipii has released a new soft synth for Windows, Kairatune:
Kairatune is designed to produce crisp and tight electric sounds for electronic music production. Kairatune is engineered for the demanding producer who needs to push the sound to extremes without compromising audio quality.
Kairatune offers fast and intuitive sound design workflow. The user interface is designed for a musician rather than an engineer and is based on the concept of pitch and beat in contrast to frequency and time. Kairatune lets you travel in the world of beats, notes and intervals instead of the logarithmic mathematics of frequencies and the rarely useful absolute time.
Kairatune is not your all-in-one synthesizer. It’s designed and engineered to be as powerful and versatile as possible in it’s target role as your source for tight bass, unique lead and shiny SFX sounds. At the same time it makes all the effort to be simple enough to use, enabling you to add your personal touch and flavor to the sound and seek for the perfect fit to your mixing preferences.
Kairatune is a free download (VSTi) from the Futucraft site.
björk: moon – new video from the ice (land) princess
From multimedia artist Bjork’s latest album Biophilia, her latest videos feel far more like important additions to the overall experience. Her latest, for the song ‘Moon’, is above, and features the lady herself and, of course, the moon – written by björk and damian taylor.
directed, produced and art directed by björk, inez and vinoodh, m/m paris and james merry.
Launchpad Live Equalizer
Music: unreleased Yo Soy Sauce tune.
plasticsoundsupply.com/release/yo_soy_sauce_-_juke_box/
Built with the following components:
processing.org
tree-axis.com/Ess/
rngtng.github.com/launchpad/
A library by rngtng – Tobias Bielohlawek for the programming environment processing.
This library provides an interface to access novation’s launchpad programmatically. It’s based on Thomas Jachmanns ruby launchpad gem. LEDs can be lighted and button presses can be listened to. In addition, it includes a wrapper for the Monomic Library as well.
Download
Download launchpad version 0.3 in .zip format.
Radio transmission – Der kalte Krieg by Welle: Erdball
After last year’s album “Operation Zeitsturm”, shipped with the accompanying film produced by the band themselves, Welle: Erdball returns with their new album “Der Kalte Krieg”. As the title suggests, the theme this time is the Cold War – with James Bond themes, the red phone, atomic bombs, SDI war in space, double agents, Russian spies and everything that belongs to it! Besides the new songs on the album, they have also recorded covers of a classic James Bond theme, Cat Stevens “If You Want To Sing Out” (from the movie Harold & Maude), Stahlnetz and The Cabinet’s classic “The Cabinet” . Addition, even remakes of some of the band’s earlier songs, a remake of “America” by Hertz infarction and a remix of the hit “Starfighter S-104” (2000), which is signed Welle: Erdball-band member Plastique’s side project The Girl & The Robot .
Don’t forget to read the interview we made with Welle:Erdball just a couple of weeks ago >>
The album comes in addition to the regular edition, even in a limited first edition that includes bonus DVD with a selection of the best live recordings from the band’s long career.
“Der Kalte Krieg” is released October 28 via SPV / Synthetic Symphony.
Track listing:
- Welle: Erdball (Hörspiel-Intro)
- James Bond-Thema
- Deutsche Liebe (C=64)
- Feuerwerk
- Eine Neue Zeit
- Amerika (Compact Phasing “A”merika – Remake by Hertzinfarkt)
- Kabinett
- If You want to sing out, sing out
- Vor all den Jahren
- Starfighter F-104S (The Girl & the Robot-Remix)
- Der Kalte Krieg (Beweg Dein Gehirn…JETZT!)
- Karl der Käfer (C=64)
- Hab ich dir heute schon gesagt, daß ich Dich liebe
- Ein bisschen Frieden
- Sendeschluss (Hörspiel-Austro)
King-style 80s synth pop with Memorymoog, LinnDrum, and PPG Wave 2.3
A live improvisation of a typical mid-’80s style arrangement – a bit in vein of King’s “Love and Pride”. The Memorymoog has the lion share in this video, with its typical, quintessential synth brass. The LinnDrum is the standard drum machine of that era, and the PPG offers an elegant choir sound.
Hardware feature – PPG Wave 2.3:
The German made PPG Wave 2 series of synthesizers are incredibly great sounding analog/digital hybrid vintage synths. They use digital samples of wavetables and feature analog VCA envelope and VCF filter sections for a classic and warm sound. The Wave 2.2 (pictured above) has oscillators that can generate over 2,000 different single-cycle 8-bit digital waveforms! Covered by knobs, the Wave still looks analog and this comprises the “Analog Control Panel”. More complex and new-wave editing of the wavetables and samples is covered by the “Digital Control Panel” where there are several key-pad buttons and an LCD screen. Another familiar treat to analog junkies is the inclusion of an 8-track sequencer which features automation of pitch, loudness, filter cutoff, waveforms and more. A cool feature – its onboard sequencer will also record any filtering and wave changes, in real-time!!
The more commonly encountered Wave 2.3 followed the 2.2 and had enhanced sample-playback capabilities. The sampler was pretty full-featured for its time and included upgraded 12-bit digital waveforms, Fourier analysis and linear playback of samples. The 2.3 model also featured 8-parts multitimbrality and MIDI implementation. The PPG Waves are know to create excellent pads, brass and bass sounds.
Mouse on Mars
Mouse on Mars | PAEANUMNION (2011) | Ensemble musikFabrik
Kompositionsauftrag der KölnMusik für das Ensemble musikFabrik
Mouse on Mars
Ensemble musikFabrik
André de Ridder | Dirigent
Uraufführung
Samstag, 10. | September 2011 | 20 Uhr
Köln | Philharmonie
Britische Erstaufführung
Freitag, 25. | November | 19.30 Uhr
London | Barbican Hall
Videoschnitt | Valerij Lisac | www.klanghafen.de
Teenage Engineering OP-1 Ableton Live Rack
Here’s a new Live rack featuring the OP-1 (price is set to 3USD)
“I have created and sampled ten different presets on my OP-1 synthesizer and placed them into an Ableton Live Instrument Rack. The OP-1 is an amazing synthesizer/workstation and this rack is intended to give a sampling of some of its potential. ”
Download @ http://afrodjmac.blogspot.com
Self contained generative modular piece
A generative piece. Totally self contained in the modular synth.
“I start it with a push button on the Q119 sequential controller. The Q119 is the volume envelope for the entire piece. The Q960 sequencer controls a few envelopes for the drone and various steps output gates to start events coming from the other sound sources. A triple set of CGS Harmonic Sequencers and a noise source are the different voices. Gated switch modules are opened with two Q962 Sequential Switches as limits on the step gates from the Q960.
This patch was inspired by a few discussions of generative patches from the MuffWiggler’s forum. My goal was to invent a patch that was entirely hands-off and contained many elements which happened automatically over a longer period. “
One Hundred
Background information: Uploaded my first video to YouTube in May 2008. And now 3 years later I upload the hundredth video. I was a little worried after doing video 99 because I wanted video 100 to be something special. And I think it is. Hope you will like it to.
At first you hear a 5-step sequence on row 1 of the Doepfer MAQ16/3 driving the Ian Fritz Teezer Through-Zero VCO and the Blacet Miniwave. The percussive noise sound comes from the self-built Modular and is driven by a 16-step sequence on row 2 of the MAQ16/3.
After that the CS Saw Pad from the Roland XP-80 comes in where after the 4 step sequence from the Synthesizers.com Q960 is introduced but only steps 1 and 3 are active on the Q963 at first. The Q960 sequences drives the Synthesizers.com Modular. The Q962 sequential switch is triggered by row 2 of the MAQ16/3 to alter the sequence between the 3 rows of the Q960. Row 1 contains an Em, row 2 an Am and row 3 a Bm sequence. But the chords played on the Roland XP-80 don’t follow those chords exactly which gives interesting variations. After that the arpeggiated sound on the Waldorf Q Keyboard is added, varying the sound with the modulation wheel. Somewhere along the line steps 2 and 4 on the Q963 are activated so you hear the full 4 step sequence from the Q960. The sequences:
Doepfer MAQ16/3:
Row 1:906: E3 B3 A3 G3 D3
Row 2:924: X . . . . . . . X . . . . . . .
Row 3:906: X (Gate output shifts the Q960)
Synthesizers.com Q960:
Row 1: E3 E2 F#3 E3
Row 2: A3 A2 B3 A3
Row 3: B3 B2 D4 B3
The Sunrizer App on the iPad is used to add some chorded sounds using the Lifeforms [JD] patch. The solo is performed on the Nord Lead 1. The audio is recorded with Pro Tools 9 using the Alesis MultiMix16 FireWire. Again my friend Anne used my iPhone 4G to video this session; thanks for that.
I dedicate this video to you, my dear YouTube friends, subscribers and channel watchers. Your comments and support encouraged me to go on. Thank you.
You can download/see/hear the video and music from my website.
DATAMASKIN
