Atari VST – YM2149
Although a bit old but still holds true to the original:
VST plug-in for authentic Atari ST chipsounds
Emulates the built in YM2149 sound chip with a decent plugin user-interface on your PC
Fantastic song made by this old VST
Spacesynth
Excellent resource for Spacesynth
Spacesynth, synthdance, spacedance, spacedisco or whatever you want to call it is instrumental upbeat synth music that focuses on melodies instead of rhythm. Driving basslines, catchy synth riffs, sci-fi influences and futuristic track titles and album covers have always been a major part of spacesynth.
Spacesynth originated in the mid 80’s. At that time synthesizers and electronic sounds had become an essential part of popular music and were widely used by such artists as Vangelis, Jean-Michel Jarre, Kraftwerk and Art of Noise. Synthpop hits like Magnetic Fields 2, Pulstar and Magic Fly are well known tracks even today.
Protonic Storm is a synthdance project by Krzysztof Radomski. The creator of Protonic Storm lives in Kowary, Poland. He’s the first synthdance artist from Poland who has released music abroad! Krzysztof has been making music since 1997, mainly synthdance, but sometimes also psychedelic trance and ambient. At first he put some of his tracks to traxinspace.com, then to sites like Spacesynth.de (formerly known as Laserdance.de) and finally MP3.com.
Resources
Epsilon Pages, www.epsilonpages.net
Ableton Live 7
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5F4XPGsvm8]
Live 7—What’s New
Ableton Live 7 renews the core of Live, with enhancements to the audio engine including 64-bit mix summing, new and improved devices with side-chaining capability, better MIDI timing and hardware integration. We have also included the most-requested features, such as time signature changes, video export, multiple automation lanes and much more. Version 7 marks the arrival of the new “Drum Rack” which streamlines beat production via an easy drag-and-drop interface and offers native sliced audio and REX file support, bringing endless creative possibilities to beat lovers.
New Ableton Instruments
The new add-on instruments are the result of Ableton’s collaboration with leading industry partners. The palette covers physically modeled electric pianos, analog synthesizers and string instruments as well as multi-mic/multi-layer sampled acoustic drums, drum machines, orchestral strings, brass, woodwinds and percussion. The instruments integrate tightly with Live, both in terms of workflow and resource management.
Tension is a physical modeling string synthesizer that allows you to create incredibly accurate reproductions of real instruments or design otherworldly hybrids.
Electric offers the sounds of classic electric pianos through physical modeling synthesis, allowing you to dive inside and play with the guts of the instrument.
Analog emulates the unique circuitry and irresistible tweakability of vintage analog synthesizers. Able to produce everything from silky pad sweeps to earth-shaking bass.
Session Drums is a meticulously multisampled library of acoustic drums that reproduces the nuances of a recording session and puts you in the engineer’s seat.
Drum Machines offers a choice selection of classic drum machines, meticulously sampled to faithfully reproduce the original sounds.
Essential Instrument Collection 2—a choice selection of acoustic and electric pianos, guitars, bass, drums, orchestral instruments and more. Version 2 adds acoustic and electronic drums as well as presets optimized for better sound quality and faster loading.
Orchestral Strings-a comprehensive selection of naturally rich and dynamic stringed instruments. Features solo and ensemble violin, viola, cello and double bass, all recorded in their natural positions within the orchestra, complete with a number of articulations.
Orchestral Brass is a thorough set of vivid and colorful brass instruments. Features solo and ensemble French horn, trombone, trumpet and tuba, with a unique set of articulations in multiple section sizes.
Orchestral Woodwinds delivers a variety of clear and vibrant wind instruments. Features solo and ensemble flute, clarinet, bassoon, oboe and English horn with a broad selection of articulations.
Orchestral Percussion captures the true essence of symphonic percussion instruments in pristine quality. Features vibraphone, marimba, xylophone, crotales, glockenspiel, tubular bells, cymbals and timpani with a variety of articulations.
Fat little synth – Sequential Pro One
The Sequential Pro One is a wicked little monosynth! It comes from the same period and genre as the Roland SH-101 and Moog Prodigy. The Pro One was basically Sequential's attempt at taking their legendary Prophet 5 poly-synth and packing it into a compact, inexpensive, monophonic analog synth! It has two VCOs, a great 4-pole lowpass filter, two ADSR envelopes (one for filter), and a compact three-octave keyboard. With a Pro-One, you can easily create punchy analog bass-lines and leads or quirky analog synth effects. The Pro One is an extremely flexible synth with lots of modulation possibilities (ie: the filter, VCO B and LFO can modulate VCO A or B frequencies or pulse widths, or the VCF). There's also an onboard sequencer, something common on many Sequential synths but not often found on other monosynths of the time. It is very basic, however, storing only two patterns and up to 40 notes max. Also, only pitch info is recorded (and in step time only); you can not assign a note duration to any notes. So it's basically a short melodic sketch-pad...but useful. Also onboard is an arpeggiator which has UP and UP/DOWN patterns.
The Pro One is relatively simple and intuitive to use, fun, educational and responsible for some of the coolest and hardest basslines in electronic music today! It is used by Hardfloor, Uberzone, the Prodigy, Cirrus, Fluke, Depeche Mode, Download, Banco De Gaia, Vince Clarke, New Order, Freddy Fresh, Mouse on Mars, Prince, Soft Cell, and Sigue Sigue Sputnik.
But since you can’t always find one (about 10,000 were produced), or one that works properly… Wine Country Sequential has come up with a solution! WCS has been servicing old Sequential gear for years, as well as selling repair parts, etc. They have developed the Pro One Software Synthesizer Plug-In, an awesome replica of the original Pro One, both in look and sound! It has some added features and is an incredible way to easily add the sound of the Pro One to your music!
Analogue Synthesizers
AudioWarrior has released Analogue Synthesizers For Kontakt, a collection of gurgling analog sounds from some of the of the most famous analog synthesizers of the 60’s & 70’s. This collection includes searing synth leads, deep shaking bass patches, FX, trippy pads based on classics like Juno, Oberheim, Moog, Prophet, Oscar, and more.
What the manufacturer says:
The Holy Grail of Analogue Sythesizer Leads, Bass’, FX, Pads.
The best sounds of 7 Famous Analogue and Digital Synthesizers from the 60’s & 70’s
that have shaped our civilization are now yours to do with what you will by land, by air, or sea.
Evolving Alien Environments and Soundscapes including Rain & Thunder, The Grays,
BladeRunner, RAIN, Deep Sea, Alien Locust, Ethereal Bog, Frogs of Plague
Every famous sound is included that put synths on the map. Digitized for maximum flexibility for use in Native-Instruments Kontakt.
Once you have them activated and on screen, further twist them into pulsating textures and pitch wheel them into pandemonium.
Download the whole retro-classic collection to your desktop in minutes.
If anyone has tried it already, feel free to leave a review
Good site for Reason Refills and for other platforms – C64, Pads, Apollo
Came across this site the other day and YES they had a very good collection of free refills (you need to sign up though, but it is free to register)
Just a tip on the way: I have been collecting refills for some 7-8 years by now and I have never purchased any commercial refills and still I today have a refill collection (and yes again only targeting the type of music I produce – electro, synth, EBM etc) closing in on 12Gigs – so make sure to surf around and download all the demo refills and free refills you can find and I assure you will never need to by a commercial one 
Some of the stuff that I liked was;
the Whale refill
the C64 refill
and the Apollo refill
But make sure to support all the good musicians out there here is one good source for starters:
Dreamhack
- Once again its time for Dreamhack here in Sweden – the largest game and hacking event, of course a crew from the place where I work will be there – video blogging. You can watch it live at www.metrobloggen.se/tat
or pay a visit to the official website here >> - At 8 am the first visitor entered the gates of DreamHack Winter 2007. One hour later had over 2 100 people checked in and were busy finding their spot among all the tables.
- The total number of visitor are increasing every second and the entrance-staff will be busy all day since over 8 300 tickets have been sold.
- And by the way if you have a PS3 (anyone wants to donate one to me?) don´t miss out on the new Ratchet and Clanc release
- [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zsqRaYpk3c]
Audio Objekt – Laugh or Cry or perhaps Smart?
It sure is a good laugh
Sorry for those of you who do not understand Swedish, but I have also heard that these guys are getting assitance from Ralf Hutter on their next album
Go for it guys
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEPUlR3QraE]
Nostalgia – Casio SK1 Sampler Keyboard
The Casio SK1 was once the cheapest sampler in the world. Now that some software samplers are available for free off the internet and magazine cover CDs, the SK1 probably doesn’t qualify for that title anymore.
The sampling was 8-bit and with a bandwidth of around 4kHz (compared with CDs’ 16-bit, 20kHz bandwidth), it’s fair to assume that you know what to expect of the sound quality – distinctly low lo-fi !
It offered a handful of sampled instrumental sounds stored in ROM but its main appeal was its ability to sample. Of course, with such poor sample quality, it was another of those novelty ‘toys’ like the Stylophone and Casio’s own VL-Tone.
There was little you could do with the sound once you’d sampled it but there were thirteen preset envelope shapes you could apply to the sample along with portamento and vibrato. Interpolation was also poor and so sounds (preset or sampled) didn’t transpose well but that only added to their ‘character’. There was no way to store your sample which was lost when you switched the SK1 off!
Naturally, the keyboard was not velocity sensitive but neither was there was any MIDI to play the sounds with velocity from an external keyboard to overcome that limitation.
The SK1 also came with ‘drum’ sounds in ROM which were required for the auto-accompaniment function.
The SK1 is used by Fatboy Slim, Beck, Autechre, Portishead and Blur (amongst other lo-fi enthusiasts) who favour it even today, presumably for its lo-fi, crusty sound quality.
Louis van Dompselaar has kindly donated the entire soundset from his own SK1. The samples were taken from the line out and Louis deliberately powered the thing off batteries to eliminate mains hum. There is a distinct DC ‘thump’ at the start of each of the preset instruments but this is apparently a ‘feature’ of the real thing! There are eight presets and all but one are presented ‘authentically’. However, the ‘Voice’ preset has been run through Antares Infinity looping software to create quite a beautiful and ethereal pad sound which, despite its humble origins, sounds quite classy and ‘expensive’.
The SK1’s drum samples are also included in Nostalgia which Louis has extracted from the patterns. Most bear little or no relationship to their acoustic counterparts but they are interesting metallic electronic percussion sounds nonetheless that could find a place in any number of musical genres.
Building a Synth Robot
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRzgC7GEF74]
A funny clip I found on how to build your perfect robot using analog gear.
DATAMASKIN
