18th March 2010: Pentacom has released version 0.9 Public Beta of ARPG8R, a new VST instrument MIDI Arpeggiator plug-in for Windows. Features: 32 Steps on/off pad. 5+1 Arpeggio mode (up, down, up/down, manual, poly a...
Categories: Audio Production Tags: arpeggiator-, arpeggio, midi, pentacom, public, public-beta, steps, vst, windows-features
18th March 2010: CGM Prods has announced the release of version 1.1. of Beat Replacer version 2.0 of SF2 Control VST. Beat Replacer is a free VST plug-in for Windows designed to translate any source track's beat into ...
Categories: Audio Production Tags: announced-the-release, cgm, control, prods, release, replacer, source-track, the-release, vst, windows
18th March 2010: Tone2 Audiosoftware has announced the release of State of Art, a new Expansion Pack for Gladiator 2 designed by Bastiaan van Noord, Bryan 'Xenos' Lee, Alusio de Lima, Dajan Izzo, Massimo Bosco, Marco...
Categories: Audio Production Tags: alusio, announced-the-release, bryan, dajan, dajan-izzo, gladiator-, massimo, massimo-bosco, noord, release, state, tone2
18th March 2010: Waves has released new V7r8 installers, which include the following bug fixes: Windows and Mac OS X: H-Delay Native now clears buffer when in bypass. H-Delay mono Native: the Phase control now revers...
Categories: Audio Production Tags: bug-fixes, control-now, delay-native, include-the-following, native, now-clears, phase, the-following, waves, windows
18th March 2010: Samplecraze has announced the release of Dark To Light for Rob Papen and LinPlug's Albino 3. Emphasis was placed on providing a 'different' sound palette to the norm and to exhaust some of Albino's po...
Categories: Audio Production Tags: albino, announced-the-release, exhaust-some, light, norm, papen, placed-on-providing, release, samplecraze, sound-palette-, the-norm, the-release
Mixtikl 2 is a multi-platform program that attempts to bring some of the spontaneous song construction of apps like Ableton Live and Sony Acid Pro to the world of generative music. It comes in Windows and OS X desktop varieties (standalone, AU and VST), as apps for iPhone and Windows Mobile, and you can even run it in your web browser using a plug-in. Here, we're reviewing the Mixtikl 2 Bundle (act fast and you can pick it up for the introductory price of $40), which includes the desktop and WiMo versions along with three extra 'Tiklpaks' of content. We'll also put the iPhone version through its paces. Overview The basic premise is thus: drop the musical elements you like onto a matrix and hit play - the result is a piece of music generated in real time that you can twist and tweak to your own personal style. Before you get to that point, however, you have to wrestle with one of the most bewildering user interfaces we've ever encountered. Whichever version you use, you get exactly the same interface, the same constrained list of options, and the same tiny flickering symbols and scrolling text. This isn't something you'll want to try on your 30"-inch Apple Cinema HD Display, which may even keep Mr Eno from joining the party. Fortunately, the standalone desktop version (but not the VST or AU plug-in) can double in size. But even then, it's still difficult to navigate through lists, go backwards or forwards in the file navigator, create a new patch, save an old one and work out what goes where. We appreciate that compromises have to be made to produce an app that works on so many platforms, but this particular interface is fundamentally flawed. "This isn't something you'll want to try on your 30"-inch Apple Cinema HD Display, which may even keep Mr Eno from joining the party." If you can get past these serious problems, though, you'll find Mixtikl to be a generative powerhouse. Upon opening the app, you're greeted with a list of 'applications' (as Mixtikl's confusing terminology would have it) and the Mixer app enables you to combine audio and generative components to create music. It's what Mixtikl is built for, and it also houses the screen you'll spend most of your time on: a grid with 12 horizontal tracks, where you sequence elements and add real-time effects to create a new mix of generative music. In detail Each horizontal track has a central row of four blocks, each of which can hold either an audio loop, a General MIDI sound generator or a synth sound. The notes used to generate the sounds of the last two are embedded within each patch, and you'll need the accompanying Noatikl software if you want to design generative music from square one. Mixtikl's approach is more immediate, letting you place blocks of sounds alongside one another without worrying too much about how they were made. (3 pages; go to page: 2 3 )
Categories: Audio Production Tags: ableton-live, apple-cinema, desktop, iphone, mixtikl, opening-the-app, party, spontaneous, time, windows, windows-mobile
18th March 2010: WOK has announced the release of daBUMZ, a new drum synthesizer VST instrument plug-in for Windows. Mainly for bass and toms, it delivers a wide variety of possible sounds with a minimum of knobs on a...
Categories: Audio Production Tags: announced-the-release, instrument-plug-in-, new-drum, possible-sounds, release, the-release, vst, wide-variety, wok
18th March 2010: Sensomusic has updated Usine to v5.12. This version fixes most of the reported bugs and implements new important features. It can be considered as the first service pack for V5 and, because of all the...
Categories: Audio Production Tags: implements-new, reported, sensomusic, service-pack, the-first, the-reported, usine, version-fixes
If you are interested in modular analog synth sounds, Matthew Davidson, composer and electronic artist, has recently released a free 2GB sample library. The sounds are manipulated through a TipTop Audio Z8000 matrix sequencer . Davidson, also known as Stretta, said this about the library: “I’ve been using the TipTop Audio Z8000 for a while now, collecting material for a video, but I also kept a DAW file handy and recorded bursts of interesting output at various intervals. This process generated a lot of material, but it is clear to me it would be more useful in someone else's hands.” The library is free to use commercially, so if you fancy getting your hands on 2gb of useful audio to play with, click here to check it out.
Categories: Audio Production Tags: audio, check-it-out, hands, hands-on-2gb, library, modular-analog, more-useful, process, someone-else, synth-sounds-, tiptop, useful-audio
OMT in San Francisco #3: ‘Let it beep’ from One More Thing on Vimeo . The legend of the early sounds of the Mac remains, apparently, an alluring one. Here, Jim Reekes talks to a Dutch documentary crew (though in English) about his thought process in designing sounds for the Mac, including the famous Mac startup sound. If you haven’t heard the story, it’s a great tale. But there’s more to why Jim Reekes matters. For one, his insight into how sound design impacts the way people feel about a product is telling. Years later, following an onslaught of still more microcontroller-packed gear and hideous cellphone ringtones, that lesson seems ignored by designers. I know countless phone users who find the traditional phone ring sound. They do so not out of habit (like those people I know who are two young to even remember pre-digital phones), but because it’s the least offensive choice. With all of the growth in sound, you might imagine we’d be finding smart, new interactions, not struggling to cover the basics. No surprise, then, that Keith Lang at UI&us , a blog centered on user experience, picks this up – it’s as interesting a question of design as it is Mac nostalgia. (I agree with the commenter there – tritone? The original sound doesn’t sound like a tritone to me.) More importantly, though, Jim Reekes is worth revisiting because of the amount he contributed to sound on the Mac platform. That should be a reminder of how important it is to value the contributions of people who build intelligent sound into platforms, especially at a time when new platforms (iPhone, Android, Chrome) are emerging. Jim is credited (by his site and Wikipedia) for key engineering in QuickTime, he single-handedly created the Mac’s original Sound Manager, build early standalone radio appliances, helped support software on which the Mac multimedia revolution relied (from SoundEdit to Vision to HyperCard to Final Cut to Myst), and even built a jog wheel and hierarchical menu before the iPod. I like to believe that forward progress is still possible in computing and sound, not only in sexy apps and hardware, but in the decidedly un-sexy plumbing that lies inside our computing platforms. It often comes down to individual men and women who make it happen. And lest you think challenges are insurmountable or the process is glamorous and magical, here’s a good quote from Jim: The people on the outside think that, you know, it’s like this wonderful world of Oz or Disney going on and all of us are just all these brilliant amazing happy people and like ‘it’s not’ it’s like a sausage factory, I mean, you really don’t want to know how this stuff happens. A lot of it is just bad arguments and politics and working around the rules and, and and not doing the right thing and apologizing for it later and getting fired a few times, I mean, that’s how things got done. It’s definitely like “Don’t pay attention to the man behind the curtain.” Jim Reekes. Source: ProfCast blog (ProfCast, incidentally, a great little tool for making enhanced podcasts and lectures on Mac and Windows) And that’s to say nothing of the days during which Apple Corps was going after Apple Computer for making products that could make music. (Jim to Boing Boing: “I was getting really tired of this whole thing when the laywers told me I had to change an API from the “noteCmd” to “frequencyCmd.” Good thing they didn’t make 440Hz off-limits.) Now, all that is history, and The Beatles are in a video game. With that in mind, here’s more on the creation of Mac sound – and its signature sounds. TINY MUSIC MAKERS: Pt 4: The Mac Startup Sound [Music thing - we miss you, you great blog - 2005] Jim Reekes at Wikipedia (a degree in composition and theory? What use could that ever possibl— oh.) Early Apple sound designer Jim Reekes corrects Sosumi myth [Boing Boing, 2005] Jim Reekes homepage
Categories: Audio Production Tags: api, apple, apple-computer, before-the-ipod, boing-boing, contributions, heard-the-story, ipod, lectures-on-mac, music, reekes, startup, traditional, wikipedia, windows