Here's a fantastic video from Brent Kallmer of Bluewater VST on using Reaktor's Metaphysical Function ensemble in a groove based scenario:
"Ever wonder how to use REAKTOR's stunning Sound Generators against a groove? Look no further than this tutorial!"
On this day in 1920, Charlie "Yardbird" Parker (aka "Bird") was born in Kansas City, Kansas, the only child of Charles and Addie Parker. Charlie's father was a pianist on the vaudeville circuit and was absent for much of his early childhood. Yet Charlie still followed in his father's footsteps, picking up the saxophone at the age of 11 and began to diligently practice in the late 1930's; in an interview with fellow musician Paul Desmond, Bird said that he spent 3–4 years, during that period, practicing up to 15 hours a day!
In 1938 Parker began his recording career with the Jay McShann Band, which he also toured with including stops in Chicago and his future home New York City. The following year Charlie moved to NYC, working as a dishwasher to make ends meet. It was in New York that Charlie met Dizzy Gillespie whom he would famously play with throughout the next decade. These early years in NYC were key to the development of Charlie's playing, including one of his main musical innovations - that the twelve tones of the chromatic scale could lead melodically to any key, breaking the confines of simpler jazz soloing. This style of playing, honed in the after hours clubs of Harlem, such as Clark Monroe's Uptown House and Minton's Playhouse, became known as Bebop!
"Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art." - Bird
I've been quite impressed with the latest gear released from Casio. The new Casio PX5S Stage Piano sits proudly in my home studio and the new XW-G1 Synth really is cool looking:
"A quick information video of a new bank of sounds, inspired by the Minimoog. It is such a classic design and sound that is still sought after today. Casio's XW-P1 and XW-G1 while being a digital synthesizers can do a pretty remarkable job of mimicking those classic Moog sounds. The Minimoog had 3 oscillators plus a noise generator and although the XW has a 4th oscillator in its Solo Synth engine - all of these sounds were crafted with the original in mind. A set of 10 Leads and basses, the specialties of the Minimoog. Separate versions above for the XW-P1 and XW-G1. Downloadable at www.casiomusicforums.com"
Tom Pritchard's latest Reason offering Thorkit II is now available in the PropShop and at Nucleus-SoundLab.com! Thorkit II pushes the boundaries of what is possible with Reason's flagship synth and is a worthwhile purchase for anyone interested in getting some new sounds for the Reason rack:
"Tom Pritchard Sound Design presents ThorKit II for Reason 4+, the sequel to the popular ThorKit ReFill. Inside you'll find 200 new Thor patches! ThorKit II contains 100 lush Chord patches, 50 evocative Polysynth patches, and 50 driving Sequence synths. Chord patches use Thor's Step Sequencer to mimic Chord Memory, a function found on some synthesisers whereby pressing a note plays an entire chord, resulting in some huge sounds. You can deactivate the chord with Button and use these as 100 deep Polysynths if you prefer. Dive back into Thor with ThorKit II!"
Check out this awesome new Reaktor ensemble by Danny J. Lewis of Music Production Tutorials available for a tweet or Facebook post:
New Atlantis Audio has released The Vault Volume 1:
"The Vault library represents the complete unearthing and liberation of our entire field recording archive, as we hand select material from our 11 Terabyte sound repository. With a stack of hard drives staring us in the face, we have decided to start small…
This first volume has over 2GB of raw, unprocessed, unplanned handheld field recordings captured throughout the world over the course of 10 years.
This is not a produced Hollywood SFX library, and that's what makes it special. These are spontaneous moments captured to portable recorders on-the-fly when they were least expected. Unedited, unrehearsed, unnamed in original chronological order and Royalty-Free for use in your own sonic adventures."
Pick up The Vault today for the discounted price of $49.99, and as an added bonus, the first 100 buyers will receive all future Vault releases for FREE!
Below is the video for Shigeto's "Detroit Part 1" taken from his new Project: Mooncircle release No Better Time Than Now!
Soundcells has updated their classic lo-fi Reason ReFill bitBUMPER Deluxe to version 3! As some of you may remember Resonant Filter took a look at bBD back in 2010, which you can check out here. Info:
"bitBUMPER deluxe v3 - the ultimate 4 and 8 bit Pandora Box filled with hundreds of low bit surprises.
This ReFill is your best friend when you´re looking for inspiring new sounds with a character and a bite - it sounds cool, adventurous, nostalgically warm and noisy at the same time! To catch this character some amazing sources were sampled:
RozzBox One v2, QuadraSID, the old grey Gameboy from 1989 with "Nanoloop 1" and "Littlesounddj", the Gameboy Advance SP from 2003 with "Nanoloop 2" and the Nintendo DS Lite from 2006 with "DS Electroplankton" and "Korg DS-10".
Version 3 adds new rex loops, 20 new combinator & 25 NNXT patches, as also lots of new samples …"
Pick up bitBUMPER Deluxe V.3 for the low introductory price of 27.90 € (until September 15) at Soundcells.de!
A new series from Moog Music:
"Soundcrafts is a new video series from Moog Music Inc. that explores the importance of creating new sounds through insight from renowned artists, producers, and engineers from around the globe.
The first episode features Bryan Michael-Cox, a Grammy winning songwriter and producer who has worked with Mariah Carey, Usher, Destiny's Child, and countless others during his extensive career. In this session Cox delves into the importance of creating and exploring new sounds, and its relationship to making lasting impressions on listeners."
Korg's Volca series has myself and many people I know excited, here's Sonic State's preview of the boxes:
A new Reason micro-tutorial! Check it:
"The RV7000 is a high quality stereo reverb that's all about embedding your sound in rich, sophisticated reverb. Regardless if you want the sound of a concert hall, a retro spring reverb or a cramped closet - RV7000 can handle it. In this tutorial we'll take a closer look at its features and what it can do to your music."
Peter Dines has updated his Ghost Shift Reaktor ensemble with mappings for the Konkreet Performer iOS app!
"When I released Ghost Shift I didn't have live control in mind other than mapping a MIDI fader to the mix control. However, the recent update of Konkreet Performer got me thinking, and I realized there was an easy way to map Performer parameters to the individual delay taps in Ghost Shift."
Katsunori UJIIE posted a couple new demos on the musictrackjp youtube page, further showing why his demos are the best on the web, even if you have no idea what he's saying:
Mount Kimbie stopped by legendary Tokyo synth shop Five G last month while in town to play the Ebisu Liquid Room:
Peff testing out my Holy Grail:
"after a year of working on the Buchla System 200 power supply I kinda gave up on the original power supply and have resorted to using a new 200e power source. however it doesn't produce the +24vdc for the 265 module. This is just a little test to see how things function, before i dive into work on the easel a bit more.
The Euro Rack system is used to synthesize the perc and drums and also sends clock and random voltages to the Buchla envelope follower. Easel generates the sequence bit, and the 259 creates the the digeridoo-ish drone."
I love geeking out on the touring gear of musicians, sadly it seems most of the rig rundown videos on youtube are of guitarists, but Keyboard Magazine has been uploading a few rig videos as of late, with the latest featuring Adam Holzman's gear on the latest Steven Wilson tour! Adam Holzman, the son of Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman, has played with some of the best musicians in the world, including Miles Davis, Chaka Khan, Teo Macero, Grover Washington Jr, Randy Hall, and Robben Ford. Check it:
A new week a new Brent Kallmer video for Bluewater VST! This ones a look at the Metaphysical Function Reaktor ensemble: