Symphonic Orchestra Free Starter Edition

Fill out a survey and get a free download of Symphonic Orchestra!l

There are a lot of companies giving out free virtual instruments this holiday season. Check Synthopia for more.

Mini Scratching. Touchtable by Masc Design

A cool midi controller. Link

Free Ohm force synth

SymptohmPE

This ‘Performer Edition’ is a simplified version of our Symptohm:Melohman powersynth, especially made for live use – but being also handy at the studio.

Get it free here!

Merry Christmas!

Tips: Making out of date synth patches on new systems

Dreaming of owning a keyboard with a 6mb sample rom library? Thinking of selling your entire studio to get that new sound? Try these simple tips to get bigger synth sounds.

1. Use a double delay instead of reverb. Digital delays are the best. You can try one tight delay (30ms or so) and one long delay (250ms), then pan each to the left or right. This creates a larger sound space.

2. Filter the sample, or analog modeling synth with a Lo-Fi sample rate down-conversion (destructive). Change the bit rate to 12 or 8 bit. This would simulate old sample roms or digital synthesis.

3. Combine a choir (ahh) sample with a short percussive attack sample. Many pad patches have been created this way with various string type sounds or percussive strikes and plucks. Many keyboards based on rom libraries let you create a sound with two “oscillators” in the patch. Again use the tips above on something like this to make it sound bigger. This is the scariest tip.

4. Experiment with sample speeds, transposition zone, and formant. If you have a roland sampler with vari-synth or ableton you may be able to get low-fi type results on modern samples, as if you were to take a smaller section of the rom sample and stretch it to fit the keyboard. Sometimes its better to turn these new pitch correcting/stretching technologies OFF and let the samples run.

5. Use a stereo choir effect or guitar pedal

The old tricks are the best tricks.

Roland The Beast

The Beast Website

Ebay Listing US $4,086.23

Automator Action for Quick-Launching Rewire + DAW Setups

Each time you start a new song it can be a hassle to setup a complex DAW environment that includes Rewire, Internal and External Midi Instruments, and Audio. Using template songs and Mac OS X automator you can get to the full power of your computer in less than 30 seconds with one button click.

Download the Files (Includes Automator Action, Application, and Song Templates for Logic & Reason 4)

File Location: Home—>Audio—>StartupTemplates

If you decide to download the files you may have to customize them in automator and rebuild the script (thankfully Apple makes this easy). This would be required if you wanted to launch Ableton instead of Logic Pro along with Reason. You may want to customize the instrument selection to your liking in both the Reason and Logic templates. My custom setup of useful Reason and Logic instrument presets is provided. Once thats done, just put the automator app into your dock for a one button studio quicklaunch!

Once the script has run, Logic Audio and Reason are perfectly synced, with all your instruments ready to rock.

Guitar Hero Drums + Osculator Tutorial

A nice tutorial with photos & video to get your guitar hero drum set working with your computer.

http://www.vultrix.com/index.php/2009/12/04/guitar-hero-drums-as-a-real-drum-kit/

Vintage Korg EMX

This is my EMX, It looks exactly as in the photo except it isnt brown yet. This is a mock up I produced as a guide for the project. Just need to complete the face plate in brown and its done. The tubes and the vintage knobs really complete the look.

Flickr Link

Little-Scale’s Novation LaunchPad Controls a Sega

I must have missed this guy somehow. I didnt know it was possible to control a “megadrive” directly yet.

Check out this guy’s blog

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