Tag Archives: electronic music production

New Track: If you take my hand

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Lately I’ve listened a lot to 80s synth pop, so when Native Instruments released the Neon Drive expansion for Maschine I immediately jumped on it. The track below was sequenced entirely in Maschine using only sounds from Neon Drive.

However, once I was done with the basic structure I got frustrated by the limited support for automation and mixing in the Maschine DAW, so I recreated the entire track in Cubase instead using the midi patterns from the Maschine project and the same sounds and presets. Super interesting and educational process btw…

This was supposed to be the February track, but I was delayed by the whole detour through Cubase… :) I’m thinking about adding a vocal track as well, but I also felt ‘done’ with it for now, so here goes.

Any comments and feedback is as always greatly appreciated.

Problems with the Maschine HW controller display

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After upgrading to the MK2 of the Maschine controller about 2 years ago I soon ran into the issue of one of the displays flickering and ultimately ending up much dimmer than the other.

At that time I didn’t think too much about it but sent it back to the store for a replacement right away.

IMG_2935A couple of weeks ago I noticed that my replacement controller also started acting bad. The same problems with the display was happening on this unit.

Since I bought it in another country I figured I was out of luck and would have to simply use it with one display darker than the other.

Then something interesting happened. As I was drumming out a pattern and I hit the pad in the upper right, the display suddenly came back to full brightness.

Now whenever it drops in brightness I just tap the upper row of the pads a couple of times and it comes back up again. Probably there’s a loose connection in there somewhere so I’m going to open it up someday and poke around when I have the time.

New Track: Tribute to Tom

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This is the January track. First monthly track of the year. The news here is that I’ve recorded and mangled some analog electric guitar parts as well as synth loops. Other than that it’s entirely in the box. 99% Logic Pro X with some samples edited in Live.

The voice over parts are from an old sci-fi radio show called ‘Tom Corbett – Space Cadet‘.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Corbett,_Space_Cadet

Questions and Feedback is as always welcome in the comments!

Day 8 in Japan (Vocaloids!!)

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Went to a book store and found these awesome magazines about digital / electronic music production.

UTAUThe first one is a sort of tutorial for a Japanese software called Utau. It’s described as a “singing synthesizer”, and it’s essentially a freeware vocaloid software. It does have a few tricks that set it apart from more commercially established vocaloids, such as the ability for a user to record their own voice and then use that as the basis for synthesizing new words and melodies.

The fact that it’s free has also lead to a significant user base in Japan, with 100s of free, user created voice banks (some capable of singing in up to 15 different languages) and add-ons available online. It’s greatest restriction is that you need a PC running Windows that supports a fully Japanese locale, and almost all the usable documentation as well as the UI is all in Japanese.

I picked up the magazine with the intention to buy it, until I realized that it was Windows only. Since I do not have a Windows box in my MBP right now, I decided to hold off for now.

You can read more about UTAU here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utau

If you are interested in vocaloids and speak and read Japanese, it’s a great place to start and get your feet wet, before investing in one of the commercial packages.

DTMThe second magazine is a monthly one called “DTM Magazine”. The reason it looked interesting was because it lists a catalog of software synthesizers and DAWs current for 2013, and I wanted to see what kind of apps / synths are popular in Japan at the moment.

I haven’t had a chance to read through it, but just browsing the pages I already spotted some interesting synths that I have not come across before. I’ll post an update if I find something interesting worth sharing.

Early birthday present!

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My wife Sachi has always been a great supporter of my extravagant projects, including my journey to become proficient in electronic music production. In fact, I cannot thank her enough for not just accepting that I’m turning our bedroom into a synth cave, but actively supporting and encouraging me along the way! Yay for you Sachi, you rock!

For my birthday this year, she gave me the perfect gift; the Spectrasonic Omnisphere software instrument. For those of you unfamiliar with this beast, it is a multi layer, multi timbre, software instrument, that is both sample and synthesis based at the same time. This means  you can layer high res sample based sounds and DSP synthesized sounds in the same patch, opening up for some incredible sounding results.

Each patch that you create has 2 independent layers, each of which can have either an oscillator or a sample based sound source. Up 8 patches, each with individual arpeggiators and effects can be combined into a Multi, wich can also have effects and other settings applied.

The included sound library is about 50Gb in size and contains about 8000 sound sources and 2000 presets… The instruments also comes with a dedicated iPad app for use in a special Live mode. This app has a unique interface that lets you manipulate effects and other settings for each patch in the current multi, as well as what patches are active and sounding.

I have barely touched the surface of the instrument here, so I really encourage you to check it out at the Spectrasonics website. You will see for your self why it is referred to as one of the most powerful software instruments ever created.

http://www.spectrasonics.net/products/omnisphere.php