Web Clips for August 2009

Jul 15, 2009 1:19 PM

p12 | Togeo Studios Audio Libraries Download of the Month

Web Clip 1: This clip combines ambient textures from Dreamscapes I, a refurbished bass loop from the Buhya Bass collection, a pad from Mixed Bag and percussion from Electro Excursions 2.

p13 | Weather Pending And How! CD

Web Clip 1: Click here to download an MP3 of Weather Pending's song "Midlands."

p16 | Sticking With Software

Web Clip 1: A tabla-driven sequence becomes more glitchy and electronic sounding when I use the RPT (Repeat) Graph on selected instruments. Smaller amounts repeat with less frequency, and increasing the graph level produces granular, buzzing tones.

Web Clip 2a: Linplug lets you build completely synthetic drum kits and offers a slew of sampled kits; you can mix and match kit pieces at will. Both of these clips use the Varizer on snares, hats, and ride cymbals to produce very subtle changes in pitch and timbre.

Web Clip 2b: Linplug lets you build completely synthetic drum kits and offers a slew of sampled kits; you can mix and match kit pieces at will. Both of these clips use the Varizer on snares, hats, and ride cymbals to produce very subtle changes in pitch and timbre.

Web Clip 3: MOTU BPM comes with a huge library of great sounding drums, patterns, and loops. If that’s not enough, it can read files from other MOTU sample-based instruments. Here, BPM meets MOTU Ethno.

Web Clip 4: The new Time Designer section of Spectrasonics Stylus RMX, is an amazing piece of work. You’re listening to a half-dozen or so loops going through a series of time signatures from 4/4 through 13/8 with different degrees of swing and rhythmic density changing for each loop iteration. A bit of Chaos Designer on the piano helps obscure the downbeat.

Web Clip 5: DrumCore 3 captures the amazing Steve Gadd. In this clip, we go through one of his signature grooves, and segue into an incredibly loose and expressive reggae feel. Quantize this!

p30 | Make Mine Modular

Web Clip 1: For this track, I ran the vocal part through a filter that was controlled by a sample-and-hold module to create a step-sequenced effect. The filter had a very wide frequency cut-off range.

p38 | Sound Design Workshop: A Subtle Shift

Web Clip 1: Here, a simple kick drum pattern drives multitap delays followed by frequency shifters to create bongo and brush-slap parts. Later in the clip, the kick pattern is varied, which also changes the other parts.

Web Clip 2: In this clip, four parts from a multi-output drum machine were processed individually with different frequency-shifter settings. Slight variations are added to each kick drum hit, a rim-like effect is added to the snare drum, the hi-hats are retuned and a tempo-synched swish is added to the ride cymbal.

Web Clip 3: Here, a four-bar string loop is heard unprocessed, then processed with similar settings by the Uhbik phaser (-P), flanger (-F) and frequency shifter (-S). Notice that the frequency-shifted version is smoother and that the sweeping is always in the same direction.

Web Clip 4: This starts with a three-oscillator synth patch with the oscillators slightly detuned. Next, a single oscillator is passed through parallel frequency shifters with approximately 1Hz shifts up and down. Notice that in the first case, the beat frequency changes with pitch, whereas in the second it does not.

p46 | Camel Audio Alchemy 1.09 Review

Web Clip 1: Manipulating the Remix Pad causes radical changes by morphing through a slew of parameters, including (but not limited to) filters, panning, amplitude and pitch.

Web Clip 2: Believe it or not, I played this patch (built from imported Native Instruments Absynth and Cakewalk Dimension Pro waveforms) by holding down three static notes for the duration. All of the animation and moving pitches are the result of Alchemy’s formidable modulation features.

p50 | Electro-Harmonix Voice Box Quick Pick

Web Clips: Click the icon to the left to access David Battino's landing pager for Electro-Harmonix Voice Box Quick Pick's Web Clips.

p52 | Toontrack The New York Studio Legacy Series Vol. 2 Quick Pick

Web Clip 1: In the following two Web Clips, the same MIDI file (played and recorded by Nir Z) is used to trigger a drum kit from each of the two sample libraries included with The New York Studio Legacy Series Vol.2. No external reverb was added; what you hear is the room tone resulting from my boosting the overhead and ambience mics. This clip demonstrates samples from the Allaire Studios library.

Web Clip 2: Here are a drum-kit groove and samples from the Hit Factory NY library.

p66 | Great Lake Swimmers ProFile

Web Clip 1: In this clip from "Concrete Heart," you can hear the lush natural reverb from the Great Hall in Dark Island's Singer Castle, where the vocals were recorded.