Issue 03 Pete Rock

P

roducer’s Edge Magazine is The Creative Journal

of Hip Hop, R&B and Rap Music Production. It is a bi-monthy digital magazine. The digital content provides extended features- including video, audio,

software demos and tutorials.

Producer’s Edge Magazine is dedicated to the creative aspect of music production with a focus on the tools we use to bring ideas into reality.

Electronic Issue 03: All in One, One for All. Producer’s Edge Magazine

Info@ProducersEdgeMagazine.com

EDITORIAL Editor In Chief/Grand Wizard Drew Spence Senior Editor Will Loiseau Team Editor Crystal Johnson

BRAND BUSINESS Brand Specialist/Manager Pedro Mojica Marketing, Public relations Richera Jones

Welcome to the 1st Electronic Issue of Producer’s Edge magazine. Firstly, we have to thank all of our subscribers and support from the production industry for making this possible. Our goal was to make an easily accessible resource while maintaining the same quality standards as our print editions. While most publications release a direct Internet port of their title for the convenience of their readership, we aimed to be a little different.

All for One and One for All will explore utilizing a singular tool or environment for the majority of the production tasks. After looking at the current offering of workstations, we’ll give you the first part of our Drum Works feature. We are going to focus on the top tools and options available for every aspect of creative percussion from sound design to creative programming. The special begins now and as always, we thank you for your continued support.

Drew Spence Editor in Chief Producer’s Edge is now wholly created using Abobe Indesign CS3.

Enjoy the new look.

Digital Content and Media Griffin Avid

© Producer’s Edge Magazine. No part of this magazine may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or resold without prior written consent of the publisher. Producer’s Edge recognizes all copyrights contained in this issue. Where possible we acknowledge the copyright holder. All contributions are submitted and accepted on the basis of a nonexclusive worldwide license to publish or to license others to do so unless otherwise agreed in advance in writing

Don’t just read about music production, Live it in the pages of Producer’s Edge Magazine.

Key Icons: These graphics represent additional content available in the Electronic version of Producer’s Edge.

FEEDBACK FLOWS BACK

ear D Producer’s Edge...

T

oday I had a chance to pick up your magazine at a local book store and I have to say, Very Nice Job u have an excellent magazine.

I’m an indie producer so its nice to get any info I can and your magazine had more than enough.

I will definitely be picking up and subscribing to ur magazine I wish ya’ll the best of luck with it and look forward to reading ur next editorial…thanks again for the wonderful magazine.

Josh Decker DeckaMade Productions Thanks for that!

C

ongratulations on another successful mag issue. I read the James Bernard interview and he had some interesting things to say on the new Reason package.

I was kinda hyped up after reading the segment so I immediately hopped on his Myspace pages to hear the new material and boy was I disappointed. Ain’t none of them joints sound like no analog. The joints that I make on Reason sound way “less Reason” than that. I’m feeling the 4th edition and all but if this is the sound that comes from 4 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

one of the lead designers, that really

keeps me from getting my hopes up about the big radio possibilities I’d been having my eye on.

Regards, Mixed Feelings

Well, we have mixed feelings about this too. While I understand the ‘hot beat in 5 minutes’ trend, I think it fosters unrealistic expectations and leads to unfinished tracks. I did listen to his music both before and after the interview and I never perceived a deliberate attempt to fool you into thinking you were listening to production from a vintage hardware powered studio.

He does say quite clearly near the end of page 33 that Reason requires custom processing. It’s not set up like most ROMplers with effects already applied to every preset. From a practical standpoint, I don’t know how much energy you really need to invest into emulating analog gear when Reason Refills offer actual samples from classic gear for your production. For the most part the sound of Reason is up to. I suggest you use the tools they give you creatively and explore all your options. Hit me up!

Editor@ProducersEdgeMagazine.com

exclusive distributors

800.747.4546

5 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

3. Edits and Masthead

Hard Lessons

4. Letters

29. Access Music TI Snow

8. iStandard Producer Showcase Beast of the Beats 2008 9. Winner: The Letter “C” 10. Dynamic Producer Conference

31. AKAI MPC 5000 37 KORG Kaossilator 39. Open Labs MIKO

Photo Gallery Drum Works Part I

NAMM 08’

12. Drum Works over

Dynamic Producer Conference

13. Audio Realism ADM 17. Roland SP-555 19. Big Fish Audio Classic Sounds Series 20. Zendrum Zap 23. Spectrasonics STYLUS RMX 26. Fxpansion BFD2

6 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

iStandard Beast of the Beats 08’

Turntable of Contents Issue 03 Fall 2008/Winter 2009

Special Feature;

One for All, All for One

85. Mastering Part III: Tools of the Trade

50. Korg M3 with Rich Formidoni

96. Vintage

58. Roland MV-8800

Sean Maru: The AKAI S-950

with Mike Acosta

101. In The Loop Series;

64. Roland Fantom-G with Warren

Ueberschall Urbanic and Elastic

‘Hanna’ Harris

104. Industry

66. Yamaha Motif XS

Dave Smith, Dave Smith Instruments

with Phil Clendennin

110.

Soft Focus 70. Ableton Live 7 72. IK Multimedia SampleTron 74. Native Instruments KORE 2 78. e-phonic Drumatic 81. Vital Arts Plectrum

Series

Insider:

Producer’s Edge:

Just Blaze Gear Through the Years 112. Main Feature: Pete Rock

Writer’s Block 118. Champion Hook Writer 120. Necro: Death Writing brings Life to Rap

with Geoffrey Gee 84. Sound Designer’s Palette Luke Cage

7 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

Intro Video

Roland Prize Package

Letter “C”

Final Results

Canei Live

3RD Place

iStandard Producer Showcase Beast of the Beats 2008 Winner The Letter “C”

Drew Spence: What are your main production tools right now?

Letter “C”: PowerBook Mac G4. I have a Roland Fantom-X and I like the plugins that come with Pro Tools. That’s it, that’s my whole set up. I don’t really have monitors yet for my own mixes.

Do you think the prize package is going to change your sound?

I can’t say it’s going to change my sound, but we’ll have more sounds available, which I need. It’s going to help me a lot.

What do you think of their criticism at the end?

Honestly, I was kind of shocked when I heard Pete Rock saying what he said, because he gave me A+ and I was like -- I didn’t expect him to say that. I wanted to tell my people that Pete Rock gave me an A+. I just wanted to tell people back home that -- like people who look up to Pete Rock, that was real shocking to me.

Did you think you were going to win? Did you say I am going to be one of the last guys up there? Where you telling yourself, I got a real shot at this?

The first showcase I did; people were bigging me up and they said, I killed the competition. I saw videos of some other kids who won previously and these kids had heat. I really felt like I put some songs together and I felt like what I had was tough, but I knew I had a lot of competition. I couldn’t say I was just going to win it off the top.

8 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

After I was there, I heard a lot of heat.

At one point I thought I was going to do good. It was still shocking news, it was a surprise for me.

Are you going to build with other producers, network and cipher?

Oh! Yeah I do. I was scared before my first showcase because I didn’t know if I should do it or not. So I just called my peeps and they were like yeah you sound good, go ahead and do it so I went and I am thankful for that.

So now what about any sort of formal training? Is that in the history, is that in the works? Maybe you are going to mess with the keyboards, get to playing some keys, get some chops?

Everything you hear from me right now is done by myself. I find my samples, I chop them up. I won’t loop unless the loop is crazy. Sometimes I play like well-known samples. I play as much as I can and I do know a few musicians, but right now, I can play almost anything over. Sometimes I really freak it like a musician and take the sample apart. I try to do it all. Check out my stuff. I can do the pop stuff too.

What lessons would you say you walked away from after the whole iStandard Beast of the Beats experience?

What helped me win is playing more in your face type music. Some producers played songs and I play songs too, but you want to move people. My setup starts off and just keeps moving. It’s not the simple formula of clap your hands and then the chorus comes on and that’s it. I’m giving the audience that high and they feel it.

So going forward, naming an artist on a fantasy level you would like to be able to produce for and I don’t mean sell a track to, I mean actually he comes to you and says, I need an album and you and him or her are going to sit down in a studio and craft an album. Who would you like to work with on that and I mean he or she is there from A-Z while you are at your board, they are sitting on your couch, drinking a POWERade and eating chips?

Roland’s Laura Tyson, iStandard founder J Hatch and Roland’s Warren Harris

Jay Hatch and Don Di Napoli:

T

o start the night, we were blessed with a motivational intro by the legendary Darryl “D.M.C.” McDaniels and K.G. of the Cold Crush Brothers, and that set the tone for the entire evening. Each producer brought something different to the table, and the crowd was amazed at just how many hot producers there are out there. After all 20 producers played their tracks, we found out that we had a tie for 1st place (The Letter “C” & Mr. JPatt both had 86 out of 100) and 3rd place (Canei Finch & El Boog “Da Compoza” both had 83 out of 100), which meant we needed a 3rd judge to select the winners. Luckily, NYC’s-own Super-Producer JUST BLAZE was in the building, and he was the tie-breaker that allowed us to crown The Letter “C” as this year’s Beast of the Beats!!! “C” brought diversity and a hit-making sense to a group of producers that will all be on your favorite artists’ albums over the next few years!

Ludacris and Andre 3000… both of them spit from the self. They come from different angles. Andre is killing every time he got the mic; he says something that makes you go wow.

If I could secure that production deal it would make me work ten times as hard because I know they are going to come with the lyrics and I do not want to disappoint them on my end.

That’s what’s up. Is there anything else you want to let the industry know before we get out of here?

I felt that one of the reasons I won is because I was diverse. I play pop, R&B, and hip-pop. I am trying to do everything. I am really trying to be a producer. So just look out for my stuff and keep checking for me.

Congratulations to The Letter “C” and continued success in all he does.

Myspace.com/CYOUNGPO Istandardproducers.com/the_Letter_C

Pedro Mojica iStandard Producer Showcase:

B

eat battles are becoming a popular way to be discovered as a producer...being at the right place at the right time helps too. If you are one of many trying to make it in this field, then you must attend producer showcases such as iStandard’s Beast of the Beats. Jay Hatch and Di Napoli promote an arena for promising producers to finally realize their dreams and receive critical feedback from the knowledgeable body of judges including Pete Rock, David Lighty and Just Blaze.

We thank everyone who came out in support of the 2008 Beast of the Beats.

Congrats to The Letter “C” and to all who in my ears played great music .... some advice from me -You do not have to be the greatest and most colorful character to participate in these events. Just be yourself and let your music do the rest. Shout out to Richera Jones. Peace, till the next event.

9 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

7th Annual Dynamic Producer Conference 3030 Publishing Panel Real Talk Producer Panel

Stacks Publishing Panel Part I

I

t was the 7th Annual Dynamic Producer Conference, an intense marathon of workshops and networking opportunities spread over three days. It’s the vision of founder Felisha Booker to provide a foundation for a producer to launch a career and provide critical and timely information while extending his or her resources.

Producer’s Edge enjoyed being a sponsor along with Native Instruments and IK Multimedia. We get behind the scenes with newly appointed Executive Director of Dynamic Producer James “Jim Bond” Llonch.

We have Felisha explaining the inspiration behind Dynamic Producer, but please elaborate on the current focus and what this conference is meant to do for the Dynamic Producer organization? The overall focus of Dynamic Producer is to give our producers access to the tools they need to be successful within the music industry. When we put our conferences and seminars together, we want our producers to get inspiration, education, insight and the best networking opportunities possible.

We invite industry guests that are not only going to be able to provide these things, but will also be accessible to our producers.

Outside of the conferences and seminars, we also provide other avenues to get these tools online. Your music is only a small part of what it really takes to make it in the industry. If you need those other things, you need to join Dynamic Producer!

There is a huge crush of producer profile websites where tracks are displayed and made available for purchase. DP seems more squarely focused on placements. Why is there such an emphasis on opportunities and not the commercial aspect of selling beats?

10 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

Part II

As an organization, I think we want to focus on sticking with what we are already doing well, while improving it and taking it to a whole new level. No matter what you do, there is always room for improvement. That being said, we have never provided opportunities for our producers to sell tracks directly through Dynamic Producer. There are a ton of sites where you can load up and sell tracks. So I think that market is already over saturated a bit. Not to knock any other site’s hustle, but it really doesn’t take a special site or web pages to sell tracks.

You need to take the initiative and get out and network and do things on your own. Too many producers assume that just joining certain websites covers them as far as their battle plan for breaking into the biz goes. It does not. Sure it’s cool to make a little money from your bedroom, but you need to start building your network and building relationships in person.

Those sites may be a good look for non US producers and hermit producers though.

Obviously we see any money spent as an investment, but could you tell us a little bit about the DP pricing scheme and what value comes with my membership?

Basic membership is currently $39 annually. That includes music submission to our industry opportunities (open projects we submit music to), access to our members only forum and members only events. By the time this is published we should have added monthly free sounds, a quarterly music catalog blast (where the best tracks from our industry opts and other submissions are blasted out to ALL of our industry contacts) and the sample of the month club. There are also a few things we will add, but I don’t want to speak on them just yet! One of the things that I think is most valuable in Dynamic Producer, which can’t be advertised is the chance to reach out to other

Dynamic Producer member’s who have already broken into the industry. Our members are usually more than willing to give advice to other Dynamic Producer members. This is something that is incredibly invaluable when you are trying to come up in the game.

While a fair listen is a prerequisite to any placement, what resources are in place to ensure my music has a real chance of being selected? Is there a screening process or filter at any point?

Most of the time there will be a screening process. How strict that process is depends on the relationship we have with the particular contact we are submitting the music to. Usually with newer contacts, we are very strict with the quality of music we submit. First impressions are the most important ones. So after we solidify a relationship, we may open up the gates with track submissions and submit more music. It’s all about building the relationship first. I want Dynamic Producer to be seen within the industry as a source for consistently high quality music. I want an artist, manager or A&R, when they get an open project, to call us first. So that means that we need to show them that we can put together catalogs of music with no weak tracks.

I’ve seen the listing for placement opportunities on the Dynamic Producer forum. Where should I be – skill-wise and how much producer experience would I need before being able to make the most of these open doors?

One major problem with producers is that, no matter what levels they are actually at, they think their music is hot.

99.99% of producers are guilty of that, me included. So you need outside views on your music.

You have to have music that random people you never met will feel. Just because your friends or some people on a forum say you have some good music, it doesn’t mean you are at the place you need to be musically. The thing producers have to realize is that you aren’t competing with the worst tracks on albums, you are competing with the best tracks. A lot of the time, if you hear a wack beat on an album, there is a reason that beat is on the album. Whether it’s politics, someone getting a kickback or the producer is the artist’s cousin or whatever. So you have to have music that stands above all of that. If your name doesn’t stand out on its own, your track needs to be the ONE track out of the 500 that an A&R or manager may listen to in a day that stands out. Of course if politics aren’t a problem for you, you can always become a politician.

We’ve heard over and over again the importance of mixing and sound quality when it comes to that first impression.

What are some practical tips a producer can use to step his or her sound game up?

The one thing a producer should understand is that improving your mixes doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time. Don’t focus on completely changing your mixing process right away.

When you learn a little here and there, eventually they add up.

You should read as much as you can from books, magazine

articles, websites, engineer’s interviews. Even if you don’t fully comprehend what you are reading the first time, eventually you will start to grasp the concepts. I think I finally learned how exactly all the settings on a compressor work a couple days ago.

Mixing can be a complicated thing, but it doesn’t have to be. You can just learn the basics and it will make a big difference in your tracks.

As far as actual tips, one of my favorites is using a high pass filter (google any terms you don’t know) or shelf eq to take out the low frequencies of anything that doesn’t need them. In Hip Hop, the low end is key. So you want to give your basslines and bass drums room to breathe on the low end. If you have some instruments like strings or piano, they have low frequencies but they might not need any of those low frequencies to sound good, so get rid of them. Also as a very basic tip, make sure your library of sounds is on point. A lot of people start with shitty drums & sounds... and you can’t carve rotten wood.

Many of your members have used the DP system to jump start their careers. Please end this with a brief story on what your association with DP has done for you and where you intend to take Dynamic Producer next.

I’ve been producing for almost 9 years and I have been a producer member of Dynamic Producer for 7 years. I started off attending our 2nd Conference, just like any of our other producers.

I didn’t know anyone in the biz & I was just trying to get my foot in the door. During that conference I met Felisha Booker, Dynamic Producer’s founder and President. After that conference, I was really going all out, grinding on the streets trying to break in the biz. Felisha saw this & thought I had some good music, so she took me under her wing. She introduced me to a bunch of industry people, helped set up meetings, gave advice and generally helped me out when I needed it. Soon after I finally got my foot in the door and have worked with a bunch of artists in the biz. I also started helping Felisha out whenever I was needed and giving her opinions on Dynamic Producer matters from a producer’s perspective. Eventually we developed a friendship and a mutual respect on a professional level. I have recently been appointed as Executive Director of Dynamic Producer. So I will now oversee our day to day operations, membership benefits and our various events. I am also looking for the next batch of Dynamic Producer members who have that same drive and talent for me to take under my wing, like Felisha did for me.

Like I said earlier, I want to establish Dynamic Producer as a brand within the music industry, where anyone who needs quality music can reach out and call us. Outside of that, I want to get all of our producers as many opportunities as possible to be heard, get educated, become better producers and become better people.

And of course I need to sell more of my music, haha!

We thank Jim for his time. You can get involved with Dynamic Producer and utilize its resources by visiting DynamicProducer.com.

11 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

“It’s not your tools; it’s how much control you exert over your tools.”

Drum Works This is certainly the easiest time to be a part of the music production community. Manufacturers are turning out high quality modules; numerous sound libraries are available, while software developers continue to add features and functionality to the host sequencer. We have an abundance of seminars, conferences, showcases and more resources available than ever before. Finding how you should work and what you should work with now requires a research period and an honest look inward. We consider the Drum Works: dope beats, funky rhythms, slick kits, broken loops and bangin hits.

This is tribal music. Make no mistake about it. We are not here to stroke our beards and sit in a classroom studying charts, graphs and mathematical equations and formulas.

This is the real world of closing your eyes and feeling your way through your production decisions. In this issue we will focus on the various performance and programming techniques, along with the physical tools and philosophical approaches, dedicated to finding your perfect groove.

My introduction to Drum Works came with the critique from one of my early mentors Dinky Bingham. The listening session was a much needed confidence booster and reality check from a platinum producer and musician whose credits include work with New Edition, Jaheim, Chaka Khan, Zhané, Paula Abdul and Bobby Brown. Every producer needs the advice of a trusted source to realize the difference between receiving advice and receiving the benefit of experience. I highlighted the phrase Trusted Source because it’s important to be able to follow advice and even instructions without always fully understanding the underlying reason WHY. Maybe I need to tighten the skin a little. It’s the early days of this sampling sport and the only viable source of drum sounds were modules with generic rock & roll sounds or

vinyl samples. So I chopped and looped and snatched hits to make my kits which led Dink to say…”You need better drums.”

I came back with well, look at what you use compared to what I have which prompted Dink to come to my humble home studio and demonstrate what was possible with entry level gear. Ouch and wow. He said It’s not your tools; it’s how much control you exert over your tools.

Since then I have dedicated myself to the study of drums in a Drum Works fashion. It’s a necessary change using drums that fit to creating a rhythm track capable of lifting your composition. Consider creating variations, not because it’s the 8th bar, but because you have an idea about highlighting a moment and accenting a flow. It’s one level to work towards getting my drums to [insert adjective] like [insert famous producer] and another to make a personal decision to elevate your Drum Work to become the name in the brackets. So, the question is What will your Drum Work sound like by the end of this issue? We hope the answer is Exactly how you want it to. See you inside.

It’s the drums, man. Your Drum Work, in many cases, will be the most important aspect of your music production task. It may be the inspirational starting point of a composition or the closing element when it comes to tying up the loose ends of your track. In some tracks it may be your only contribution. What drums you put behind that sample. Your Drum Work stands alone as the only player on the team that can, well… play the game all by himself. Just drums and nothing more than an emcee spittin over your drums and that’s a record.

AudioRealism Drum Machine Virtual instrument Step Sequencer PC VST, Mac OS X, AU $164.54 Available as electronic download

Loads Sysex patterns from the TR-909 and Rebirth-338 MIDI Learn for external MIDI device control Can load samples

Software Demo Griffin Avid Patches and Drum Kits additional sounds, effects and samples

Foreplay

T

he old school sound is very new right now. The classic tones of the legendary Roland TR series are being multi-sampled, simulated, bundled and re-bundled. Stepping up to the plate with a modeling

of three classics is the AudioRealism Drum Machine or ADM. It’s a singular software powered solution for the sounds of the TR808, 909 and 606. Your sample collection of analog drum hits won’t go to waste either as ADM is capable of loading up your own sounds and further extending its usefulness as a central percussion source.

Stage Play and Playwright

The GUI simulates the top down view of a step-sequencer driven drum machine, including a modeled top panel showing a working row of (signal routing/mute and solo) audio ports. Below this are the Instrument Controls and on the bottom is the familiar step sequencer with its Pattern Control section. The ADM sports a simple interface with controls laid out in a logical fashion. Let’s take a look at some of the features unique to ADM and not so obvious at first glance.

Cream skin variation of GUI...creamy!

13 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

Play it Forward Sound sculpting is done within the Instrument/Parameters section.

Clicking on the name brings up a choice of machine sources or custom samples.

Note: The Tuning parameter is an extra parameter not found on a standard 808, this parameter controls the pitch of the bass drum which can go below sub bass in its minimum position. To the far right is the Pattern Controlled FX. The PCF sets the amount of filter modulation (when activated), cutoff, filter bandwidth, attack and decay. Mangle adds a soft and pleasing distortion. The power here lies in automating changes in the PCF for different steps in the sequencer.

After creating my drum pattern I select the instrument part and engage the PCF. Now I choose the step to be edited and tweak away.

Running the sequence causes the dials to move and reflect the individual settings for each step.

This is a common technique for subtle differences in tone and can also be used to create bass lines by automating the pitch of each activated step.

Pattern Play and Played Out Patterns The Pattern Control section sports the expected controls for steps, sync options (lock to host or run independent), groove adjustment via shuffle and flam for note repeats. Mode button…when

ADM operates in pattern mode the incoming MIDI triggers the sequencer and internal patterns using the piano roll of the host. Note Mode triggers the individual hits- thus turning ADM into a sound module. Inspiration arrives from the pattern button which brings up a menu with many options for generating new patterns and pattern parts. You can expand or shrink the pattern by inserting or subtracting a blank step between each step. Swap and duplicate steps.

Shift entire patterns one step to the right or left. Randomize entire patterns or just individual parts.

Endgame So how does it sound?

Well, let’s say they have A/B comparisons on their site and I couldn’t tell the difference. Even the users on their forum are posting tests and I must admit the offerings here sound better than some sample sets I’ve used!

Is it a perfect copy or a replacement? They say: “…the goal of ADM is not to sound exactly like its hardware predecessor, but to capture the essence of the machines. Everyone has their own idea of what these machines should sound like and it’s very difficult to make it sound like every single [users’ expectation].”

It’s a worthy goal to put sought after tools in the hands of producers seeking to merge the past and the present together. This they do and do well while adding additional features and functionality. So the next time you think about logging in to your paypal account and downloading another Roland-olddrum-machine-samplepack-from-a-

14 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

website-using-GIFs take time to pause and consider picking up a copy of ADM and ending your quest there. Install the demo and listen with your eyes closed. You owe it to your production.

Be sure to visit their website for demos, patterns, skins and additional resources. AudioRealism.se Also available from AudioRealism: AudioRealism Semi Modular (ASM) Bass Line PRO $251.15 AudioRealism BassLine2 (ABL2) $164.54 AudioRealism Bass Pro $251.15 Special packages include Bass Line 2 + ADM 251.15 and the Complete Bundle $424.35 We talked with AudioRealism owner/ programmer Mike Janney for his background details and the origin story.

We jump to Sweden…

I

n 2003 after graduating from university I was looking for DSP programming work around here.

Unfortunately there were not many openings at the time, but I had released this small freeware Rebirth clone called Freebee and people were emailing me asking to do a VST port. Once I got about 30 emails I decided to just do it, never having even used a VST plug-in myself. Six months later the first plug-in ABL was ready for testing.

Most of my stuff is based on cloning audio generators from classic gear.

I own or have owned 202s, 303s, 808s and 909s.

The interface of any production tool is a very important consideration.

What issues did you focus on in creating the ADM GUI? When making the GUI I typically do a prototype layout and then send it off to the graphics designer, usually Yannick Bonnefoy from Beautiful Screen [also does design work for Arturia and Digidesign], who renders a mockup and then we bounce the design between us until both sides are satisfied. We try to make the GUIs quite simple without

further editing which tells me that they do not want to be locked down to any specific method.

What should I be aware of when trying to avoid stiff and static drum patterns?

Use shuffle! Also use the PCF to automate the volume or various parameters of the pattern. Oh and use at least one other drum plug-in to overlay some sounds to get some diversity. too many controls on screen at once.

We place some functionality in the sub-menus to extend your choices without having to remake the whole GUI layout.

What drives Audio Realism to move in this direction of classic gear and why do you feel the need to bring a vintage sound to modern productions? What concerns do you face as a business among the many software choices available to producers?

We respond mainly to feature or product requests that users express. I am interested in any sounds that are ‘good’ and it’s a nice challenge as a DSP programmer to try to figure out how these sounds work and what makes them wanted. Also, many companies have tried to clone these sounds but few are successful so there is a sense of competition to it that interests me.

Could you tell us a little bit about the step sequencer and beyond the nostalgic inspiration- why has this approach to drum sequencing survived among the linear, real time and pattern based work flows?

I think pattern based step sequencing is popular because it’s easy to get something good going quickly and improve upon it. A lot of users want to start out with step sequencing and later export the patterns to MIDI for

Tell us a little bit about the inspiration for the PCF (Pattern Controlled FX)?

The PCF is inspired by the Pattern Controlled Filter in Rebirth, except our PCF can automate any of the sound controlling parameters and it also has a filter which it can also control on its own. It has a Pattern which can be used to trigger the filter and which steps are affected by the PCF. The FX section also has a mangler with selectable amount applied.

From a sound design point of view, what considerations did you have in choosing between a sample-based solution and a pure synthesis engine?

There was not much choice really, as I am into writing DSP algorithms and not into sampling. I’m sure good results can be achieved with pure sampling however synthesis has its benefits, for example the noise source for the snares and toms is ever changing and the cymbals have a moving quality to them that never sounds right with samples. That said I am in no way opposed to sampling, it’s just a different way of solving the same problem.

You also included the ability to load samples. With 3 different drum machines included, why was this done? Why not just expand the series with additional kits from different drum machines? Well given the amount of time it takes to make a single drum generator sound right it would take a lot of effort and time cloning sounds of every piece of kit out there. It took about 2 years to do all the generators in ADM (admittedly some generators were rushed and still need work).

But ADM is written in a modular fashion and there is nothing stopping us from adding more generators as they are completed.

Will there ever be a standalone version that can run independent of any host?

Beyond the strong reviews, what type of feedback have you received from your user base and what plans do you have for updates and future releases?

There are no plans on making stand-alone versions. If we move our stuff to a framework that makes it possible to do stand-alone versions without any additional overhead we will do it of course. As for future products, I am thinking about and designing the next version of ASM (the long awaited update to ABLPro).

“We have a fair amount of users that have the real gear and want something more portable to bring on the road, or just sketch out ideas with and then use the real gear for their releases. Also I think people just want the same sounds that they grew up hearing, and these are classic sounds so why not use them. Anything that inspires the user to create is good in my book.”

15 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

16 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

by the product numbers you’d guess the Roland SP-555 sits comfortably between the SP-404 Sampler and 606 Sampling Workstation.

Roland SP-555

Drum Loops processed through SP FX engine Samples of Adobe Loopology and Big Fish Audio material rendered through SP-555

Roland SP-555: Creative Sampler with Performance Effects ~$595USD D BEAM and V-LINK

Performance Tool played for Production

L

et’s face it. DJs get the best toys. You’ve seen the demonstration where turntables are man-handled while overhead a huge screen displays tracking software. Man that looks cool. Now Roland has seen fit to slide them a box of samples, a sampling box, an effect box with XLR mic input and phantom power, USB computer connectivity and support for up to 2GB of compact flash.

In the hands of a DJ or Turntablist, you’d expect to hear samples triggered and effects applied to the voice of the host in real time. They might capture

the live output from the mixer and loop a segment of the mix and apply effects or build a live composition by combining snippets from different records and samples preloaded into the SP-555.

Right before I bumped the table and made the record skip, I saw his hands wave over the D-beam controller and operate as a monophonic synthesizer (think lead), a filter control or another pad trigger.

Getting In the Act

The key words that make this an attractive buy for producers are Live Performance. We know this is codespeak for a tool that is easy to use and fast in operation. We expect an intuitive interface and enough visual indicators to guide your workflow with just a glance. All of this portable power usually comes at the expense of long term studio-use features, expandability and versatility. It’s nothing a workaround can’t fix! If you went solely

Surface Scene The upper left of the unit houses the controls for Mic and input level.

Below this are the effect selection controls and to the right lies the array of pads and triggering options such as (sample) Hold and Roll (the ubiquitous note repeat).

Round the back are RCA ins and outs, MIDI ports and USB. You’ll find a pedal jack which comes in handy as a sample-start trigger while your hands are occupied. Every button on the SP-555 is backlit. That makes a huge difference in workflow as the next available task or expected destination also lights depending on what function was engaged. Just pulled in a sample?

All the available pads to dump it to light up. Switching to Pattern Select lights

17 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

up all the pads with recorded patterns.

Over-acting. The rotaries have a nice firm feel and the pads will be familiar to anyone who’s spent some time with the Fantom series. The unit itself is perfectly balanced between a respectable weight, sturdiness and portability. It arrives loaded with a bank of sounds that, while usable, betray the main aim of a sampler. They were the first thing to go.

Enter Sound Stage Right

The internal ROM banks of the 555 hold 32 samples or 5 minutes of 16bit 44100 sample time (doubled for MONO). The additional compact flash banks (8 slots lettered C-J) use the CompactFlash card and have a capacity of 128 samples or 386 minutes on a 2GB card. PC hook up. I installed the drivers and Wave Converter software to connect the 555 to my DAW (Sonar LE is bundled) and transferred a custom sample library to the soundbank slots via a card reader you’ll need to snag. The SP-555 now shows up as an additional audio input and destination. This means you can track an entire session- including

vocals through the SP-555!

I expected a more robust interface (showing sample names for instance) for the Wave Converter, but it proved enough to get the job done.

doing short work, but that small niggle is not really an issue since we’d be dropping that captured loop on to one of the pads for additional processing and long term storage anyway. I’ve been using a foot pedal to trigger the sample start and dropping the captured phrase down into a fresh pattern. It’s a very fast system that works well.

Action!

Affected Effects

The SP-555 uses pattern based recording (without a song mode) for sequencing. You’ll create parts of a track and trigger them one after the other in real time to create a full arrangement. I suggest using an entire bank of pads (16 slots) to hold your composition- starting out with the basic skeleton of a track and overdubbing additional elements as you move higher in pad number. This is an easy way to organize your patterns and becomes an easy workaround for the lack of a dedicated mute pad/sample function.

The SP-555 can be configured to sync with your MIDI host and can function as slave or master. From its pattern based approach you will not be laying down multi-channel MIDI sequences [in a linear fashion], but you will still want to couple this sample box with another sound module to really open up your portable studio options. It’s nothing new to use pads instead of keys and in this scenario, capture the performance as an audio sample.

Cut!

Sampling is a straight forward affair with options for Autostart, Count In and capturing audio at a specific Tempo. This BPM Sampling sets the end point of the recorded audio to match the pattern length. When using the SP-555 as my studio away from the studio I used Loop Capture to add my live playing on top of the internal patterns.

Pressing Line In channels the streaming audio from the Ins and when finished capturingthe loop repeats. There is a small timing gap which causes the loop to drift over time- it wouldn’t be noticeable to a DJ 18 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

The SP-555 has 37 effects ranging from the usual suspects like reverb, EQ and compression to unique offerings like the Isolator, DJFX Looper and Subsonic. I’ve been using the LO-FI, Noise GENerator and Bit Crasher for sound design and Radio Tuner following Amp Sim for total sonic destruction.

Only one effect is available at a time although you can run multiple samples through a singular effect. Re-sampling is the workaround to achieving a chain of effects. You can hear all 37 effects applied on this issues DVD-ROM and watch numerous video of the SP-555 in action.

Curtain Call

The SP-555 is loaded with features meant to enhance a DJ set or add spice to a live mix. It is the combination of features and interface that make the SP-555 an attractive purchase for a producer looking for a portable rig that is perfectly cast between sampler and session master. I’ve been having a blast with the SP-555 and loading the pads with sound clips, bass drops and even sustained notes to create melodies. With the ability to stream samples direct from a CompactFlash card or quickly stream into a DAW, the SP-555 is rapidly becoming my sampler of choice in the studio. That folder of samples you never look in might be given new life by the 555 and its array of effects. I’ll end by saying the SP-555 is a great supporting actor and its list of features compliment any performing troupe and if given a chance just might steal the show. While surfing the net for additional resources I stumbled across sp-forums.com. Stop in for a chat with other SP series users and pick up on tips, tricks and other support. www.RolandUS.com

is. The final groups of tracks contain loops of the old school R&B/dance music variety. The loops themselves run long enough to fully develop from an intro bridge and hook. Some of these strings can last up to 3 minutes in length and does make me wish the collection was made from smaller loops with some kind of tempo indication in a plain wave format. My favored workflow was to use the CDs’ string of individual hits for sound selection. Once I chose the general tone, it was easy to fish out the exact hit(s) from full loop. It would also be light work to pull up Propellerhead Recycle and git to choppin.

Blister Pak Audio/Wav

Big Fish Audio

Classic Sounds Series: TR 909, TR 808, The Beat Machine, Vintage R and Blister Pak $99.95

“I just can’t mess with software, dawg” He didn’t mean sequencers like Pro Tools or the little nick-picky, minute detail, technicality of my hardware piece having a software brain controlling its internal functions. He meant for vintage electronic sounds. The idea of learning a new interface or running a host along with his drum machine was just not an attractive workflow.

He wanted raw hits to build classic kits. Obviously, you can load these sounds up in anything that reads wave files, but I think you can see where we’re going.

As I’ve said before, if you hunt around on the Internet you find lots of sites with various samples of these classic machines.

What usually separates one collection from another is the care and attention to detail during the capture process including the quality of the equipment used. Since The Beat Machine is an exhaustive library of, well, any significant drum machine going backward and Vintage R is a rhythm based offering of TR and TB loops, we’ll focus on the packages geared towards building your foundation of basic electronic drum sounds.

TR 808/909 Audio/Wav

I had a genius sound design moment. I was going to buy a bunch of Roland TR units and sample each one with the knobs in different positions. It was going to be the definitive collection since I was going to cover every tweakable possibly the hardware owner could ever have. Pure genius. I called specialist Mike Acosta from Roland to break the big news and he dryly said “Dude, that’s been done before.” Oh. Yeah, I knew that…um, made any new beats on the MV? Both products have cda files that roughly lay out the same way and give you over 60 tracks of individual hits as a string. For the 808, tracks 1 through 46 are unprocessed and captured raw from the TR. Tracks 47 to 58 are processed and stand as your best shot for being dropped directly into your unit and used as

Disc one is purely comprised of cda audio tracks. Some are created by various rhythmic loops lasting up to a minute and others are strings of single hits. The sounds slant towards electronic music with many of the samples being treated with reverb/delay and distortion. The hurdle with this approach is cataloguing all the useful sequences. I dragged the entire CD’s contents to my hard drive and began the process, but the task of creatively and sensibly naming all the different bits wore me out. I chose to keep it as an inspirational source that I will dig through when the time is right as opposed to adding it to my mental Sound Rolodex.

Disc two breaks down into standard categories including Collections (themed sounds), hihats, kicks, percussion FX, snares etc. It’s over 4,000 hits- meaning over 500 different snares and 500 different kicks. The kits are grouped in individual folders with appropriately descriptive names. Let’s just say there is no confusing the zippy, zappy sounds from a kit named ticks and fleas with the club friendly booty kits. The Tonal category gives you a nice mix of usable accents. They could be pitched and played as an instrument, dropped as a perc and some could even serve as the catchy sound that comes in and out. The phrases are great loops that would suit the purpose of adding interest to a shell track. They are cut to perfect loops, but lack any tempo information. Blister Pak gives the producer the necessary tools to add electronic character to his drum arsenal.

Overall, Big Fish Audio has given you the recorded sound of the TR series in just about every way possible. For the producer looking to expand his sound collection and Drum Work into the realm of vintage pieces; the classic series is an easy win. It has samples that are ready to go and raw sounds waiting for your own customizations. As I sit here loading the Roland SP-555 with these samples I see a paradox. I think I have another genius idea, but I’ll keep this one to myself. See you in the lab.

19 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

Words by Will Loiseau

F

eedback, both diagnostic and elaborative from beat makers, musicians, producers, engineers and music lovers whose opinions I value has been essential to my creative development.

Even the best musical ears can find it strenuous to judge sound patterns objectively after countless repetitive auditions.

MY DRUMS NEED ZIP The reoccurring theme was my instrumentals were creatively refreshing and engaging but the drums lacked the nuances of natural human timing. I was told over and over that my production was contaminated with the dreadful “16-step sequencer sound”. My competitive nature saw this as a challenge to drive toward my full potential of expressing my natural rhythm. Drums are the groundwork of this genre and if they’re lacking then the other compositional components won’t excel.

I was well aware of the drum machines that were considered industry standard and most of the producers whose work I had admired over the years swore by them. I took a stab and experimented with a few, but I just didn’t develop any level of comfort when scrolling through the menus. These machines just ended up under blankets of dust in the far corner of the studio. I’ve even tried using keyboards to trigger my drum sounds with some decent results but I knew I could get more out of my drum work.

I had heard about the Zendrum and after seeing it up close at the annual AES convention, I was even more intrigued. It came in a wide range of shapes and colors. It’s striking in appearance. It has an oil finish, wood designs and unique triggers that gave me the impression it would be fun to use. I tried out the Zendrum Articulating Programmer, a desktop unit that sits on a studio table and stands out like a piece of exotic furniture. Tapping on the circular, plastic pads took me back to junior high when some friends and I would mimic beats we heard on the

20 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

radio shows by banging on lunchroom tables in the cafeteria.

ZAP FORWARD The ZAP features 19 shock-mounted, velocity sensitive pads that are way more touch sensitive than they appear and offer more of an organic feel than anything I’ve ever worked with besides an actual drum set. The density of the wood base enhances how the trigger pads are isolated from each other and yet provides sensitive response when played as one large trigger array. The way in which you can hold your finger on a pad for a second and listen to a drum roll or hit the side of another pad and hear changes in the timbre of a sound is what gives the feel of playing a live instrument. With the hexagonal arrangement of the pads I was creating patterns that I hadn’t made before.

Production gear has to be straight to the point so I can let my creative juices flow without wasting time troubleshooting and battling equipment issues. I’d rather make music than study complex

instruction manuals. The hookup and controls on the ZAP are as simple as it gets. The MIDI cable plugs into the MIDI out slot and goes to the MIDI in of the sound card or interface. One end of the power supply connects to the rear panel and the other in an outlet. The power switch turns the unit on and off. Once the ZAP and sound source are set to the same MIDI channel it’s ready to play. The 4-way

with other sound modules by matching the transmitting and receiving channels.

16 note map Set Ups (or memory banks) onboard the ZAP can be edited to melodic presets and recalled in mid-performance for user chord changes and scales. When you’re in the numeric screen of (Up), you can then toggle between the map numbers and change keys without sending channel/program change messages.

ZENDRUM DRUM CHOICES

The Zendrum ZX is the original Zendrum design with 24 triggers, made to be worn with a strap like a guitar; however, the ZX can also be used on a desktop or across your lap.

The ZAP is a compact stationary MIDI controller designed with a smaller footprint specifically to fit in tight spaces and studio environments.

control pad is used to select and edit functions. The momentary sustain switch is used to change the sustain pedal or the momentary sustain switch polarity. Reversing the polarity of the momentary sustain switch (PL) from 0 to 1 effectively turns it into cc #64 choke and lets slower attack sounds and loops play all the way through- until you press it to stop them. The user can change MIDI notes by scrolling through numerical values and design their own setup pattern by assigning a sound to each trigger pad. Changing to another function will ensure that edits are saved in the unit. The Midi Channel select allows the Zendrum to communicate

ZEN SNAPPED Once I got started I was beginning to gain confidence in this being the tool that would allow me to optimize my increasing drum library and loosen up the “stiffness” that the listeners were talking about. The shuffle options that many software sequencer programs offer was just enough to keep my interest but felt too digital. The ZAP in a nutshell is a durable hardware unit that fuels inspiration to conquer new techniques by integrating the user’s choice of software. I would just open up my favorite sequencer program, press record and start banging away.

The Zendrum Laptop (ZLT) is ergonomic, ambidextrous, worn with a strap or held in a snare drum stand, on a desk, or in your lap. Same electronics and price as a Zendrum ZX, with one extra trigger. Only 18” wide.

Profiled in issue 02

ZAP WRAPPED The Zendrum ZAP is revolutionary in its simplicity and effectiveness in articulating a producer’s sonic arsenal.

Its appearance is what initially grabs you like: “What the #$@! is that?” Then the quick trigger response of the pads and the density felt when your fingers hit is what amazes you and pulls you in closer. The easy functionality of the unit is what ultimately gives you that optimal level of satisfaction. This will work wonders for expressing multisampled percussion software and can be used for creating new drum patterns from scratch or layering existing sound patterns. The ZAP just may be the element that your production studio has been missing. More information at Zendrum.com

21 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

Spectrasonics Stylus RMX REALTIME GROOVE MODULE Grooves created using Xpanded Library and Classic Stylus RMX material. $299 and $399USD for Xpanded version AU/VST/RTAS

Spent Cartridge

Y

ou can’t do any serious talk about software drum modules and libraries without Spectrasonics Stylus RMX being mentioned. It’s mostly referenced as a loop library and certainly it functions well as one, but the real power lies below the clean interface and takes some digging to uncover. What’s most noticeable is the sound design work from company owner and visionary Eric Persing. I did scratch my head over hearing unfamiliar breaks since I do have a serious collection. The samples sound authentic- and they should since Spectrasonics have gone the extra mile of pressing their original drum work to vinyl and then sampling it into the SAGE engine.

[Hence the well-named Stylus - GA]

Multi-mix mode screenshot

Needle in the Groove Stylus RMX defaults to Multi Mode on launch and it’s here I discovered an alternative method of creating rhythm tracks using construction kits. Multi Groove Patches contain all the elements of a drum track as loops isolated for mixing and matching. There are tracks of soloed snare/kick/hat/perc patterns and you get the entire ensemble as a single entity followed by several variations including intros and fills. And at the same time, you have each slice available as a oneshot so the possibilities are endless. By combining loops and stacking rhythms, you will create drum patterns beyond your normal output.

23 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

Needle in a Haystack You have multiple ways to organize the massive library around your chosen workflow. The Core library breaks down into the Groove Elements; hosting all the loops, organized by tempo and sync-able to your host. The Sound Menu holds over 10,000 one-shots. These are mapped across your keyboard and have submenus beyond the regular single drum hits including cinematic soundscapes, special effects and even orchestra stabs. The Kit Module has 3,000 drum and cymbal loops organized by type. This mode is best used in conjunction with a drum machine or other triggering device.

Edit Page with Edit Groups visible

Tonearm

CHAOS DESIGNER

Hot Beats on a Platter The Chaos Designer is well suited to tackle the usual limitations of working with short loops or static pattern based drum programming. Variations, interesting variations. It can be used in subtle ways to add additional hits or in extreme doses to mangle a loop by repeating hits and reversing slices.

Range will dictate how much of the loop is affected and the vertical faders will control the intensity. Buzz, which stutters the audio stream, can be used in moderation for fast note repeats.

And if this beat-freak-fest isn’t enoughyou can capture most of your MIDI performance data and export it to your host for further editing. This is another area where using Edit Groups becomes immensely powerful for twisting out your drum tracks. Although MIDI Learn works in every area, it shines especially bright on the Chaos Designer page. There’s nothing like flipping beats in real time using only your ears and a robust hardware controller.

Lathe of SAGE Xpanders You are given two methods of shaping sounds directly; the Edit and FX pages. The Edit Page hosts the filters, LFOs and ADSR. I look at this as the major tone shaping area and usually start my sonic sculpting work on this page. It’s intuitive and fast. Sitting behind the speaker mesh are the super useful Edit Group controls. These allow you to mute the individual slices of any drum loop or isolate them for processing by any of the many sound shaping/mangling tools in RMX. The FX Page works like a hardware rack bus system where effects are created on channels and then dialed in for the chosen element(s). The effects are quite superb and it’s a shame they can’t be used away from Stylus RMX. Vintage tones are the order of the day and each module hosts a bevy of presets in case you’re a little rusty on the surprisingly deep knobbage layout.

24 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

One of the greatest features of Stylus RMX is also its only drawback: the stellar sound design of Eric Persing.

Every loop, every hit every element has a character and tone that has the potential to define your track. What if you want material that goes beyond classic vinyl loops?

These Xpanders have been around for a minute for $99 each, Diamond Point but Spectrasonics has seen fit to bundle all five for an amazing You know what Spectrasonics has done to the pad with value at $399. Each maintains the Stylus system of having Atmosphere and Bass with Trilogy. Now it’s a three-peat construction kits in Multi patches, suites and an elements library. with Stylus RMX. Re-energized with the Xpander package, Let’s get an overview it’s a complete drum and break beat workstation that goes beyond the rhythm track and ventures into the territory Backbeat: This package contains live acoustic drum grooves of sound design. There are a few companies that can angled for pop and rock production. It’s cross-over material. I find rightfully boast their product line is all you need for music it works very well as a layering foundation behind many of the production. Spectrasonics is one of them. more distinctive drum sounds. Played by an all-star cast including Gregg Bissonette (Santana, Joe Satriani, Don Henley) Bob Sage; Proceeding from wisdom; well judged; Wilson (Liquid Grooves, George Benson, The Crusaders) John shrewd; well adapted to the purpose.

Ferraro (Larry Carlton, David Benoit, Albert Lee, Aaron Neville) S.A.G.E. Spectrasonics Advanced Groove Engine. What Eric Boseman (Liquid Grooves, James Newton-Howard). is it? They say: S.A.G.E. is an underlying core technology Retro Funk: The name says it all. The drums are a bit rougher/ that allows extensive real-time control, creation and drier and the grooves have much more swing and oomph as manipulation of grooves while retaining state-of-the-art expected. A highlight to note are all the conga, shaker and perc sound quality. loops. The fills make perfect intros.

Stylus RMX is best defined as a beat workhorse and to get a Liquid Grooves: If you are tired of using hats and shakers handle on all the workflow options, the program features then Liquid will provide a gold mine of ethnic percussion loops. a browser based help menu detailing all the functionality Its sounds are meant to take your production around the world. and in-depth video tutorials of every function and ability are Most of the material works well as starting points to build drum tracks around. I know you’re tired of starting from a 16th note repeat high-hat pattern.

Burning Grooves: This is a break beat paradise overseen by Eric Persing himself. Expect heavy drums meant to be dropped in your track as is. The construction kit is broken down into loops available on the Spectrasonics website. of the individual hits. This package features the talent of Abe Be sure to check out the New Orleans Strut; a mini Laboriel Jr (Paul McCartney, Sting, Seal, Chris Isaak, Steve Vai, xpander pack with all the proceeds going to the Habitat for Humanity’s relief effort in rebuilding homes for the victims k.d.lang, Jeff Beck, Joe Sample and Scritti Politti). in New Orleans and Mississippi. (http://www.habitat.org/).

Metamorphosis: This one is the most…unique. A heavy dose Spectrasonics did ask us not to make this part of the feature of sonic mayhem that can be used to add interest to a track or since it is a very personal matter to the company, but I become the topmost layer that defines it. You’ll find familiar loops think Producer’s Edge is credible enough to mention their mangled and processed into something else, flavorful elements sincere efforts without a commercial motive being implied. that are the catchy thang and some loops that just need to be… looped.

“We made the New Orleans Strut project purely for charity

Add Ad Infinitum The Sage Converter imports Rex Format loops into the Stylus RMX library. It’s a simple thing to open the utility and choose the loops and name your library. Many of the sample houses have Stylus ready content and Big Fish Audio has a dedicated RMX installer making the entire process a snap. I’ve built my own custom library of loops ready for Chaos play and created my own Multi Patches by slicing an entire track using Recycle.

and it was a big success. We’ve been able to build several homes with that project for Katrina families that really needed help! The library is still available as a download and we continue to send 100% of proceeds to the Habitat for Humanity hurricane relief fund.”

-Eric Persing; Creative Director Spectrasonics.

Katrina affected all of us and this is an opportunity to give back to a community that has done so much for music. The New Orleans Strut library is available in several formats including Groove Control® activated S.A.G.E. format for Spectrasonics Stylus RMX, Apple Loops format for Apple GarageBand/Logic users and also as standard audio loops in AIFF/WAV formats - which can be used in nearly any audio application. This special benefit collection is only $25 - Available exclusively as an Internet download (spectrasonics.net/neworleans/).

25 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

Fxpansion BFD 2 Acoustic Drum Production Workstation WIN/MAC Standalone VST/AU/RTAS $399USD Expansion Packs ~199-248USD

One Step backwards…

I

t started with a quest for an infinite source of acoustic drum samples. My gameplan was to run pristine hits through assorted vintage outboard gear and create my own signature set of drum sounds. Fxpansion put forth BFD as a 9gig acoustic drum module with extensive controls for mixing the sound and matching the kit pieces. All the kit heavyweights are there, including Ludwig, Pearl, Zildjan and Ayotte. The main selling point was the sound quality and attention to detail in both the capture process and the execution. Nice touches like a humanization slider and a Groove Librarian filled with jazzy patterns rounded out an awesome package. I picked up BFD1 and went to work.

Fast forward.

Two Leaps Forward

I was actually hoping Fxpansion didn’t make a BFD2. I didn’t want anyone making that bum sequel after a classic movie. Really, all they needed was a continuous supply of expansion packs. Don’t push it.

In a surprising move, BFD has taken the leap from drum module to drum production workstation by raising the bar in every category and incorporating its own piano roll sequencer. The multi-sample approach yields a 55gig monster library backed by a super-charged effects engine.

There’s a lot to see and do and too many features to list here. It’s a load of options for tonal adjustments and tweaks so instead, let’s take a walk-though tour of a common music production workflow using BFD2.

About Face

The main screen is clearly laid out with a Control Bar showing Page Buttons for moving from the default Kit page to the Mixer, Groove, Mapping and preferences pages. The topmost area displays a drum kit graphic where clicking on any piece auditions the sound and links to the kit piece itemized below. To the far right are the overall mix controls that is specific to the kit piece highlighted. I have the choice of mic mix, damping and articulations. On the bottom left are the master controls with vertical faders for tune, dynamics and humanize. Loading a kit is as simple as clicking on its picture and there are options to sort by name, keyword and kit size.

You might wonder why they would include such a robust system, but remember, BFD2 already has 18 kits to choose from [in multiple piece sizes from 10, 18 and 32-GA] not including the BFD1 kits or expansion packs like Jazz and Funk or B.O.M.B.

Mixed Feelings

I’ve got a great sounding kit, but I want to do some tweaking or sonic sculpting. Right off the bat, I may not be sure about the sounds I want so I load up a mixer preset to start from. The topmost area holds four different effect slots and below them are the Mixer channels. I have two different ways of looking at the channels. The default view 26 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

shows the usual controls like mute, solo, record-enable and phase flip.

To the far left is the FX/Sends button.

This brings up an alternate view where I see a stacked view of my effect slots where, if I need to, I can create an AUX channel for side-chaining. For starters I create an EQ slot and exaggerate the highs and lows of the entire kit. I use the channel strip below to create reverb and frequency shifting effects for just the snare. Each channel strip is representative of a mic so a snare has three strips (bottom and 2 tops) and a kick only needs two (inside and outside the drum). I can hear a bit of the snares fading reflections leaking into the kick drum channel. I remove it by lowering the Master Bleed on the far right, below the Distance and Width controls for the mics.

I actually had to stop writing this feature and make my own mixer presets. It’s just too easy to get lost creating custom drum kit sounds using the simple, but deep and powerful FX routing system.

I guarantee you will say aha! That’s how they got that sound at least once during your experimentations. What good is a drum kit if it aint grooving?

Feeling Groovy

Firstly, the definition of groove in BFD does not refer to MIDI patterns.

A Palette is a snapshot of the current state and settings for the groove engine. On opening the Groove Page, you’ll see across the top two horizontal fields. The first is a ruler displaying a timeline in bars and beats and the

second is the Velocity Lane- where the hits are edited by a vertical meter. Dead center is the Editor and tool bar where you can modify grooves or create them from scratch. Live MIDI data can be captured and notes can be drawn in.

Below this are the Groove Effects where all the humanization and quantization tweaks are made. Bottommost is the transport bar to trigger the play back of the groove engine. To the far right is the key palette with slots for 128 grooves consisting of drum patterns and fills- with each corresponding to a particular key on your MIDI controller.

Grooves can be exported as audio, MIDI and manipulated as individual groove parts for each kit element. Mix and match at will.

I pulled in a jazzy drum pattern, but thought it was a little too busy so I eliminated hits using the erase tool and moved notes around and then added more of my own to round out my original groove. I didn’t like the kick pattern so I used the palette expand to audition another groove and listened to its isolated kick drum pattern. Not before long I had a tight groove. I started with a Quantize Swing Template and adjusted the humanize timing and finally used humanize velocity to non-destructively finish off my groovy groove.

There is also the ability to import your own velocity mapped samples to create your own kits. If you only have 1 sample, like a single snare, BFD2 will automatically scale the amplitude of the sample to match your input velocity.

And likewise you export multi-channel mixdowns including aux channels and even ambient buses. Layering is done by linking kit pieces, It’s as simple as using the link tool to drag the cell of one kit piece into another. An arrow indicates a link and triggering one sample activates the second.

27 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

Stepping up to the Plate

Did you know?

I suffered slight cracks and pops at the initial install. A call over to Fxpansion gave me an FAQ link with optimal settings for slower machines. The list takes you to a Preferences screen capture where you’ll customize the engine and balance CPU load and performance by tweaking the number of velocity layers and rendering detail. This eliminated the cracks, but not the intermittent pops. The recommended specs suggest a fast, multi-core and low latency interface. Perhaps my 2.4 Intel has just reached its limits. Right before switching to the

Live drums are captured using different mics. Why? The sound of a drum being hit varies depending on the location of the microphone. The recordings from the close mics are mixed with the

workhorse B-machine, I tried switching to the native firewire

sound of the entire room as a stereo

ASIO drivers and it was smooth sailing ever since. I won’t

field (usually called ambience) and

kid you, this is another heavyweight product reminding you it’s time to move beyond playing around on your momma’s Dell. Let’s face it; the question isn’t about BFD2 being right for

combined to create the total drum track

you- it’s whether or not your production is ready for a worksta-

sound. Reverb wetness is caused by a

tion this serious. I’m trying hard to find something slick to say

mix leaning toward the highly reflective

about improving BFD2…some sort of addition or functionality Fxpansion might have overlooked. MIDI Learn…check. Drag and Drop…check. Okay, I was wrong before. I’m glad they made a BFD2. As long as this attention to detail and sonic integrity remains, they have my permission to make a BFD3.

28 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

stereo recordings and a dry sound focuses on the close mics.

Access Music

Virus TI Snow All the viral Infection you need in a tabletop box.

Y

ou must be aware of Access Music and their line of Synths by now. If you’ve never paused to play with one, driven by the physical appearance of the square box with lots of knobs, you’ll have your viral infection through hearing its patches in numerous songs. It’s another product line with inspiring sounds out the gate that need little more than a cursory tweaking to fit. The legacy is built from dance music genres, a reputation I believe was crafted by the musical tendencies of the sound designers and not so much the engine that powers the Virus series. We share a few words with Nik Reiman, the Mac developer for Access Music.

Aside from being a tabletop version, what is the relationship between the Virus TI and the Snow? How does the TI lead to the Snow? The Snow utilizes the same sound engine with no sonic restrictions whatsoever. In comparison to the bigger models you can expect about 60% of the polyphony. Also 4 instead of 16 multitimbral parts are supported.

What were the initial challenges in creating the TI Snow?

The constraints in size were a challenge. The Snow takes up about the same desktop space of a Time magazine where as the TI Desktop is a 19” unit. After toying around with some ideas we realized the entire menu navigation and editing system needed to be redesigned. Also making decisions on which I/O is really necessary wasn’t always easy. The analogue inputs were not included with the very early specs and I’m really happy we have them now. Without those inputs a feature like the real-time glitch/slicing processor “Atomizer” wouldn’t be possible.

Did the smaller physical size limit your sound design options? Absolutely not. We didn’t limit the sound engine in any way and all the patches are 100% compatible. As for the menu navigation versus loads of knobs and buttons, I believe that we found a great way of using all the buttons to get to parameters fast and without too much distraction.

Also the menus are context sensitive. In the default mode,

only 3 parameters are shown for every section, but those parameters are the most appropriate for your work flow.

For instance, changing the oscillator model will bring up the three different oscillator settings. We really wanted to make it easy for our users to focus on the parameters which are actual fun to tweak and respond great. Of course, there is an expert mode which shows all TI parameters.

The look is a departure from the previous line of Access synths. How durable is the chassis and what inspired the design? The Snow design is based on the TI Polar, which sports the same white metal and white LED look.

Everything else has evolved from there. We kept the quality up to Access standards; metal shell with sturdy knobs in a rugged case. If you’ve seen the build quality from our previous products, you can expect the same- even in the smaller TI Snow.

I’ve been hearing the name Access for several years and I know the patches are very prominent across many genres. What unit would give me the widest range of classic tones? The first Virus was introduced about 12 years ago and since then, the sound engine was constantly developed and refined. Though we always managed to add “big” features from revision to revision, the TI series stands out for 2 reasons: We added total integration which allows you to control the entire synth from a plug-in hosted by your DAW. The plugin not only allows for fast editing and storing your patches, it also turns the TI to the only sample accurate hardware synth which can stream audio from the hardware back into the plug-in.

The other reason the TI stands out is the addition of alternative oscillators. Up to the Virus C series, the Virus was considered to be a Virtual Analogue synth. With the TI comes wavetables, a multi sawtooth oscillator called HyperSaw and Grain/Formant oscillators which make the TI sound like an entirely different beast. And for a nod to our sonic legacy, the classic Virtual Analogue oscillators are still present.

29 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

A

tomizer allows you slice and dice audio in realtime using a MIDI keyboard. Stutter effects were made famous by artists including Aphex Twin, Trentemoeller, Squarepusher, BT and many others.

Any ideas that might be used in the next Snow type product?

We considerably slowed down our products’ life cycle and you can expect the Snow to be around for quite some time. To us, the TI is a development platform which we will improve as long as we can. Instead of throwing new hardware versions on the market we’d rather invest our man power to improve the existing platform and release feature updates on a regular basis.

Anything coming in a firmware update? We just went through a couple of public beta versions for the OS 2.7 release which adds several features such as Atomizer and Virus Control Center which allows you to burn your own ROM banks into the Virus TI Series and create backups.

The next step will be side chaining from the plug-in into the Virus hardware so you can Atomize discreet tracks without even touching the analogue inputs of the TI. What’s your favorite part of the design process? As a programmer my favorite part is user interface design. A normal production day is filled with de-bugging and implementing new features. It gets interesting when we consider how the user works and flows. It’s about figuring out what’s easiest and natural on the screen and on the hardware. It’s a very creative process figuring out how to bring all these elements together and have them flow naturally off your finger tips- in the studio.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to Producer’s Edge and congratulations on the new unit. You can find out more about the Access Virus TI Snow at access-music.de

Once sync’ed to tempo, you can chop and play those slices in realtime.

You can record the slicing process into your sequencer and edit it later along with the rest of your song. You can remix in realtime as well, with the modulation wheel becoming an intelligent crossfader, while the pitch-wheel lets you change the pitch by approximately 4 octaves. And there are tons of effects including sample rate and bit rate reduction algorithms which, again, can be used in realtime and become a part of your performance.

Atomizer will be available free of change to all Virus TI users as a free software update.

What Is Total Integration?

Just like it’s cousins in the “TI” range, the Virus TI Snow comes bundled with the Virus Control software - the hub of the Total Integration concept. Virus Control allows the TI Snow to appear as a multichannel VST/Audio Unit/RTAS plugin, streaming audio and MIDI data discreetly over USB in 3 stereo channels, with sampleaccurate timing and delaycompensation. Every parameter of the Virus TI synth engine is represented in the graphical user interface, with automation of all relevant parameters possible within suitable host software.

The Browser page allows comprehensive patch library management, including a powerful search tool, and total recall of all your settings means the Virus TI Snow will always be exactly as you last saved it with each project.

For detailed information on how to use Virus Control, please refer to the relevant section in the Virus Control tutorials, which can be accessed directly by clicking on the ‘?’ button in Virus Control itself, along with several other useful resources.

30 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

AKAI Lineage, Legacy, Leader A

KAI. The very mention of this company elicits the fondest thoughts about what hip-hop and rap used to be and what it used to mean in terms of sound and even the purchasers dedication to the artform. The pads are a visual cue and simply suggest a cultural link when chopped into a company logo. It’s a stamp of creative quality when used as an avatar and a snapshot of you holding one up says I’m a producer and this is my studio - never mind the pile of dirty laundry in the background.

adding vocals and other tracks, or have to use outboard synths for basslines and leads. We wanted to make it so that a producer could work from start to finish within the MPC itself. There were also many areas of streamlining the user interface that we felt could improve the workflow, while allowing us to add features.

How can the new crop of releases remain relevant when the MPC60 is a classic, the 2000XL is still being bought and traded and the 3000/4000 workstations are still all you need to get it done? On the soft side, quite a few bits of software and combinations of software are being touted as MPC-killers. In hardware, we have every type of MIDI controller configuration imaginable with bells, whistles and flashing lights claiming to have that MPC feel. Even ROMpler workstations have stepped in by adding pads to their control surface. And we don’t need to mention that other beastly line, seemingly born from the imagination of that fifth AKAI engineer no one listens to at the product development meetings. To get in closer, we chop it up with AKAI Product Manager Glen Darcey.

This is the main function that hip-hop producers use. We have made sample editing easier by improving on the user interface.

We use the sliders in the Q-Link® section to edit start and end points, we have an Auto Zero Crossing function that will help remove clicks from the heads and tails of samples. We have our Chop Shop® format that enables you to slice loops and have them play back at different tempos, without affecting the pitch. In the MPC5000 we updated Chop Shop® to version 2.0, which has a better algorithm for slicing and allows for stereo samples.

The filters in the MPC5000 are much better than were present in the MFC42. We have increased the filter types and worked on the DSP to make them all sound much better. We thought a lot about the effects routing and effects themselves in the design stages, and came up with an all-new effects engine with four effects busses that allow for two effects per bus. The busses can be chained so that you can have four effects in two busses. The effects routing allows you to route external devices through the unit so the MPC can work as an effects unit for external gear too. There is a lot of flexibility in the new engine. We went over the top with some of the compressors, distortions and delays, but during development we kept finding ways to make them different and new. My personal favorite effect is the Frequency Shifter; it can increase the stereo width, and do some great chorusing and crazy ring mod types of sounds.

First things first; congratulations on the new workstation, I thought you might be done with the all-in-one solution.

With so much functionality in the 2500, what prompted AKAI to make a full out workstation?

The MPC5000 was the next logical step for us to take in the MPC evolution. We spent a lot of time looking at our current users workflow and how they are incorporating external software, DAW’s and synths into their setups. There were a lot of users who wanted to be able to do every aspect of their production without having to go to external recorders for

It’s a common production workflow to cut samples into smaller parts and re-sequence the order of chops into a new composition. What facilities does the MPC5000 have to simplify and extend this process?

31 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

There are still raging debates about the magic swing and characteristic sound of the different MPC units. Could you please clear this up for us and place the newest MPC releases in historical context? All of the MPs use the same swing algorithm. We were not going to mess with that. We did increase the PPQ resolution of the sequence engine so there is finer control of recording your performance and being able to shift beats forward and back in time. The sound quality is one of those things that nobody can agree upon. Some customers say the MPC60 sounds the best. Some say the MPC3000, MPC2000XL or MPC4000. We used some very high quality analog circuitry and high quality ADCs and DACs. We had beta testers who owned MPC60’s, 3000’s, 2000’s, 4000’s, 500’s, 1000’s and 2500’s. The MPC5000 stands up to these and improves sound in a lot of areas. For those who like the old 12 bit sound though, we added an option to the Master Compressor that says “Old School.” It does a bit reduction and down sampling to give that vintage sampler sound.

Speaking of product lines, there is a huge amount of overlap in terms of features and abilities. Could you please give us some kind of general outline to separate the more recent products? I want to dive in with an MPC, but I’m not sure which one is right for me.

The current MPC line essentially has an entry level and an advanced level lineup. The entry level has the MPC500 and MPC1000. The portable, battery-powered MPC500 is indispensable for MPC users on the go, but also serves as a great starter. The MPC1000 needs an AC outlet, but gives a lot more features like more filters, mix automation, Chop Shop®, an LFO, additional I/O and more. From there you move to the more advanced, full-featured MPC2500, which has more MIDI capability, the full-sized MPC pads, Auto-slice, a CD/DVD drive option and more. The flagship MPC5000 is the most powerful MPC ever made and is the first to have a built-in synth, hard drive recording and much, much more.

RELEVANCE The MPC2000 line has, in many cases, been reduced to a MIDI controller triggering soft kits or sequencing virtual instruments. It seems the MPD24 and 32 are solutions, but is this in some way an acknowledgement to the shift from hardware to software? M.P.C. stands for MIDI Production Center; does that definition have any meaning in this modern age of software DAWS and sequencers? We prefer to use the acronym Music Production Center, as the MPC line is certainly a powerful MIDI controller, but it’s so much more than that. The people who tend to use MPC’s do tend to be more hardware centric so MIDI is needed.

There has been a shift to the computer in some areas, but we are actually seeing more and more people interested in hardware.

There is a group of people who may have started on some cracked software program and as they get more into making music, they want more of a musical experience.

Software is a great tool for music production, but the user interface

32 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

is not musical at all. The MPD/MPK line is geared toward making software more musical. While there are MPC users in genres other than hip-hop, it is the main market. There are a lot of people out there who have never used an MPC but who want a pad controller or a quality keyboard controller.

The pad layout is a great tool for triggering samples, playing percussion parts, triggering video clips in VJ applications, etc. I find using the MPC pads to play regular instruments and synths makes me approach composition differently and yields interesting results that I wouldn’t normally come up with playing a keyboard.

The MPC with its pad layout was really the last paradigm shift in how people make music. There are not many other music

input devices that have become a standard like the pads of the MPC. The proof is to look at how many companies are trying to copy us.

To bridge the gap, we are all concerned with computer connectivity. What added functionality is found in the MPD and MPK series that go beyond triggering hits?

The goal with our controllers is to make musical instruments, not just some buttons, keys and pads. The quality and user interface are a big part of our controller designs. Also, the number of controllers on the MPK49 and MPD32 go way beyond standard hit triggering. Once again, software is great but using a mouse to make music isn’t, so we make our controllers with plenty of user controls. With MPK49 and MPD32 you have the MPC Note repeat and swing. On the MPK49 we added an arpeggiator.

We all seem to want a hybrid sampler; keyboard thingie with pads. Are there any plans for an MPK61 that has pads, keys and an internal sequencer with USB connectivity? Is there a chance for a firmware update that will extend the abilities of the MPK49 or MPD32?

I can’t comment on the feature set or availability of future products, but I can say that we have some great products on the horizon. I spend a lot of time using hardware and software, and we get a lot of feedback from our user base, most of which are DJs or musicians, customers, dealers, artists, web

forums, etc. All play a roll in new product development. Akai is moving in a great direction. We are having a lot of success where others are losing market share. The future for Akai is looking better than at any point in its whole history.

The MPC5000 sports an internal synth DSP engine. Where did the inspiration come from? It’s quite unusual to have a sound module fitted to a sampling workstation. This came from the fact that so many of our customers use the MPC with synths like the Mini Moog, and how many requests we have gotten from people doing music in genres other than hip-hop who use a lot of synth sounds. Sampled synth sounds are OK but having a real synth enables much more flexibility and creativity.

I wanted to do something with a synth that is lacking from the other workstations out there; make it fun to use. We had all the knobs and sliders in the Q-Link® section that were just begging to be used as part of the general user interface. The synth is totally hands on. Every function can be accessed by the Q-Links and nothing is buried down in multiple pages. It allows for easy use and great sounds. There are some serious synth heads at Akai that have long histories with using and designing synths, so we all got together and came up with this one. Its simple user interface kind of hides how flexible it is.

You boast that this three oscillator VA synth will replace my external modules. How likely is this? Is this an all-around synth capable of tones besides leads and bass? Are there included presets? Can I extend its range with my own programming? Will I have pads, string emulations, brass or wind in the future? How easy are the sounds to trigger without a keyboard interface? Is there a soft editor in development?

That’s a lot of questions. [laughter] Here goes: Yes, yes, yes (over 500), yes, it can do synth strings/brass/effects, very easily. The Q-Links are a better interface than a software editor ever could be.

The synth was a real pet part of this product to the development team.

It sounds great, is easy to use and has a lot of presets for those who don’t want to dig into it, but is easy enough for anyone to dig into. We made the main page of the synth have access to the controls that you will use 90% of the time. If you load up a synth, moving a Q-Link will do something that you will hear.

I like the way you think. That being said, I can’t comment on any potential future product idea. We have not announced any plans for such a product.

Speaking of sounds, The Loopmasters have been contributing sounds for your recent products. Why were they chosen among all the companies available to you? We work with a number of sound producers for different projects based on their strengths. We are working with Loopmasters on our MPC download libraries, and they contributed the over 600meg of material that ships on the MPC5000 hard drive. There are a lot of sound companies out there but there are just a few that consistently have the quality that Loopmasters produces. Loopmasters also covers more genres than most other companies, and they do them all very well.

I think we would all benefit from a robust virtual counterpart to the MPC line. Thinking beyond a patch librarian or editor could lead us to a soft synth workstation powered by a hardware interface playing back a modern translation of the AKAI sound libraries.

I sound like that fifth engineer. Will AKAI merge on any future products with a software company?

I can’t comment on future plans for our product line or relationships with other companies that may or may not be in the works.

There is a three-way-dance between AKAI, Alesis and Numark. Although they are all distinct entities with their own branding strengths, what hopes can we see for merging product lines and shared resources?

There is technology sharing that goes on between all the brands. There is Akai, Alesis and Numark code and hardware that gets used across the brands. The engineering here is shared so we make use of IP from one company to another all the time. It allows us to put the best of all the brands into each of our products. The MPC5000 is a great example; it has code and hardware from Akai, Alesis and Numark.

Parallel development leads us to the AKAI XR20 and the Alesis SR18. Could you tell us a little bit about each and what ways are they similar in purpose and different in functionality and form? Without any sampling capabilities, what studio role are these units best suited for?

Why is there no onboard synth for the MPK49? That seems to be the unit screaming for internal sounds. Any possibility of that synth being made into a separate product away from the MPC series… maybe as part of a new MFC series? Yes, I’m fishing now.

The SR-18 works well for the widest possible range of performers - it’s got a sound set that has something for everyone, from country to pop. This is more of a traditional drum machine for the traditional drum machine user.

Guitar players doing solo gigs love the SR-18.

The XR20 has a hip-hop/urban focused sound set. We had Chronic Music work with us on sound and pattern design and they nailed it. The sound is great, and that’s

33 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

what matters most. It is designed to be used by anyone who wants a professional sounding machine with a lot of sounds. You can edit the pitch, filter and decay settings for the sounds so you can get a

lot more out of the box than the 700+ samples allow for. I have been getting requests from producers to get the sound set for the XR20 so that they can use it with their MPC. The response to the XR20 has been better than we could have imagined.

The AKAI MPC has certainly grown to become a music production cultural icon. What steps and forward thinking strategies are in place to ensure the MPC line remains a vital and necessary component in the evolving production landscape?

I think you’re seeing some of what the future holds with the release of the MPC5000. It is all about the music and making a good musical instrument first and foremost. Having the “feature of the day” is nice, but the product has to help someone realize their art. That’s the main thing that keeps something like the MPC

viable. It’s about making music and being able to work in a way that promotes creativity instead of hindering it.

There are many AKAI and MPC dedicated hubs on the Internet. Mpc-forums.com has an active community dedicated to the hardware user. Akaipro has an active portal.

SoundsForSamplers at akaimpc.com offers sounds, video tutorials and even free tech support for your products. What are your thoughts about these satellite Web sites and what impact do they have on companies like AKAI as a whole?

We are grateful for the role these sites play in developing a community around the MPC in a way that can’t really be done from a corporate perspective. It’s a lot more authentic when someone builds a community around a product because of their passion for it, than it is for a company to try to build a community on their own. We lurk on these sites all the time. There have been features added and OS updates released based on the threads and feature requests. The Internet allows people to come together and share ideas, philosophize, complain, describe their dream products, etc.

It’s all good. The passion for music and the gear behind it are

34 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

awesome. The people who make shoe laces and key chains don’t get to have what we have.

Music forums buzz with opinions and reaction to all your product releases. Is this feedback ever considered, or are there dedicated lanes that influence company policy?

Any company in this industry that doesn’t listen to its customers does so at its own peril. We absolutely listen to musicians and producers from around the world who tell us their opinions. This type of feedback was never possible in the old days. Companies would put in warranty cards to try to get this type of feedback but nobody ever filled them out. The customer has more influence in the products made than ever before in the music industry.

Although the abilities of any MPC unit extends beyond the needs of the average producer, why do you think these units have been embraced so strongly by the hiphop and rap community?

It’s all about workflow, feel and ease of use. The MPC enables you to get your ideas down and build tracks very quickly. The beat is the soul of hip-hop and the MPC is the most expressive, functional and useful tool that’s ever been offered for making beats.

INFLUENCE A unit from the MPC series is almost always named in any featured producers kit list. Why are so few producers associated, marketing wise, with the MPC line? It was a great thing to see the Pete Rock campaign. Producers like Just Blaze and The Heatmakers have done tutorial videos and sat in for Q&A over the MPC series. Why are resources like these not linked from the AKAI site officially or urban producers used as official spokesmen?

We do have relationships with artists. We are fortunate they come to us and choose to use our gear on their own because it does exactly what they want it to do.

Having a certain artist using your gear doesn’t really sell products though. We don’t pay people to use our products like some other companies do. If someone is using our product, it is because it works for them, not because they are getting a check from us.

Most of the successful producers I’ve met really don’t care about being in an ad and are making way more money than they ever would from an endorsement. We do get a few really big names who have offered to be in ads just because they like the gear though, and that is gratifying. We may do it sometime in the future, but there are no set plans to do so.

And lastly, could you give us some insight for what plans AKAI has for the rest of the year and maybe even a hint at a new product around the corner? We always have plans for new gear. That’s all I can say.

Well, we tried. Producer’s Edge thanks the team over at AKAI Professional for taking the time out to kick it with us.

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Kaoss over Chaos Demo Sounds patch preview

and

Printable template for accurate grid patterns

This is a lot of power and creative potential placed in a portable case.

Producers knew that and adopted the Kaoss pads as filter boxes to add excitement to dull sounds and add a new way of working with effects. To satisfy the demand for more chaos, the Kaoss concept has been featured in their new flagship workstation the M3, more tightly integrated with the live DJ set with the Kaoss Mixer [a traditional mixer with Kaoss pad front and centerXP] and now broken down to two sleek hand held units.

Korg Kaoss Series and the Kaossilator The Chaos Order

T

here are only two ways in which the Kaoss design and technology relate to any Korg product. It’s either on a future feature wish list or a major selling point. That’s it. The Kaoss pads started as a toolset aimed for DJs and meant to add an effects box and sampler to their live rig. The touchpad interface gave them a unique control surface where effects can be manipulated in real time to twist the internal samples or streaming audio. The Kaoss pad 3 is the current series heavyweight and boasts sounds and effects from the Radias along with its own custom suite for a total of 128 programs.

Instead of a swirling touchpad display, the KP3 uses a backlit 64 cell grid matrix for visual feedback.

The KP3 not only samples but can chop audio via time-slice and mute individual parts for new patterns on the fly. MIDI facilitates tempo

control (both manual and tap) with the ability to send and receive clock data. More than that, the KP3 operates as a MIDI controller sending information out from the touchpad, slider and sample bank buttons. All of your actions can be recorded as MIDI and stored in your host for total recall. USB connectivity adds file transfer and the software librarian manages programs and edits samples.

The Kaoss before the storm

The mini-KP places much of the Kaoss series power into a battery powered (4 AAs or optional [you gotta buy it -XP] 4.5 V adapter) sampler and effect processor. It’s the ultra-affordable ($200 USD) carry me along version without the MIDI and USB. It does arrive with

AA batteries so you can get to work right away. It has100 effect programs; a step down from the KP3 overkill of 128. If you’ve ever had a chance to spin through the programs in any Kaoss pad you stumbled across some presets. I mean sounds. Musical loops and instruments. It’s nothing new for Korg to bail its users out with patches you can use just one finger to trigger away and keep the groove moving.

Interacting with the touchpad changes the pattern of the program and switches to additional variations. Some highly useable sounds lurk inside the Kaoss pad series- some great sounds indeed.

What if Korg just focused on just the sounds and made an affordable Kaoss pad that specialized in tones while still being …Kaotic?

Enter the Kaossilator!

Korg strips away the MIDI, USB and audio-in processing in favor of 100 presets; mostly generated live from a modeling synthesizer. You’ll find 20 leads, bass and sound-effect patches, 10 Acoustic, chords, drums and an additional 10 phrases/loops. Again it’s about quality over quantity. Every sound works in some musical context and many are screaming to be the main juice of a track or icing on top.

The counter balance is lack of any save features, mixing abilities (mutes, volume, etc) or deep sequencing. It’s a single-pattern based affair. You’ll build up your composition in layers, locking in your current state and then adding on more instruments. You can use the “Fix” function to save the current state

of your pattern, and “Cancel” to return to that state if you add something you don’t like. It’s an over-dubbing system that helps focus your creations. If the next addition isn’t hot you can’t to push if off as an optional part to mix in later so you usually dump it. The limitation here is 2 bars or 8 beats, but you can layer indefinitely and that leads to another reason for producer consideration.

get usable musical phrases. But you might be a little frustrated by the blank touchpad screen while you’re working out a killer melody. It’s always at the end of that second bar - you get happy and try and wild out and blow it. I created an overlay laminate to give an idea of what notes landed where for repeatable performances.

Kaoss on Order Obviously you can whip up little tracks wherever you find open time or use it in a studio setting integrated as a tone module with a wicked interface. Korg calls it a Dynamic Phrase Synthesizer, but I’ve been using it to create samples.

I build up a small phrase (with minimal percussion) and record it as a loop to be mangled and flipped in my favorite apps. The drum kits and prerecorded phrases favor the electronic slant, but small taps- triggering only the beginnings of arps and loops adds another variety of material to work with. The Scale Function reduces your performance errors to just bum notes by keeping the available pitches sensible according to the chosen musical scale.

You’ll be using the Gate Arp to create instant arpeggiator satisfaction to fill any inspirational holes you might have been scratching your head over.

Moving your contact point (finger or stylus) horizontally controls pitch while vertical axis swipes affect the filters.

With a little practice you can coax some pretty complex melodies with the touchpad. You can also jump two octaves and dial in the tempo directly.

Kaoss Theory in Action I stopped way short of calling the Kaossilator a musical toy for nonmusicians. True you don’t need keyboard chops or music training to

The touchpad remains wonderfully sensitive even when covered by several layers of paper or plastic. I also taped the program list card to the back of the Kaossilator to quickly jump to patches I use often.

New Whirl Order

In conclusion, Korg has taken the best preset based features of the Kaoss series and packaged them into an affordable joy box. At $200 USD you cannot overlook the idea of more then 75 usable sounds with a dynamite interface. If combined with a mobile recorder like the Korg MR-1, you’d have everything you need to create, compose and capture with the charismatic and colorful Kaossilator.

Later.

Specs at a glance 100 Presets (10 drum and 31 music patterns) RCA Stereo Line Outs Mini headphone jack DC 4.5V Power supply needed

(4 AA batteries included, lasting ~ 5 hrs)

More info at korg.com

Open Labs MiKo Timbaland Edition Words by Saga Legin Total workstation solution combining music and studio technologies.

“I’ve made the new Timbaland Special Edition MiKo with Tim’s Touch.

It’s got everything I need in a single box and when I use it, we make masterpieces.”

- Timbaland

If I buy this will I sound like Timbaland?

Will this replace all my hardware pieces? Should I buy this for my first production system? Is this the best bang for the buck when it comes to workstations? Can I really have any sound module I want in my miKo by using its mimiK cloning software?

I

had a chance to test run the MiKo Timbaland edition from Open labs. The hype surrounding this machine is enormous and kind of pulled me in as well. After looking at countless youtube footage and reviews I had to get my hands on this beast of a machine.

Open In the Lab

The Miko is no small piece of equipment. It is pretty heavy, about 30 pounds wider than it appears in pictures. The interface is Microsoft based with the open labs logo as the desktop background. It comes loaded with sound libraries from E-MU, Roland, Ensoniq, Moog and more. The host sequencers and GUI include mFusion, mimiK, Karsyn, Wusikstation v3, Reaper, V4 sound library and Cubase Le to name a few. Now keep in mind, you can install any windows compatible software onto the machine like a standard PC. It also uses a Presonus mic pre and has 4 inputs and 6 outputs.

Meeting the MiKo

After setting up the MiKo I immediately went into a program that comes native with the unit (except the se model). The program that I couldn’t wait to use was Mimik. It allows you to clone any of your existing keyboards, and/or sound modules onto the MiKo’s hard drive. Mimik is supposed to be very intuitive and give you the capability to copy all the attributes of the sound your cloning (velocity, note range, decay, etc). I thought wow, this is a program sent from the gods. I can not only use the massive library of sounds this thing comes with, but also my keyboards and modules with it as well. I own a Korg OASYS, n364, mo phatt, Roland XV5080, and a Motif rack. So I dived right in and began the process of cloning my machines. To my dismay, the cloning process, for one sound in a bank, 39 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

takes approximately 25 to 30 min!

Once cloned the quality of the sound is far less than I expected. This could be due to the inexpensive Presonus mic pre being used. The sheer size of the folder that mimiK creates for the sound is large and would require you to have a great deal of hard drive space available in order to hold the samples. Plus the format that it saves your sounds is not compatible with all popular virtual samplers on the market (I won’t name names).

MimiK or Mimic?

After I recovered from the disappointment of the mimiK I moved onto the rest of the Miko. In action the V4 Sound Library by E-MU was impressive. I own several E-MU modules (plus the SP1200) and I must say the sounds on there were dead on. It was like having those classic modules at your fingertips - set out for you in a smooth GUI ready to play. Most of the sounds were pretty close- if not identical to their hardware or software predecessors. Out of all the modules I liked Karsyn the best. It reminded me of Kontakt 3 in the way you can layer instruments. The included sounds were quality- especially the grand piano.

Close Labs In the end the Miko did impress me with it’s accuracy of sound and inventive all-in-one approach to the digital workstation. I liked the fact that it is upgradeable since you can add multiple hard drives and you are not limited by the included software/ instruments. The option to install any program that is pc compatible was an ingenious idea. Mimik disappointed me and probably was the main reason that I can not give this machine a higher rating. The bundled sequencers make for added value, but I didn’t like the interface on Reaper; I didn’t find it as user friendly as my usual combination of Pro Tools and Logic. The sounds, although accurate, are somewhat

dated. I didn’t hear anything that I haven’t heard in the last 10 years. This is not the place to look for cutting-edge and next years’ sounds.

Sealed Lab In conclusion, this machine is great for the artist who is just starting out without a lot of gear at their disposal.

It is essentially a computer, keyboard, dj mixer, mic pre, all mixed into one solid package. The producer who already has a good amount of gear and computer with sequencer probably does not need this unless overkill is their intention. To the ambitious audiophile this might also be something worth checking out.

Special Edition Timbaland MiKo LX starts at $4299.00 Visit Open Labs at Openlabs.com for overview videos, tutorials and sound examples.

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Specs at a glance: Expansion Slots: (3) PCI Slots (2 available for upgrades), (3) PCI-E Slots (2 available for upgrades), (2) 3.5” Bays: (1) Start Up Drive and (1) Available for Upgrade, (1) 5.25” Dual-Layer DVD-RW burner (8.5GB/disc)

Audio I/O: (1) High Performance Audio I/O Card with Low Latency including 24-bit/96kHz professional 4-in/6-out : (2) mic/instrument preamp inputs (with Phantom Power 48V), (2) analog line inputs, (6) analog line outputs, S/PDIF digital I/O (coaxial)

Connections: Midi In/Out, 1) Sustain and (1) Expression ports, 2) USB 2.0 ports, 3) (1) FireWire 400 port, 4) (1) Gigabit (10/100/1000) Ethernet port, 5) (1) Headphone Jack with Volume Control

MimiK: Keyboard or sound module cloning

software.

Triggers

device

and records audio stream to create a software soundbank composed of multi-samples.

Karsyn: Live performance workstation for virtual instruments.

VST host [max 32 instances] with audio effects capable of processing live audio. ReWire master device. Automatically scroll through presets while playing.

Hottest feature: Scenes are one of the most powerful features of forte. Scenes enable you to use a single rack for an entire performance and automate preset changes, output routings, and mutes.

Each rack file can contain multiple scenes visible in the Scene window. Each Scene contains a complete configuration including: •A preset for every instrument in the rack. This does not need to be a saved preset because the actual settings of each instrument are saved instead of just a name.

•An effect preset for every audio effect in the rack. Again, this does not need to be a saved preset. Bypass status is also saved.

•A MIDI input enable for each port on each Instrument Module.

•A MIDI keyboard range, transpose, channel and controller remap for every MIDI input on every Instrument Module.

•An output Buss selection for every Instrument Module.

•A tempo (which many VST and DirectX plugins will follow).

•A transport (used by many drum machines, arpeggiators, and ReWire devices).

Coolest feature: Auto-start on boot up, auto-recovery, remote control, SceneView and other features eliminate the need to use the keyboard and mouse during live performance.

41 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

After creating Reason, Ernst Nathorst-Böös has found a reason to read PE mag!

Proof Editor Will Loiseau says they are 100 Proof!

James Bernard gets retarded!

Charmain Dennison works for Yammy and she’s Yummy!

Double take 42 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

Teddy!

Warren G’s the mag

43 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

Necro; wish you were here, man

44 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

iKey Audio Heatmakerz billboard

SONY Creative

45 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

46 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

Access Music gives us access to their talent!

Hi mom!

47 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

L to R Domingo, Devo Springsteen, Dame Grease, Steve Pageot, Jimi Kendrix, Steven “Boogie” Brown and Amadeus

Nicole Sanzio, Kev Mitchell, James Mtume, Wendell Hanes

The Dynamic Producer Alumni Panel!

Next year, this could be you. www.DynamicProducer.com Dilemma, STEFF Nasty of the Beat Banggahz, Hilton of Wrightrax,Jim Bond, Frequency, Versatile

Kev Mitchell, Omar Grant, Christopher J. Cabott, Esq., Walter Jones, Folayan Knight, Joie Binns

Jim Bond thinks about that next placement 48 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

Can the Letter “C” lift it?

Pedro and DMC Long lost brothers?

Apple still gots the juice

Damn that DJ - a match made

Blaze worthy

Roland’s Laura Tyson builds it up.

KG and The Mack break it down.

Do you think editor Will uses Reason?

Hmm, I wonder...

Hatch hatches a plot!

Mike, MV and the mag

Rock and the ROMpler!

49 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

KORG M3 The merging of preferred control points.

Korg Hardware Specialist Rich Formidoni.

T

he blending and/or combining of features from different product lines have become the latest trend in workstation manufacturers. We have an arranger with drum pads, a workstation running VSTi, a groovebox with linear sequencing, a mixer with a touchpad and a keyboard…with a keyboard.

Producer’s Edge looks at how your contact point may affect your production more than you know.

The Korg M3 Sequencing sorts There are a couple of ways to sequence on the M3. You can loop tracks individually, which you could also do on the TRITON series, and that’s a feature that we definitely wanted to keep on the M3 because people use it a lot. So I could record a two-bar bass pattern and a four-bar electric piano pattern, and have the bass pattern loop two bars, and the electric piano pattern loop four bars, and then just jam out on top of that.

Now, the other way to do Pattern Sequencing on the M3 is using RPPR, and that stands for Real-time Pattern Play and Record, and again, this is a feature that was very popular on the TRITON. Basically what you can do is store an entire MIDI sequence under each key, and then you can decide which of the 16 sounds that are in your sequence you want that MIDI sequence to play through.

So on one key I could have a drum loop, on the second key I could have another drum loop, that’s maybe twice as long, on the third key a bass line, and on the fourth key a quick little piano Riff, and you can just really play an entire DJ set just by playing one set of keys, and you can record those sequences using Step Recording or Real-time.

What might it mean to my production style to actually pick a certain way of recording? Could I get a different type of material coming out if I use a Pattern Base approach as

50 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

opposed to linear Fashion or Phrase Recording? That all depends on the kind of musician you are. If you are a keyboard player, you might want to do some Linear Recording, do a couple of multi-bar phrases, and then put those little phrases on RPPR keys so you could trigger them whenever you want.

If you are not a keyboard player, you might want to use Step Recording, and then once you get a step recorded sequence, also assign that with RPPR to a key or a pad, and you are good to go.

Now, what are my options as far as correcting a bad performance?

Oh, that’s very easy in the M3. We have a feature called Event Edit, and it’s a list of all the things that you did in your performance. When you pushed a key, it registers how hard you hit it, how long you held it down, when you initially hit it, and you can just go back and modify any of those parameters after you have already recorded.

What about something like using quantize on the way in or quantizing after? You have the option to do both on the M3. There is a little menu right on the main sequence screen, that’s next to the word Reso, Resolution, and you can set that to any note value you want, or high resolution, which basically means no quantizing at all.

On the other side of the coin, if you would rather record the performance and then quantize, you can do that for each individual track or all tracks at once. That gives you more options, like adding swing or shuffle to varying degrees, and you can try it, and if you don’t like it, you can undo what you have done and try again with different settings.

The advantage would be, if you know your performance is going to be spot on, you can record with quantizing on input. If you are not quite as confident, you might want to try quantizing after the fact to make sure you get the result you want.

Now, from a production base standpoint, is there any certain genre that the M3 really excels at, that you could say is catered for?

That’s a tough one. I wouldn’t say there’s any genre that the M3 is absolutely specific for. There are features like the Pad that make it exceptionally good for rhythm oriented styles like hiphop, electronic and dance production.

When you look at some of the sounds and listen to the orchestra sounds and all the new keyboard sounds that we put in, with the recent supercharged program editions, there are all kinds of ways which you could use the M3 in just about any production or live situation.

Although it is a ROMpler that does lean heavily on the presets as its main selling point, is there any concern about how many records will be coming out using the actual signature presets, as opposed to just the bread and butter sounds?

Let’s say you have got one of those really expressive instrument sounds, and it’s not as simple as just a string, maybe it’s an evolving pad, maybe it’s one of those key sounds that you hear it and you know this is the foundation of my next big record. Is there a concern, like the TRITON series, that those patches will be the ones that producers are really going to jump on first?

Well, we are hoping that people will jump on whatever sound they hear out of the M3. We are not going to sit here and just hope that the piano sound is the one that everybody reacts to the best, or that this particular pad sound is the one that makes it on to the next record.

Our programming team is not just one guy; it’s a whole group of people around the world that program all these sounds.

They have all got their different flavors, and they all add different elements into the program structure of the M3. So it’s difficult to say which ones they would want to hear first, basically, we just want to hear the M3 on records.

Layered in layman Terms Let’s talk about the drum sounds of the M3, and the layering possibilities; what I can do with my layering, what I can do to edit the timbre of the sounds- pull more longevity out of my board by recreating my own kits.

Yeah, sure. The M3 gives you lots of flexibility for creating your own drum kits. When you go to create or modify a drum kit – you can define four stereo samples for each key with cross-fades between them. On a lot of keyboards-

when you push a key assigned to a snare drum softly, you might hear one sample. When you push it really hard, you might hear a different sample of a snare being hit louder. On the M3, you can actually cross-fade between the two snares, so it will give you a more realistic feel. When you hit a drum harder and harder gradually, it’s not like the sound suddenly changes from one hit to the next, there is a gradual change in tone. The M3 lets you recreate that tonal change using multiple layers of samples that really we haven’t seen in a keyboard before, other than the OASYS.

We know the OASYS is considered a world champion, so let’s touch on the connection between the M3 and the OASYS. Yes, there is a big connection between the M3 and the OASYS. The M3 has much more in common with the OASYS than it does with the TRITON series.

The OASYS is a collection of different engines that run as software. The core engine in OASYS is called HD1, and that’s the sample playback engine.

Now, the M3 is a hardware recreation of that HD1 engine, and in the M3 it’s called EDS, Enhanced Definition Synthesis.

So we take that software, burn it into hardware, and we are selling the M3 as that main engine in the unit by

51 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

itself. With the addition of the KARMA engine, it’s just capable of blowing people’s mind. That KARMA engine is lifted directly from the OASYS. Every single element of the KARMA that is in the OASYS is in the M3, and that gives you beats and basslines and tweakable motion that you can just experiment with for years and years to come. The sky is the limit with KARMA. The pads come directly from the OASYS. A lot of the navigation that went into the OASYS is there, Category

bunch of keyboard controllers, you can just pick up the M3 module or the RADIAS module. If you are a synthesizer player in your band that only needs one synth, you can get the RADIAS with its own keyboard.

If you are a guy who wants the best of both worlds, you can get either the 73 or the 88 key M3 and mount the RADIAS right along beside it, so then you have not only all that great sample based power, but all the RADIAS modeling power at your fingertips too.

software synthesizers, and when you click save in ProTools or Cubase, or whatever you are using, it will save the state of the M3 right along with it. So you have got all those 16 sounds and your computer isn’t doing any of the work. Add this control surface [points to the M3 and pushes the external button] and then go to the control surface tab on the main screen- you can dial through the software templates that are preloaded in the M3.

I dial up Cubase or Reason, and it assigns the eight sliders, the eight buttons above the sliders and the eight pads as MIDI controllers for whatever software I have chosen.

You can even customize your own templates.

Now, the third level of this is the

search can do subcategories; like not only do I want to look at pianos, I want to categorize them by acoustic pianos or electric pianos. That’s something that first appeared in the OASYS and has trickled down to the M3.

Radikal Radias Alright, another question is, with updating older models into newer stuff, you pretty much recreated the MS2000 using the RADIAS? Well, the only thing that’s similar between the MS2000 and the RADIAS is really the basic look of the front panel. Apart from that, it is a totally different synth. The engine for the RADIAS came directly from the OASYS again. So it’s much higher fidelity, it’s capable of doing much more at higher polyphony and has fatter sounds. As great as the MS2000 was, the RADIAS is leaps and bounds ahead.

Why make the M3 and Radias integrate? It’s the modular approach.

KORG feels is a great way to let people customize their own playing environment. If you are a computer based musician who already has a

The other way you can go is getting the RADIAS in the form of a card that mounts right into the back of the M3 and gives you all that RADIAS power, and you can control it right with the controls on the front panel of the keyboard.

What’s more powerful? A DAW running a sequencer and controlling the M3 or the M3 hosting sounds from my DAW? The M3 has he best computer integration of any workstation keyboard that has ever existed, I have no qualms about saying that. Think about this, the M3, when you plug it in with USB, comes with an Editor/ Librarian. That Editor runs as a VST, RTAS, or Audio Units plug-in. So right away you have point and click access to 16 sounds that behave just like

52 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

FireWire Board. On the back of the M3, there is an option to install the EXBFW FireWire interface. What that does is it takes the six outputs of the M3 and streams them along with MIDI to your computer over one cable. It also takes inputs into the M3. So what this means is you can stream six audio channels at once direct to the computer, and stream audio back into the M3 from your workstation.

So that basically turns the effects of the M3 into VST plug-ins, or RTAS or Audio Units or whatever you want. You can take a recorded vocal, pass it through the M3’s Compressor Limiter, and then back into your computer, which hasn’t had to do any of the processing.

So with the combination of the MIDI

control and the Editor/Librarian and the FireWire interface, the M3 becomes a huge studio upgrade in addition to a standalone interface.

So now, here is another hard question I am going to force you to answer. When it comes to KORG products, am I making my choices based on what I can afford?

Now, let’s say I don’t have much money; do I look at something like a TR series? If I can afford a top of the line, do I go with an M3? Should I still be going back and buying the TRITON Extreme? How do I decide where I dive in at? Again, it really depends on what kind of player you are. If you are a guy starting out and you just want to make beats and you want to do it on a tight budget, go to a store and check out the KAOSSILATOR, you might be really surprised at the music you can create with that.

and the new. If you have got those great classic M1 sounds, that Dance Piano, the Bright Horns that are in there, all those great familiar COMBIs, like Universe, those sounds still have plenty of life in them, and you will definitely find a way to use them.

Now, the thing that most people don’t know about that Legacy collection is that it comes with all the expansion boards that were ever made for the N-Series, the T-Series and the Wavestation, and if you were to buy all of the hardware that is included in that Legacy collection, if you were to buy all that stuff when it was brand new, you would have spend over $10,000. It’s great to be a modern technology musician.

Yeah, exactly, praise the gods of software.

If you have got a little more change in your pocket, not quite M3 level, the TR is definitely going to take care of you. That will give you the RPPR Pattern Sequencing that we talked about. It will give you some absolutely awesome samples, and you can create your entire project right on that keyboard.

But like anything else on earth, the more you can afford, the more you will get, and the M3 definitely has the most features out of this line, barring the OASYS. I want five years -- I want to be able to use this keyboard five years from now, still discover new tricks and tips in it, and still have it be my main hub in my studio.

You could buy an M1 from 1989 and discover some things in that keyboard that nobody has ever found out yet. I am not kidding when I say that. It’s like everything else the KORG makes. Our products get updates and we bring new things to the table, and the stuff that we have already made, people haven’t quite tapped the full potential of it. So we definitely stay ahead of the curve that way. Now, you mentioned the TRITON Extreme; when you think about the TRITON family, when that started with the TRITON Classic, there were a couple of banks of sounds, four banks of programs, and three banks of COMBI sounds.

Now, at the end of the TRITON’s life cycle, with the TRITON Extreme, every bank was totally full of sounds from all the expansion boards. There are over 3,000 sounds in that keyboard, and now the M3 is starting to take on that same lineage. We just added 512 free new programs to the M3.

If you don’t have them, get on korg.com/m3 and download them, they are free, and they quite literally double the amount of programs that are in your keyboard. So as we keep these products on the market, we don’t just let them sit and hope they sell, we add value to them.

What about my KORG Legacy, I just got the M1 expansion, what should I be doing with that?

The M3 has a template that lets you control KLD right from the control surface. That’s a fantastic combination of the old

Padded Questions What are the advantages and disadvantages, if any, of actually using a MIDI device to enter your drum notes as opposed to either a keyboard or an electronic drum set?

There are lots of advantages, especially speaking from the perspective of a padKONTROL -- I mean with the KORG padKONTROL you have that familiar pad layout; there are 16 pads and that’s something that a lot of people that are familiar with when they go to make beats.

So if am doing rhythm production and I want my kick on a certain pad and my snare on a certain pad, or if I have artists that are used to working on hardware- something like a padKONTROL gives them an advantage. If they are not keyboard players, they can feel comfortable playing the pads or whatever MIDI device they are used to versus playing the keys.

53 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

Now, on the other side of the coin, me being a keyboard player, I am pretty familiar with the way all these companies lay out drum sounds. So there’s usually a kick on the C, a snare on the D, and then a closed hi-hat on F#, and an open hi-hat on A#, so I know right where to go on the keyboard. But a lot of people don’t like to do it like that, so it depends on what kind of musician you are.

it’s on the right side. If you go up and down, it changes the volume of the roll. You can even specify which pads get affected by the roll. You can hold down two different pads, and the roll can be made to only affect one of them- if that’s the way you want it.

Now, let’s say I have got an M3, and it has the pads on it, it has got a touch screen for triggering effects, do I still need a padKONTROL, is that still any sort of purchase I could consider?

Sure, the padKONTROL would just add more flexibility to your set up. So when you have an M3, and you load up a drum kit, its going to be laid out in order from left to right; kick, snare, closed hat, open hat, Tom 1, Tom 2, Tom 3, and then crash cymbal. Then if you connect a padKONTROL, you can customize 16 other drums, so you know right when you hit a pad, you will be triggering the drum sound that you want, so basically just 24 pads instead of 8.

Let’s compare and contrast the quality of the construction to an Electribe. As far as I have known for quite some time, the Electribe was the actual best drum pad triggering piece of equipment KORG had. Yeah, that was a great, great system, and it still is. The Electribe MX and the Electribe SX are still really selling well because of that. One of the advantages for the padKONTROL is the larger pads. The pads on the Electribe aren’t velocity sensitive so there is less dynamic range that you can get out of them. The construction of the pad is very different.

So another great thing to do is to connect a padKONTROL to an Electribe, because then you are going to have loads and loads of control over your sounds.

Let’s discuss the pads themselves, because really at the end of the day that’s going to be my premier interface. Are the padKONTROLs sensitive in all areas? Yes! When you are on the pads from any other manufacturer, and you hit a pad in the corner or around the edges, you might not be able to get a full level or velocity of 127, but on the padKONTROL, you can nail the very corner of the pad and it’s just as sensitive as it is right in the middle. So you don’t have to play as precisely as you would on any other set of pads. So that’s definitely one big advantage for us.

The other one is that the pads light up to let you know when they have been hit. So if you are doing sequencing, and you are hitting some pads, and you make a mistake, but you didn’t hit the pad hard enough to hear it, you will still see that it lit up, so you know to go back later and erase the extra note that you put in.

Excellent. Let’s now discuss the Note Repeat feature, and how I would pull that off, that’s incredibly popular when it comes to drum programming. The Note Repeat is dynamic.

There is a little touch screen in the bottom left that looks like a KAOSS Pad, it’s an X-Y Controller. When you push the roll button, you can actually control both the speed and velocity of the Note Repeat just by moving your finger on the pads. So if you want to slow roll, it’s over on the left side. If you want a fast roll, 54 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

A collection of software titles available for FREE with the following Korg products: K61P KONTROL49 microX padKONTROL

X50

You get “M1 Le” –Korg’s epoch-making “M1” workstation/ synthesizer now available in a software version.

Ableton’s “Live Lite 6 Korg Edition” – a lite version of their cutting-edge loop-based audio/MIDI sequence software.

“Reason Adapted 3.0 for Korg” – a special configuration of Propellerhead’s workstation software with a ‘virtual rack’ of synthesizers and effect processors.

“UVI Korg Edition 2” – a special version of Ultimate Sound Bank’s plug-in software with over 800 MB of drum kits and other sounds.

Applied Acoustics Systems’ “Lounge Lizard Session” – a physical modeling electric piano synthesizer including Rhodes and Wurlitzer sounds, plus “Ultra Analog Session” – an analog modeling synthesizer.

Modartt’s “Pianoteq lite Korg Edition” – aphysical modeling piano plug-in synthesizer.

Another question is software integration. The latest and greatest hardware workstations have the ability to control the software DAW and the software DAW can control the workstation. Is there anything like this available for the padKONTROL? Not only is it available, it ships with it. The padKONTROL has what are called Themes. When you load up a scene, it automatically creates settings for the pads, the knobs, and the X-Y Controller.

There are 16 scenes preloaded, and it comes with over 30 of them for the popular sequencers.

The padKONTROL can also appear as two different MIDI devices. I could be playing with something like DFH Superior and Reason at the same time; both of which shift with the padKONTROL, by the way. So I could set up the top three rows of pads to control drums in DFH, and then the bottom row of pads I could set up as transport controls for Reason, like rewind, play, fast forward, and record.

Now, is this for inside the studio or really meant to be live with a DJ? It’s definitely meant to be both- that’s a big focus for KORG. We want to make products people feel comfortable with in the studio, as well as playing live.

It’s additional reasons for the pads lighting up and all the functions are laid out on the front panel. If you have to make tweaks, it’s easy and instantaneous; you don’t have to surf through a whole bunch of menus to find the option you want.

I have also heard about the practice of sampling and triggering entire loops and phrases using the padKONTROL. How would I set that up?

I would do it with the included software and reach for Ableton Live light.

You create the loop in Ableton and drag it into the Impulse Sampler and then assign one pad to trigger that. Each pad can be customized so one pad is playing a loop and another is sending a MIDI control message. I could have two more pads triggering drum sounds or synthesizer sounds, or whatever I want. You decide the MIDI Note, Control Change Message, channel, which of the two ports it’s being sent to and they can have customized velocity curves. So one pad could be set to a velocity of 127, like full level, and the other pads could all be touch sensitive.

Excellent. Let’s talk a little bit about the hardware itself.

What would be my most flexible and maybe even best way to connect this to my modern computer setup?

What connector should I be using and where should I put it in my production chain?

USB, the simple answer is USB. It does have MIDI In and Out Ports, but if you plug it in with USB, those MIDI In and Out Ports become an extra MIDI interface for whatever other gear you happen to have. So all you really need is a USB port, and not only will it allow you to communicate, it also powers the padKONTROL itself. So that’s one cable and it integrates with your computer; both with power and MIDI communication.

What else would I need to know about the padKONTROL, when I am really sitting down and I am looking at all the different controllers on the market, trying to find one that speaks to me? Definitely try out the feel of the pads. The most important thing is how does it feel? If you buy a guitar or a real drum set or a bass or any other kind of instrument- if it doesn’t feel right, you are not going to want to play it. We spent the most time thinking about how it feels as a musician playing the pads, and I think that’s one of the padKONTROL’s best features.

The other thing to look at is, which controller is the easiest to use. A lot of other pad controllers have knobs and sliders that you can assign to do different things, but we thought it was more important to have the X-Y Control that gives you immediate hands-on access, and with the themes, we have already assigned our controls to work with various pieces of software. Rather than giving you lots and lots of different sliders and knobs to clutter up the unit itself, we give you a couple of the most useful controllers -it keeps the price down, and makes it easier for you to use.

KOASSILATOR the touchable The KAOSSILATOR is one of the most fun products I have ever seen in my life. This is the first synthesizer that I have seen that literally anybody can pick up and play music. It looks like a little tiny KAOSS Pad, its bright yellow, and it takes four AA batteries. You plug in your iPod headphones and turn the dial, and you are scrolling through 100 different sounds. There are lead sounds, acoustic sounds, basses, chords, drum kits.

There are preset patterns that are in there, all kinds of great sound effects, and you can combine them into loops right from inside the KAOSSILATOR. So you can record a quick little drum pattern and then play it back, lay down a bass line on top of it, lay down a synth line on top of that, and if you make a mistake, you can undo back to a point where you fixed your 55 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

it; you are really running audio out of it. So why was this step taken and who thought of this?

work, where you saved your work so far. Basically, you just come up with a loop in less than a minute, and every time you come up with it, it will be different and awesome sounding.

I love you man, but I got to ask some tough questions. Where did the sounds come from? I’m hearing the M3 and the Radias.

The sounds came from a variety of different sources. The KAOSSILATOR isn’t actually using samples; a lot of people think it is, that is doing serious modeling synthesis.

Some of the technology that went into our previous modeling synthesizers like the Z1 and the MS series- that technology is in there.

That’s why it doesn’t just sound like a couple of waveforms played back; it’s an actual Korg synth. Every time our programmers get their hands on a new product, they are going to try and make it very different from the previous products.

Now, to give you an example, the TRITON series; when you have the TRITON going into the TRITON LE to the TR, some of those sounds ended up being similar because a lot of people didn’t want to get a keyboard without those wonderful TRITON sounds on it. So sometimes you will get some products that pays homage to KORG’s past and give people what they want.

You still see an M1 piano in products like the TR and the X50, people just can’t live without that M1 piano sound.

It’s from 1989 and there is still so much of a market for it. The KAOSSILATOR is something very new for us, and we wanted it to sound fresh, so that’s why you don’t see too much similarity between that, and the other products that we have.

The Yellow Album “The Yellow Album” is the first fulllength album produced and performed entirely on the Korg Kaossilator device. No other effects, EQ or sounds were added. The audio was digitally recorded directly off the unit and the only external editing performed involved simple volume balancing. The musical challenge was to attempt to make the two-bar loop limitation of the on-board phrase recorder sound less repetitious by playing the touchpad live, solo-style, over the loops during the recording.

When you are just looking to do something and you are not sure exactly what, letting the gear help you out is one of the great ways in which the KAOSSILATOR works.

This is one of the first product to actually break the rules of the KAOSS Pad series, meaning you are not really running audio through

You are not just limited to the keys when you play a KORG sound, we want you to experiment, push that X-Y button on the M3, see what the screen is up to, move the slider, see what it controls. Each sound goes way beyond just pressing a key and listening to what happens.

Well, these are the geniuses at KORG doing what they do best. When the KAOSS Pad 1 came out, it definitely took the DJ and hip-hop world by storm. Nobody had ever seen anything like it before, and people realized, hey, I can modify these effects really easily, really fast. We looked to move on and do new things, our engineers thought: let’s have this be the basis of a synthesizer, let this be the way that people create sound, not only modify it and that’s how the KAOSSILATOR was born. The KAOSSILATOR lets you put four AA batteries in it, and just plug your headphones in and listen while you are on the train, plane, bus, or wherever you are.

Now, in closing, what would you say would be KORG’s strength when it comes to the raw sound? Like what would you say would be the tone that I would be looking for that brings me to a KORG product, as opposed to another manufacturer?

Expressiveness, if I had to pick one word, it would be expressiveness.

When you get onto a sound on the M3, you can play the keys, and it feels great. Then you push the aftertouch a little bit, and it does something completely different. Then you reach for the joystick and it modifies the sound in unexpected ways. You grab the Ribbon, it might be controlling a filter.

Then you reach for the sliders, and the sliders have all been assigned to do useful things that change depending on what sound you are using.

If you just search for sounds by playing one key, moving to the next sound, playing a key, moving to the next sound, you are missing the whole point. Each sound should be able to entertain you for weeks.

We thank Korg’s Rich Formidoni for taking the time to talk. More info on these products at Korg.com

57 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

MV-8800 exclusive Drum Kits by Mike Acosta !!

Roland MV-8800 With Roland Hardware Specialist Mike Acosta

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roducer’s Edge takes a look at a hardware workstation and what modern options and features are available for custom drum library construction and programming.

We go under the hood with Roland MV-8800 specialist and producer Mike Acosta.

Drew Spence: My first question is about the ability to import my own custom library of sounds and the expansion capabilities of the MV series. I want more drum sounds in my studio and some unique sounds from my own producer ear.

Mike Acosta: If they are in Wave format you can do it two ways. You can either copy them over to USB on to the internal Hard Drive and then create patches internally or import them directly off the CD. Once they’re

sitting on the hard drive you would go on to the Import Function. Open up the instrument section; choose an empty patch, which would say INIT patch which basically means it’s blank. Hit the import button. The MV will look to the root directory of the hard drive.

Then you could select which particular sample you want to bring in, you can even use the “Mark” function which would allow you to Mark multiple sounds.

If you were to choose pad one, you can just tap the pad and then it will automatically line them up consecutively on to the pads in order and once you have them on the patchyou can easily save the patch, name it and now you’ve made a new drum kit from your own samples.

What can I get from Roland hardwarewise to expand my Drum library?

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Mike Acosta: I always tell guys check out Pawn shops. Sometimes you can find old TR drum machines in there; 707, there’s a 626 …always fun to have. You can customize and capture. Every time you sample something yourself, you’re going to get a different flavor. We have a lot of the classics- TR drum samples, you can download, sampled in an impeccable studio with top AD converters so you get a really, really great transference of the sound.

If you want to get some flavor, recording through a budget AD converter or something for small home usage will actually give you a better lo-fi sound with some noise in it and that may actually work for you. Maybe the guy never cleaned the audio ports so there’s just a little static with the output.

A funky noise could be a good thing.

Your samples are going to be unique because no other machine is going to have that same character. I’ve leaned on this for my own sound design.

Pick up really cheap stuff and start layering them with your other good sounds. Now you have this whole other world of sounds to work with.

With more experience you’ll learn how get a particular type of sound from scratch, instead of just having a go to the Internet and looking for sample libraries and downloads. If you want your drums to be really customized and a real representation of you; the best thing to do is learn how to get the ideas in your head out. You don’t always need high end studio gear. Use what you already have and considering the amount of plug-ins available, you have lots of options. An old cassette deck sitting around -run your sound through it to get that peak saturation sound.

What about inside the box? We know about compression and EQ to bring out the life of drums. What other effects might be overlooked inside the MV-8800 that I can use on my drums?

I don’t tell producers to mess with compression. Unless you already have a lot of experience working with compression, you could

really screw up your sound. You need to understand what the compressor does, and how it works. Just because you slap a compressor on your drums, it doesn’t mean it’s going to make it sound better. There are so many different kinds of compressors...VCA type or tube type … solid state or optical. All of these different types of compressors react differently to sound.

When I do clinics and post tips and tricks on the MV Nation Forums I mention the lo-fi FX processor and the radio tuner processor. Both of those, if used as an insert, dramatically change the type of sound that you get from the drums- even at the sampling stage.

I posted a tip on the MV Nation Forum about 12 bit sounds from the MV as you are sampling. You could take the lo-fi FX processor, insert on the multi effects and set the FX running to input. Anything plugged into the MV is running through that lo-fi FX processor first and then hit off before the sample engine.

The 8800 has the ability to store effect presets, which was something

that wasn’t possible on the 8000. You can customize and tweak the settings and save it as a preset. Before you would have to save the project and then the effect will of course be saved within the project, but if you are using multiple multieffects in the project, you would loose that particular setting. You can even share them with other owners -you can post it online and have others download that preset.

People didn’t know we already included a bunch of preset templates already setup specifically for sampling. If you scroll to the bottom, you call up a bed effect. The library button will show you the entire list of effects. If you are new to sampling and don’t know how to dial in the effect, there is a preset there already you can tweak and resave.

This is not just for drums. If you have a guitar player tracking live licks over a beat, you can run them in through that effect. Once it’s on the audio track with that dirty effect sound on it- you can take pieces and dump it right over to a patch, chop it up and now you have chopped up samples.

The effect called the guitar multi is basically a Boss ME-50, which has compression, amp modeling, auto wah, distortion and overdrive, flange, chorus / delay all in that 1 MFX. [Editor’s note: COSM FX modeling is Composite Object Sound Modeling; emulates anything from Electric guitars to Acoustic guitars to Bass, multiple distortions and recording through different guitar cabinets, etc.-DS].

It’s easy to make it sound like it’s coming through a massive guitar stack with lots of distortion. It’s like you got a little VG-99. Of course the VG-99 goes way beyond with guitar effects processing, but again we are

talking about a sampling work station here and it actually has something for the guitar players and it sounds really, really good.

Does pushing drums through these guitar pedals push the limits on sound design or is that still a viable option?

Back in the day; when I started doing this, in the late 80s or early 90s, would take a drum machine like the TR-909 and tweak the kick drum output of the TR-909 and run that through a Boss distortion pedal and then out of the Boss distortion pedal back into the mixer. And overdrive the gain stage on the mixer and just roll off the entire low end on it and then sample. Combined that with a dry signal from the TR-909 and then you would layer the two and have this crazy, massive and huge kick drum with an aggressive edge. It retains the very round, bottomy, boomy end.

The best advice I can give is to experiment and try different things. That’s how you’ll stumble onto something that sounds really, really good. And as long as it sounds good then it doesn’t matter how you did it; there is no right or wrong.

Let’s talk about layering for a moment and how easy it is to layer my drum sounds together on the MV? It’s pretty simple. The MV will allow you to layer up to four samples on one pad and that’s done in the SMT area of the MV which is the sample mix table. If you are in the MV and you have a drum kit; load it up and you Press quick edit once a drum kit is loaded , F2 for SMT ( sample mix table )

Once you are on that screen you will see that at first you will have four available. You will see the first slot will already be taken up by the current sample that’s there when you hit the pad. If you want to add a second sample to that pad, you would merely cursor down to the second slot that’s empty.

Bring up your sample list. You can go and import another sample off the hard drive or use a sample that’s already loaded into the sample memory from other patches. So, you can scroll

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http://www.rolandus.com/go/mv-8800_demo/

to your sample manager list and choose another sample for something that’s already loaded in there and then you select it and then would now add a second sample to that layer.

You do the same thing for each particular layer, so again four layers. Then you have the option to set the cross like velocity switching depending on how hard you hit the pad it will trigger either just one sample or it will trigger two samples or it will trigger three samples then you can set the velocity levels for each one. So, depending on how hard you hit the pad, it will trigger multiple samples or you can just have them all set the same so that they all trigger anytime you hit the pad.

It’s really up to you, but it just gives you that flexibility to be able to do that. In that same screen you can also set the pitch for each drum. So another thing about layering drums sounds, it’s not just about layering them altogether, you also want to tune your drums, that’s another big thing that a lot guys overlook is tuning your drums.

So if you have got four different kick drums on there, the one thing that you want to do is go in that same page in the sample mix table and tune each one of them so that they are all in tuned together, so that they sound right. A lot of guys just stack a bunch of stuff and it sounds like scrap. So you got to really know how to tune your drums.

In that table right there, in that particular edit screen it allows you to

do that as well and also set the volume for each sample. So you have a lot of control over it and once you are done with everything then you just resave the patch and all that data and information gets saved along with that patch.

of course you will need to change the start point and move the start point up so that it starts right on the attack of the sample.

I’m layering a bunch of snares together trying to make a composite snare that sounds right, but something about it is sloppy and I don’t mean in a J-Dilla Way. There is something wrong with the timing, so how do I start to troubleshoot that?

Drew Spence: Now, when I am picking out sounds themselves to layer, are there certain candidates I am looking for? Am I looking for something over boomy? I am looking for a certain sound that could be high in pitch, what am I doing when it comes to actually picking out the sounds that will layer together?

Mike Acosta: Well, the one thing is you need to check the start point of your sample. Every sample that you import or sample may have a different start time depending on how you edited that sample or where you got it from.

So the first thing to do is to check your samples to see exactly where the start time is on them. You will press the quick edit screen and Press F1 for Sample Edit- that would actually bring up the wave form.

You will be able to see the start and end locations as well as the loop point and right there you would want to definitely select the start point and then, if the sample is right -- you will be able to see it if starts to link, there is some dead errors in front of the samples and well,

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To search with the MV-8800 you can also use the auto zero cross mode which will actually put you at the zero crossing point. So you can get it as close as possible if you want. It puts it right on the zero processing points so that you don’t get any top at the beginning or at the end. Some use the space at the front of the sample to get a very sloppy laid back sound so it triggers just a little late. So when you are playing using quantize and are playing on beat, but your samples are triggering a little bit

If you are looking for something that really cuts through a mix with crack; get a snare sample that has a really, really sharp attack and then maybe you don’t like the ending part of that sample.

Then maybe use another snare that doesn’t have a sharp attack, but it has a really good release on it like the ring out of the snare. Then add a clap for a third layer. You might only want the attack from that clap, because maybe the clap has the wide sound. So now you have got sharp attack, a very, very sharp short attack of a really bright snare. You will have a nice wide, no attack sound from the clap, but you will have the ring underneath. That makes the sound complete.

to triplets, to reggae flame to samba, like all these weird timings.

They are all in there as an actual template that you can use and apply to any one of your drum tracks in real-time.

What kind of sound library does the MV ship with drum-wise?

Excellent. Now, what about the drum programming itself? Is quantizing too much of a crutch in modern days as we are doing everything in free form or is that just a corrective behavior for how I should lay down my drums? Some guys don’t like to record with quantize. They just like it all free hand. So it’s just do your thing. It’s all about how you want your music to sound. If you are looking for something to correct your timing because maybe you suck at how you play then yeah, definitely you need to use the quantize, but the cool thing that the MV has that a lot of other drum machines out there don’t- is the ability to allow you to either set the quantizing at the input stage, so that it will automatically quantize for you. Or you can shut it off and it will play back immediately the original sequence that you did yourself.

How far can I get on that custom The MV comes with over 400mb of on-board sounds right out of the box.

Now, how far you can get on it really depends on you. There are some guys, all they use is stock sounds and they have cut albums with them.

You have the ability, while the sequences are still armed and recording, to switch quantize on and off. You can also change the strength of quantize of how hard you wanted it to adjust the timing. You can also change the resolution of the quantizing in realtime. You can also add the shuffle to it in real-time and adjust the rate of the shuffling and the amount of shuffle. [holy cow]

If you’re getting a sampler that means that you’re going to put your own sounds into it. If you want to use it like a ROMpler then you should get something like a Fantom or MC808 with tons of drum and other sounds already in because you’re not going to do much sampling. There are a lot of really cool drum kits- everything from subtle acoustic, mixed electronic, hiphop, urban R&B dance and even glitch analogue drum kits. Check for MA Durt Kit used on the 8 diagrams Album

These are features some of those other drum machines out there and sample machines do not do after or in real time. It’s all nondestructive on the MV. Want to quantize? She has over 75 different templates that you can choose. These are all crazy different types of templates from twin templates

We go way beyond the machines of the past. Remember when you got like one or two drum kits? –Real minimal for someone just starting out who doesn’t have samples or a big sample library. The MV is perfect since you’ve got synthesizer sounds, keyboards, strange vocal

sounds, guitars and all kind of funky licks. You can take any of these sounds and start layering and customizing and using effects and re-sampling. You can flip these sounds into something that’s really you.

As a producer, the drum loop is my main weapon of choice to start with.

What facilities do I have to keeping that workflow and still use an all in one solution like the MV?

With the MV, you have two sample engines. One handles patches and one-shot samples or instruments that you’re going to play back. The other is the Audio Phrase engine. It’s for any type of like time-based samples, drum loops, vocals and any pre-fabricated music loops. Automatic time stretching with BPM Sync will turn your material into liquid audio and adjust it to any tempo changes without altering the pitch in real time, unlike other drum machines that are trying to claim they do that and it’s not necessarily true.

In some other machines you’ve got to take a sample, convert it to what they would call a patched phrase and then trigger it back in time, but you can’t edit the sample. You have to take it out of that patch phrase mode back to it’s original form to edit, do anything and then put it back in your patch phrase again to trigger. [Sounds like a complicated process] This also works on live audio tracks since the MV has the ability to record eight linear audio tracks alongside your 128 midi tracks. The eight audio tracks can be used to record live vocals, live

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LAYERS OF MEANING

If you wanted to layer eight samples, technically you can only do four on the MV, but if you did four on one pad and then you did another four on another pad and then hit the record button on the sequencer and strike both pads at full velocity then you just record one note.

You basically strike both simultaneously and record that and then you go on and resample that, now you have that one sample that’s triggering eight sounds and then you can go and load that onto a pad within the same patch and then delete the other two pads which would then save you more sample time for RAM.

guitars, saxophone, flute or anything.

So imagine: I’ve recorded my vocals, guitars and later on that night I want to change my beat, the tempo and everything so I change all that up and I want to slow it down a bit.

Typically, if you decide to change the tempo -you would have to go and timestretch each individual audio track to fit.

There are programs now like Ableton Live that allow you to do it easily, but the MV does it in real time and remember it’s hardware, not software. You don’t have to rely on computers, processors and all the things that make software a pain. For someone that doesn’t want to use a computer and still be in the box working with hardware- this is giving you that power and flexibility. It takes extreme time stretching before you start even hearing any type of aliasing.

Just change pitch independently from timing. If I decided to change the key on my song and the vocalist has already jammed their lead vocal, you can go in and tune the vocal up, drop it down an octave without altering the time and have it fit to whatever new changes you have made within the song. Remember; the original recording takes are never altered and that’s where the MV really stands out because it processes all of it in real time.

Auto Chop for Drum Kits MV has the Auto Chop Mode: you can take any recorded phrase and have three different ways to slice and dice that sample.

You can do it by level, so it will look at just the transients and get right at the individual drum hits and create a whole new drum kit to play by breaking it up into pieces- separating the kicks, snares and hats previewable in real time. Many drum machines don’t allow you to do that. If you chop it up, it’s basically one slice that gets assigned to all 16 pads and if you want to hear what the other slices are, you have to use the dial wheel and then scroll through the different slices to hear what they are. The MV does this differently. The MV lets you see the entire waveform with all the slices and then play them in real time to preview and decide that this is what you want.

Beats chops in equally divided sections. The divide mode will allow the MV to look at the sample, analyze it and then break it up into equal divisions along the pads. So it means, if I have an eight-bar loop in there and I want that eight-bar loop to fill up just the 16 pads, it will look and scan the eight-bar loop and it will slice it up equally onto all 16 pads, so that you can play each pad. If you want to play each pad in order like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 you would basically be playing the loop in real time, sliced up on 16 pads.

Now, you can also tell it to divide by beats, so if it’s an eight-bar loop and you divide it by eight, then of course it

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would split that loop equally, but only onto eight pads. So of course on each pad the sample would be longer, but it would be equally divided amongst eight pads.

What other resources are available for me to learn how to increase my knowledge of the MV series?

Check out mvnation.com. There are a lot of different tips and tricks that guys have posted on there like videos from Da Madman & Ski Beats.

Somebody may be doing something that you already know, but he may do something a little bit different that you never thought of before and now you can learn something new.

Watch the videos that we have for the tutorials on the Roland website which is http://www.rolandus.com. We have tutorial documents and that’s one thing that a lot of guys seem to overlook.

They cover specific functions of the MV. So if you want to learn just about sampling and how to get the most out of the MV see the MV-8800 workshop 03 – Sampling. It’s a detailed step by step guide. If you are a new guy to the MV and you are converting over from the MPC background, we even have a specific tutorial document that’s labeled the MPC to MV translator document and this is really, really cool.

It’s helped a lot of guys out because it labels all the specific functions on the MPC like the button pushes, the terminology used on the MPC and how that relates and translates over to the MV. It’s different terminology and different wordings, but it means the same thing and a lot of guys don’t understand that.

So for example, like on MPC, all those guys know timing correct. On the MV, we refer to quantizing and that’s the same thing.

Timing correct 1:16th on the MPC 2000 would mean quantize resolution 120 on the MV and it gives an exact comparison in a chart.

We thank Roland hardware Specialist Mike Acosta for sitting down with us and getting us under the hood with the MV-8800 workstation.

Roland Fantom-G with Warren ‘Hanna’ Harris Flagship workstation ROMpler.

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oland has been on quite a roll recently with the MV 8800 and Fantom series workstations. Cutting edge products like the V-Synth and solutions like the Juno-G, Sonic Cell and SP line of performance samplers help create a balanced selection of products. The Fantom-G arrived and became the newest Roland flagship product. I’m sure you’ve seen our videos from winter NAMM 08 [youtube.com/griffinavid] and crawled through the info and specs at Roland’s website [Rolandus.com]. Is it really worth it to run down to your gear shop and check it out first hand? You know how it sounds, but how much ‘better than the Fantom-X’ must it be to require an upgrade? In 2008 you have a lot of choices. Even if you consider sticking with the Roland brand name; you have choices. Let’s roll up on Roland product specialist and musician Warren ‘Hanna’ Harris and see what’s good with the Fantom-G and see what it could do for your production. And yes, he’s bringing his bass along.

Firstly, I think of expansion boards in their usual sense. I open the back or bottom of my board; add some fresh sounds- boom that’s it. Now I see the SuperNatural expansion boards are DSP synths so it looks like we’ll be able to add a new engine to power this new soundset.

Could you please explain how this all works and even tell us why it’s suddenly necessary on a board as powerful as the Fantom?

Hannah: For years, most cats never edited sounds in their workstations.

You pick a sound and use that sound.

I am one of those guys. Honestly, the process has been too time-consuming for me and just not worth it to edit the sounds. Now, with Supernatural Technology, it’s easier to edit because it’s visual and intuitive to change the shape, size and mic placement on a drum. You actually see the drum change on the screen! As producers, we tend to go through a lot of sounds fast. There are a few core patches we consider part of our production palette – we turn to these sounds often because they pretty much fit any track. I call those the signature sounds. No matter how much love and thoughtfulness is placed on programming and sound design there will always be instrument categories that shine above the others.

What would you say are the FantomG’s strengths? [does droning voice] Basses; synths & acoustic, Drums, Strings, Electric piano, Acoustic guitars, leads, and pads [laughter at naming every category]. You call them the meat and potato sounds. To me, a signature

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sequencer. You can still work in smaller patterns until you are ready to move up to the level of the new sequencer and take advantage of all its features.

sound is a sound a cat may use so much that it defines him. You hear a track and you know it’s him or her because you hear that same bass or lead sound. You can’t say any one sound area is better than the next because Roland focuses on a great sound and tone for every preset in every category. The producer will choose his sounds or patches that best suit his ear. There are no rules.

The Fantom-G is a tool. Music is art.

It’s about the joy and freedom to create and do whatever you like. I think many producers suck, that’s the problem.

No skills; that’s the problem. It’s like they’re asking “how do you test drive a car?” My question in return is: “Do you know how to drive?”

I know you look at the gear pieces as production tools and not just sound modules. You’ve demonstrated the ease of recording traditional instruments and mixing them with the included sound sets. What about staying entirely inside the box?

What performance enhancements, articulations and expression tools do I have at my disposal to capture that live bass or electric piano tone using only the included sounds?

Inside the box? If you can finish your

song inside the box, do it!

That’s it!

You’re done! Live bass performing enhancement is YOU actually playing the bass like a bass player.

The patches speak for themselves.

The electric piano ARX card, however gives you supreme customization of the tone for the electric piano. If you can apply yourself, you create the entire song convincingly inside the Fantom.

As a player, I’m sure you can appreciate the newer key action, but what about the pads? I see the changes to the surface. The new larger LCD screen…the faders. I see a merging of the DAW and hardware workstation. What options open up with USB connectivity? Mouse control, thumb drive archiving, saving and loading Waves and Aiff files. Pads are triggers and it is a preference whether you want to play a sound with a key or a pad.

Let’s talk sequencing and discuss the new sequencer that works in a linear way, much like a Pro Tools or Cubase. Workstations have always been pattern based- with my song being built up by smaller sequences. Am I now at the point of doing away with a host sequencer or is this just another option? What if I don’t want to break from working in 4 bar phrases, can I still apply my workflow from previous Fantom units?

That’s tough. It’s a linear sequencer. Not going to sugar-coat it.

If it’s the end of the world for you, then you still need your familiar host

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What if I’m standing at a cross-road? I may already have a Fantom and be thinking of selling it to upgrade my sound or maybe I’m about to buy in and I can’t decide between the still highly usable Fantom-X or raise a little more and go in at the Fantom-G. What factors should I be considering as I make this decision?

Price difference is about $1,000. If you don’t need 24 audio tracks, get the X. I personally think the G sounds better. [we know they reworked the sound engine-GA] I may decide to keep my Fantom-X. It has some great patches I don’t want to miss and my workflow is lightning fast. How much of the Fantom-G’s sound set is totally new? I understand the new capture process used and even the more powerful engine pushing out those sounds at greater fidelity, BUT! I am concerned with adding on to my sound palette and I want to know how much overlap there is with the previous ROM? One sound in any keyboard may be worth the whole keyboard. I don’t know an exact overlap number; it could be less than half. You may need both.

In conclusion, what else do we need to know about the flagship Fantom-G? What is a little known characteristic that will make this production tool even more useful in my studio? You need to hear the G! The little known characteristic is that it’s the best sounding workstation ever made.

Thanks again Hanna for taking the time to build with us. I hope to see you on the road again jamming on that Fantom-G.

Yamaha Motif XS Impressions and Expression PART I with Phil Clendennin

Musician

and Yamaha specialist Phil Clendennin wants you to get more out your Motif XS. When I say more I mean expressiveness.

Sure, they added all those articulations and performance nuances, but it’s up to you to take advantage of them.

Instrumental Mental Phil Clendennin: At Yamaha we build everything from acoustic pianos to dedicated electric pianos, the synthesizers; the workstations, etc.

There are many different customers although musicians are a small niche market. Out of a 100 people you’d be lucky to find one that’s a musician and then you can take that one person as a musician and he may not even play keyboards. We all are in a very small market, but at the same time, we are dedicated. Yamaha is a musical instrument company from the very beginning. So we make all kinds of products for all kinds of customers at all price points, from a few dollars until you run out of money [laughter].

So the Motif XS just happens to be a hat we call a synthesizer workstation; a development within the last 10, 15 years and it is a cutting edge product that uses a lot of technology.

Articulated Articles Articulation is all about getting the nuance out of a sound. Acoustic instruments basically work on physics.

Musicians don’t really get into the physics of the musical instrument but when you start doing technology, you really do have to think about how the instruments make sounds. For instance in a piano, a piano is in the percussion family. And musical instruments can make sounds in one of two major categories or in two kinds of ways.

They can be percussive, or they can be what they call self-sustaining.

So you have instruments that are hammered, struck or plucked.

And note, those are your percussion instruments where the musician is responsible for triggering an event and then that event is a musical tone that continues until time, friction, and/ or gravity make that tone stop. The other family of instruments we call self-sustaining; where the musician applies pressure to the instrument and it continues to vibrate as long as the musician applies pressure.

Those instruments would include things that you blow through. Reed or pipe, or by applying a bow to a string and as long as you apply that pressure

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the instrument continues to vibrate.

So there are mechanics that you have to imitate when you do something with the synthesizer. In terms of electronic, the key is an on/off switch. Basically, you press the key down, you turn it on and the sound happens, you let go of the key, the sound is off. Now that can translate very well for certain kinds of sounds. So it’s very easy for a synthesizer, for instance, to imitate a drum. You turn on the sound by striking it with a stick and boom the sound happens. And there is nothing else to do until you are told or instructed to strike the drum again.

A key going down makes a very good trigger for a drum sound.

However, it makes a very poor trigger when it’s trying to imitate a wind instrument; there is a lot more going on. Playing takes two parts. The player is not only turning a key or pressing a key, he also has to trigger the event with his own lungs and lips, and so forth.

So the technology that’s predominated in the market right now is what’s called sampled playback, it’s a digital recording of real instruments.

And how we got here, it’s just about the history of electronics; the first synthesizers did not try to imitate anything. And a lot of people really liked that- of course other people hated it but

the reasonable synthesizers just made noises, bleeps bloops - if it was a high sound, you call it a lead; if there was a low sound, you call it a bass. But nobody called it a piano, nobody called it a flute, nobody called it a trumpet or drum.

Now you can almost sound like that instrument, almost.

That’s where we are now with synthesizers.

The keyboard players want to sound like other instruments. It’s not enough for the piano player just to play piano; he has got to be the strings, the brass, the drums, the bass and the guitar.

That’s what keyboard workstations are about. A lot of the television shows you see where there is music going on, there is nothing but a keyboard playing.

Synthesizers can emulate almost any instrument. Just because you play piano it doesn’t mean you are going to be a good synthesizer player, there is more to it. Articulation is all about being able to make the instrument speak better.

Articulation is about thinking like a trumpet, thinking like a flute when you are playing a flute sound. And this

is hard for some keyboard players to get used to but those instruments play one note at a time. To a flute player or a trumpet player that, of course, is obvious to them; they are used to playing one note at a time. Keyboard players have 10 fingers, and they want to play 10

of the key things.

A flute, if you are going to record or sample a flute, what you would do is get a really good player to stand in front of a microphone and have them play the whole notes, like a Middle C and then have them play C#, and then have them play D, and then have them play D# and so forth. You’d sample the whole instrument, and in that way you could map it to the keys and when you hit the key it would play back that note.

The only problem with doing that is that each time you record the person; you record them attacking the note. So when you try to play a flute line you will sound like a rank beginner who’s breathing in and out on every note.

You can’t phrase like a real flute player would on one breath maybe play six or seven notes in a phrase.

So that was one of the things that samples did not do well and typically when you hear keyboard players talk about trying to emulate a saxophone, everybody knows it doesn’t sound like a saxophone. And the reason is nobody plays attack, attack, attack, attack.

They attack a note and they play several notes by just fingering on one breath. That’s where articulation comes in.

Look at what Yamaha did with the XS; when you lift up a note and play it attacks, but if you play Legato, that means without lifting up a note, you trigger another note, it transitions to that note without re-attacking and that makes all the difference in the world in terms of articulation. Now you can phrase like a flute would, it’s monophonic, it plays one note a time, but the notes connects in a realistic manner.

Articulation is one of those small but very, very important improvements that have come along within the last couple of years. We have something called the Expanded Articulation Control and it allows you

“If you play or approach everything like it’s a

piano, then you are not going to get the most out of your keyboard. In other words, piano parts are basically different than strings. When you voice chords on a piano that’s different than how somebody would orchestrate a string section.” flutes, but it doesn’t work that way.

To really imitate a flute you got to think about how a flute phrases.

Keyboard players don’t have to breathe in and breathe out when they play, they can play continuously for a long time without even thinking about breathing. A flute player has to think about breathing. It’s necessary and they’ll pass out if they don’t [laughter].

If you are going to do a really good flute line, you have to think about when you attack a note. This is one

67 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

“...there is something like 1,150 some

odd presets in a Motif XS. Who in the world needs 1150 sounds? A Piano makes one sound; back in day you had a Fender Rhodes it made one sound. Keyboard players walk in with over 1,100 sounds at a gig. Man, they couldn’t pay somebody to play that many instruments.” to easily transition from one sound into another by how you hit the keys - that is a Legato mode or by stepping on a peddle or pressing a button. Not only is it good for emulating acoustic instruments, but when you get into synthesizers and sci-fi sounds it makes for interesting performances.

So even in how the chords are voiced, they are spelled out on the keys. You have to have a more sensitive ear, you have to change your approach depending on the instruments that you are trying to do. Oh, I’ll give you a good example, in my function at Yamaha as Product Specialist I got out and did performances for end users and I was doing one here in New York. And I played a sequence and played along with it and at the end of it a young guy in the front comes to me and he says, “Man you had that breath section sound like a real horn section,” I thanked him for noticing.

So what I did, I played back the song and I soloed the trumpet track and then I soloed the alto saxophone track and I soloed the tenor saxophone track and I soloed the trombone track and I soloed the baritone sax track. So he is like, “That wasn’t just one sound?”

I go, “No, no what made it like a horn section is the fact that it wasn’t just one sound.” If you call up a sound that is called a brass section or a horn section and play it like a keyboard player it

comes out sounding like a keyboard.

But if you play the trumpet line individually and then play the alto sax line individually and play the tenor sax line individually and then the baritone sax individually and the trombone; it builds your section up. It sounds like a bunch of individuals playing with each other. You won’t be perfect so each instrument phrases a little differently but it comes out sounding like a section. That’s the key; it’s a matter of how you approach it. If you do quick stabs you can get away with that little horn section, but if you are going to play to make it sound like Tower of Power or a real horn section, you have got to take your time and build it up a little at a time.

I notice that you are very quick with the controls on setting up your patches but could you lead us through a little bit of some of the tweaks you do for individual sounds. I am not expecting the actual guideline but is there just a general blue print that you might be able to lay out of what adjustments you make per sound.

Well, it depends on the sound. If it’s an acoustic guitar, you are going to bend pitches and hit harmonics. If you are going to strum the sound; you have got to think about upstrokes and are you going to spray the chord going

68 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

up the keyboard. If it’s a down stroke, you have got to spray the keys going in the opposite direction. You have to think more like the instruments and on the XS you have access to 24 realtime parameters via knobs and you have 8 sliders that are assigned to different volume aspects of the sound.

You have buttons and pedals and what you would do with any sound is set that sound up - what we call controllers so you can perform it. On a piano you have keys that go up and down. On a synthesizer, you have your knobs, your buttons, your wheels, your ribbon so that you can articulate the sound.

It’s all about trying to do something that’s done naturally on the normal instrument but you have to farm it out maybe to two or three other controllers. See if a guitar player wants to slide up a string he just does that, if you want to slide up a string, you either have to assign that to a wheel or a ribbon. If they want to add vibrato, which is the change in pitch up and down to make a note sing, you have to apply that either to a wheel or to a ribbon or to after touch which is pressure on the keys.

You decide about these things ahead of time and this is how you choose a particular voice, it almost sounds absurd that nowadays there is something like 1150 some odd presets in a Motif XS. Who in the

world needs 1150 sounds? A Piano makes one sound; back in day you had a Fender Rhodes it made one sound. Keyboard players walk in with over 1,100 sounds at a gig. Man, they couldn’t pay somebody to play that many instruments. [laughter] Well now let’s talk about the effects sections, which is one of those sections that seems to bewilder many people on what they should do when it comes to a sound.

The effects are what they are; you need things like reverb if you are going to record. Typically if you are a human being listening to music, let’s say you are at the best seat in the house, which means you are probably 10 or 15 rows back, center of the house listening to the band. That means that 89% of the signal that you hear is bouncing off the ceiling, floor, walls, the room that you are in. 11% of the sound comes directly off the stage and goes directly to your years. So 11% is small amount. 89% of it is influenced by the room that you are in.

If you are blind folded and you go into that room - if it’s low ceilings you would know it; if it’s high ceilings you would know it, simply by just being in that room. So everything that you hear is usually influenced by the environment it’s in. So when you record anything, this goes for a recording in the studio or sampling instruments.

What you do is you put a microphone within inches of that instrument. Well

that’s not natural, that’s not where you put your ear; when we sample a flute or a trumpet the microphone is an inch or two away from that trumpet, you would never put your ear in that position.

And the reason is you are not used to hearing sound like that, number one; and number two, it would hurt [more laughter].

Obviously, putting the microphone close has an advantage; it allows you to isolate that one sound.

It allows you to get every nuance of that sound. But then to turn it back into something that sounds realistic you have to put distance between the listener and that sound. That’s where reverb becomes a necessary evil.

Now for keyboard players this is a double-edged sword because it depends on the environment you put your synthesizer in. So you always see on a Yamaha synth, effect bypass buttons right on the front panel.

The reason they are there is because some of our people use our synth at home or in the studio, some people use it out on stage. Now if you are out on stage, usually you are in a large room, you don’t need to add reverb, you are in a room that adds reverb itself. So you can bypass the effects. So reverb -- I mean all kinds of effects are really -- they are just sweetening. Those are the things that we add to sounds to make them more pleasurable for us to listen to.

Now the effect processing that you have in the XS, one of the most exciting things about the keyboard is

that at Yamaha and if you go to any live concert, in fact the next concert you go to take a look in the middle of the house, eight out of ten times, - 80% of the times the console that is responsible for doing sound in the house is a Yamaha; it is a Yamaha PM1D, PM5D. One of Yamaha’s main things is major mixing consoles for live sound.

Those boards can run $125,000 to $200,000. The effect processing in those boards eventually trickles down to where mere mortal musicians can afford it. And the effects that you find in the XS have trickled down from our top of the line consoles.

So what we have in there is called VCM or Virtual Circuit Modeling effects. So the Virtual Circuit Modeling is about making these things sound like vintage effect processing from the golden age; I love when they say that because of when I used to work in the studios.

The 70s and 80s was where you used killer effect processing. And to have this at your beck and call and advantage is off -- so if I am doing a guitar sound and I want to call up like a dual phase or something that sounds like a Mu-tran from the 70s or MXR Phase 100 or any of the classic effect processes. That’s what I have access to. So if you are going to do a guitar sound, to make it really sound like a guitar, you have got to run it through the same effects the guitar player would run it through. So I can take an actual recording of a clean guitar and put it through effects that make it sound like a guitar player would.

A lot of people think of effects as hiding something, but no, effect processing is what it is. It really brings back some of the environment that you are usually hearing. Effects are one of those things, and especially when they are good effects that can enhance your experience. What you have in a Motif XS is a complete recording studio in a box.

Many of the professional components as you can possibly get. Things like compressors are essential tools used to make your music stand out.

Part II Continues in Issue 04 See you then!

69 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

ABLETON LIVE 7 Multi-track and MIDI sequencer Win/Mac VST, AU ReWire Instruments included 119 USD

By Jeff “Madjef” Taylor

A

bleton 7 is Live, that’s how I’m going to start this product feature. Live has been around since 2001 and I’ve always loved the concept. Even then it was good enough for most of the sound manipulation I needed to do. Its potential was obvious, but I figured it might be a while before it was a truly one-stop solution. After working with Live 7 over the past several weeks, I can assure you that with Live 7, that time has come. Ableton Live 7 is the right software.

There are a lot of new features and upgrades in Live 7; such as the new 64 bit mixing engine, updated instruments and effects and three new physical modeling instruments from Applied Acoustics systems. You’ll be using Tension, Electric and Analog as well sampled instruments from SONIVOX and Chocolate Audio. Combine that with the new Orchestra Instruments and you have sounds for days, months…well years.

Live is unique to me in that it allows you to think outside of the box, even as a rewire slave- it’s completely changed the way I arrange my tracks and given me more creative freedom.

I want to bring your attention to the new features that really got me excited about working Ableton into my regular production setup. Drum Racks.

I.e. For example, normally I sequence in logic audio and when my beat is done I might decide to add a sample, loop, percussion or whatever catches my ear. Normally I would have to sample it into Logic and trigger it as a one hit, or slice it up to make it work with tempo, pitch etc, this can be a time consuming task. However with Live rewired in, I can take that audio sample and drop it on a track in Live, double click the track and have the option to alter start points, pitch, speed all while it’s perfected locked to the new tempo.

This process has changed the way I work with loops and samples.

Drum racks is a 128-pad drum-programming machine. It has auto-controller note mapping, individual mixer and effects control for each sound and the ability to use single hits, multisamples or even virtual instruments on each pad.

Depth is always an issue for me when mixing samples and loops and with the new sound of Ableton, this is no longer a problem for me.

The new 64bit mixing engine sounds great and the ability to work with the IO of my existing audio interface for total integration with outboard FX and hardware is a plus.

Using Live 7 as a standalone sequencer is no longer a reason for concern, you don’t need to use it rewired to anything, but if you’re like me, you’re going to keep using your main sequencer.

With the latest operating systems, rewire has become as stable as the Brooklyn Bridge. I’ve enjoyed working with Logic for the basic sequencing of my drums and Live to load samples for inspiration and experimentation.

70 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

As a beat programmer I am very familiar with the MPC type approach to programming and triggering samples with pads.

I can maintain that workflow and drop as many samples as needed on the 128 pads, which are sub-divided into groups of 16. Regardless of the type of MIDI controller you are using, the new auto-controller note mapping automatically

around in the window to change the order of sounds for those that like to have their kick drums followed by snare, hi-hat, toms, FX, etc. I love this feature; it reminds me of the large format consoles with white tape labeled on the patch-bay. REX file support and audio slicing have also been added, allowing you to slice any loop into a midi track for editing.

Side chaining is now one of the included effects, which allows you to take one sound and use it to manipulate another sound. Most often you will see it on compressors, gates, limiters, and expanders. It’s used to place multiple instruments in the same frequency range without clashing. reassigns your pads or keys to reflect the currently selected bank. Now there’s no need to search for or manually midi note numbers. Drum racks will give many hip hop and R&B programmers that final push needed to buckle down and learn this software.

Impulse was the first attempt by Ableton to integrate a one shot sampler into the software and I never quite enjoyed working with it. But Drum Racks replaces Impulse with an amazing number of features and greater flexibility. Each pad can be assigned its own effects plug-in chain, which means you can have different effects on each sound if you choose to, click the show/hide chain button and the box expands to show you individual controls for each sound, volume, pan, mute, and solo, you can edit the start of each sample, loop point, length, attack, decay, sustain, LFO, filters, etc.

The Drum Racks individual sounds can be shown in expanded form with their own individual faders by clicking on the arrow in the upper right hand area of the track. Once expanded, you can audition each sound, then just when

you really start to see how deep Drum Racks is, you can then drag and drop the effect of your choice onto individual channels, reverb on the snare, another reverb on the kick, delay on the hi hat, drop a compressor on top of that clap and decrease the threshold and listen to how it starts to crack, you get the picture. Wow. While working in expanded drum racks mode, selecting individual sound brings up all the editing parameters and any affects etc that are assigned to it.

You can also, grab a track of the individual sounds and move them

The GUI is really simple and it’s clear that the people at Ableton are more concerned with what goes on under the hood and less about frivolous graphics.

Searching for the right sound is a necessary but tedious part of the process. The layout of the browser is excellent, you can organize your files any way you like and the browser cruises thru each volume and folder until you eventually find what you want.

The upper left of the browser has a headphone button, click it to audition or preview the samples.

Double clicking pops the sample in on a new instrument track with the waveform available immediately for editing.

Live 7 changed my work habits in a big way with the added features and improvements. In fact this software is so much fun I recommend you try it out as soon as possible. Once you get familiar with how it works, I’m sure you’ll find yourself saying Wow over and over and over again. I ran Ableton on my Mac G5 8 quad desktop and a Mac Book Pro, it ran flawlessly on both machines.

71 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

IK Multimedia SampleTron WIN/Mac Standalone VST, RTAS, AU 269 USD

L

ast quarter we took a look at IK Multimedia SampleMoog which brought us a fresh software ROMpler option for adding the Moog sound to your production. Even the folks over at Moog music appreciated the results.

SampleTron presents another reviewer’s paradox. How do you go about evaluating the authenticity and faithfulness of a product that is powered by samples from…a sampler? Since the software SampleTron is based on the hardware Mellotron, perhaps we should start there.

Chamber Music In 1952 Harry Chamberlin produced an instrument that played back 8 second long bits of tape when triggered by a keyboard. The tape didn’t loop, but was reset back to its starting point when the key was raised. Bill Fransen, a company employee and sales rep improved the design with the help of Melody Electronics and produced the Mellotron Mark-I. Development and production continued throughout the 60s’and

into the early 70s’. The most popular version of the Mellotron is the highly recognizable white M-400 [produced up until 1986!] followed by the ultimate incarnation the Mark-V. Eventually the Mellotron sound was upstaged by the new analogs from Moog and ARP. Perhaps the most recognizable usage was in The Beatles “Strawberry Fields Forever” but you can find the Mellotron featured in songs by Marvin Gaye, The Bee Gees, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, David Bowie [“Space Oddity”]

72 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

and many, many others. The strings, particularly the violins were utilized for their characteristic haunting and emotional undertone.

The Recognizer Those familiar with the current Sample series will be right at home with the GUI. IK has opted for a rusty and decayed look to match the lo-fi nature of the samples. As always the Browser eats up most of the screen-estate so it’s pretty obvious you are going to be using combis and fashioning your own layered instruments. Below the browser are the PART controls.

Range as in key range and velocity controls - mostly useful for creating splits and layers. Synth decides how the engine will manipulate the samples.

Re-sampling works like a traditional sampler and changes both the tempo

and pitch and offers the most transparent results. (PS/TS) Pitch Shift Time Stretch separates the controls for pitch and tempo and allow independent adjustments to each. This is best used to match the tempo of the internal loops. This allows for the manipulation of an acoustic instruments timbre as well. You have Filters and the ADSR which is located in the Envelope Controls. Velocity you would tailor to your playing style.

The Multi-effects unit is comprised of 32 effects you will select for 3 of the 4 available slots. The first slot is hard wired for EQ and Compression. All effect controls are MIDI-learnable. Effects of note are the Lo-Fi, which trashes the sound completely. Phonograph mixes in the pops, crackles and other vinyl artifacts. Crusher for distortion and Slicer for turntable fader style drop outs.

Master Control Program You will want to spend some time exploring the Part controls and experimenting with the different engines. In just about every case, the default settings were preferred, but I found switching the synth engine type increased the tape artifacts and the lo-fi character of the instruments. A nice touch is the effects run independent of the instrument. Just selecting phonograph as an effect brings on the hiss and crackle which I immediately sampled to use with other tracks. Did I say too much there?

One feature of the original Trons was loops of music. They played for 8 seconds and a performance was based on triggering these loops in succession to create a seamless composition. It feels

like a cross between a key-mapped workflow from a standard sampler and a sample-chop arranger.

On the surface these may seem like throwaway presets or a nod to days and sounds long gone by, but consider approaching these banks creatively in a performance manner and you will unlock the potential. Enough said.

My User wants me

It ships with over 600 presets from 17 Mellotrons, Chamberlins and other tron family machines. So how does it sound? Retro, vintage, crusty and funky. If you have an understanding of the original machines and the lo-fi coloring of the sound, then you will appreciate the great lengths IK Multimedia has gone to while preserving the nature while embracing the future. It is quite an achievement to amass these samples from such a diverse set of instruments (many needing restoration) and present them in an easily accessible manner to both the Mellotron enthusiast and producer looking to add vinyl-styled instruments to their studio. If you want clean and polished tones that require very light processing and/or layering, stick with SampleTank 2. If you are a producer who uses samples and struggles to find additional sounds to sit next to the vinyl snippets then this is a key product.

73 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

Native Instruments KORE 2 Unified hardware controller, VST host and librarian Standalone WIN/MAC VST/AU/RTAS 399 USD

I

’m going to call Native Instruments KORE 2 a concept piece. I say this because it is hard to describe and any short summary of its functionality skips over another cool way to use it. I’ve had it for several months now and I still pause when someone asks me what it’s about. Let’s first cover what you GET and what you SEE then lastly figure out the many what you DOs.

HardKore (what you get) The unit is surprisingly heavy and well built. For all the live performance abilities it’s aimed for- it needs to be and even has a laptop/notebook Kensington-style lock to ward off gear-grabbers at gigs. Round back are two user assignable footswitch ports- used for on/off signals in addition to the two Expression Pedal ports following right after (which everyone confuses for audio outs). Next to the USB interface is a MIDI In/out which allows for additional controllers. You can’t use the controller without the KORE software engaged, but it has a MIDI In and OUT so you are not losing a port in practice.

The Controller knobs are touch-sensitive endless rotaries whose backlit Selection Rings glow more intently as the knobs

are twisted. Above and below are the Controller Buttons which can be used in gate or toggle mode and will most likely be used by you to store a Sound Variation’s settings (a snapshot of the KoreSound’s Control Page settings).

Below the display screen are the arrows which navigate the different frames of the KORE software edit screen.

On the very bottom are the Transport controls. The huge Scrollwheel mirrors the up and down arrows for quick navigation. The Control Button brings up the Control Pages (what buttons/knobs do what) for the component in focus while the Sound Button switches to Sound Mode for navigating the Sound Matrix and also for morphing

(gradually transforming) between Sound Variations.

F1 is context sensitive and F2 opens the browser and hardware settings. The small speaker icon is a pre-listen or audition button.

SoftKore (What you see)

KORE has two modes of operation Standalone and Plugin. Plug-in Mode has three additional options: standard VSTi, virtual FX rack and Multi-out with 16 stereo

outputs. Like most VSTs with dual modes, expect more direct menu options when in standalone and more of the optional settings being controlled by the host sequencer when loaded as a plug-in.

Once opened as a New Performance the screen is divided in to four tiers. The upper most is the Global Header or Task bar. The 2nd tier called the Upper Pane is the software link to the KORE Controller. Changes on the hardware are reflected here visually. Here sits the Edit Area where you’ll spend most of your time, but we’ll come back in a minute. The Browser uses a left to right search field customized by the user to display hits by key word criteria. You can search by sound category (like a workstation ROMpler), instrument (see ALL string patches in your computer) or description and more. I know the feeling of losing inspiration from spending too long looking for the right sound while pulling up plug-in after plugin and combing through its soundbanks. You’ll find it a total joy to pull open a plug-in and save its patch under your own definition and descriptive info. The next time you sound surf, you can stop at all the sounds you labeled with a custom attribute.

The Edit Area in the middle loads individual plugs (SingleSounds) and can layer multiple Plug-ins and

library presets to create a MultiSound. The idea here is to create layers from all the different plug-in presets on your computer without opening the individual plugins’ interface since KORE 2 does this behind the scenes for you. This entire set up is saved as a KoreSound and can be loaded into itself as a SingleSound. If you think of layering the already layered patches you can get some serious creations that might be hard, if not impossible, to visualize all in one take. This simply means a sessions worth of routing and chaining and layering can be brought up in another session as a singular sound without ever having to dive back in under the hood. On the very bottom is the Info Pane. It displays the same information a mouse over would. It’s needed for the many pages of options and extensive context-sensitive functionality.

PowerKore (Do and do and a don’t) The KORE Controller grants control of the most tweaked settings on any patch you pull up. It’s all about the performance parameters here. No longer do you need to scan that horrible GUI looking for the filters. It’s already mapped out to the Controller for any Plug-in that follows a standard automatable parameters spec. It’s impossible to have a set up ready for some of the more complicated modular plug-ins, but you can MIDI learn and customize your KORE Controller.

There are no direct sounds coming from the KORE controller.

I know it looks crazy but no, no sounds. What you do get is a 5 gig library of Native Instrument worthy sounds, including more than two dozen mixed drum kits and seventy-five bass patches. It’s tons of content, but obviously it’s easy to manage.

You will take advantage of 30 different FX, ranging from the expected to the bizarre and can easily spend hours trying out 75 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

a single sound patch with different FX patchesbefore even getting to the FX settings.

The newest crop of software is quite powerful with huge gig-chewing libraries and you will need to keep up with the ever-increasing demands.

Understand; the KORE controller is not a DSP solution: you need a real rig to run the next generation of software and a robust soundcard with solid drivers. On my default install and set up (M-audio ASIO on a 2.4GHZ Intel with 3 Gigs of RAM) I was getting slight crackles on the larger patches (pianos and some soundscapes) so I worked at 11ms of latency which made them stop, but they returned when polyphony was upped from heavy patching and chord play.

They suggest: Mac OSX 10.4.x / 10.5, G5 1.8 GHz or Intel® Core™ Duo 1.66 GHz, 1 GB RAM and Win XP / Vista (32 Bit), Pentium / Athlon 1.4 GHz, 1 GB RAM. These system requirements are pretty light, but let’s be honest- you don’t get a system as powerful as this and drive it in the right lane.

All problems ceased when I switched to Firewire ASIO from a MOTU 896HD. This is one more offering that makes an upgrade or audio geared soundcard so much more sensible.

If you have a particular sound category you want to blow out, then consider the KORE soundpacks (~$59.00). Synthetic, pop and acoustic drums, Drawbar Organ, Absynth, Massive, Kontakt and Reaktor sounds are all available for download at the NI shop with more on the way. The KORE 2 integrates 76 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

the sound engines of REAKTOR, MASSIVE, ABSYNTH, FM8, KONTAKT and GUITAR RIG which allows it to play the patches from their heaviest product lines. If you have licensed versions, the original GUI can be pulled up and edited as normal or left hidden while you get to work – fully focused on tone and composition.

At the Core of KORE In summary, Native Instruments have put together an incredible hybrid ROMpler and synthesizer, patch browser and sound design tool with an FX suite and engine incorporating the technologies of their entire line of products. The final and most important question you might ask about KORE 2 is what will it do for my production? That answer is easy enough. It will give you choices. It will allow you sound as different or as modern as you want to or, better yet, choose to. And since there is the free KORE Player which gives you access to the interface and browser with 300MBs of sounds, you’d be silly not to fully explore the KORE 2 package from Native Instruments. It’s really a simple choice or really no choice at all.

for making a clap sound. Drum synthesizers have these special characteristics built-in and the drawback you often find is that these parts are too static or can’t be modified the way you want. The biggest challenge is getting the sounds in your head to translate onto your drum work.

Could you tell us a little but about White Noise and what extended role it plays in Drumatic 3? The noise generator is probably one of the most important parts of Drumatic 3. Noise combined with a set of filters makes a very powerful tool. Actually, you can use noise in almost any drum sound, even in the kick drum! In Drumatic 3 the best examples of noise usage are the hand clap, hi-hat and shaker sounds... all these hits can be created out of filtered noise only. When listening to these sounds they all sound very different, which proves how flexible the noise actually is. You can also use noise to add extra punch to the beginning of your sounds, create reverb-like effects or even create a tone by using a resonant filter on it. There really are a lot of possibilities with a simple noise generator! We put all these techniques at your fingertips.

e-phonic Drumatic Drumatic VE

3

Virtual Drum Synthesizer PC VST Free

O

ur Drum Works feature now turns to the virtual instruments designed to bring you the necessary waveforms and sculpting tools synthesize drum sounds. They are a great entry point into percussive sound design. We take a look at two free options and speak with synth programmer Pieter-Jan Arts who lives in Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Thank you Pieter for providing users with a free and useful app. Firstly, what challenges face a sound designer trying to create a synthetic drum sound? Most people say synthetic drum sounds are simple sounds. You just take a sine oscillator and create some sort of short percussive tone and then add some filtered noise. Well, this is the most common way to create a snare, kick or tom sound indeed and most synthesizers can do it, but you end up with a very average sounding tone that does not feel right.

Since synthetic mostly sound clean and simple, every detail of the sound becomes very important.

On most all-round synthesizers you don’t have enough control to create exactly what you want. For example; you’d be missing the envelopes you need 78 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

Getting Tech with The Creator...

The snare itself is known to be the most difficult kit sound to replicate. Did you feel this and how did you approach the task? For me it wasn’t the snare but the hi-hats and cymbal-like sounds that where the most difficult to create. Most modern drum computers switch to samples when it comes to hi-hats and cymbals, but I really wanted to synthesize all the sounds in Drumatic 3 to keep the flexibility.

For this I’ve analyzed the TR-808 and TR-606 cymbals and hi-hats to get a good starting point. I discovered that these sounds are about the most complex in these machines. For example, the 808 cymbal alone uses 6 oscillators! I decided to try a much simpler solution to simulate the metallic character of hi-hats by creating a combination of frequency modulation and distortion/clipping. This is what I called the ‘metal harmonic modifier’ in the hi-hats-tab of Drumatic 3...

It is very tweakable and fun to play around with!

The Interface of any production tool is a very important consideration. What issues did you focus on in

started programming synths. I discovered Sync Modular and a bit later Reaktor by Native Instruments. Both these are modular software synths and give you the opportunity to play with audio signal in a very easy and visual way. This is where I really learned about programming synthesizers.

What were your expectations and how have you dealt with the user feedback from the Drumatic series?

At first I created Drumatic 1 as a Reaktor ensemble, it was only meant for my own use. Then friends of mine started asking for a copy, but at the time it wasn’t possible to run Reaktor creating the Drumatic 3 GUI? A GUI should need very ensembles without having Reaktor installed. A bit little explanation and be easy to use. A way of accomplishing later I discovered Synth Edit- it’s a lot like Reaktor this is to visualize the work flow of a user. Using synthesizers and Sync Modular but with the possibility to code gets easier when you have a good handle on what you’re your own components and save your project as VST doing. That’s why I created the large graphical envelopes so plug-in. This allowed me to develop Drumatic and you can easily sculpt your transients the way you want them. share it with everyone that had a VST compatible I chose the tabbed setup. It’s a simple solution and something sequencer. I didn’t that works great for expect much of it, a plug-in with a lot of controls. The tab Some people swear by hardware and say it is but from day one I got many, many only shows what is and needed for a single impossible to make software sound as good as downloads countless positive sound and helps from keep the unneeded hardware... I think there already are examples that reactions happy users. options out of sight.

Making a good GUI prove the opposite. In theory you should be able to That was a big takes a big part of the whole process replicate a TR-808 or TR-909 pretty good so software inspiration for me and it really helped of creating a plug-in, to improve people often don’t is suited well enough, but I don’t think emulating me and continue the think about that! of existing synths is what makes software so interesting. development Drumatic to the Did you have any hardware The biggest advantage of software is that you can go point it is now. Even though version 3 programming or previous beyond the limitations and difficulties of hardware was released in 2004, I still get a lot experience before of feedback every Drumatic? Before sound-wise and interface-wise. day and I know a lot I made the first of people still use it version of Drumatic in their productions.

I didn’t have much Drumatic users vary from hobbyists to some of the experience with synth programming at all. I was into computer biggest names in music industry, something I never music for some time but most of the programs I used were expected in the beginning! sample based like Pro Tracker on the Amiga 500.

When I switched to PC there was a lot of new music related Hip Hop and Rap music production has been software to check out. Software like [D-Lusion] Rubber sampling sports for some time. It is now moving Duck and Rebirth really got me interested in software into the arena of original composition and sound synthesizers at that time. It was a few years later that I really

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79 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

design. How important to the producer is a fundamental understanding of how a drum machine engine works and how can creating original and new percussive sounds be utilized?

For a producer it always is important to know your gear. It’s the only way you gonna get out of it what you have in mind. There isn’t a need to know how oscillators, filters or envelopes technically work, but you should understand the interface and what effect the controls have on the sound.

That’s why a good user interface is so important. For hip hop beats, synthetic drums can be used in a wide variety of ways.

Of course you should find your own way in using synthetic drums as it strongly depends on your personal taste. You can just use a synthetic drum track alone but this tends to sound too clean and polished. And when using samples alone you have very limited control over the drum sounds. My favorite method is combining both synthetic and sampled drums and layer a synthetic drum track on-top of a sampled drum track so they blend nicely together. This way you have a lot control over the sound and still have a bit of ‘dirt’ from your sampled hits.

make software sound as good as hardware... I think there already are examples that prove the opposite. In theory you should be able to replicate a TR-808 or TR-909 pretty good so software is suited well enough, but I don’t think emulating existing synths is what makes software so interesting. The biggest advantage of software is that you can go beyond the limitations and difficulties of hardware sound-wise and interfacewise.

It’s just a lot easier to experiment and try new things with software than hardware. New tools like beatslicers, easy to use modular synthesizers and complex sampling applications like Kontakt are result of this. I am excited about these kind of developments and I know a lot of modern producers share this feeling. For me software has already replaced most of my old gear and it really works like a dream!

Frequency Modulation, Subtractive, Additive and Wavetable. What types of synthesis have you explored and out of these which do you feel is the most flexible? Is there a particular favorite for your percussive tasks?

I really think it depends on the sound you’re looking for.

For example, frequency modulation can be very flexible and great for drums but comes with specific characteristics and specific controls. And like FM, subtractive or additive, all types have their pros and cons. I’ve explored most common types of synthesis and I felt that subtractive synthesis, in combination with a little FM, was the best way of getting the old school sound I was looking for in Drumatic 3.

Why look back at all? Is it nostalgia or is there something sonically special about the gear of that era that must be preserved? I think it is a combination of the two. Of course nostalgia takes a big share in the reason a lot of people still like the sound of this gear. But the old machines were really special because most of them were trendsetters and revolutionary in their time. New genres developed around from them and they had a big impact on music. Even though you might think the sounds are old fashioned now, they still find their way in a great amount of modern productions. Therefore software clones are still very popular, effective and a relatively cheap way of getting close to the sound of these difficult to obtain machines. I’m sure they will be around for a long time to come!

In closing what can you tell us about your future plans as far as updates are concerned? Any new products down the line? I’m currently not developing any new plug-ins. This is because my time is too limited to start big new projects. While I was developing my plug-ins and pouring all my time into research and coding, I forgot why I started making plug-ins in the first place... To make music!! I felt it was time for me to get back into making music again. I’m producing electro and electronica and finally have the time to use my own plug-ins! I must say that development is still on my mind because of the amount of feedback from the users... and I’m sure I will return to the Drumatic series some day.

Do you feel software is suited well enough to replace vintage drum machines and supply a modern generation of producers the tools needed to move their respective art forms forward? Opinions differ heavily on this question.

Some people swear by hardware and say it is impossible to

Hopefully after this album is done you’ll return and bring more useful studio tools. Thank you for your time and we wish you success in music. You can check out the free Drumatic Drum Synthesizer and other Plug-ins available at e-phonic.com

80 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

program, so they saw that I could do it. I did that for ten years up until 1998. I was the main voicing person for the K2500 and the PC88 and all the various voicings of the K200 and the MicroPiano. I left in 1998 full-time, but I actually, started up recently consulting again for them.

Tell us about the technology that makes Plectrum possible. My boss at Kurzweil, the Chief of Soundware, Joe Ierardi started Synthogy. A lot of us from SoundWare left over the last few years and got into computer sampling.

Direct from Disk sampling was a whole different story. We had 4 megabytes to express a piano. So, you would chose maybe 18 routes and you put them across the keyboard and we did route stretching and looping. That’s the way samplers have been for a long, long time and all of a sudden here comes software; you can play your samples Direct from Disk which means there is no limitation at all on how much you can put into the recordings.

Vital Arts Plectrum

Original acoustic Instruments Standalone VST/RTAS WIN XP $299.00

I

t started at the 123rd AES while cruising the floor and looking at the upcoming production tools and solutions…both Will Loiseau and I heard an incredible organ-like sound from a display area triggered by a Motif XS. We figured Yamaha added a new tone to their workstation series, but much to our surprise it was coming from a computer workstation running the Plectrum VST. After the show it stayed on our minds as a tool with the potential to become a producer’s signature piece. It simply sounded different from anything else out there. We contacted keyboardist, sound designer and Plectrum creator Geoffrey Gee for more information behind this incredibly unique offering.

Drew Spence: Let’s go back a little bit and talk about your history, responsibilities and experience over at Kurzweil.

Geoffrey Gee: I started part-time over there and they were building this thing called the K250. It was one of the first sampling keyboards. It had 12 notes of polyphony and it cost $10,000. I was the guy testing it. I was working on the keyboard action; a wooden keyboard action with metal keys.

I would actually have to use a screwdriver and tune up the velocity response of all those 88 keys on its way out of the factory floor and that was my first job at Kurzweil.

They saw that I could voice instruments really well and they had this new Ram player. It was very hard to

You have the Vienna orchestral Instrument where they sample every single note of every instrument and there is no limit and Ivory was just this amazing thing. Joe had been in charge of the piano recordings for Kurzweil for many, many years, now he has his own Synth engine that played from disk. He knew how to do the recordings and all of a sudden we have an 11 Gigabyte piano.

Plectrum comes out of this. I love to voice and map the samples, but had never been able to take samples that were so big. I can use 24-bit full-bandwidth stereo samples and I can use as many of them as I want with the Gigasampler Engine. I could put 12 different samples that cycle on every key if I want to, keep hitting the same key and you get a slightly different sample, because you can put all that data on the disk.

It just blew me away. The other thing that I was always doing in my acoustic piano performances is I reach inside the piano and pluck them a lot. All these things you can’t do on a sampled piano, you can’t say “Oh! I think I’ll pluck this string or I will pluck the….” This is in my live shows, because I perform as the pianist.

What is the crowds response when you do that?

Oh! People love it. I have actually worked out a whole technique where I used the sustain paddle to latch certain dampers up and then I strum like an autoharp. What if you could reach inside a grand piano and pluck it? You can’t though. There are no black and white keys mapping. You’d find a different number of strings for each note.

If you sample those sounds, you can play anything you want. That’s the concept behind Plectrum. You can hit a glass jar just a certain way and it has pitch, but you can’t play music on that, but if you sample a gazillion glass jars with a lot of different takes under every key, all of a sudden what you have is a virtual instrument that you can play.

With Plectrum we were able to give you sounds that are completely acoustic, tonal and beautiful, but were never ever to be able to be played as an instrument.

81 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

Very plucky over his awesome creation!

The work of art that is Plectrum is simply the sound. It is a collection of finished voiced instruments, whose purpose is only to let you play them.

As a musician, did you just find yourself bored with the piano tone and wanted something beyond that? Music is all about transgression.

The main purpose of sampling was to recreate the sound of acoustic instruments so you don’t have to hire real instruments to do your commercial music production. Its purpose was to try to sound like a piano or try and sound like a violin, but what did people use sampling for? Well, they developed all the genres of hip-hop and all of the modern genres that use samples and loops.

Those technologies were developed in service of trying to sound like a violin; they weren’t developed in service of trying to make cool loopy sounds. But the thing is that the musicians will transgress those limits. Plectrum is my way of offering a transgression as a work of art.

Has the sound design affected your composition? Are you making different music now? Yes, yes. I am a pianist and I have spent all those

years running my hands up and down the keyboard, testing and developing and voicing the synthesizers and also from the years of performing my own music. When I voice a sound, I want to be able to play the notes up and down and different notes together. It’s not about holding down one finger. I n fact, if you look at the sounds in Plectrum, they are all decaying sounds with decaying envelopes just like a piano.

Do I need any sort of specialized skill set to get the most out of Plectrum?

I would say no. Go to some of those round robin glass programs and play an octave in both hands. Go back and forth and play a rhythm with your fingers. Mozart does basslines like that in his piano music, but it doesn’t take any special skill really. You can just play them like drums, and you will get a groove, but the good news is that you can play any key you want to. You don’t have to retune those drums or find some funny notes to play them on.

A middle C is a middle C and an E flat is an E flat, so I voiced it that way. So you can get a lot out of it without being a great keyboard player, but keyboard players can play to their ability and still make cool things with Plectrum.

82 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

So what would be my target usage and workflow; should it be additive, should it be just considered new sounds, should it replay sounds that I already have in my studio? Is it a layering instrument where I should layer it behind something else that maybe needs a little bit of help?

Good question Drew. I would say a couple of those really come to mind.

It is new sounds you can lay on top.

Some of the piano sounds, the plucked piano and strummed pianos. They can replace a guitar part and they layer well with anything.

Where does this purchase belong?

Should this be my first instrument that I pick up? Should it be the first keyboard sounding tone, or should this be the kind of thing that once I have got my bread and butter sounds, I add this in?

I would say that you can really approach it either way. I would love to hear of users where this is their first virtual instrument. It’s a new offering.

There is no bass, there are no drums.

It’s not trying to be like anything, it’s a completely new offering. But I don’t see that keeping someone from jumping in and having this as their very first virtual

Each Plectrum instrument is original in the sense that it brings to your fingertips unique sounds from prepared instruments and found objects, tuned and voiced to play with a responsiveness, ambience, and decay comparable to a piano.

Each Plectrum instrument is acoustic in the sense that it was constructed from high-resolution recordings taken of physical materials in real environments. Multiple takes and articulations of each sound are set up for “round robin” playback, offering the texture and aural richness of an acoustic instrument. instrument. You can make cool music on it.

Are there suggested performance requirements like pedals and such?

Weighted keyboard, spring synth action?

The ambiance is recorded, so using a sustain pedal will let the ambiance ring out. The Tascam engine is capable of streaming back the samples at high polyphony, so there is no problem there in getting a full sound. A lot of them are voiced for all 88 notes, so don’t be afraid to go to the extremes of the keyboard and see what you can get. One thing I want your readership to know; here is a sample library that’s entirely acoustic.

There are no filters, and except for the synth pad that I included on a couple of patches, there are no envelopes.

When people hear it, it sounds more acoustic than any other sample library they have heard, and yet they have never heard those samples before.

They never heard those glasses that I touched, or the strum of the piano all tuned up to play.

Could you touch on the Habitat?

The thing about the Habitats is I recorded the sounds from the farm up here in upstate New York. The last category of Plectrum is called Habitats.

Instead of having a string or synth pad sound, what comes out is the sounds of an environment, like birds chirping or the crickets next to the stable or the frogs down at the pond or rainfall. It adds an atmosphere to the music that’s not intended to be a sample library.

There are a handful of these scapes,

and you can layer them with other things, just like a synth pad, but what you end up doing then is getting a very realistic and true environmental sound.

Pick a sound and tell us about it.

One of the plucked strings is called Plucked Harpgrand & Halo. There are 185 instruments in total. Some are variations of a similar sample set, just voiced a little bit differently. Plucked Harpgrand & Halo is a two layer sound; one of the strings of the piano has been plucked. [Remember we said: each piano note has more than one string- WL]. I would pluck each of them, and then there would be a round robin series on the keyboard, where repeated notes would play the different strings. So you get random variation when you play the notes, even though you get the sound of only one string being plucked. It’s a thin hollow sound.

This was done on a slightly out of tune grand piano, here at the farm.

Then a layer is coming from a music box, a hand-held turn crank music box. I took the handle off of it and coupled it to the soundboard of the piano. There is a bridge that attaches the strings to the spruce soundboard underneath the grand piano. If you lift all of the dampers with the paddle, that becomes an incredible reverb chamber.

It’s a beautiful reverb chamber that the grand piano is capable of. So I rigged the dampers up, so that now whatever I hold against the bridge on the piano is going to have the resonance of a grand piano. So I took this hand-held music box and sampled it. It’s one of the most beautiful samples to come

out in the Plectrum library. I am just really, really happy with it. You can use the patch to sound like a real acoustic beautiful sounding music box, and of course since you can play it, you can make your own music box sound.

But anyway, these samples are taken at high rates, at 96 KHz and above. If you transpose down an octave, a sample that was taken at 96 KHz, there still is a little bit of information that used to be above the hearing range, but is now in the hearing range. Oh wow! They are at different trim levels and so there is just sort of a random, eerie music box transposed sound that comes in every time you play the key. It’s a beautiful organic and acoustic sound coming from the music box. This music box was added to a harp and the halo part of the piano, so it’s called the Plucked Harpgrand & Halo.

I was inspired, and I worked for a year on this, knowing exactly what I wanted to do. What came out in terms of the end result of Plectrum is exactly what I wanted. I always wondered what it would be like if I could strum a piano, and have that sound that I loved so much when I am sticking my head inside the grand piano; hitting things, and banging on things, and striking the strings. I love it, it’s a beautiful sound, and I always wondered what it would be like to just play that at the keyboard, where I could pick the notes and just play them, and so Plectrum allows me to do that.

Thank you, Geoffrey Gee! vitalartsmedia.com/plectrum.html

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Exclusive Luke Cage package from SONY Creative.

Over 100 loops and sounds!

X amount of dollars on this and X amount of dollars on that. -Down to the point of $5,500 for a full disc.

Once they release it, they’ll make that. Half of their core buyers will buy all their stuff and they got a huge, huge mailing list of people they send stuff out to who will buy it [right there].

It’s hard to be sure. Right now man, it’s really, really funny. A lot of companies aren’t doing business and even independent labels are doing funny stuff with monies. Only thing that’s really paying well is television.

Lukecage Sound Designer I

t probably occurred while playing the track back in your whip to test it out. There’s something different about the drums in this one. It’s a Lukecage moment. You probably snatched the drums from a recent construction kit purchase and didn’t think twice about it. Further inspection reveals consistent Drum Works; whether it is a sound library nestled in an engine or arranged phrases ready for your chopping pleasure. He’s a sound design hero for hire with an ear for sickness.

Drew Spence: In regards of your Hip-Hop background, what correlation did you see between yourself and the Luke Cage character?

Lukecage: Oh man, Hero for Hire, shit! I mean music for money, arts for profit. Luke Cage had that unfortunate thing happen when he was locked down and he stuck with it. He had to make money! He’s was one of the few superheroes who’s not independently wealthy… an alien. Similarly, I worked for cash; I used my superpowers with music for food.

There is a parallel to the beginning of his career in having trouble collecting payments. We saw it lead to many of his misadventures. What position do you have to put yourself in now to ensure that doesn’t happen to you for your sound design work? Protect yourself man. With larger companies like Sony it’s easy, but the companies that are run by or owned by two or three people, it begins to be really hard, because things change in the deal making process somewhere. They don’t really give you an upfront price, you finally give them a price, they try to haggle you down, they try to tell you [does refined voice] well we have to spend 84 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

Production wise, you’ve looked at film and television before as an alternative to being able to sell tracks to a mainstream artist. Are there any thoughts about selling custom tracks to an individual artist or producer, as oppose to working with a big sample house? Yeah man, I’ve done a bunch of that. I had some work that was in a film called A Good Day to Be Black and Sexy that was at Sundance this year, and it got picked up by Magnolia.

I have also licensed music to adult film companies. I have done demo work for a couple of artists, I have done beat programming under Kenneth Crouch with Andraé Crouch and Keith Crouch; that whole music family. I have done work for a lot of people in that respect, with some local and some overseas talent.

It’s become what the manager or the label is willing to pay for work. Again, they are talking to the artist so they can low-ball me, and it becomes difficult.

Nowadays kids get a copy of Fruity Loops and work for free. Oh, you’ll get nothing, but what else do you expect?

Most of the deals being handed out are too fucking small. The largest I heard was $50,000 out of Interscope and that’s from my inside guy at Interscope. Other than that every other small label is trying to do $15,000 or smaller for either a complete ownership of a couple of tracks or a whole record.

That doesn’t work, when they can market it, re-flip it, re-heat it, re-tweak it to make their money.

Let’s talk a little about your musical background.

What did you have going as far as traditional education or training? I went to school at City College and CalArts where I majored in Fine Arts and minored in Saxophone. I didn’t graduate because I went on tour. , My sax mentor was Bobby Bradford out of Pasadena. If you look on the back of almost any record, you will see Bobby Bradford somewhere.

Who wouldn’t want to get paid to practice, and influence people in their homes to create more music. That’s what an artist wants to do anyway -they want their music to be heard and understood. People got my stuff all over the world and it influences them to make some type of change. It’s one of the best ways to say I’m a musician and to give back to the community of musicians.

What made you start doing custom sound design? That’s a funny story really. The transition goes like this.

There is not a huge market for live musicians; it’s cut throat here in LA for tour spots. You have to be dead on in terms of site reading. I play fine, but my site reading isn’t sharp enough to compete. I was slowly being pushed out. I still got some good work but it just wasn’t doing. Coming from the early days of hip hop- I knew how to put together a beat, but I was new to the whole digital thing. I was trying to make music on a first generation iMac…for my first sample disc. I spent $300 and got stuff I just couldn’t use- stuff that said hip-hop, but it was like New Jack Swing. I figured I can put something together that somebody might want to use much better than this stuff.

While reading Black Entrepreneurial magazine one of the cats said find the hole and fill it. I said cool, I can fill that hole, I just had to get over the initial culture shock of going from beat boxes and digital recorders to a computer and it didn’t take long.

How do you fall into the REX file being one of your sample formats?

REX files didn’t interest me at first. I was using Studio Vision Pro and you can have a gazillion tracks. I would take a beat, calculate the BPMs and break it down myself all to separate tracks. So I didn’t really see the need for a REX file format because it was pretty elementary for me. That was a marketing thing man. More and more pieces of software began to use REX file format and that slight bit of elasticity made people really take to it.

I had a problem with the way some of the sounds sounded if they weren’t chopped up properly. It’s still a funny file format for me. I think it’s quick, I don’t think it’s very subtle, but it’s quick and it works. AMG [Advanced

Media Group] was pushing as many file formats as possible. That put me in a position where I had to REX a lot of stuff. Everybody I talk to loves the REX file format stuff I’ve done because they can get to the individual sounds.

Unfortunately some stuff was released as mono even though I submitted stereo files. So some of those early kicks are kind of weak [laughter erupts]. I have listened to a few people that sent me stuff that they’ve done with some of that early AMG stuff, and I was like, wow, what am I doing on that bass drum, I mean what went wrong?

the years, I am trying to get as many discs as possible. It hasn’t changed my socio-economic position [laughter], but it does help when referring to myself, or when looking up Lukecage online.

I would like you to touch on Ultramagnetic beats and also Metropolis and what went into creating those libraries. What was going through your mind at that time?

Money! Money and put it down for the underground. There’s always a big push with all of this digital equipment and these sounds to do Dance, Electronic fusion, Downtempo or Trip Hop. I thought that was cool, but I was like man, there’s got to be some money and somebody doing something for Hip-Hop. UltraMagnetic Beats was really just about the Ultra Magnetic -- the whole New York thing that was going on- that real authentic Hip-Hop thing…the rough samples grimy kicks and the lo-Fi effect; which wasn’t really lo-Fi when Hip-Hop came out. If you listen to Boogie Down Productions Criminal Minded the record is lo-Fi. It sounds like garbage actually, but I love it, because that’s the lick.

Oh damn! They said that? Oh dude, they haven’t told me to do anything differently than what I do. Most of the stuff I’ve given them, I made it myself, I laid it out. Like Cinematic Funk, that was my main thang. Maybe Richard [Thomas Senior Media developer Sony Creative/issue 02-WL] has asked me if I had anything that was more clubby or something like that. I think AMG had taken that clubby, that up in the club joint that I have, which is a dope CD…[fades off to reflect] I think that’s in Metropolis too. I am pretty clear on how it goes down. I know how they format their discs. I know what they are looking for and I don’t cheat by using 8-Bar-Loop or some shit like that or use 24 bit files to make the disc seem larger than it actually is… using the same drums but varying it a little bit.

Nobody wants that shit.

What changes in your life- with the association with a bigger company like Sony? Sony is cool, because they pay and they pay better than anybody else. Everybody else is low-balling. It’s changed in terms of my name being associated with a company that everybody knows. Over

Now they’ve said that they’ll give you plenty of room for freedom to create, but also keep a tight control over the quality of your libraries.

What’s the difference in trying to bring your vision to the marketplace while dealing with their perception of what it should sound like?

What are some of the tools you go to; both the live instruments and the interface? You know what I am doing, dude? I am pulling samples from my friends who are musicians, pulling samples and sounds off of LP, I primarily use Reason, I am a Reason user, it’s pretty fundamental, because there is one big sampler except for the Synth. It’s a sampler in different

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formats, one kind of looks like a Roland step drum machine [Redrum] and the other one kind of looks like an older Akai sampler, [NN-XT] but for the most part, it’s still one big sampler. I can put all my sounds in and twist it around, I love that. I’ll slide over to some of these studios and get a couple of rehearsals in and whatever I can pick up. I have the MPs and SPs at my disposal. It fills out when you start laying samples and gets really sick.

Mouse clicking or using the keyboard and/or MIDI controllers?

I got a MIDI controller, but I do a lot of programming. I don’t do a lot of hitting the keys for drums and I’ll play the piano or keyboard…live stuff. Step programming. It’s Roland gear in the Redrum- pattern numbers and you program it out; the sky is the limit. The thing that I guess makes some of my programming a little unique, is that most people can’t figure out how I get some of those fills and stuff, out of reason. It’s a real unit of step programming. I am using the software as it was designed to be used completely.

I am not going to press you and dig into any of your secrets when it comes to that Redrum, but I certainly for one know you’re not just simply clicking on those lights.

I am clicking on those lights man. It’s a trick. While I am clicking on the lights.

I have a really good method for how it works, but I’ll tell you this much… the way that I do it [whispers for effect] I use a particular version of Reason. I use Reason v3.0 BUILD 51. Reason 4? I don’t [upgrade] because they changed the drum machine, they fucked me up on that. They changed the way it functions. They changed the way it triggers the pattern. I don’t like that. So until I feel like messing with it, I am still using Reason v3.0. I don’t really need another synthesizer. I have a ton of soft synths.

The difference between what I do and what a lot of other people do -- a lot of people look at it and think that doesn’t look right. I am just listening to it - I do a lot of listening. Just like working on an old sampler. I have

to apply the same logic to computer work because you can get caught up into how everything looks. If it sounds good, just go with it.

Have you ever played around with any of the synthesis VSTs and created your own kicks and snares.

There is nothing out there that I like to create my own sounds on. I would much rather go get the original drum machines. I’d pick a little snare, a marching band snare and a good condenser microphone- even a good tube for that matter and just start hitting, unless I am using an older Akai box with some of the factory sounds.

My stuff is heavily, heavily layered. I’ll do that, because there are few places that I have gone [for sounds] where the sound is right and it punches through the mix.

What’s that line between producing music for yourself or an artist and designing sound libraries? Do you feel it somehow hurts your own chances of being recognized as a producer? It’s enhanced it because I had a chance to do what a lot of producers won’t get an opportunity to do; try out all those silly ideas that may or may not work. I’ve had close to 20 discs based on the stuff I wanted to try out. I’m pretty clear and deliberate about how I approach beat making and song writing now. It’s completely different to writing a sound library. I’m just in here for our buyers and I just want to make sure that there is an open ending so that people can jump from where I left off and keep going.

Who wouldn’t want to get paid to practice, and influence people in their homes to create more music. That’s what an artist wants to do anyway -they want their music to be heard and understood. People got my stuff all over the world and it influences them to make some type of change. It’s one of the best ways to say I’m a musician and to give back to the community of musicians.

Excellent! Well, we thank you for your contributions and look forward to your next library.

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More Luke Cage!

Special extended interview with detailed opinions on some of today’s most popular Drum Works solutions.

I generated a noise sample Generate/Noise, Mono, 32-bit 44100. I made a separate 2 second sample of each Noise and combined the layers of White, Pink and Brown noise in the multi-track view. I wanted a composite waveform and used the mixer settings to bring in more of the Brown Noise and reduce the White Noise’s contribution. The mono mixdown yielded a thicker noise sample that was further processed with the multiband graphic equalizer to extend the sweeter frequencies and dip down the 16k range.

Tonal Sculpting

To shape the attack I chose the Tube-modeled Compressor and did major changes to the snare drum preset. -40.9

Additional resource: Special PDF details entire process step-by-step with audio samples noted by number.

Creating a Rhythm Track from Scratch .

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y goal for this installment of Griffin Avid’s Corner is to create a drum track, including the sounds, using only the native effects and wave generating abilities of my sequencer. We’ll be using Adobe Audition 3 although much of this workshop can be executed in most DAW apps. The accompanying audio clips flesh out my different steps and should be listened to as a reference.

The numbers in brackets note the audio sample I am referring to. Let’s go.

Tone Generation Snares

Threshold. Ratio 7.8 Attack 66.2 milliseconds and release 5.9 milliseconds. Now my noise sample looks and sounds like a snare. I create a copy of this snare for further processing to be layered underneath. I jumped into the Mastering Suite and mangled the De-esser Light (to remove the trailing hiss of my snare sample) followed by a Parametric Equalizer to make the snare thump like a kick for a foundation of heaviness [sample 08]. It’s now back to the multitrack to mix these two layers together. Again, I’m using the mixer to match the volume levels to create a Heavy Snare [09]. I’ll do the final EQ mix when I’m actually working on the drum kit later on.

Tone Generation Kicks

I start with a generated Sine Wave- setting the Base Frequency to 200Hz and the flavor Characteristic to .6 so it brings in a slight fuzzy overtone. It’s layered with an Inverted Sine [11] with base freq of 100 and Modulation Frequency of 100Hz. This combination of waves [12] is then Dynamics Processed to eliminate the high bands and leave only the beginning thud.

Tonal Sculpting

My kick is very sharp and short [13]. I return to the tubemodeled effects and add power to the kick and finish off with a Time and Pitch adjustment, preserving neither to elongate my kick and deepen its tone by lowering its pitch [14].

I load all of my finished single hits into the Multitrack. I made a few visual cues to help organize my work. I dragged the waveform handle to shorten the length of the hats to match their duration and chose a lighter clip color to match the sonic space they occupy. Likewise the kicks are drawn out more and given a darker color to represent their sonic weight. I made two tracks for the kicks to EQ the initial kick a bit stronger for an accent. You can spread hits across as many tracks as needed, but we’ll keep it simple here. I set my tempo to 95bpms and set my view selection to only 1 bar.

Zooming in divides the bar into 16ths and the snap to grid works to quantize as I copy hats, snares and kicks and spread them along the timeline. It’s a pretty boring and stiff pattern.

Exercise

Tone Generation Hats

I pull in a favorite break beat loop, cut and looped perfectly at 95bpms, and analyze its timing in the waveform view. Not a single hit falls perfectly on any 16th! [i16] I’ll be using the general concepts behind swing and shuffle to nudge my hits around till I’ve got something groovy.

We reach back for a white noise burst. I could chop a snippet for my hat, but instead I do a little more for the sake of creating a more interesting hat by using the FFT filter to tailor cut a suitable snippet.

I create a bus of plate reverb and send the snares through it while using the volume envelope to cut out the attack, but keep the trailing reflections. By bouncing down tracks of snares and kicks and sliding the 1 bar loops back and forth along the timeline I create a syncopated rhythm that adds interest. I end my drum work by processing individual hits with extreme effects to create percs and additional ear candy. Now I think it’s time to fire up those included VSTs and finish up this track. See you in the lab.

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Mastering Part III: Tools of the Trade

By L-ROX, Redsecta Mastering, Los Angeles

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astering studios are definitely different than Recording and Mixing studios, and here we’ll look at the differences.

We’re also going to look at some of the popular gear used by Mastering studios and how these processors are different than equipment found in typical recording studios.

The Room

There are mastering facilities that have been built from the ground up for mastering, but there are also others that have treated an existing room. It’s common for elongated rooms (shaped like a shoebox) are better than square rooms, since the rectangle-shaped rooms have longer lengths between the front and rear walls, allowing more acoustic control. Ceilings and floors play a role also, and most dedicated mastering rooms are 10 feet in height or taller.

The materials used for a mastering studio can be found in drapes, carpeting and fine woods that are absorbent and help control sound.

Fiberglass/foam paneling are placed in corners, walls and ceilings to trap and diffuse frequencies. It’s not always about trapping the sound.

Reflective materials are also used where sound waves clash in a room creating “standing waves” so wood flooring and diffusers are applied when needed.

When building mastering rooms, an experienced acoustician may be hired to design a shoebox-shaped room of about 25’L X 15’W X 12’H. There are several types of preferred dimensions for rooms, typically based on physics theories by Morse, Bolt, Sepmeyer, Louden and others. These recommended room ratios, which suggest a perfect

shape for a proper sonic environment, are referred to by most Acousticians. Ideally, all mastering rooms should be perfect but most mastering studios around the world are not, so they are treated for the sonic deficiencies that are inherent with each room’s design.

The idea is to control the sound reflections bouncing around the room, hyping or canceling out frequencies. The first reflection should be you (and your ears). This is the reason why mastering rooms usually don’t have much more than the loudspeakers, amps, treatment and processors, with the mastering engineer seated directly in front of the speakers (distance varies by speakers, room and that room’s reflection signature). If you’ve ever known an audiophile and seen an audiophile’s setup, this is much like a mastering suite with regards to the listening environment.

Recording studios have different rooms that use their sonic signatures while tracking instruments.

There are recording studios that use different materials, like carpet, wood floors, wall paneling, heavy drapes, marble, etc. to create and control the reverberation of instruments and capture the sound of the room. Vocals are recorded in

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treated rooms that reflect little or no sound back to the microphones which is important for projects that want to add vocal effects at mixdown. There are cases where people track inside rooms and capture the room’s reflections for an effect, like tiled bathrooms if that’s what the project calls for.

Mixing studios are essentially control rooms, where you have all the tools necessary to shape the mix, such as the console and effects processors.

Nearfield monitors are usually on top of the console, and some studios also have soffit-mounted loudspeakers, useful when the producer and artists are there for the mix session; these “mains” are supposed to fill the room with sound, allowing everyone to hear

You may also want to consider headphones as an additional reference to your speakers. These days there are audiophile-grade headphones and headphone amplifiers that can help you hear an accurate representation of what you’re doing to the material, but without the true stereo image perception of a set of high quality loudspeakers. I’m sure you’ve heard how it’s just not right to use headphones for mastering material; well, my opinion is that they’re a great addition to a set of high-quality speakers. Headphones can let you hear things that your loudspeakers (and room) would probably hide, like small clicks or pops, and in my experience with a set of nicely burned-in Sennheiser HD650’s, I can hear ±0.5db changes over most

the mix as loud as they want. Diffusers are common in control rooms, since you want the sound to be spread out throughout the room, although the environment is not as neutral as a mastering room, and mix engineers usually rely on more than just the mains to mix, like another set of monitors and even headphones.

of the frequency spectrum (emphasis on most, not all, which is a reason why having a great set of loudspeakers that can let you hear small changes through a wider range of frequencies is best). You’re probably curious as to why people will tell you not to use cans for mixing or mastering, and here’s probably why:

So what can you do if you don’t have the budget to build a room for mastering? You can treat a room as much as you can, and learn the sonic signature of that room. It’s not a matter of completely covering the walls in foam either, because proper placement of your speakers is also important, and having an unobstructed path from them to your ears is essential.

Headphones aren’t “flat”. This seems to bug out most who feel that anything that isn’t designed to be flat (when referring to frequency response) shouldn’t be considered for critical listening. Sound hits your head and the outer parts of your ears before your brain processes it, so by the time sound enters your ear canal, the frequencies have many peaks and dips, which if

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measured, would look nothing like that flat line across the frequency spectrum listed on those charts that came with your speakers, and this is the concept behind the Diffuse Field EQ curve that is applied to most headphones that claim to have a “flat frequency response.” Unfortunately, this standard applies to an “average” head shape, so the sound of any pair of headphones with a DF curve can vary from person to person. The only thing that keeps the DF method of measure in check is an actual standard by the IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission, 60268-7:1996, pg. 61).

The IEC defines itself as “The leading global organization that prepares and publishes International Standards for all electrical, electronic and related technologies.” Again, this method is based on what someone considered an “average” size head, so if you have a large dome and big ears, you should probably stick to loudspeakers!

But back to the room, you don’t have to have a specially-designed room for mastering, but you definitely need to treat the one you plan on mastering in.

How to treat your room for mastering?

Fortunately, these days there are plenty of manufacturers of acoustic panels that have websites with a ton of useful information to help you control reflections in your space. Do some research online and check out their sound absorption ratings, the quality products have reports that they’re proud to share with customers (also make sure the materials are fireproof).

Many of these companies offer great advice and you might even be able to send them pictures of your room for them to tell you how much treatment you’ll need just by looking at your space.

Another thing you can do to help you figure out how much treatment you need is to take measurements at your listening position with an SPL meter.

This usually involves playing various frequency tones, set at a specific volume level as well as noises (white, pink as well as other spectral noise types) and taking db measurements

with the meter. You would then use a chart to make notations as you go through the frequency spectrum to get a rough idea of how much, in terms of decibels any given frequency is being picked up at your listening location (by placing the SPL meter where your ears would be with the use of a tripod).

“Ah, I see, so then once I know where my room falls short in the frequency spectrum, all I need is an EQ to cut/ boost the frequencies and I’ve got a tuned room!” you say? Not so fast.

By using an EQ to make up for the differences, you can actually make problems worse by augmenting or diminishing other frequencies at your listening position, as well in other areas in your room. I believe that it’s best to treat your room with bass traps/ diffusers and if there’s a problem that just can’t be solved due to some kind of structural issue, then an EQ may help, just make sure you use an EQ that will not introduce distortion, phase, or “color” to the sound. Keep this in mind when considering solutions that offer to treat your room with the use of correction software (EQs) alone.

Through the years, I’ve learned that a lot of the mastering engineers whose work I’m constantly impressed by don’t have perfect rooms, a lot of them have learned to adjust their hearing to the sonic signature of the rooms they work in, and while that may mean that they’re not hearing a 100% accurate representation of the frequency spectrum, they’re getting real close and know how to compensate for it, and if it works, meaning, the work they do for their clients who listen to the material over systems these guys are not familiar with, then it means that they’re doing their job, and that’s what counts at the end of the day.

Speakers, Cables, Amps You can easily spend 20 grand (2008 dollars) on a pair of decent high-fidelity loudspeakers, matching amps and cables. Higher-quality speakers do their best to reproduce a flat frequency

response for the listener, and in a room that is treated to tame the problems an enclosed space has as much as possible, a high quality set of loudspeakers will give you an accurate representation of the material playing through the system.

There are wellknown brands and models of speakers that have been proven to work well in mastering studios around the globe; these models are also typically accepted in the audiophile community as well. The size of the room has to be taken into account, as well as the placement of the speakers in the room, and the distance between you and the speakers, so a good way to go about getting the best speakers for you is to do some research as to which speakers will work best in your space in addition to treating the room.

If you plan on spending a few grand on loudspeakers and setting up your listening room to make the best use of them, start hanging around audiophile forums on the web, you should also pick up magazines related to high-end audio, these will expose you to many other alternatives for speakers and amps than what you might pick up from mastering engineers who surf web forums, or by checking out their gear lists online (I’ve noticed most mastering engineers that talk about what speakers they use on the web usually stick to just a few models of high-end speakers, which are considered to be great in the audiophile community, but like many other things, there are high-quality models out there that are as accurate, but are lesser-known). You might even be inclined to build your own speakers, and there are plenty of online and print resources on this as well.

Keep in mind that many of the leading manufacturers of high-end

loudspeakers apply similar design concepts to their lesser-priced models; this is a benefit for those that don’t want to shell out the dough for the flagship models, since manufacturers haven’t had to spend as much on the development of their cheaper models as they did on the research and development for their flagship units.

The whole cable game, if you ask me, is out of control. It’s my opinion that a good set of shielded cables for your speaker system is sufficient, but there are people out there that swear that sound is greatly improved by using cables that cost a lot more, which have “features” that most people don’t consider essential for speaker wire, such as cables that are oxygen-free.

I simply have not been convinced to try a great deal of expensive cables to confirm this, but to me it makes more sense that the components used throughout your system are what dictate the quality of the audio, and not the cables.

From the research I’ve done and from what I’ve picked up from a speaker repairman I’ve dealt with for years, the most important issues with cables are thickness and length. I’ve been told thick copper wire (10-12 gauge is usually what most audiophiles go for, the thicker 10-gauge for subwoofers mostly) is what to look out for and it can be purchased almost anywhere, including your local hardware store.

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Keep the length of the cable from being excessive; don’t purchase 50ft. cables if you only need 12 feet of wire (but if you get a really good deal and have a pair of wire clippers around and are comfortable making your own connections, go for it!) If you walk into a speaker showroom, the salesperson will most likely point you to the most expensive cable they’ve got, but if you ask someone who is not in the business of selling you cables, but is in the business of speakers, the idea is to get thick copper cable in just the right lengths.

Amplifiers come in two flavors: solid state and tube. For mastering, solid state is preferred over tube amps by many masterers as tube amps introduce harmonic distortion, which many audiophiles prefer over solid

for this, with specialized features that go beyond the basic source switching capabilities of the home audio receiver.

The Mastering Console The mastering console is essentially the command center for the Mastering Engineer. Some MEs build their own devices, like monitor controllers and patchbays (the build quality of typical patchbays found in recording studios won’t cut it for high-end mastering).

There are manufacturers who build custom modules and make consoles tailored to fit the needs of the ME. There are also modular units that can be incorporated to fit into an ME’s setup, based on their needs using the most passive designs possible.

can be very worthwhile, it can be very expensive if you plan on doing it with high-end passive gear in mind.

The console can be in a desk that resembles a typical mixing console, with all of the processors laid out within arms’ length. When it’s done this way, there is typically an unobstructed path from about the ME’s torso to the speakers, but because the first reflections from the speakers are hitting the lower portion of the desk before the ME’s ears, which will affect the sound to a degree, some MEs choose to put their consoles (including processors) in a rack behind them, or in another room altogether, and sit directly in front of the speakers, with no obstructions, and will have control over the audio, with remotes for monitoring and patching, and processors within reach. Those who prefer to go with a desk, however, choose designs that do their best to not interfere with the sound of the speakers; round corners and low profiles help with this issue.

The features found in mastering consoles vary. Some MEs work with stereo material only, some with Stereo and Surround, etc. Here are some key features that can be found on most serious mastering setups:

state amps because of the warmth they impart on the signal, but this is something that isn’t desired for mastering audio, since we don’t want to enhance the sound from the source, instead we want the cleanest path possible from the source, through the amp, to the speakers. For this reason, Amplifiers are used instead of Receivers to minimize the path as much as possible. Receivers are used by home audio enthusiasts to connect various consumer devices, such as CD/ DVD decks, radio tuners, turntables, tape decks, etc. Mastering engineers require a more sophisticated solution

A lot of thought needs to be placed on how the mastering console should be configured, how many connections are needed for the mastering chain, what features are useful and it’s also a good idea to have an outlook on future expansion, while maintaining the cleanest path within the console as much as possible. In the hardware world, passive devices that don’t introduce a meaningful amount of noise are complex, and therefore expensive.

For engineers that are completely “ITB”, stacking plugin effects won’t add noise to the signal, and while the trip out of the DAW to high-end analog

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Monitor Control – High quality controllers feature stepped attenuators (in 1db steps, typically) as opposed to the “smooth” potentiometer-type of volume control. When dealing with volume control, the quality of the “tracking” in an attenuator relates to how well and closely-matched the two channels (L/R) stay with each other in the range of attenuation. Potentiometer controls don’t track as well as stepped attenuators that use rotary, stepped switches, making these less prone to phase and balancing issues when going up and down the audio taper (or volume “curve”). Having multiple sets of monitor inputs and outputs and being able to mono the source, dim (to user-set levels), polarity flip one channel (to check a mix for phase issues) and mute (to answer a phone call or to check to see if that ringing is

in your ears only, or in the mix) are also highly desired options.

Patching/Routing – A lot of mastering engineers stick to using a set chain of processors, some always EQ before compressing, and might have for example 2-3 hardware EQs and 2 compressors and will simply bypass the units they don’t need (truly passive units pass signal even when the units are powered off), but there are other MEs who might like to switch the order of the processors and/or audition one of the processors in the chain with the press of one button, as opposed to having to bypass all the other processors in the chain, and that’s what a high-end router does. For digital devices, there are digital units that route various types of digital connections and formats and some also do sample rate conversion on the fly. This is useful, for example, when you have digital gear that might use AES/EBU connections but want to send the signal to another digital unit that uses S/PDIF. Mid/Side Processing – Many times, it’s not possible to go back to the mixdown stage to correct issues on a mix, and for example you might have a mix where the vocal has too much sibilance. Patching in a de-esser on the mix will also affect the hats, cymbals and any other frequencies in that range. Mid/Side processing (also known as Vertical/ Lateral processing in vinyl cutting, and Sum/Difference in other processors) will take a stereo track and combine the information that is shared by the left and right channel (Mid) and separate the remaining difference (Side). What you end up with, after decoding the signals, is the ability to treat the Mid information independent of the Side information of the mix. Assuming that the vocals are panned mostly in the center, you can then insert a de-esser on the Mid channel and not affect the Side channels. Like the saying goes, “There’s no such thing as a free puppy”, a lot of times you can introduce phase

by changing the balance of the mid and side channels, and affect the stereo image of the mix. This can, however, help in widening a mix that sounds too “narrow”. The ability to independently process the Mid information and the Side information can many times save a poorly-balanced and thin-sounding mix.

Visual Tools A good set of meters is essential to anybody, but there are other visual tools that are very useful to mastering engineers when processing audio.

Mastering engineers with loads of experience can hear most problems in mixes without relying on visual tools, but when it comes to analyzing audio, these tools help define problems more precisely and aid when making corrections for things like Stereo Imaging and Phase. In addition to high-quality meters, some tools you might see in a mastering studio are Phase Scopes, Spectrum Analyzers, Correlation Meters and Bit Meters.

Signal Processing

Contrary to the “don’t do it, you need a million dollars-worth of outboard gear!” campaign that you might stumble upon on the internet, the processors used by Mastering Engineers are often times plugins these days (and while you can spend thousands on them, plugins

tend to cost a lot less than their highend analog counterparts). A decade or so ago, plugin designers had to cut corners due to the lack of high CPU power in computers, and therefore plugin effects weren’t serious. It all boils down to the fact that in order to make effects that sound great, they require quite a bit of CPU processing power and it just wasn’t feasible to design a plugin compressor that would cripple your Pentium II computer with one or two instances. These days, however, designers can take advantage of more powerful computer processors and can model hardware processors in plugin form that closely resemble the characteristics of the original hardware, as well as create new effects that do things that would be really hard to accomplish in hardware, like a transparent multiband compressor/ expander/gate, for example.

Then there are times when some nice analog harmonic distortion is in order, which happens often in the world of digitally-composed music and this is one of the areas where high end outboard processors outshine plugins. Some high-end mastering EQs and Compressors have a way of treating the signal with transparency, and yet a “depth” that just hasn’t been accomplished by plugins. Often this difference is more apparent with mixes that leave a good deal of headroom for the masterer who might have a few nice high-end outboard processors (another good reason to leave more headroom in a mix for mastering).

As far as features, plugins can do as much and sometimes more in terms of processing than hardware effects, but in many cases, when a sense of depth and warmth is desired, hardware processors simply sound more pleasing. I love both, so rather than focus on why one is better than

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Restoration Tools

the other, which will always vary from project to project, I’ll stick to the types of signal processors used in Mastering, which realistically are in use in both software and hardware form by mastering professionals out there. Let’s start with one of the most important pieces of the chain, assuming your mix resides in binary code somewhere on a hard drive, and that it has to first be converted from zeros and ones to become an electrical signal that will drive a speaker:

DA Converter

Before you even think about a monitoring system that will give you an accurate representation of your audio, you should first look at the quality of your DA (Digital-to-Analog) converter.

A great DA converter will accurately translate your data into a signal.

Designers of cheaper, more-bang-foryour-buck converters will put lesserquality components (like the clock) in their units (like many other higher quality devices, the best are sophisticated and cost quite a bit in research dollars and skilled engineering manpower hours to make). Many times, “prosumer” converters sound pretty good, but when you compare the sound of these to a great set of converters, you might be amazed at what you’d hear. What sounds “good” on a set of decent converters will sound amazing over better ones; a lot of times you hear elements in your audio that you couldn’t quite make out before. The audio has a greater depth and it’s not

because the better converters enhance the sound, it’s because less than great conversion doesn’t translate the data as accurately as the better converters do. Really important if you want to hear your audio as accurately as possible.

AD Converter

Whenever I hear people say that recording digitally sounds harsh, thin, lifeless, etc. I assume these people have never used a high-quality Analogto-Digital converter. The cheap ones can sound thin and lifeless, but better converters will give you the ability to record your music better than anything else that’s been available in the past, and when I say “better”, I mean more dynamic range, with a smaller signalto-noise ratio than ever before. In mastering, AD converters are typically stereo converters since they are used at the very last step of an analog chain before hitting the DAW; stereo mastering at the time of this writing is still the most popular delivery format. In the world of high-end AD Conversion, there’s no question that they’re able to capture every detail that’s coming into the analog stage of the converter, so the variances in the quality of conversion are referred to as “flavors”. The flavor spectrum of high end conversion can go from very clean and transparent to some converters that are capable of imparting “analog character” to the signal, and it’s not unusual for mastering engineers to invest in more than one of them.

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One of the first tasks a mastering engineer often tackles is the clean-up of noise issues on mixes before applying any other type of signal processes.

This can include hiss from tape media, clicks or pops caused by badly-clocked digital devices, DC offset & RF noise introduced to the recordings (which happens often when sampling from various sources), and any other type of unwanted elements. In this department, the most sophisticated tools are software packages that feature a comprehensive set of tools.

While these tools can work wonders, there is usually a tradeoff, and many times you can’t completely get rid of the unwanted noise without also removing some of the material you want to keep; the more serious the noise issues are, the harder it is to completely remove them from the material.

Equalization

Equalizers designed for mastering have features that cater to working on program material. For example, many times they’ll have specific frequencies they work with that have proven to work best for mastering, as opposed to having sweepable frequency controls.

They also have notched controls for highpass/lowpass filters, gain and Q (center frequency) settings. These controls help a Mastering Engineer quickly recall settings should they need to go back to a track to make changes, and having notched controls for the Q settings also helps with phase compensation between the Left and Right channels, since having a very narrow Q setting on the Left channel, for example can cause smearing of frequencies if the Right channel has a wider Q setting.

Hardware EQs, due to the fact that they are analog (nonlinear) in design, will always introduce some amount of phase distortion, and many designs claim to have minimum phase. In the world of digital, however, designers have been able to accomplish what is

known as Linear Time Invariant (LTI) designs, in which phase increases linearly with frequency; this is known as linear phase. Don’t confuse this and think that all plugin EQs are linear phase; a lot of them can introduce distortion, as well other artifacts that don’t sound pleasing, due to poor design.

It is often suggested at the mastering stage, that if a mix requires a heavy amount of EQ, then a trip back to the mix is probably in order, but many times this is not possible. A surgical EQ, one that can offer very narrow Q settings, different types of filters (slopes) and a wide selection of frequency bands can save the day.

reason; if we apply a 2-band (stereo) compressor, we will be processing the entire frequency. You could set the threshold to act only on the loudest levels of the mix, which would probably be the kicks that are out of control, but keep in mind that high frequency material also has high peaks that isn’t as noticeable to the ear as low frequency material, so more than likely, you’ll also be compressing some of your hats & cymbals. Multiband compressors split the frequency range into several bands using filter banks, and in this example, you would be able to compress only those frequencies where the kicks are at (and everything else in the mix that shares these frequencies).

Compression

Notched steps are also preferred in hardware compressors for Mastering, as well as having a wide range of settings, from low ratios (2:1 and higher) to very fast and slow release settings. Mid/Side processing and unlinking capabilities are also desired features, and as explained earlier, being able to independently compress the mid and side channels is something that a mastering engineer might need to do from time to time. Another highlydesired feature for mastering is having a high pass side chain, which can minimize pumping during compression, caused by the compressor acting on the lower frequencies in a mix; with the side chain, you would tell the compressor to ignore a certain range of lower frequencies when compressing.

Some software compressor designs can do things that would be very hard to recreate in a hardware compressor, due to the amount of electrical components that would be required to recreate some of the complexity found in digital processors while trying to retain the quality of the material, such as multiband compressors. These tools, while they are sophisticated, are many times used only when it’s not possible to go back to the mix to fix issues. Let’s say we have a mix that has a kick drum that is a bit louder than everything and it’s not possible to go back to the mix session for whatever

Enhancers

There are times when a mix calls for more complex processing and treatment is required at the transient level. Sound Enhancer effects typically fall in one of four categories: Exciters – Add harmonic elements and massage the high frequency bands.

Maximizers – Increase the average (RMS) levels in a mix.

Bass Enhancers – Add harmonic elements and massage the low frequency bands.

Transient Shapers – Apply gain to transients and change the perception of them.

The intent of these processors is to enhance the perception of mixes that might sound “thin” or “small”. At the mastering level, these effects are used sparingly, as too much can introduce phase issues or give an unrealistic feel to the material.

Limiting

A limiter by definition is a compressor with a high ratio setting, usually 20:1 or higher. Unlike a compressor, limiters don’t have Attack settings because they are designed to have 100% attack, as the purpose of a limiter is to prevent peaks from going over the set Threshold (some limiters use an

Input control). Limiters accomplish this by using a “look-ahead window”, which means they’ll delay the signal to the compressor by a small amount of time, typically less than 2 milliseconds to make sure they grab all the peaks in the material. While typical compressors have a make-up gain control to increase the output level of the material after compression, limiters have an output control that does not exceed 0db, therefore the only change in output can be down from the 0db setting. The threshold or input control increases the signal level to the compressor, causing gain reduction. Average (RMS) levels in the material are then increased as the dynamic range is decreased. Some limiters feature Enhancing processes (see Enhancers above), while others are designed to be transparent.

Dithering

Last but not least in our Signal Processing category is Dither. When truncating audio data from 24-bit audio to 16-bit audio (to be able to play your music back on a CD), the result (loss of data) is referred to as quantization error. When played back, a truncated data file is in effect, non-linear, and will therefore have some amount of audible distortion. The process of Dithering introduces a low-level random noise to the signal, and the distortion then becomes more “analog” to our ears.

There are different types of dithering algorithms such as Pow-r, IDR, UV22 and you might already be familiar with them because all DAWs come bundled with one type or another. Dithering is done at the end of the signal processing chain and often times, Mastering engineers will audition various types of algorithms to hear which one sounds best for the material.

In part IV, we’ll have a closer look into preparing a CD for replication/ duplication. To a mastering engineer, burning CDs is no joke! We do some things here and there to make sure that when you spend your hard-earned money on getting CDs pressed up, they won’t be duds.

www.redsecta.com

95 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

VINTAGE SERIES

AKAI S-950 REVISITED

The Akai S-950 is not just an old school sampler. It is THE old school sampler.

Sizing it up

Introduced in 1988, it became the weapon of

Upon first glance, the 950 is all business. choice for a crowd of would-be legends (DJ It is almost clinical in Premier, Large Professor, Lord Finesse, Pete appearance. There are no trendy graphics or other Rock, Prince Paul and others) and played a signs of pandering to a big role in many classic albums in the years youthful market. Clearly, this machine is designed that followed. for professionals. Keep in mind that in the late 1980s, most hardware samplers were purchased for and used in professional studios, mainly as a sound design tool his installment of Vintage or for flying in the occasional sound Series will look at the Akai effect. It is only fitting that the 950 looks S-950. I will not spend much the part of a no-nonsense workhorse. time detailing all of its features.

Something about it makes you feel like A PDF of the manual is available you should be wearing a lab coat or from Akai’s website and it covers talking to mission control and I mean them very well. Instead, I will that in a good way. It totally plays into revisit the workflow it encourages the “mad scientist” vibe many producers and of course, its gloriously enjoy. Besides, whatever the unit lacks gritty sound. I will do so from the in form it makes up for in function. perspective of someone who has

T

a lot of experience with hardware samplers but who has never had the opportunity to push the buttons on a 950.

Layout & Architecture

The first things you notice are the dedicated controls on the front panel.

96 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

by Sean Maru

Akai wisely gave dedicated knobs to parameters over which you need immediate control such as record, monitor and output levels. It should be a law that all samplers be set up this way. The 950 even gives you a handy contrast knob, which makes a lot more sense than making you strain to see the display in order to adjust it.

There are eight page buttons in the middle of the unit (Play, Record, Edit Sample, Edit Program, Midi, Utility, Disk and Master tune). After my initial explorations, I realized I spent most of my time in the record, edit sample, edit program and disk pages. Record has several pages where you specify the sample rate, sample duration and root key of your sample. The Edit Sample page is where you trim and loop samples. Edit program is where you set up keygroups, filter and envelope settings, etc. You will use the Disk page for loading, saving and deleting sounds. To navigate the submenus hit the page or cursor buttons on the right

side and use either the 10 digit key pad or the control knob for entering values.

Between using the short cuts (which are printed on the front of the unit) and simply remembering how many button presses it take to reach a given parameter, I bet an experienced user could literally operate one of these blindfolded.

Like a lot of old school hardware, the 950 provides a wealth of output channels. The 950 has 10 unbalanced outputs, which can be used to route individual sounds to your mixer/DAW. How you assign sounds to their outputs depends upon the role you want the 950 to play in your production. If you are using it for drums only, then assign each sound to a separate output. This will allow you to EQ, effect and route each sound independently. The clarity of your mix will improve because the adjustments you make to one sound will not adversely affect the other. If you are trying to make an entire song using only the 950, then allocate one channel each for the kick, snare and hats. Then use the rest of the channels for your samples. I put similar sounds (e.g. chops of the same instrument, sounds in similar EQ range, etc.) on the same channels. Anytime you assign different sounds to the same channel you will have to compromise somewhat but planning your assignments thoughtfully will minimize them.

For my experiments, I tried to keep different drum sounds on separate channels and patched them to my analog mixer. From there the signal was fed into the audio interface on my DAW. Although I love being able to save and recall mixers settings in Logic, I have to say it is a lot more fun mixing on my Mackie 1642. Physically turning the knob on an EQ pot to locate a sounds sweet spot is a feeling that cannot be replicated using a mouse.

To feed sounds to the 950, I just ran a cable from the send outputs of my turntable mixer into the mono input on the front of the 950. Make sure you have a stereo to mono cable and/ or adapter or your will have phasing problems.

The 950 has a refreshingly simple architecture. The raw sounds you record are referred to as samples, which are then mapped into one or more keygroups that are contained within a program. Keygroups are where you set up envelope shaping, filtering, fine-tuning, vibrato and output assignment. Sounds can be set up to cross switch based on their position on the keyboard or velocity. Velocity cross switching is very useful, especially for creating more expressive drum kits.

A kick, snare and hi hat sample can become a dynamic instrument when you make variations of each using filtering (to mute the high end slightly), decay settings (to simulate a choked hit) or simply changing the volume and trigger each by simply hitting the keys harder or softer. The interactivity this provides makes sequencing feel more like making music and less like programming. Although it takes a few minutes to set up a keygroup, you can save it to disk and use it as a template the next time you build a kit and put the time saved into the rest of your production.

your source and let the threshold you set trigger sampling. That’s it. If you are using the same settings for each sample then you will spend most of your time hitting the page key to get to that last screen. The process is very hands-on and with a little practice, you can sample sounds as fast as you can find them.

Time Management

Although my first real sampler (a 1989 Ensoniq EPS Classic) had similar memory limitations, the 950 reminded me how soft I have grown in terms of resource management. My current DAW has 2GB of memory and half a Terabyte of hard drive space, so I never worry about having enough time to capture all of the sound I want.

Consequently, I tend to sample long passages, thinking that I will chop it up and make sense of it later. The danger of that approach is your beat has no focus from the start. If you have picked up the same bad habit, the 950 will break it for you. Its meager sample time demands that you know what sound you are after. Even then, you have to be alert when sampling to ensure you don’t miss part of it. A few timeBEFORE YOU SAMPLE: •Make sure you are sending a strong signal out of each honored tricks can component in your signal chain to maximize your signal help though. First, you can play the record to noise ratio.

•Turn down or mute unused mixer channels that may at 45 rpm and pitch it down an octave introduce noise to your signal.

•Use gentle EQ to emphasize the character of the sound inside of the sampler.

A benefit of doing this you are sampling before sending the signal to the 950. technique on the 950 is that when it interpolates the sample Sampling on the 950 is very quick to play it at the lower pitch, it imparts a nice crunch its sound. Although and easy. Hit the record button and the 950 can be set to start recording then the page key to step through the submenus until you reach the level set screen.

How is the Akai S-950 different from the S-900?

Make sure you have a nice and •Maximum sampling rate increased from 40kHz to 48kHz hot signal (the •RAM capacity increased from 750kb to 2.25MB signal should fill •Max number of samples/programs increased from 32 to 99 up the screen •New functions added (cross-fade looping, pre-trigger during peaks but recording and time-stretch) not “live” there).

•Can now take both HD and DD disks Hit a key to start •New options include the ME35T trigger-to-MIDI interface sampling or play and the 13-pin Voice output plug

Sampling

97 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

Sure the Akai S-950 looks all business but it developers had a sense of humor. Just execute the “halve bandwidth” function one too many times and all of the page lights will begin to blink and the 950 will actually mock you.

when it reaches the threshold you set, it sometimes cuts off the beginning of samples so I tend to start recording manually. When using this approach, it can also be helpful to cue up the first beat of the sound you want to sample and scratch it a couple of times before releasing the vinyl so it will be “up to speed” as soon as sampling starts.

The 950 employs a couple of functions that will help you manage your memory. First, you can choose from a wide variety of sample rates. It is a good idea to sample slightly higher rates for your main samples and reduce the rate for less important ones (percussion, sound effects, etc.). You can also get away with using a lower rate for samples, like kick drums, that won’t use the upper part of the audio spectrum anyway. The 950 will also let you resample sounds at half bandwidth after the fact. This not only frees up memory but also grunge up the sound a bit more, if that is what you are after.

Trimming & Timing

Once you sample, the next step will be to trim the sample start and end.

Although the 950’s “Auto” feature can search for the start point for you, I found myself dialing the sample start in manually most of the time. When doing this, it is helpful to play a key an octave or two below the root key so you can hear the attack in slow motion and

locate any dead space or clicks that need to be deleted. If you are looping a phrase, the sample end may flam with the beginning as it loops. To fix this, you need to bring the sample end down enough to cut out the first beat of the unneeded measure. There are a couple of techniques you can use to avoid having to listen to the entire sample repeatedly. First, you can find the start point, and then hit “Discard before start and after end” to truncate the sample.

This will reset the starting point to zero.

Then you can temporarily increase the sample start value so you can audition the sample end after hearing the last couple of beats instead of waiting for entire bars to play out. Don’t forget to bring the sample start value back down to zero before discarding the sample end. An alternative method is to trim the sample to the point where the extra beat is just starting to come in and then reverse the sample to fine tune.

This way you can trigger the sample repeatedly while bringing the sample end down as you listen for the point where the last beat vanishes. Then reverse the sample again and listen to the loop going forwards to make sure it loops correctly.

Chopping on the 950 is done by copying the sample a few times and trimming the start and end of each copy to isolate the sections you want. This is

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definitely much slower than chopping in recycle, Kontakt, etc. However, faster is not always better. Whereas the average chopping program will give you the politically correct eighth note or sixteenth note chops in an instant, the 950 requires you to get your hands dirty. You have to cycle through the loop a few hundred milliseconds at a time. The extra time spent often yields a chop that lives in the gray area between obvious divisions. In this regard, you could say that while programs today are too smart for their own good, the 950 is blissfully ignorant of the assumptions that can box your music in.

One of the more important features that the 950 introduced to the line was time stretching. In addition to doing a good job of helping you get your sample on beat without changing the pitch, it was also good for generating effects when abused. I found that I could get some interesting artifacts by time shrinking the sample by 50%, then stretching it by 200% and then filtering the result.

Artful manipulation of the “D-Time” parameter also introduced interesting results. Longer D-Time values gave samples a tremolo type effect (which can do interesting things to a flute sample) and shorter ones made samples sound more metallic (good for “robotic” voices and other clang effects).

I tended to use the time stretch more for effect than actually getting things on beat. I honestly had more fun working completely old school and just using the fine pitch control to get all of my instruments to loop correctly. Although you risk a major tonality train wreck, it is more fun to massage the pitch of a sample until it loops just right than it is to think about percentages. Besides some times the dissonance you get from samples that are not perfectly tuned can be a good thing. Another bonus is that working this way forces you to make the sample loop to the rhythm as YOU hear it and this personal stamp builds a little bit of your personality into the track from the start.

Looping

Samples can be played un-looped, looped forwards or as alternating loops. The 950s auto looping features proved to be useful. I don’t loop many “real” instruments these days but the few times I did during my testing, the auto loop feature proved to be quicker and more musical than my first couple of stabs at doing it manually. In addition to making sampled instruments decay more naturally, auto looping can help when building instruments from single cycle loops. If you are not afraid of a little math, single cycle looping can provide another way to design sounds without using a lot of memory. In short, you sample, tune, layer and filter single cycle loops of samples to build more complex instruments. The samples can be anything. Although, I usually copy a sample from the song I am working on and build a lead instrument from that.

Alternating loops continuously play the sample forward and then backwards. If you are having trouble looping a sample forward, an alternating loop can sometimes work.

When sampling records, applying a bidirectional loop to the last eight or sixteenth note of the bar can hide an overzealous vocalist who chimes into early and other flies in the ointment.

Filtering

Not only is the sound of the 950 old school, but it encourages you to knock the dust off old techniques. Using the low pass filter to isolate the bassline is a bread and butter technique of the early 90s and although is it is not innovative to do in 2008; it sure is a lot of fun. Just lower the frequency cutoff for verses and let the unfiltered sample sing out during the hooks (along with whatever supporting samples you added) and you have a song. You can bring the unfiltered sample in during the verses to remind the listener of what’s coming in the hook. Granted these days this might sound dated but if your emcee is doing his job and you have chosen you sample(s) wisely, no one will care.

In fact, I think this flavor is kind a part of hip-hop’s collective consciousness at this point so it is hard to go wrong.

Nevertheless, the 950 does have tools

to help you expand on this formula.

For one thing, you could time correct different pitches of the filtered sample and set up a keygroup to allow you to play the variations in different ways.

In addition, the warp (pitch sweep) function can also be setup to vary according to how hard you play. Of course, combining techniques just multiplies your options. Suffice it to say, the 950 still has a lot of creative potential flowing through its circuits.

Conclusions

I have to admit the Akai S-950 was every bit as fun as I hoped it would be.

Although I have a sizable collection of soft synths and samplers, the last time I literally had Goosebumps was while using the 950. Maybe I was feeling déjà vu or nostalgia. Maybe it was the realization that only 15,000 of these were produced and there was a chance that one of my heroes had made something incredible on this very machine. The thought is humbling and inspiring and almost plausible considering my test unit has lived in Long Island, NY for much of its life.

Even if you do not romanticize the golden era as I do, there is still a lot to like about the 950. First, there is the sound. Although, yes the sound is gritty, the most attractive quality to my ears is its presence. I get a punch from the 950 that I don’t get from say an Emu Ultra or even an Ensoniq EPS/ASR series sampler. This quality along with its fast midi response makes it highly effective for drums. Just pair it with your sequencer of choice and perhaps a drum pad controller like Maudio’s Trigger Finger or Akai’s own MPD 24

and you have a makeshift MPC 60.

Next is flexibility, the 950 allows you to set up key groups that yield highly playable drum kits. In addition, its 10 outputs allow you to break instruments out individually to your mixer or DAW for more control over the sound. There is also the workflow. Probably the best thing about the 950 is how quickly you can capture your ideas on it. Once you know your way around, you can sample sounds as fast as you can find them. Not only does the interface not slow you down, you occasionally feel like it is waiting on you to come up with the next idea. Another thing I like about this machine is it requires you to be connected to your music. While making a track you have to use your ears and your gut to make a hundred little decisions. This involvement draws you into your music in a way that a DAW does not (at least not as readily). Lastly, there is stability. It may or may not surprise you but the 950 did not crash or flinch even once during the past few months. I honestly don’t know what I would have to do to make it crash. The main down sides to this machine (e.g. storage hassles, file conversion issues, etc.) are just byproducts of its age. In spite of those limitations, I think the 950 has aged pretty well. I doubt my any of my current soft sampler will boot let alone inspire me in 2028 but I have a feeling my 950 will still be screaming “Enough Already”. Ultimately, I think my reaction to the 950 has been more about rediscovering the fun of throwing many sounds together quickly and being reminded that a track does not have to be technically perfect; it only has to grab you on an emotional level.

99 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

•Great 12-bit sound •Easy to navigate user interface •Many sample rates to choose from •10 outputs allows for flexible routing of sounds to mixer/DAW •Timestretch feature can be used/misused to great effect

Cons •Limited memory •Stores to increasingly hard to find media (floppies and small SCSI HDs) although third party applications like Awave facilitate transfers to and from your computer •Only has one LFO and one (LP) filter which limits synthesis options •Limited availability of replacement parts and accessories

100 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

In Europe the term “black music” refers to any kind of high quality Hip Hop, RnB or Rap production. Similar to the word “urban”, except that this term is not that common in Europe. So with the name of “urbanic - pure taste of black music” we had to walk a thin line between US and Europe to let users from both sides of the ocean understand what’s really in there.

Pros

IN THE LOOP SERIES

Ueberschall Elastik Urbanic

Music production construction sets in a liquid elastic engine. Elastik Engine Soundbank standalone Mac/PC/ AU/VST/RTAS Sample expansion packs and standalone products Urbanic Producer Pack

Waterboarding

L

et’s see now. Two bars at 95bpms is 5.05 seconds so the pitch would drop…or maybe a semitone looped to cut off here might…What’s the bpm to make this loop …loop right?

Seems like the days of calculating loop lengths are over with every sequencer and plug rendering your material at different tempos without a second thought. Ueberschall Elastik uses a powerful zPlane algorithm [more on this at zplane.de], which is also in use

by other heavyweight time-stretchers like Ableton and Native Instruments, to give you total control of your production without a calculator.

Take a breath.

Ueberschall has licensed the engine and turned its focus on percussion based loop libraries with a good measure of musical phrases thrown in. You will have before you an entire track broken down in to its key elements available for mixing, remixing and mangling regardless of the original tempo.

Wash and Wear

The general angle of production based loop libraries is to quickly get you up and running with a solid foundation to build the rest of your composition around. You may not be a drummer or drum programmer. You may not have a room full of vintage boards or the musical skill, inclination or time to bang out that perfect melody. And no, your compositions shouldn’t be limited to one-finger-music or simplistic percussion tracks just because you haven’t had formal music training or put years in at the grind wheel. On this issues DVD-Rom you’ll find tutorial videos, sounds and samples. It’s enough material to get you treading water and with a small amount of time inI’m sure you’ll find your custom stroke.

Let’s cause a ripple on the surface.

Watermark

The interface is as ‘right to the point’ as the sounds. If you’re used to, or better yet require, a slick GUI pretending to be the surface of a nice bit of hardwareyou’ll pause on start up and scratch your head. Once you dive in you’ll find all the requisite functionality to mangle your drum tracks and even find inspiration when you’re dry. Working within a closed engine usually adds a definable limit to a producer’s creativity unless the record-live-outputs workaround is used. In a very fresh and clever move, Elastik will export (bounce) hits and loops in either the original state or your modified versions for those wanting to be free from the system but retain the core sound.

The sound quality of Ueberschall offerings is beyond question at this point. There is a unifying ‘sound’ to their libraries stemming from the algorithms of the elastic engine and no doubt imparted during the capture process.

There is a necessary roughness to the loops that adds credibility to the presentation. You can’t walk up in here and claim to be Underground Hip Hop or Urban in any sense and deliver shiny and sleek cliché tracks.

It’s obvious very skilled producers are behind the sound design and

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composition of the tracks. They know this music and deliver a highly usable slant whether they are tackling Rap or Reggae. This product should be added to the recent wave of sample libraries from companies who have learned the difference between listening to current music and copying and hearing current music and building off of the vibe. We went back to the well and talked to Wenzel Mehnert, an official representative from Ueberschall.

Can we get a brief background on your history and how you came to work for Ueberschall?

Wenzel Mehnert : Two years ago I just picked up the phone and dialed their number and you can call it luck or destiny, but they needed someone like me [product rep]. So that’s how I came to work for Ueberschall. I don’t think it would work today but sometimes you just have to hit the right spot at the right time.

What challenges did Ueberschall face in creating the Elastik GUI in terms of both keeping it simple and intuitive? Our main challenges were, as you said, to make it as intuitive and simple as possible. But we soon noticed that the more you think about simplicity the more complex it gets.

So we always had to keep [in mind] the

view of someone who is seeing Elastik for the first time. They needed to understand its interface it immediately.

The result is what you see today, an easy-to-use but powerful sample player.

Let’s talk about the graphics themselves. You’ve stayed away from the on-screen keyboard approach and went with square blocks to define the actual keys and you also represent the looped waveform as a circular grid called the loopeye…where did these ideas come from? What are the benefits?

The idea of the loop-eye emerged, as all good ideas, by accident ;) *insert Happy Face graphic*** We planned to show the wav form in a different way from the beginning.

We wanted to concentrate on the loop-ability of the samples, not only play it from left to right. While we were sitting together with the interface designer of Elastik he was playing around with some nice effects and by accident hit a cycle filter or something similar. The displayed waveform was bent. He said “Oh sorry” and wanted to undo it. Luckily we came across and said, “No, that’s exactly the way we want it!” We quickly realized that with this display of a wav-loop as an actual

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loop -you can easily change the start and ending and recreate whole new rhythmical grooves and patterns.

This is the main feature that makes Elastik so flexible.

The sounds themselves come fully processed.

Are you concerned with producers not having the proper gear to finish their sounds or is speed and immediacy the main point? Speed is always a factor.

Nowadays producers have to produce fast because the labels want them to.

In this case it’s much faster to take, for example, a drum-loop that already sounds good and just layer some vocals above it. The time that is saved here can now be concentrated on the mixing of the vocals or the backing. But in case you have the time and prefer mixing yourself the single loops are usually unprocessed. So the user can still decide for himself which sound he wants or even build his own drum-loop using the single sounds.

As far as effects go, do you have any plans of adding bread and butter effects like reverb, delay and EQ or more experimental suites- including bit-crushers and vinyl effects? If not, why? No we won’t. The reason is simple. We feel most users [will prefer to] trust their own reverb, bit crushers

or delays- so we offer multiple outputs so you can route samples to different mixer channels.

In any streamlined workhorse app, a great deal of functionality is left to the host sequencer. What are your thoughts on many second generation VSTs adding their own sequencer or piano roll to allow for precise note editing away from the main sequencer screen?

We already played around with a lot of new ideas we will implant in version 2.0 of Elastik. The Sequencer in a Sequencer is one of them ;) *insert exclamation Face graphic*** There are several other good and inspiring new ideas but right now it’s too early to talk about it.

There are solid tracks among the demos on offer. Who decides what material is included and how do those tracks wind up in an Elastik release? Also, is there an issue with an artist using one of those tracks as is and releasing a record?

The decision is always in the hands of the production team.

We decide which product we want to release and who will make it and the producer creates the tracks. Very often we also work together with external producers to catch new influences and styles. Generally speaking, we are always interested in new material and listen to every demo we get. [I don’t have to drop a hint, do I?] If an artist uses samples from one of our libraries he can do that in an official release.

That’s what the material is there for.

The only two exceptions are that he is not allowed to use the complete mixes and the samples can not stay on there own but always have to be mixed with something done by the producer.

You used the subtitle “pure taste of black music”. With hip hop and rap music so wide spread and its influences felt so heavily in every genre, what is the context of the term ‘black music’ and is there any statement being made in reference to other sample based offerings?

In Europe the term “black music” refers to any kind of high quality Hip Hop, RnB or Rap production [Nice!].

Similar to the word “urban”, except that this term is not that common in Europe.

So with the name of “urbanic - pure taste of black music” we had to walk a thin line between US and Europe to let users from both sides of the ocean understand what’s really in there.

Thank you for your time, Wenzel. Take a look at the full range of Ueberschalls’ Elastik construction tool sets. This includes the “Urbanic Producer Pack”: a tool box for every Hip Hop and RnB producer and also Analog Attack; a collection of live recorded analog sequences for different Dance and RnB Styles. Check in to the Ueberschall website for video tutorials, music forum and additional connections and content. For a classic rewind, consider the popular Hip Hop Underground. ueberschall.com

Washing away any Doubts

It’s a simple thing to imagine a producer taking two seconds to mix and match a few loops and calling himself done.

It’s the same pool of Beat-In-FiveMinutes hack producers love to swim in and the beatmakers in the baby pool wrongly think represents the deep end.

There is an unsaid moral code every artist/producer lives by. It’s a personal choice, or better yet, it’s an instinctive gut feeling based on your workflow and work ethic. You’ll know when you’ve injected the right amount of. ..you to brand a production truly yours.

The Liquid Series products manipulate audio phrases in a piano roll screen like MIDI, adjusting pitch and note placement. Samples can be stretched, truncated and looped to create new lines from audio samples as if they were synthesized. The aim is to give the producer the sound quality of authentic live instrumentation while working with grid based composition.

The liquid series includes live phrases created from Horn Sections, Trumpets, Guitars and Bass.

Urbanic Producer pack Elastic Soundbank for Mac/PC/ AU/VST/RTAS 1.3 gigs of content 2,090 Loops and Samples *included Elastic player

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Industry Insider Synth Designer

Dave Smith Dave Smith instruments

Was it at that point that you said okay, this is it for me, this is my life from now on and this is my life’s dedication?

All I was doing before that was building synthesizers, so I had already decided I wanted to design stuff. And I was having fun doing it. That was, of course, the first major instrument - the first real instrument I had designed, so it just cemented the deal.

S

ince last we spoke about the new analog beastie from Dave Smith Instruments, the Prophet 08 [rack-mountable] desktop has landed. In a season marked by the return of retro pieces, we talk to synth designer and father of MIDI, Dave Smith.

Can we go back to the days at Sequential Circuits; can we start there and talk a little bit about the Prophet-5, and how that came to be?

Dave Smith: Basically I got the idea of doing a Polyphonic Programmable Synthesizer because I knew the parts I needed for the synthesizer functions were becoming available. I had already been working with Microprocessors for quite a while so I knew how to do that.

That was a necessary step to do it all.

But initially I actually hesitated and didn’t go forward. I decided not to do it because I was a very small company; it was mostly just me back then, and we were building accessories and sequencers and things like that. I just figured it was such an obvious next idea for the two big companies at the time- Moog and ARP. I was convinced that they must have been doing something similar, because it felt so right to build a Polyphonic Programmable Synthesizer.

I waited a few months with that assumption, and finally tired of waiting and decided to just take the plunge and go ahead and do it! That was spring 1977. I spent the rest of the year designing it. We announced it in January of 1978, so it’s about 30 years ago.

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How did you stumble across MIDI? That was far from an accident. The Prophet-5 was actually the first instrument, musical instrument, that had a Microprocessor and within two or three years all the other companies started putting Microprocessors in their synthesizers. Once you have a Microprocessor in an instrument you realize that it’s fairly easy for it to communicate with another instrument with a Microprocessor.

So at Sequential Circuits we developed a high speed digital interface we used for connecting sequencers to the Prophet-5, and remote keyboards, and computers and so forth. At the same time, Roland developed an interface and Yamaha and Oberheim had proprietary interfaces they were using.

We quickly realized it would be silly if everybody only had their own interface because no one can connect

anything from different companies together. So after some initial talks, I decided to organize meetings at the Audio Engineering Society [AES] Convention, trying to organize everybody for creating a common interface. It took a few meetings to convince people to do it. The four companies; Dave Smith Instruments, Roland, Yamaha and Korg decided to move forward and actually do this; whereas, other companies like Oberheim and Moog and a few others decided not to get involved because they, for whatever reason, didn’t like the idea. Well, from that point forward it took about a year of working together with the Japanese, but most of the work was done by Sequential Circuits and Roland, the other companies didn’t exactly understand, but were at least smart enough to go along for the ride.

Towards the end of finalizing the specification, we had to come up with a name for it, and that’s when I thought of the acronym MIDI, for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. Then we developed the very first MIDI synthesizer, the Prophet 600. We shipped near the end of 1982.

Then at the January NAMM Show in 1983 we connected it to a new Roland synthesizer, I think it was JX3-P or JP 6 and that was the first time the two MIDI instruments were connected together, and it actually worked.

knobs and its own keyboard and you play it like a musical instrument, and you don’t have to deal with computers and software and all that.

MIDI is a just interface, and something we needed at the time.

We gave it away free to the industry, so nobody had to pay royalties to use MIDI. Most of us would rather just keep

sound, if you hit a single note, it will change gradually in different ways as it decays. If you hit a second note in the piano, the two strings will interact and it will be a different sound than if you only play one by itself. There is always an interaction going on with real musical instruments, and they are always changing.

The other extreme is when you play something like the Sampler, and it has a simple loop on it, you play it and ends up sounding exactly the same. That’s just one of the reasons a lot of instruments sound boring- it’s because there’s no movement in the sound.

I have always been a fan of expressive movement in an instrument. I think it’s important and it’s more interesting. I tend to build products I like to use, so that’s the kind of sound I like, and that’s the kind of instrument I design.

I just don’t have any interest in “ plugging things into a computer

and dealing with all that in order to play something. I am sure it’s a fine translation, but I would rather have a piece of hardware in front of me that I can hold and pick up and move and play. “

As I was reading your bio, I was sort of thinking to myself, well, why isn’t Dave Instruments the leader in MIDI controllers? [Why wouldn’t they be releasing massive, monstrous MIDI controllers with 127 knobs stretched across three tiers?!] Why stay with synths?

We are instrument designers. I am not that interested in controllers for software. I would rather design a musical instrument that has its own

building instruments, and there was actually a whole new cottage industry that formed, with people who made little interfaces and controls and stuff, and that’s basically how the whole recording industry got started when we invented MIDI. Now, in regard to the Wavestation; why is evolving and changing sound over time so important to you?

That’s just a personal preference; if you think about it, virtually every other musical instrument, acoustic musical instrument, does that by itself. A piano

So is it the envelope that you would say is your main concentration as opposed to say the filter?

No…it depends on the instrument.

The Wavestation obviously had a lot of sequencing envelopes to turn on and off different samples and oscillators, so that was fairly important.

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I designed. And I am not done yet.

But I think most people would agree that filter is probably the center of any synthesizer sound, even more so than the oscillators quite often, depending on the type of instrument.

All instruments are a little different and they have different emphasis and different priorities, so it’s hard to pick one element of a synthesizer and call it the most important part.

I see. Now, can you tell us a little bit about your Korg years? Are you aware of your own legacy, or did you see yourself as a working journeyman?

Well, it’s both. I don’t dwell on it too much but when I look back; I have been responsible for quite a few things that were the first of its kind in the industry.

The Prophet-5 pretty much started the Polyphonic Synthesizer business, and virtually every synthesizer since then has been polyphonic and programmable. I don’t know if you realize it, but I also designed the very first professional software over ten years ago now. Really?

Yes and that started a whole new industry that’s gotten quite a bit bigger. I tend to have a habit of doing things like that. MIDI of course is still used today in synthesizers and home computers and cell phones, and everyone uses it everyday whether they realize it or not.

I’d rather be known for the instruments

Why not a Poly Evolver 2 as opposed to the Prophet 08? Well, there are no set rules when I decide what to build next. In the case of the Prophet it was kind of interesting, because I had a lot of requests from people who wanted a 100% analog signal-chain synthesizer, and I didn’t do one for a long, long time because I was having more fun with the Evolver.

The voicing is considerably more complex, while keeping the analog sound, but I decided to do it anyway.

It wasn’t until I was almost done with it …I was playing with it and it surprised me how good it was. It had been a while since I actually designed a fairly simple analog synthesizer like that. So I was able to put in a lot of updates, the things that weren’t possible when the original Prophet 5 came out. The whole contribution of that experience plus the basic analog sound just provided something that is right there. You can’t buy an instrument with a sound like that. It was only then that I realized it really was a Prophet, so I didn’t start by trying to design a Prophet, it just turned out that way.

What about the knobs, the design, the physical layout of it, is that also your handiwork?

Yeah, I did the mechanical design, I did decide on what features, what knobs and all that. One of the things I thought after designing soft synths is I didn’t like them. You need to interact with your instrument.

Interacting with an instrument doesn’t mean sitting in front a computer monitor with a keyboard and mouse and trying to click things and drag things.

Even though we designed the Reality

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synthesizer and it sounded really good and had a bunch of different synthesis types, I just never used it because it wasn’t any fun. That’s when I decided to give up on software and go back to only hardware, because it’s so much more fun. So something like the Prophet, I try to pick the right functions for the surface so you don’t have to dig through menus to find features.

Obviously the Prophet doesn’t have as many features as some soft synths, where every six months they come out with 20 new features and 30 new menus to dig through and figure out. It’s a very straight forward design, so you always know where things are. It’s familiar to anybody who has used a synthesizer before, because everything is pretty much exactly where you would expect it to be. There are more than enough functions to keep you busy for a very long time.

It’s kind of like a guitar. Guitar players don’t complain about only having three knobs and six strings, but they get used to playing with their instrument, and it’s always the same, and they can come back ten years later, and the same knob and same string will do the same things that it does now, and that’s the same thing on the Prophet, whereas software synthesizers won’t even work in ten years unless you upgrade them every six months.

Ouch! Well, I must ask, are you not impressed with the Korg Legacy Wavestation? They gave me one and I never even turned it on. I understand, people tell me its pretty good, but I just don’t have any interest in plugging things into a computer and dealing with all that in order to play something. I am sure it’s a fine translation, but I would rather have a piece of hardware in front of me that I can hold and pick up and move and play. I can pick up a guitar and play it, and know that each of my different guitars have a different appeal and a different sound, and they have some good parts and they have some bad parts, and you learn how to play with them and they are real musical instruments.

“...the

real payoff of designing an instrument is to be able to hear what a musician does because no matter how much I know about my instrument, somebody will still do something with it that I didn’t think of, and make it sound a certain way that I have never been able to make it sound…make a song out of it and use it in a recording. ”

Are you concerned with the comparisons between your Prophet and the older ones?

Oh, I welcome comparisons. To me, it’s pretty clear that it’s not exactly like a Prophet-5, it’s not exactly like a Prophet 10 or a Prophet VS, but it definitely is a Prophet; it has the same basic sound, it has got the depth, it has got everything that the original Prophets do. I think it goes well beyond the original Prophet. When I play a Prophet-5 now, it seems kind of quaint and nice and tame compared to the Prophet 08.

There has been a couple of very detailed product reviews from people in magazines who have done just that, because the big questions is, well, are you just using the name to sell more instruments, or does this thing really deserve to be call a Prophet? So far pretty much, a 100%, everybody agreed that it’s definitely a Prophet. Modernized and still has the character.

Do you have a vision in your head of what your masterwork could be? Do you believe there is a synth that you have not created yet, that could be your life’s work, your life’s masterstroke?

No, I don’t look that far ahead; I tend to take things a day at a time, so I can’t say that I have any long-term targets or a magical product to build. I do think probably… the Evolvers are by far my best to date, but it’s hard to compare because they are different instruments. There is a lot of overlapping; you get a lot of the same sound in the Evolvers, but they go well beyond what the Prophets’ can do because they have the integrated digital sound in addition to the real analog. But as far as my future planning and fantasy designs…I don’t have the ultimate instruments in mind to build someday, I just go from one to the next.

Is there some sort of feeling you get when you are designing a synth, knowing that someone is going to lean on your instrument to express themselves, and someone is going to try to make emotional music? Their great ambition may be to make a living off of or to even change their world, based on what you designed?

Oh sure, I mean that’s the best part about it. I mean, there are only a handful of people in the world who can call themselves Synthesizer Designers; there are not very many of us who do this. For me, I mean the real payoff of designing an instrument is to be able to hear what a musician does because no matter how much I know about my instrument, somebody will still do something with it that I didn’t think of, and make it sound a certain way that I have never been able to make it sound… make a song out of it and use it in a recording. That’s really the payoff as a designer; seeing the artist actually use the instrument.

They like having me around to make instruments they can play, and give them an individualized sound. I like to see what they do with the sound. There are so many different types of music; everything from pop and rock to hip-hop to techno, and everything in between, so many different types of music including soundtracks. It’s great to hear what people do with it.

This may be rude to a person who designs synths, but there is such a heavy concern with the presets you include in your synths, as opposed to the sound the synth is capable of creating. So while creating soundbanks do you keep in mind someone may judge all of this work, only by the bank of a 256 presets? They may decide to buy or not to buy your grand work that you spent months on, based on just the included sets of sounds.

Well, that’s an important part of showing any instrument these days. It’s probably more critical for instruments like Samplers and digital instruments that are hard to use, because most people are only going to use the presets and they will never make their own sounds. It’s a little less critical in our case, because it’s so easy to make a sound or to modify a sound.

If you are playing, at anytime you can just grab a knob and change it, either a little bit or a whole lot to suit your taste in an instant. But having said that, so far most of what we hear

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from our customers is that they really love the sounds that are in there. It’s a littler trickier these days, it’s like I was just saying about how many different types of musicians use synthesizers.

You have to come up with a real variety. You don’t want to do all bass and lead sounds, if somebody wants a techno sound.

You don’t want to do all sound effects just for the movie people.

Some people only want the old sounds and some only want the new.

I noticed at trade shows when people are playing the synths for the first time - they step through the programs and everybody stops at different programs. So one person will stop at number three because they really like it, and they will play it for five minutes, the next guy will go right by three and play number six. So all you could do is put in a real variety to really show what the instrument is capable of.

Some people aren’t going to understand it. All they might do is play major triads on a C chord, and they just bang out the same chords on every sound, and of course it’s not going to sound as good. What you have to do on a real synthesizer like this is to take time with each sound, because low notes might respond completely different than high notes. If you push down on the notes, you use the wheels, it might change completely, and you have to play the sound based on the type of sound.

You might miss part of what the instrument is capable of.

I have actually another hard question. What is your feeling on effects, since some synth manufactures are relying on effects and clever programming to get those presets to sound good, while others are just concerned with raw waveforms and let the user build it up, so how important are the onboard effects to your instruments?

It depends on the instrument. I am not going to do something like the samplers do, where they have tons of reverbs and a whole big pile of effects on it, because in general my instruments don’t need that. The Evolvers do have some onboard effects, whereas the Prophet has none. It’s partly to match the type of instruments. The Prophet was meant to be all analog, and as soon as you put [commonly used] digital effects 108 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

you take away from some of that purity. So we wanted to have maximum punch on the Prophet, and kept it as clean as possible, so that means people have to have their own effects on it if they want them.

The idea with the Evolver is still different than the other instruments. It wasn’t meant to be a synthesizer with a bunch of effects at the end of it. The effects in it are very tightly coupled with the synthesis. So the distortion in the Evolver is individual for every voice, the delay is individual for every voice, and it allows it to be much more musical when you play it, and the sounds get that much more incredible when you have four different delays going on four different notes at one time. So the answer is, it really depends on the product, and what you are trying to do, and in my case I have done it both ways, depending on the instrument.

I am sure you are sitting there thinking to yourself that I wish everyone would buy my instrument, but when you are designing it, surely there must be some sort of synthesis or musician you have in your mind that you are sort of saying to yourself, I hope this guy picks up on this instrument, who would that person be? Well, I have to say that’s not entirely how I do things. I design things for what I want, and so maybe the answer is …is ME. I don’t

Dave Smith: Vintage Shop, Vintage Shot sit here and think that, oh well, Keith Emerson would want this, Timbaland would want that, Herbie Hancock would want this, and Bernie Worrell would want that…there are so many different people, and every one of those people want something different. I can’t say I really have end customers in mind, I think I have a wide range of sound and a wide range of appeal, if that makes sense.

Well, is it a musical skill level; is there a musical skill level, a bar you are looking at? A musical skill…not really. Here is a funny story. I had one customer that had a Poly Evolver, and he was complaining that his roommate who knew absolutely nothing about synthesizers was getting better sounds off the keyboard than he was. That was because this guy would just go up and start turning knobs, and he had no clue what the knobs did, but he would just keep turning them until almost accidentally he would come up with some really cool sound, and then he would save it.

So it depends on what you are doing. If you are into creating sounds and soundtrack type stuff as opposed to music, then that’s one thing. Obviously if you are a musician with Chops, then that’s a whole different thing as far as your approach to the instrument, and your level of competence.

But I see a lot of first time synth buyers buying the Prophet, and it’s actually a good one for them. They have always heard about analog synths and they have always heard about Prophets, and they may not totally understand it, but when they first get it, they will just start turning knobs and they say Well, what does filter cut off do?, and they will hear it, and they will go oh, I know what that sound is, I have heard that sound on a million records and get the idea. They will learn how to use it a little bit at a time.

Well, what do you want to say in conclusion to the person who is hovering over the Prophet and

thinking about purchasing it, in an industry that’s turning further and further away from analog, synthesizers, and going into the virtual realm, what do you want to say, or what statement maybe does the Prophet 08 make?

Well, all I could say is play it and listen to it, and if it speaks to you then my job is done. If you don’t know what the difference, then you might as well save the money and buy a software synth. I don’t like to make a big deal about the technology and say analog is better than digital.

I seem to think, and most people agree that, it does have a much better sound then the digital stuff, but it’s up to the musician. It’s like, why do some guitar players like Les Paul, and some of them like Tellies and some of them like Strats? It’s when they pick it up, when they play it, it’s what they hear and what they feel. All I could ask is for people try it, and if the instrument speaks to them, then they should buy it.

I meant to wrap this up, but I can’t help it now that I have you, I am intrigued about your thoughts on analog drum machines?

Well, since I am in the middle of designing one, my opinion would have to be that somebody needs to do something like that, and it may as well be me, because it will give a different sound than what everybody has been used to for the last 10 or 15 years. How is that?

How does the BoomChick become the LinnDrum, and how does that collaboration begin? Well, Roger and I have known each other for a very long time, and we have worked on some minor projects together. Doing something big, like a drum machine, is a huge project, so it’s a good one for us, and easier as a joint project than either one of us trying to do it alone.

The BoomChick was a temporary name, and after we got further into it, we decided that it would make more sense to call it a LinnDrum, because that’s kind of what it is. It’s coming along nicely; we hope to have it done later this year. A lot of people are waiting for it. I think they will be happy with the way it sounds.

The rumor I have heard is that you’ve been able to shove some of the Poly Evolver in it, is that true?

It’s similar; we have got four analog channels where you basically put in samples or whatever you want through the analog filters. I am borrowing from some of the tricks of the Evolvers, where you can do tuned feedback and synchronous delays, and then some other tricks to give it a little bit of a boost, because for people that have played the Evolvers, they know how it can do some really nasty and fun stuff as well as some nice, clean stuff. So just like I said earlier, it’s trying to provide some different sounds for people to play with.

I thank you for your time and Producer’s Edge wishes you continued success with the Evolver series, Prophet 08 and future release the LinDrum II. Davesmithinstruments.com 109 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

JUST BLAZE GEAR THROUGH THE YEARS Words by Jeremy Vargas

I

’ve been watching the career of Just Blaze for some time and I’ve always been curious about the gear he started on. I had a chance to pick his brain at the Guitar Center Sessions where Pete Rock, Just and 9th kicked it about production in front of a packed house or up and coming producers and fans.

Jeremy vargas: At what point did you know music production was the thing you would do and what was your first piece of equipment.

Just Blaze: It’s interesting question because I have been doing this for as long as I can remember, I think I fell inin stages. I guess it all started with my father who used to play keys. He had two Casio keyboards. Casio make pro stuff back in the days; it not like the little ones you see now for like $20 at the Kmart.

So he had a Casio MT-70 and I forget what the other one was called. But I mean this was 1983-1984. They didn’t

even have MIDI. They had a Barcode Reader and that’s how you would scan music into the joint. It started with thatbuilding presets, just trying to learn about melodies and music. I must have been like 7-years-old, fast-forward a little bit; Casio came out with the SK-1 and then the SK-5.

I started on that myself, low sampling. Exactly and you could put four seconds of sampling time inside it and then the second one had the four drum pads on it. So that was my introduction into sampling and figuring out- if you spend something up really fast, you can get more sample time and

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just slow it down after the fact. I might have been around 10 or 11. The next phase was when I went to that attic and found all those old records. I realized Rebel Without A Pause by Public Enemy had this drum loop from this James Brown 45 and I am Wait, this is how they are doing with it? This is in 88’.

I was bugging off the fact that this is where it’s all coming from.

So I started making my looped pause tapes, just trying to imitate what I heard on records and what Marley Marl and Red Alert would do on Fridays and Saturdays. I wanted to start taking it somewhat serious and begged moms to buy me a Roland JS-30 which

was the most terrible fraud of a beat machine ever! It had no Sequencer, it was basically just a sample playback unit and if you wanted to have four minutes of music…you’d have to play your drum track for four minutes, no quantize, no nothing. Then go back and lay your sample on top of that for four minutes straight and just arrange it as you were doing it.

Just Blaze Created MIDI

I had a program called MIDI Workshop which I figured out -- wait a minute, these are these two things that say MIDI In and MIDI Out, one is wired that came with the program. And this Roland has a thing that says MIDI In, MIDI Out. So may be if I connect it, I can make the computer trigger this. So here I am thinking I am onto something new- not knowing this is what it was made to do.

I saw the Soul II Soul video of “Back To Life” and dude had a little Mac and the keyboard, so I am like, we can make all this on our computer? I walked into the computer store one day and said I need that joint that’ll let me make music on a computer. So they gave me some little BS program, but that was really my first introduction of really saying, okay, this is what sequencing is, this is what arrangement is. I was able to use that with the Roland. That’s when I really started to go hard with it.

I begged my aunt to buy me an ASR-10 because Rap Pages had just came out with a RZA interview

and that’s what he used. This is when Wu-Tang first came out. I dragged my aunt down to the Sam Ash and I basically said “I need this”. ”She said, but this thing, it says Roland S-760 is only $600, this is $2,000. I am like, yeah, but I need this, this is what I need…this. Maxed out her credit card in one shot, got it to the crib and that was really my introduction to what brings me here to where I am today.

What are you rocking with right now? Right now? Oh I know it’s bananas. Yeah, the thing is, when you have a whole recording facility, it’s a little bit different. What always stays with me at this point now- is Logic. I still have my MPC and when I want to knock something out quick, I will definitely still go back to the MP to just sketch out basic ideas. But once I had that basic idea, I will take it and dump into Logic and really go hard from there. It’s either that or Pro Tools.

I think Logic is great on the production as far as computer base of production.

Arrangement and editing pro tools still has the crown on that. Pro Tools is made like- if you know how to use a Word Processor, you can use Pro Tools.

If you understand what a Console does and what a Word Processor does and the concept of cut and paste, you good with Pro Tools. Logic is not always so logical. So like with the newer version 8 they streamlined it, they appleized it.

You know Apple’s theme is simplicity.

What’s your most recent and current projects? Marsha [Ambrosius], who is formerly from the group Floetry signed now on Aftermath. Games new album LAX. Saigon; Greatest Story Never Told on Atlantic. That project is done; we’re just working out the details. That’s about all I can get into now. I scored NBA Ballers [http://www.nbaballers. com/]. I am trying to diversify. It’s my tenth year doing this and I’m at a point where I feel like making records is cool and I’m not going to stop doing it, but I’ve got to diversify a little bit and broaden things.

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“It’s

damaging

when

you

don’t do a good record, when you do something corny and whack and a hook that makes no sense. But when you do something in this time and age, it’s all about the oomph you put in your music, in the hooks, in the beat. The beat has to be crazy. I believe it’s all about how you do it. ‘coz to me, it’s like certain cats, how they do their music that offends me. Like there’s nothing in the music.

It’s just fucking kick, clap, and a fucking whack hook and somebody thinking they’re hot spitting on the track.

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Creator

Innovator

Legend

“There’s something on every record.

You can make any record into a beat.

I mean, even in the early days, cats made music out of anything.

I collect music.

Music that sounds good and I make samples with real music.”

A

s always, there’s a lot of office discussion of who should/will be on our next cover. It’s one of the most difficult decisions an editor has to make. It certainly decides the tone of the issue and relates to how we see the production world and its players. We’re rolling with a quarterly schedule so our cover feature is an even bigger issue. Pun intended. Should it be someone who’s poppin right now? A legend? Someone consistent and safe? I like the idea of having someone who’s active. I mean a talent who is active in the producer community and giving of his time and energy.

Pete Rock is a simple choice. He’s one of the first to achieve the title of Supa Producer. Where were you- when every other record on the radio was a Pete Rock record or remix? It’s the current state of hip hop and rap production that creates an interesting paradox. The very same musical trends you complain about only serve to solidify his status as a legend and role model. Let’s get Wreck with the Creator.

Drew Spence: Do you feel like hip hop has been disrespected by the rap world?

Pete Rock: Yeah of course man. I feel like right now there’s a lot of cats that’s in it that don’t know how to be in it. You know what I mean? And it’s like they’re making this music that’s just not really appealing to the ear. There’s some cleverness to it. I’m not going to shit on all of it.

There’s a lot of it that I like. And then there’s lot of it that’s annoying. You know what I’m saying?

Now you know from making classic records that survived the test of time. Are you saying today’s music is a temporary fixation? Well, only some of today’s music. Not all of it. There are some good things I like Kanye West’s music and Common.

But those are the throwback artists. Yeah. Like to me, they reinvented themselves. And really Kanye is a new artist to me. He’s a new producer that’s doing the same thing that I did when I came in the game, but just a little more. He’s definitely got more that he’s working with. But

as far as like the rest of the people, I can’t really speak at them . . . I just wanted to make the kind of album that’s been missing for years. Like that New York swagger.

How do you pick artists for one of your albums? Do you sit down at night and listen to old records? After I make the beats and smoke maybe like one or two hours, I kind of start thinking about people.

Who do I want on this? Yeah- and the track basically has to fit like the person. Like me, I’m that type of dude like I make a beat and then the image of the person will come into my head or who I feel the beat sounds good for or who I think sounds good over this. Same thing when I make like 11, 12 other beats. You know what I mean?

That 950 still in service? Oh yeah. I still have all that old equipment. I have to actually bring that to the shop right now.

But it’s still in working condition.

What’s the weapon of choice now? Any new weapons of choice that you’re not really up on? Nah, not really. I got the MPC2000XL, the 2500 and the SP’s still doing it.

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The business engine behind your albums. You’re on the edge of crafting a classic album…do you think the industry and fans are ready? I think so. I think they ought to be. Slowly but surely you can hear my type of music coming back, that Pete Rockish style. That sound today, people are still feeling, other producers still chase that sound. When I listen to certain producers like Just Blaze or Kanye or J Dilla, people like that, when I hear certain music on the radio, I’m like wow, that sound is coming back.

It was a perfect opportunity for me to come in and take advantage.

How is the 2500 working out? Good. It’s still good. It’s not that different from the MPC2000XL. They added a few more things. That’s about it. You know what I mean? But you know. It kind of reminds me of the SP, but just an upgraded version of it. With the SP, you couldn’t sample as much…you didn’t have a lot of sampling time like the MP does.

You needed workarounds with the samples. Exactly.

Now you can do better manipulation with the MPC with the sampling and use your imagination and really bring out the pitch or the music that you have in your mind.

So in 2008, is sampling time an issue at all? Do you still pitch shift? Oh yeah. I Pitch Shift all the time. I never really stopped doing that. Since day one, I think I was one of the first cats to really do that, you know, fuck with the samples and manipulate. Producers like Prince Paul have done it. Lots of other producers before me were experimenting with that, but I think I just took it to another level.

I overheard you once say that Little Brother was New York without being from New York. What’s that about?

[Right on cue Phonte walks from the central studio to the tracking room] They’re from North Carolina. They’re just real hip-hop. They love this- the culture we represent. In hiphop music- if there’s no soul in it, then you can just see that people are doing it for money and they’re just putting together any sound that sounds hot or they think sounds hot. I do this to let you guys know how much I really love this shit. Hip hop is the most important thing to me. I could have been manipulative or greedy in a sense. But I basically love this music. And it’s going to come out when you hear it.

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How do you feel about 9th wonder?

I love 9th.

He’s basically been listed as a software producer?

I mean that’s cool. It’s whatever floats your boat. You know what I mean?

Whatever you’re comfortable making beats with. It’s basically how you do your music. And if you’re putting that real element in your sound - it doesn’t really matter what you use. It’s how it’s being displayed out there to the people Creative energy wise, are you able to craft several tracks in one day? Yeah. I can do like maybe 5. I’m up to like 6, 7 beats a day. On another day, like maybe two weeks ago, I made 10 beats in one day. I don’t know what was going on. I just blacked out and just went for the gusto. But I think it was ‘coz of the weather and the rain and the snow and it was nasty out. So I didn’t really go anywhere. And I had to watch my son anyway. So I just got busy.

Sample wise, other producers are known to use crate diggers that will handle samples and give them records. Do you have any scouts out that actually readily give you samples? Nah, I do all the digging myself. Basically it’s just showing you that I really love what I do man. I’m not saying I don’t need anyone to go out and find me shit. I like doing it myself.

You still crate dig today? Yeah of course. That’s what keeps me surviving. You know what I mean? Gotta keep digging. Filter wise, have you ever messed with ASR 10?

Not really. That’s a Large Professor thing and a Nottz thing. They manipulate the ASR very well. Me, I was always an SP and MP dude.

Now keyboard wise, you ever thought of integrating some synth work into your tracks? Yeah definitely. I got a Juno and a Rhodes. An authentic Rhodes?

Yeah. The real shit. With the real foot pedal and all that, same vibrato! I’m incorporating all of that in my music.

Now when it comes to engineering your session, what is it that you must have in your session when you’re tracking over your own beats? Someone who really knows how to work Pro Tools and knows how to bring my sound across. I tell them what I need and they bring it forth.

Do you separate the artistic and the technical? Do you say bring this back this many bars, do it this way? Or just say I want to take this again, I want to recapture that?

Do you ever spend time behind the boards?

Oh yeah, of course. I do all of that when I’m mixing or at home. When I’m making the beats the ideas that start hitting me in the head -I’ll just add them in as I’m mixing. You know what I’m saying?

Do you ever go through phases like this week is jazz samples and another all soul- maybe another week it’s all ‘60s or ‘70s? Nah. I just dig any and everywhere I can find something. Have you ever sampled Tijuana Brass?

Be honest. [laughs] Yeah of course. Herb Alpert, all of that.

C’mon, can you flip anything?

Let me tell you something. There’s something on every record. You can make any record into a beat. Just for starters I come from a jazz background, a reggae background, a heavy reggae background. Plus heavy soul and classical.

Jazz classical: all that was instilled in me. You know what I’m saying? And I think if you saw my collection, you would pass out. It’s eclectic.

Yeah of course. I don’t just collect shit with beats on it. I collect music. Music that sounds good and I make samples with real music.

We know about your background with the radio station and having that vast collection of records. Do you feel that part of your edge over today’s producers is that you’re culturally linked to music as opposed to a cat today whose main circuit may be just mp3s?

It’s cool. Like I said before man, cats are going to feel most comfortable with what they can operate the best. You know what I’m saying? Whether it be computers or whether it be the drum machine. Me, I like to tap and beat on shit. You know what I’m saying?

Physically. There’s something about that I can’t stop doing.

And then you have cats that are computer wizards that want to do it that way [mouse and keyboard] and master it that way.

So there’s no real set way on how to make your beats as long as you have the tools to make music. ‘Coz people make music. I mean, even in the early days, cats made music out of anything. And I think that’s pretty creative for people like us. Black people are the most creative people, I believe. It’s amazing. I see stories and read documentaries about Miles Davis or James Brown and how they made their music. It’s incredible. Some of their mistakes were their biggest hits.

That’s how I felt about when I first came in, at a very young age, doing beats and picking up on production and working with a lot of people.

Do you still embrace the other elements of hip-hop, DJing…? Of course. What about graffiti and the break dancing? That stuff, I just look from a standstill now. The DJing and the rhyming and the beat making is something that I’m always going to do. Those to me are the real important parts of hip-hop culture besides the graffiti and the break dancing. ‘Coz without the music it’s really nothing.

As far as DJing goes, how do you feel about mix tapes then? It’s cool. It’s a new way for DJs to become greater DJs. We didn’t have that coming in. Kid Capri started the mix tape and Ron G. Those guys started the mix tape game period. It’s a little bit overcrowded now. You see a lot of cats coming out of everywhere doing mix tapes. But there are a few choice ones I’ll always dedicate myself to. I like Clue’s mix tapes. I like K-Slay’s mix tapes. I still like Ron G’s mix tapes and K Capri’s. Even the last mix tape he made before he started making beats and doing production.

Who would you look at and say ok, that’s the dude that I would give a lot of leeway to do something with?

Papoose. He’s really hot now. Jim Jones. And then my man Max B. He’s nice with it. Any of the Wu-Tang dudes.

Still you see them in categories and if so, is that important? Yeah, definitely. ‘Coz the way I make beatsI’m flowing to myself. I listen to different rappers today and adapt myself to their flow. And that way, if I ever work with them, I know how to make their music. You know what I’m saying?

Are you afraid of the big labels? Not really.

Worried about their influence? I know how to get down now. I had to learn the business. I had to learn about the major labels. I had to learn about being on top of my game. I had to learn about being on time for shit and never being late -if you’re serious about making money. All that had to come into play. I’ve learned inside of the music game. The most important side is learning. Your paperwork and learning that you can’t trust anyone. You got to watch everyone. Lawyers and everything. You know what I’m saying?

How did you hook up with Little Brother? Actually my younger brother introduced me. They had a show in DC and he was at the show. One thing led to another. I think he met 9th wonder. And when 9th wonder found out that that was my brother, you know that was it. He kind of hooked it up and we met. They brought him to my house. They spent a night and left the next day. It was cool. The cat is real.

Do you trust the artist? Yeah, I trust these guys ‘coz I really love the way they do their own music. So if I have an idea, I will call them up and say look I want you to do this or 115 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

say this. They’re going to lay their vocals down and all that stuff. And then I’m going to take it back home and play with different beats. This might not even be the beat for the track. I made like 10 other new shits - I’m trying to see which one fits the best.

Do you have an audience to play it for? Is it on the 5 peeps that come through to listen or do you just go by your own ear and say I know this works? Nah, nah. I don’t know what cats are going to like today. So I put like 20, 25 beats on a CD. Tell them if you like something let me know.

How familiar were you with their previous work like The Chittlin Circuit, The Minstrel Show? Oh man, that was my favorite album. When I first heard it, it blew me away. ‘Coz I never knew there were cats building music like that in Carolina. This music game is just so difficult like with all the southern influence. There are a lot of southern artists coming out doing club music and shit like that. Like this is what we call reality music.

About life and struggle. Yeah, basically just trying to make a good hip-hop album that you can listen to and every cut is tight. Now what’s the setup at home? What’s that about? Pro Tools. 16 track board or whatever. Akai mixing board. Not much. A little bit of shit. Nothing major; a few keyboards, rack mounts and a shit load of records [laughter erupts] …and that’s it.

Is there even an idea of a solo album with just you, strictly just you? Yeah. I got that in the works. I’m going to do like 10 songs with me rhyming on every song. No big deal.

Any thoughts reunion wise- bringing back the Grand Puba, Q-Tip? I don’t know. If the opportunity presents itself, so be it. But I’m not going around looking for it. A lot of those cats are not the same anymore. Just certain cats, you know you don’t see eye to eye with as much as you did when you were doing it back then. Shit change. People change. But me, I just still remain the Sole Survivor of the Soul Brother Number One. Previously, the VH1 Hip-Hop Honors, you had attended that. What was your feeling there about the night?

Oh I had fun. It was lovely. It’s funny how they don’t understand. . . the staff, none of the workers know real hip-hop. They don’t know the history of hip-hop music.

It’s funny. Yes. You agree with their picks? Yeah, yeah. And I don’t really remember the first year ‘coz I didn’t really see it that much. But they made me a part of it this year. And I felt they should have honored the producers as well from the era, like when Big Daddy came and none of those cats were doing it. The man behind the music was Marley Marl 116 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

and the All Stars; the most important era in rap. He wasn’t noticed. He was up in the balcony the whole time. They didn’t even put the camera on him enough. And I was just like wow, that’s crazy.

He was actually there? Yeah, he was there watching Big Daddy Kane perform. That’s how you know these people don’t really know their history in hip-hop ‘coz you got Marley Marl in the building and the camera is not even on him.

Like I felt that was kind of whack. You know what I mean?

Red Alert is in a similar boat too. A lot of people aren’t really familiar with how deep Red Alert goes.

Yeah, yeah. It’s a young audience today. Red goes back since the early ‘70s. You know what I mean? With Sugar Hill after Islam and Jazzy J and Bam. You know what I mean? He comes from that. And I kind of grew from that era as well ‘coz I learned from those cats. I came up under that. Cold Crush, Furious Five, Fantastic Five, Crash Crew, the whole shit, Treacherous Three. That was a great time in rap. The old school cats were making records and putting it down on wax. And the next thing you know the rap gang started growing and growing. The ‘80s came and you had Criminal Minded, Paid In Full, Nice & Smooth. Heavy D and the Boyz. The list goes on.

I always felt when I listen to some of your lyrics too that you wrote so close to the edge of the 5%. You would sort of touch on a little bit of the concepts . . .

That’s ‘coz I grew up with cats that were 5% when I was young, back in like ’81, ’82 when it was real strong. I used to get the cats to show me the lessons and what it is and what they had to learn what was universal.

Rhyme book still? Yeah, rhyme book everything, papers, whatever. You know what I’m saying? I do more beat making than writing. But I’m more into the writing now.

The DJ has been removed as the hook provider. The scratching bridge is a thing of the past. With music being so minimal, has the core of hip hop been removed or has rap just turned the corner?

It’s damaging when you don’t do a good record, when you do something corny and whack and a hook that makes no sense. But when you do something in this time and age, it’s all about the oomph you put in your music, in the hooks, in the beat. The beat has to be crazy. I believe it’s all about how you do it. ‘coz to me, it’s like certain cats, how they do their music that offends me. Like there’s nothing in the music. It’s just fucking kick, clap, and a fucking whack hook and somebody thinking they’re hot spitting on the track.

You know what I mean?

Live show wise, how important is the DJ to a live show with so much being run from lap tops now? I’ve seen pretty good shows run from an iPod. I’ve seen them with mp3s or iPods or CDJs now. I kind of

like the CDJs. ‘coz when you’re performing on stage, they give you a clarity better than turntables ‘coz you’re dealing with the ground wires and the hum and shit like that. CDJs; the Pioneer joints. They have techniques now. They have different brands.

Have you ever incorporated that for production itself?

Have you taken a beat you’ve worked on, burn it to a CD, throw it in, and cut it just as another element?

Yeah exactly.

How do you feel about the mp3 culture and people downloading your songs? They claim to be sustaining your old hits or only snatching the stuff not in store anymore.

What about your new stuff?

Certain things you just don’t have any control over. But what you can do is just make sure that your street team and your marketing plan is in its proper perspective and it works out for you. We couldn’t stop the bootleggers from bootlegging.

It’s just grown into a business that’s far beyond anyone’s control.

“I’m tired of all this shit that I’m hearing on the radio. It doesn’t have any real soul to the music.

Now also seeing the response overseas… I mean they have an appreciation for real music overseas. Everywhere I went over there, they love what I do. And even down to the lyrics, they know my lyrics. F--k every other rapper.

They know those lyrics too. It surprised me to see them know a producer cat. So it’s a genuine love man overseas. Period. It’s like hip-hop starting out in the late ‘70s, ‘80s all over again overseas. That’s how they treat it.

How do you feel about LA rap, California rap, even the gangster rap era? That pretty much is what followed the Golden Era. It was a strong era in that time. But it’s only a little bit more different. Their music is g funkish, more George Clintonish, more Funkadelic Parliament type of sounds. Like lot of moog keyboards and guitar base, you know bootsyish [Bootsy Collins] type of sound. East coast was just raw.

Like our sounds were just straight raw. We were taking old records and making MC routines like Cold. Kool Herc; who brought the sound of hip-hop from Jamaica to New York kind of manipulated it with soul music and made hip-hop and discovered Grandmaster Theodore who did the first scratch.

And you had Ashton. You had Charlie Chase. You had DST. You had all these great DJs in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s that was rapping hip-hop.

There’s no vibe to it.

I feel like this rap shit is a joke right now.”

WRITER’s BLOCK Champion Words by Scarpen

Hook

Writer

competitive song with three loose verses as long as you keep a solid melody for the hook.

RING GENERALSHIP

RING ROPE NOTES

Tand get closer to the music.

o be a champion hook writer you have to get away from the lyrics, If your nice with the rhymes then you already know that you have the people in you corner that appreciate lyrics.

The purpose of the hook is to hook in the people who appreciate song writing and make it easy for people to remember the melody or the words to the hook after just one listen. If they don’t remember, then the hook should be so original that there’s something in it that is easy to commit to memory. An example of that is Missy’s song back in 2002 called “Work it”.

Missy literally reverses a major portion of the song and people speculated on what they heard? This had us hooked on the song and us wanting to listen to it again.

RING SAVVY The first step in hook writing is finding the melody of the hook. It’s kind of like humming your favorite tune and you only know 3 or 4 of the words. If you already have the beat for the song it makes it 10x easier to find a fitting melody. You know when you have a melody that fits the track when it almost sounds like it could be voiced by and instrument in the song.

TITLE BOUT Next you want to come up with a title for the song. Some writers suggest you should come up with a title first, but in actuality it’s best to let the inspiration lead. Through my personal experience

MC’s tend to try to fit the name of the title into the hook which puts constraints on the flow of the chorus. This may come at a price of sacrificing a catchy phrase just to mention the title for emphasis. The melody and the ease of committing the melody to memory is the most important. It should be easy to say, easy to perform and heard clearly in the mix.

Now that we have a melody and the title to the song, we can actually build the rest of the song around these two elements. We can start with the concept and lyrics. Most current songs lack the concrete writing and concepts popular in the silver and golden age of hip hop. You can now make a strong,

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We usually link the name of the song with the hook to make it easier to find.

You do want people to listen to your joint and know how to Google it. A prime example of rule breaking is the song “Elevators” by Outkast (ATLiens 1996). The words to the hook were memorable and the title was totally irrelevant. The reason this works is because if the hook is catchy enough, people will find the song regardless of whether or not they know the title.

STANDING EIGHT

Study every song whose hook catches people’s attention. This could be rap, R&B, alternative, or even Meringuesince every song has a rhythm. When you hear a song you like you have to ask yourself “What element about this song do I like?”, and try to add that element to your arsenal of hook crafting.

I came from a very lyrical background where I thought a good hook was unnecessary and even selling out. I now have seen my Rapper’s Edge and see hook writing as a challenge. How can I remain as raw as I want to be and still make creative and catchy hooks consistent with my overall viewpoints?

STYLES MAKE WRITES

There is no particular formula to what should actually fill the meat of the hook, but it’s best to consider every part of your record as a chance to draw a listener in. Scar your pen. Peace.

Recommended HIP HOP HOOKS What did he say ? These are songs that are purposely hard to repeat so that you have to give it a 2nd listen. This is a masterful way of luring in a potential fan with strictly melody and concept.

Missy Elliot “Work it” The Roots feat. Erykah Badu --“You Got Me” Jim Jones, Max B, and Mel Matrix – “ Sour Deez” Named for a dance – Not for everyone, but it’s effective since it gives the listener a visual and something to do besides watch you spit..

Fat Joe and the Terror Squad – “Leanback” Soldier Boy “SuperMan” Catch phrases- Catch phrases- It something that will remind the listener of the song when the song is not around. When you can promote your own slang in the hood, it has huge staying power.

Naughty by Nature “OPP” Wu- Tang - “Cream” 50 Cent – “Wanksta” Cash Money Millionaires – “Bling, Bling” Playful Song/ Hook - These are hooks that are fun to repeat from songs that are fun to listen to.

You may catch your kids singing them or even someone who is not a big fan of hip hop .

Eminem “My Name Is” D4L – “Laffy Taffy” 2 Pac “I Get Around” Jay – Z “Hard Knock Life” Fat Joe feat Lil Wayne - “Make it Rain” Nas “ I Can”

Shaquille O’Neill feat Rza, and Method Man – “No Hooks” Three 6 Mafia feat Project Pat – “Sippin on Some sizzurp” Busta Rhymes – “Gimme Some More” Kanye West – “Jesus Walks” The Sample – This is a good way to get out a song if you are not a good hook writer. Sometimes it just sounds better if it’s a sample versus you saying it. The best way to pick a sample for a hook is to pick a part of a song that is memorable and very easy to repeat.

Cassidy - “I’m a Hustler” The Notorious B.I.G. – ““Ten Crack Commandments” Lil Wayne - “A Millie” The Game “Dreams” Controversial - These songs were noticed not only because they broke the rules, they also put the artist in the watchful eye of the government. They were also good hooks, and carried a strong message that actually affected people’s lives.

Public Enemy’s – “Fight the Power” N.W.A.’s - “Fuck the Police” Ice T’s – “Cop Killer” 2 Live Crew – “Banned in the U.S.A”

Broke the rules/ originality – These hooks broke the rules in one way or another (either speed, or style) making it memorable to after the listener after hearing it one time. The only weakness to this style of hook is that it can either go over a listeners head, or it may just not be a good hook.

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The idea of spinning imaginary

NECRO

tales and exaggerating the hoodlife adventures is nothing new, Ron Braunstein better known as Necro has turned to the darkest side of the human psyche to bring you Death Rap. This is one of those rare instances where a rapid fan base- so passionate and loyal forces you to drop what you’re doing and pay attention to their fast rising… undead hero.

Writing Death Brings Life to RAP

Words by Will Loiseau

Will Loiseau: Congrats on the Death Rap Album. How long have you been producing? Necro: I would say 18 years now, I started around 1990 to produce beats and collect vinyl.

Did that begin out of necessity or was it a natural attraction toward sounds? I never thought of getting other people’s beats, the whole thing was about making ya own shit, so I wanted to come up with my own sound, plus I had been in a band, a death metal band playing guitar, so I was good on live bass, and could play the keyboard naturally. I first started with loop tapes; looping up shit with the pause and record buttons on my stereo, that’s before I could even afford a sampler.

Anyone who rhymes and can produce their own music automatically sets themselves apart from most because not many can do both effectively. You obviously got a lot on your mind and put your gifts of expression on display for your audience. Who were your influences and what compelled you to go in the direction of Death Rap?

For music production I was influenced by producers like Marley Marl, Large Professor, Premier, Pete Rock, Dre, The Geto boys, Tribe, De La -all that shit from back then influenced me.

Cypress and Muggs, anything dope back then made me wanna do hot shit, but I definitely had my own style which was darker because of my metal influences. As for death rap, if you go back to my earliest demos they were evil shit, I just liked rapping dark, and over a period of time I developed my own style, the same way a Raekwon will come up with slang, I came up with my slang, and death rap is a term that I created to describe my steeze, straight brutal shit.

How does your family feel about the things you say in the music and the images you show? My father is a killer from the IDF army, he isnt impressed with anyone. If it makes money he is happy, my mother is more nervous, but she knows I’m smart and I know what I’m doing. But it’s not like it’s her cup of tea.

What were you like growing up in H.S.? Did you play any sports or

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join any after-school activities? Not really, I was into hip-hop, I was the white kid that mainly clicked with the spanish and black kids during lunch banging hip-hop beats on the table.

Kids called me the white Kool G Rap, cuz I was rapping about killing and guns,. I used to punch a lot of kids in the face who tried to test me or rob me.

I had to make an example of someone a lot, I finally got kicked out for fucking someone up. I even snuffed one of my teachers. I was a dark kid mentally, because I didn’t like people, so my swagger caught the attention of the grimy kids, and I was getting into more beef than making friends, but it was all part of my life. I was also extremely dipped in high school; I had designs in my head, and rocked blue suede Pumas and Columbia rain suits, Cross Colours, the newest dope shit always.

Once I got kicked out of high school, I started selling weed, and had 30 customers and business cards printed up. I was 17. I delivered to anyone that beeped me.

What was it like trying to succeed in an industry where the artists who receive exposure are predominately

how to get rid of a corpse, throwing in tons of gore movie references, mentioning brutal things I did in life, it’s just coming off as rugged and brutal as you can, and where it’s believable, not a joke, when I do my death rap shit, I aint playing, I’ll fight you if you got an issue or wanna disrespect.

It’s not a game to me, it’s my life. My representation: one style of mine

people of color? It’s always been hard, but I had fans as far back as 1992, when I would bless radio stations like Wildman Steve and Riz [WBAU Adelphi College radio 90.3] that was reaching Long Island white kids and they never heard white kids rhyming like me and Bill. We would go up and spit 5 verses each of new shit over ill production, whether the newest Buckwild beat, or newest Havoc, so we came off rugged from jump, and that created a fanbase. Every time I blessed a radio show like WKCR, my fanbase grew. It’s at the point now where I have a fanbase of all colors, 75% white, 15% latino, 5% black and 5% asian, but they are all real die-hards and they all relate regardless of color.

For those who don’t know as well as your biggest supporters, describe what Death Rap is. Death rap can be me rapping the Manson murders over a beat, me kicking some ill verse where I talk murder shit, explaining

You’ve not only made music for yourself but you’ve been doing production for other artists as well. Non-Phixion, Secret Society, The Circle of Tyrants, etc. Tell us about the single with Raekwon from Wu-Tang and how that whole collaboration came about. Ill Bill hooked that up, he gave Rae a Necro beat cd like 2 years ago, and Rae finally picked a beat after 2 years, I was shocked at first, but pleasantly surprised - especially since he put Ghost on it, I didn’t even get to mix it. Rae or someone just leaked it, but it is what it is, it’s on the resume.

That’s cool in my eyes. The beat was made in like 1997 I think, so we talking about an 11 year old beat finally getting used, that’s what’s up. Every beat has its time.

When I met you at the Cop Shop out in LI, you told me you were feeling the features of the ASR-10. Have you since thought about upgrading your studio gear and adding on?

I’m old fashioned, it takes a lot for me to change up. I believe if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, but I don’t really use the ASR-10 anymore. I fuck with Pro Tools at this point. Death rap was made

and recorded on Pro Tools, so I have stepped forward, but a lot of drums and shit I had cut up on the Asr-10 was used too. To me, it’s all just tools. No machine makes a difference to me really. I can’t tell the difference because my mind is focused on other things- more than whether a sample sounds different.

Every person has a different view. I just focus on shit sounding bangin to me, if it’s hot, it’s hot, if it ain’t then I gotta fix it, mix it, tweak it, ect.

Ever use any software instruments?

Plug-ins? I use tons of plug-ins, we have everything so anytime we need to flip something we use plug-ins.

For vocals, basslines, guitar riffs and making samples sound better. Plugs are the future.

Do you mix and master your productions or do you work with an engineering team? I work with my engineer Elliot Thomas. We been working together for the last 8 years, he knows what I like. I’m very detailed and into analyzing shit. So when you work with someone for a long time you don’t gotta say shit. We mix and master shit together and I never settle ‘til shit is hot. Our last session was a 24-hour session, so you can see how I get down.

I read somewhere that you played guitars in bands. You still play?

Does any of your production include you on the guitar? I can play, but I don’t wanna be a guitar star. Rhythmwise I can play anything needed to be added on a track. A bunch of my songs I played guitar on and I list all credits in each album- telling the fans what I played and what I didn’t.

Tell us about your experiences working with live musicians and who would you like to work with in the future?

I worked with a lot of live musicians, as far as metal artists, some are really dope and talented, and some suck and I’m shocked that they were in huge bands. But it’s always cool working with anyone talented on their instrument.

Are you laying down the drums first or thinking of drum patterns and tempos after letting the sample run

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for a while? Both, there is never one way to make a beat in my mind, it’s all about the vibe and how you feel and how you wanna do shit that day, and depending on whether you sample or play shit. I have done it everyway.

Are you the type to sample drums off of records or do you use sound libraries? I’ll fuck with both, but a lot of sound libraries sound like a pile of shit, so in the end it has to work.

Doesn’t matter what you do as long as the final result is hot. You could give someone the dopest drum sample and if they can’t flip it, it’s useless. It’s all about the chef and how he cooks his ingredients.

p-ssy, you name it.

Describe your roughest stage experience. I guess all the times i punch people in the face on stage. In Virginia I went nuts and jumped off stage two times. After snuffing the first dude, the crowd got more hostile and hateful, so I jumped back down and snuffed another kid. This was in a 2,500 cap room so it was a big jump down to even reach these f-cks. I was on tour with hardcore bands Hatebreed and Agnostic Front,. Their crowd wasn’t feeling me because I’m hip-hop, so certain kids felt they could shit on me and I would’t do anything. But I lost my temper and went nuts. Cops came and pulled me off stage. We almost got arrested and I got docked my pay.

Freaks is the sickest horror, Goodfellas the sickest gangsta flick, and as for documentaries, there is a lot, Faces of Death is dope. On Youtube you can find a lot of jail shit about Rikers and other jails. The I Need Drugs Behind the Scenes is a sick documentary filmed by yours truly.

What are three of the most important things I need to know as an up and coming MC or producer? The business, respect to the forefathers and people before you, and you won’t get anywhere overnight in any business, you gotta pay dues, so be prepared to work smart and hard.

What are your interests or How have you developed your craft over the years? Just being Death rap is number one, concerns outside of music?

Music is my life, but I wanna into it, loving it, wanting to be doper and doper, you have to love it and when i rap, cuz i’m the only get into real estate at some point. I love women and I’m care about it. I live and breathe it, it’s my life. More than anything I dude that claims it and i very perverted so I like to spend time with sexy women. fucking love hip-hop. I love making shit and I feel I’m awesome at it, invented the term... I’ll fight Studying wealth and success and reading knowledge books. so I just get iller and iller. There is so much more to do. I have only you if you got an issue or Do you plan on releasing started. I’ll be 50 and still making shit. I feel there is a lifetime of wanna disrespect. It’s not another solo or group album in the near future and how far beats and productions to make. do you think you can take this Whose music do you listen a game to me; it’s my life Death Rap? Do you think you’ll If it wasn’t for some fans telling cops to when you’re not working on or eventually mellow out and branch we didn’t do anything it would have listening to your own? Not many off into another direction or genre? been issues. One kid had his whole other people, maybe some Metallica, I already do other genres, like sex rap face smashed-in from getting hit with but lately all I have listened to is PLR with my Sexorcist alias. The Sexorcist a bottle. He was a fan, he got caught shit. When I’m dropping new records special edition cd/dvd has been in the middle. This is one fight out of and releasing new shit, I will be rocking available since August 5th, and that’s many, but just to give you an idea, my own shit more than anything else, all sex shit. F-cking groupies, spitting when someone disrespects- we set it just because it’s that new shit, and it’s on bitches, smacking them, pissing on on them, no compromise. my shit, so I feel good hearing hot shit I them, whatever we wanna do to amuse created or one of my artists created. ourselves. I can rap thug shit all day Where’s your favorite place to cuz I live thug life and follow the code perform? I like Canada a lot, Australia What should people expect at a of the streets. I think I follow it even was fun, NYC and LA are cool. Honestly Necro Show? How often do you more than ya average so called street anywhere my fans are, is cool to me bring guest performers out? I don’t cat, cuz I really care about loyalty, because they are showing me love. need to bring guest performers out, never snitching, fighting if you gotta, NYC for life homie, Brooklyn for life, when I do a Necro headline show never backing down, ect.

I might get a crib somewhere else for they are there to see me and hear my Thanks for taking the time to vacations and getaways, but unless bangers. My live show is amazing, the communicate with Producer’s I catch a body out here and need to fans are great. They are rugged and Edge Magazine! Much success. disappear -I ain’t going nowhere. they mosh pit hard for me, not many Follow the Death Rap by checking out rappers can get a reaction from a these websites for more on Necro.

What does Necro recommend as crowd that loves me like I do. Kids get WWW.MYSPACE.COM/NECRO the sickest film or documentary bloody pitting to my music and girls get WWW.MYSPACE.COM/PLR that I need to see? Blood Sucking naked on stage, showing t-ts, showing 122 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

123 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

124 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter

125 Producer’s Edge Magazine Fall Winter