Wsm - August 2006 - Issue 004 by Wusik Dot Com

Sound Magazine August 2006 #004

www.Wusik.com

Acoustic Collection Artvera NewAge Babel Sounds

Creating Sounds Getting Started Mastering Tips Secret Tricks

And much more...

Letter from the Editor

Sound Magazine

Thanks to user contributions, Issue #004 is once again full of HQ Sounds and very useful Articles.

Editorial:

ArtVera has produced the Second Volume of her NewAge Collection. And I should say, this set has the best NewAge sounds I ever heard on the WusikEngine. Some of the Sequenced material has its own Harmonic content, but you can easily change that by editing the Wseqs Tune information. We also present the first Volume of our new

Artvera SoundSet: ArtVera NewAge Collection Two Vera Kinter aka Artvera is a graphic artist, sound designer and musician from the Czech Republic. She has worked with various developers and now brings her talents to Wusikstation. http://www.artvera-music.com

Acoustic Collection. There's even a Didgeridoo sound: maybe for now not that usable, but I promise that the next issue will have more Didgeridoo sounds, and more usable this time. The SFX sounds are very clean and can be used on several situations, even on combined sounds, check the "Combi" presets to see what we have in mind.

Paul Walsh SoundSet: Babel Sounds Collection Two A musician, writer and cultural anthropologist with eclectic musical tastes ranging from experimental electronic works and ambient drones through to post rock, alt. folk, Indian classical music, and Bollywood hits. paulywalsh@yahoo.com

BabelSounds also introduces his Second Volume, with very interesting textures. Learn more about it on the final pages. Zvon presents Machines, a set of looped waves that make machine-like sounds, very useful for SFX and anything related. We also introduce some work by new users this month. LiquidBrad presents his own handmade presets and sounds. They are short, but still very useful. BeardedLazies also presents a short set of Drum-Loops. If you have WS V3, you can take advantage of the new TimeS Wseq options. Otherwise, the sounds will just play unlooped. Plus, there's an extra set by NucleusSoundlab, the NSL Outtakes. Some of the sounds were still on the production-floor, waiting to be converted. On the magazine side, you will see that we have some new sections. William's Uncle, DamBros, even took the time to write a smart column, that we hope to keep every month. We couldn't run the "Ask William" column this month, due to the lack of questions sent. So please, send your questions to us so we can include those for the next issue.

We would like to thank everybody involved with the magazine, and helping us every day. Wusik is all about the user community. Without you, we wouldn't exist. Thank you again.

Magazine Layout: MoniKe Editors: WilliamK and MoniKe

Rick Christy (aka grymmjack) Tips and Tricks & GJ Skin Source Does freelance design via his project DesignerMonkey (www.designermonkey.us), which caters to VST/VSTi plug-in developers. He works for free if the project is free, for trade if it is a small commercial project (to help the small developers), and by professional contract. Funky Chicken Dance Proof-Reading, Interview and Articles Funkychickendance is British, but lives in Southern Maine. A guitarist of sorts, a sixties type and a writer, he's been trying to make sense of electronic composition and recording over the past year or so. Doug Byfield Proof-Reading & other things All styles of music, not enough hours in the day to listen and play. I'm a guitar player for 20 years who got into computer based sequencing and vsti's three years ago. If the music's weird, wonderful and original, hey-I'm there! Currently taking a Computer Science degree specializing in programming. Autodafe Interview Sample / preset maker. Currently works as a freelance Technical Trainer for IT Companies. DamBros Hear Me Out Column William's Uncle, Reporter and Music Editor. Mike Felker (aka. Karmacomposer) DVD Distribution Professional Composer / Production / Printing - http://www.mfelkerco.com

WilliamK and MoniKe 2

Wusik Sound Magazine

Proof-Reading: Funky Chicken Dance and other users.

In This Issue:

04 Getting Started Cheap Portable Audio Recorders

#004 - August 2006

NSL’s Viral Outbreak is a Monster

If you need something cheaper? For occasional recordings?

The Voices

I am a Visionary guy.

Secret Tricks for

Wusikstation Three simple techniques to make great-sounding patches...

Big Guns:

Creating

Sounds Wave Sequencer Editing

Hear Me Out

I would call it "The Anthill Concert."

- Advanced Level -

The Synth Romance

I was happy, very happy with my current selection...

What's New!

A Chat With Autodafe

I love the MOD matrix, it’s very powerful and flexible...

Mastering Tips

Removing Gear Noise with a Low Budget

Wsm #004 Sounds

Acoustic Collection Artvera NewAge Collection NSL Outtakes by Nucleus-Soundlab Babel Sounds and others. Wusik Sound Magazine

Getting Started Cheap Portable Audio Recorders by WilliamK

There's a lot of portable solutions out there, but most of them are very expensive. Take the new Sony PCM-D1 recorder, over $2,000 USD. But what if you need something cheaper? For occasional recordings?

M-Audio "MicroTrack" 16 / 24 bits 44.1 / 48 / 88.2 / 96 khz $500 USD ($400 street)

The first option, and our pick, would be the new M-Audio MicroTrack, not exactly Cheap, but that depends on your budget. It comes with everything you need, stereo mics, inputs, outputs, volume indicators and a 64 Meg CompactFlash card. All that for only $500 / 400 USD. Which is not that bad, considering what you get in return. One thing to note is that the included Mics are not built-in, you have to attach themto the device. But, the unit includes professional external connections, as opposed too similar products.

Wusik Sound Magazine

Edirol (by Roland) "R-9" 24 bits 44.1 / 48 khz $450 USD ($400 street)

Competing with M-Audio comes the Edirol R-9, for the same price. (you can find it for around $400 USD on some eStores) Browsing the internet I can see that the R-9 is actually a bit smaller than the Microtrack. Some claim that it looks better, but I don't think so. Still, the MicroTrack don't have internal Mics like the R-9 has, you have to plug the Mics, while the R-9 has those on its body. Also, the R-9 display seems very small and hard to read. Not to mention the lower resolution recording.

Getting Started Edirol (by Roland) "R-1" 24 bits 44.1khz Around $300 / 250 USD at eBay

Not exactly brand-new, but still a good solution. The sound-quality is just as good as the R-9, the only drawback is the lower resolution. But still, you can find some good deals at eBay.

Or keep your current setup and get a Truck.

iRiver "iFP-799T" 16 bits MP3 Recorder Around $100 / 200 USD. This is not a High-Quality device, but it's very cheap, has a Mono-Mic built-in, and a stereo line input that you can connect anything. It can even take some types of Mics directly. It doesn't have WAV recording, only MP3 recording, so the quality is not Top-Notch, but still very useful for some situations. The 1 Gig version can be found for $200 at eBay, which can get you a lot of recording-time.

www.prodyon.de Wusik Sound Magazine

Secret Tricks for Wusikstation

by Jeremy Janzen

Alright, so maybe what I’m about to share with you all isn’t a ‘secret’, per se.

But over the past two years I’ve had a lot of time to create Wusikstation patches and learn the architecture – in fact I did the first 32 factory patches for Wusikstation v1!

In fact, I think those were the first patches ever to use the Wavesequencer oscillators.

Right now I’d like to share a bit of that wisdom with you, in the form of three simple techniques to make great-sounding patches without a huge amount of fuss: Modulate Sample-Start with a random parameter:

This is an easy way to add tonal variation to all types of sounds. Depending on how this is done, you can achieve more analog-esque sounds, wavetable-like effects, or just a subtle humanization effect. To try this technique, follow these steps: 1. Load the same soundset into O1 and O2.

Ok, so a trance-gate is pretty much passe at this point. But you can follow the same type of programming logic to modulate other sound aspects in a rhythmical way. By connecting a wavesequence with an Envelope Gate, you can restart the Gate every time you draw in a step in the wavesequencer. Follow these steps to get all rhythmic and stuff: 1. Load a sustained-type sound into W1 2. Create these modmatrix settings: 3. Source: W1 Mod 1 Destination : Mod Env1 Gate Amt: 127 4. Source: Mod Env 1 Destination : W1 Filter Freq Gate Amt: Experiment 5. Enable Filter 1 on Osc W1. Set it to LP with the settings Freq: 61 Res: 29

2. Pan both sets to opposite sides

6. Now open up the W1 wavesequencer window and set a row to ‘Mod1’.

3. Slightly detune both sets 5-10 cents using the finetune knobs.

7. Set the wavesequencer to a 1/16 rate, set the loop bar to 16 steps

4. Go to the modmatrix and add a new Source. Midi in/Key RND Poly. Make the destination Layers "O"/O1 Sample Start. Set the AMT to 127

8. Now draw a rhythm into the wavesequencer. Remember, for any step the wavesequence row ‘Mod 1’ contains a value greater than one, the Mod Envelope Gate retriggers.

5. Create an identical modmatrix row below this, except use O2 Sample Start as its destination. 6. Now lower the ‘MAX’ parameter of both rows to around 20.

What we now have is a stereo synth patch that sounds slightly different on each attack, depending on where the random modulation sets the sample start. To tweak this more, experiment with the MIN and MAX parameters on both modulation rows, load different wavs into the soundset slots (try an evolving soundset for wavetable-esque effects!), and tweak the Amp ADSR. You can see what I came up with by following these steps by loading the Lesson 1 patch included in this issue of WSM. 6

Create Rhythmic Patterns using Envelope Gate Modulation:

Wusik Sound Magazine

9. Finally, edit the Mod Env 1 ADSR so there is no attack time, a short decay, and no sustain.

You

should be able to hear your cool sequence playing along right now.

Hmm, what else could we do with this? How about modulate pitch by Envelope 1 for a electro pitchbending sequence? Or filter resonance? Or load a drumkit into the oscillator and program a drumbeat to match the Gate modulations?

You can have a look at what I came up with by loading the Lesson 2 patch included in this issue of WSM.

Secret Tricks for Wusikstation

Quick and Dirty Granular Oscillators:

Wouldn’t you love to have access to those amazing granular effects from modular synths like Reaktor – in Wusikstation? Me too. But until then, we’ll have to make do with some wavesequencer trickery to create granular-like effects in Wusikstation. I’d like to mention that I first came upon this technique in a patch created by Stephan Muesch aka rsmus7 – so all credit for this cool trick to Stephan! Granular synthesis works by breaking down audiostreams into ‘grains’ of various sizes. The playback rate, and the space between these grains is then modulated. This enables granular to create amazing effects, from timestretching to horror sound fx. Follow these steps to get a type of Granular action goin’ on in Wusik: 1. Load a soundset into W1. Preferably something with a bright tone. 2. Enable the LP Filter on W1, set it so around 64 with a small amount of resonance.

Now comes the tough part. Load a raw osc like sine or saw in O1. Now ‘tune’ the W1 osc to the same pitch as O1, just by adjusting the Wavesequencer speed. You’ll notice as the wavesequencer speed gets very high, it becomes ‘pitched’ because it is retriggering at such a high speed. In essence, each retriggering represents a small ‘grain’.

you are having trouble tuning perfectly, try the W1 finetune knob.

Be aware that due to the fact that Wusik wasn’t really meant to be used this way, often this type of granular sounds only sound alright on a small portion of the keyboard.

There you have it! Now try a whole bunch of different soundsets and get a whole bunch of different tones! Adjust your filter settings for even more options. To see what I came up with, load the Lesson 3 patch included in this issue of WSM.

That’s all for now! If you enjoyed this article, please let me know by emailing me at jeremy@nucleus-soundlab.com. If I get a good response, there is always a chance of more secrets in future issues! Also I’d love it if you came by my website and browsed through my high-quality Wusikstation soundsets – at www.nucleussoundlab.com. Each and every one of you should consider my recently released Viral Outbreak Volume One (www.viraloutbreak.net) Thanks for reading! Cheers.

Hear Me Out

by DamBros

he other day, I had an idea T about a musical work whose subject would be the life of ants in their own environment. I would call it "The Anthill Concert."

he first movement could be called "The Wedding Flight" T [ allegro assai ] Imagine the party as the queen is fertilized by males during the flight, followed by an orgy with a swarm of females. he next movement might be "Tunnels And Chambers" T [ andante ] The inspiration would be the heavy rhythm of ants marching through tunnels and passages, or laden ones entering the chambers where ant gardeners mix fungus with freshly-picked leaves brought from the outside world. he final movement would T be called "At War" [ presto agitato ]. It will portray the drama of the ants being attacked by predators, and the fierce battle that follows.

Wusik Sound Magazine

on s ' t Wha p

m A r u o y

Vangelis "Heaven and Hell" This is a very strange album, from 1975. I used to have the original Vinyl Album, but saved to my computer some years ago. A friend once said: "Vangelis was on its most crazy period ever on this Album." And I must agree, its crazy, deep,but I just love to listen to it. The last song: "So Long Ago, So Clear" is just beautiful and also very known by some people. Jon Anderson was the lead vocal. You can find it over iTunes, and get the CD version on several Internet Stores. Just Google for it.

What's What's New New by WilliamK

"Special Summer/Winter Offers"

All Upgrades Prices with 50% Discounts. Visit our site for more information. "Wusik Membership Announced" All Magazine Subscriptions were converted to a Wusik Membership, with extra additions. "Wusikstation V3.0.2 Released"

New PitchBend Smooth Code, avoids ZipperingNoises when bending the pitch. Fixed problem when loading multiple WAV files. EG: ElektroWusik III Drum Presets. New File-Browser option: Discard Unused Sounds. Check our forum for more information.

"Wusikstation V2.2.8 Released" New PitchBend Smooth Code, avoids ZipperingNoises when bending the pitch. Fixed problem when loading multiple WAV files. EG: ElektroWusik III Drum Presets.

Check our forum for more information.

"2nd Week of August"

Tangerine Dream "Cyclone" Another "oldie", but also very good, back from 1978. This is one you have to listen carefully. Its almost like an Epic, non-stop music. There's a part that starts with one single sound, that evolves into another one and a new track is born. For that time, it was something very new and odd to do. So keep in mind that it was the 70's.

Various Artists "Celtic Tradition" This is a 3 CD BOX, very cheap. Got on a local store on sale. But it still have a very good mood to it, deep relaxation music. The CDs are titled: Celtic Dreams, Celtic Myst and Celtic Visions. If you Google for "Celtic Tradition The Maiden of Treviri" you should find some related sites.

Wusikstation V3.0.4 Update Several new additions and fixes. Check our Forum for more information.

Considering each issue is packed with gigs of content, now you can get the Wusik Sound Magazine DVD delivered right to your mailbox every single month so you can spend more time playing and less time downloading!

$15

www.mfelkerco.com Wusik Sound Magazine

by WilliamK

Mastering Tips For those who record acoustic instruments, vocals or just external sounds. You know how painful can be the hissing noise introduced by some Mic Preamps, Mixers, Audio-Cards and what nots. There are several high-end solution for those problems, but they are all expensive or way too complicated.

Some

time ago, I was facing the same problem, and decided to look for some noise-removal programs. I found one that could fit on my budget and would also deliver. I visited the Magix.com site and found that there is a downloadable version of the famous Audio Cleaning Lab program. Its an older version, V10, but still good for

Wusik Sound Magazine

"Removing Gear Noise with a Low Budget"

what I needed. The price was also very good, only $ 29.95 USD, the new V11 that is only delivered by mail also has a low price, only $ 39.95 USD. Since I couldn't wait days for the CD to arrive, I took the eVersion instead.

The

program has everything you need to record stuff from Vinyl's, Tapes and Voices. But can be used for anything you want, as long as you program it to. There are some limitations, although it opens 96Khz files, it will save back to 48Khz. Also, if you process a Mono file, you need to export as a Stereo file, otherwise it will introduce clicks on the sound, not sure why. It did handle 24 bits files on both ends, so that's a plus.

Mastering Tips

Open the program and click on Load, to import the recorded files.

Turn its Power ON. Set AudioType to SoloInstrument and Quality to High. Click on the "Pick" button, the Red one.

Be sure that when you record, you leave a "blank" part where the only thing you hear is the actual gear noise. You need this in order to "scan" this noise so the program can further remove it with better quality. It has some generic-noise options, but I would avoid those. There's a Play-Looped option, click that and try to find the best area where you can only hear noise.

Now

Open

the Cleaning section. Be sure that everything is turned Off, as you will use only one component on this Tutorial.

you have the Noise sound recorded into the Denoiser. Stop the Playback and start it again without the Loop. Set the Reduction Level to whatever suits you best. But keep in mind, the more you reduce (higher db value) the more you will get artifacts.

So you have to find a balance, for that, only your ears can help. Its also best to use the Adaptive option.

Click on Edit next to Denoiser

Now you are ready to Export the audio. Just browse to the Export Tab and click Export Audio. Remember to always output as Stereo, as in Mono the program will mess with the file adding clicks and pops. (at least every time I try to save in Mono, even if the source file was Mono).

Wusik Sound Magazine

Visit www.viraloutbreak.net For tons of demo mp3s and to Purchase!

Viral Outbreak Volume One Is finally here for Wusikstation. * Over 2gb (Wusik Format) Viral Outbreak Volume Sick of searching for of multisamples comprised of One is the first in a series of sounds and plugins that 130+ soundsets. sample libraries based on the are supposed to sound * virtually all soundsets stereosounds of the Virus TI like a Virus, but don't? sampled for the greatest depth. hardware synthesizer. Using Get the real thing - and * Sampled at 32-bit 96khz the power of extensive 96khz harnass its power in quality! For resource efficiency, then multisampling, manual looping Wusikstation! carefully downsampled to 24-bit and professional preset design 48khz. Nucleus SoundLab brings the TI sound to your * Nearly 750 Wusikstation v3 presets, sampler! many taking advantage of all the new v3 Viral Outbreak Volume One is available now features! (450 presets for Wusik v1) for Wusikstation v1/v2/v3, SFZ, and Kontakt 1/2. * The best preset designers out there: Viral Outbreak Volume One contains all ToTc, Teksonik, Tim Conrardy, Jeremy Janzen, manner of TI-based sounds. Classic wavetables, rsmus7 and more! raw saw and pulse waveforms (sampled at multiple * An amazing, TI-inspired, Wusikstation v1pulsewidths), unison dance leads, breathtaking v3 skin by Vera Kinter. pads and even punchy synth drumkits. Details: 12

Wusik Sound Magazine

Big Guns: NSL’s Viral Outbreak is a Monster O

ne of the pleasant surprises about becoming a Wusikstation user is that there’s always more going on than you bargain for…and often more than you can afford! I found that when I first popped into the atmosphere of Planet Wu last fall…yes, I wanted all of the presets and sounds, but who were these BITR people with The Second Wave and VOX’d? A pair of huge soundsets/presets with their own GUIs, but a Wusikstation core: I was tempted and bought them. Later, I found myself fascinated by Dangerous Bear’s Fuel, then Ignition. Clearly, with outside collaborators adopting the format, Wusikstation was a way for me to get a huge collection of sounds together at modest prices. Through this period, Jeremy Jantzen was building up his own line of WS-compatible sets, in the form of the Soundcell trio. Now in business as Nuclear Sound Lab, he’s had a busy first half, debuting the very neat Oberheim Resurrection this spring, then following up with what may turn out to be a modern classic, in the form of Viral Outbreak Vol.1.

Don’t

be fooled by ‘Volume 1’: this beast runs to over 2GB of samples, in 130 soundsets. There are 750 presets by a ‘who’s who’ of VSTi sound artists, including the ‘old Wusik hands’ of T3. And yes, there will be a Volume 2, we’re told. Around $85, it’s NSL’s biggest and most expensive offering yet, but worth every penny.

or Wu people, there are both v2 and v3 presets mixed into the product: use that which you can. And there are even 450 v1 presets in .bnk format. There are also v2 and v3 GUIs.

by Funky Chicken Dance

’d always thought of Virus as a kind of ‘tarnce & dahnce’ synth, with a distinctive fat unison voice and whizzing foodblender overtones. (Some beautiful and usable examples appear in the Elektro Wusik collection). But like so many synths, there are more voices available, and it is capable of quite pleasant results across a spectrum of sounds, when tickled with the hands of experts. As you’ll find when you listen to the absolutely extraordinary things that Artvera and Rsmus7 contribute in this collection. Who’d think that a synth with such origins could produce stately movie themes, gothic gloom, ambient sounds, clever arpeggiated sequences, etc?

For

almost the first time, I noticed, there are many presets that take more advantage of the wavesequencer and the advanced mod matrix features. It’s a good sign!

Seeing

that navigating through 750+ presets might drive you cuckoo, NSL has produced two indexes, one by type of sound, another by author. Wusikstation v3 has better search functionality, but it’s good to see users of earlier versions helped out in this way.

lot of fun will start, I think, as hybrid presets begin to circulate. Last month we saw how dnekm had made some exceptional presets by drawing on various Wusikstation-friendly soundset families. We’ve also had Mallory’s Enigma Engine at our fingertips for some time, and it’s sure to be upgraded to be able to mix Virus samples into its combinatorial routines. Wusik Sound Magazine

by Williamk

Some of my friends know me as a Visionary guy, someone ahead of his time. This is due to the fact I have plenty of ideas every month, and some even show up on the market after some time. Some may say those are crazy ideas while others will actually urge for those to be developed. Since I can't do it all, I decided to start my own column all about those things. I call it "The Voice", as most of those ideas come in a very odd form for me. Like voices on my head, dreams and visions. I remember that some months ago I was trying to make a Wusikstation Midi Box, where you could control each parameter and wouldn't have to rely on the computer screen anymore. I see that now there is such product on the market, so you can see that I was already ahead of things that time. This is not the first time something like that happens. I always tell my wife about the things I "hear", just to avoid seeing something new and creating a false-memory about having the idea previously. She used to be my witness on all this, and now so will you. A while ago, another big idea popped into my mind, was 2 ultimate Midi-Controllers.

I will try to explain what each one would be like: "The Needle Table" This controller would replace everything you would ever need in terms of Faders and Knobs. Imagine a Table, where with the touch of your fingers, it will react displaying not only a 2D image, but also pushing special needles up to create a rudimentary 3D touch-feel of what's been displayed.

For example, you select a simple 2 Knob and 6 Faders page. It will draw the 2 Knobs and 6 Faders by using Needles that are pushed up. When you touch a Fader and try to "move" it upwards, the device will sense that and move the Needles according to your move. Giving the impression that its actually moving. Of course, this would require a very high detailed device, so you don't actually feel each needle going up and down your finger. Some may remember one of the X-Men movies, where they had this table that would draw a map by using something similar to this. So this is not exactly a new idea, but still, I don't see anything close to this on the market today. The idea could lead to several other products, and even help those who can't see or have problems with regular monitors. Maybe a new LCD monitor that has very small needles that can be used to give a slight touch-feel of the objects. 14

Wusik Sound Magazine

You may wonder, won't I get hurt by those small needles? Depends, the software would have to be careful not to let you impose only one small needle out, as it would hurt you. If you get 10 needles and put those very close to each other, they will form one larger needle that won't hurt you. That's the whole Fakir concept. Just google a bit about it and you will see what I'm talking about. Is like walking on eggs, but I leave to you to research.

The Voices "The Lego Set" Now this is something

a bit strange, but I truly think it could work very well. Today most Midi-Controller boxes are set to something like 6 faders or several knobs. There are some special controllers designed specially for some VSTs. But we don't have a Modular Controller. Something like a Lego Set, where each block is one component that can be clipped to another one and so on.

Imagine

this, you purchase a box with 4 faders, another with 4 knobs, and another with some leds/LCD. Now you put all this together on the way you want, and a software will let you assign each controller to whatever you want. Each component design could be simple, with 4 ways to be connected to the next component.

In a practical sense, this can be done, just need someone to be brave enough to actually do it. If a big company does it, each component would be cheap enough for users to purchase whole sets of components and build several devices. Making things much easier to control.

Compared to the Needle Table, this is much easier to make and could really change the whole Midi-Box market. A

final note: if you actually use any of those ideas, and later find it to be very profitable, please, don't forget who gave you the idea on the first time. If you already developed something like this, but don't hold a patent, you own me copyrights now.

Wusik Sound Magazine

Creating Sounds I really enjoyed the excellent articles in WSM #1 about creating gates and arps but I found entering the values into the Wave Sequencer using the mouse was a bit fiddly. I was thinking of emailing William to suggest that he added a feature to edit the values from the keyboard but Summary of the main editing features

Click

on one of the sequence steps in the Wave Sequencer with the mouse to select it. Now, you can use the up and down arrows to increase and decrease the value of that step. When you're done, you can use the left and right arrow to move to earlier or later steps. Simple and quick.

The up/down arrows actually change the value by +/-10. If you want a smaller change hold down the shift key at the same time and you'll be able to fine-tine the value by +/-1. One

subtlety is that the WS shows the numeric value for the bar underneath your mouse pointer. So, if you want to see the value that you're editing with the keyboard, make sure you move your pointer away from the Wave Sequencer's bars. Also, as you move left and right, it shows the step number that you're on, so you actually have to make a change to the value (with up/down arrow) to see the numeric value.

There's some other really cool things too. Pressing the C key copies the sequence, and pressing the V key pastes it (you might need to press Ctrl at the same time - depending on your host). Also, if you right-click on the sequence there's a menu with a bunch of options, including inverting the sequence, randomising it, and even loading and saving it to disk for use in other presets.

Wusik Sound Magazine

by Paul Field

Wave Sequencer Editing - Advanced Level -

then, while randomly playing about with WS, I discovered you can do that already! Then I started playing some more and discovered some very powerful editing features lurking there. I thought it would be nice to share what I found. An example

So,

here's a quick step-by-step demonstration of some of these features. We'll build up a panning, gated preset using two Wave Sequencers. It's not going to be the greatest preset in the world - I'm just showing you how the editing works :-) I'm also assuming you know the basics of navigating between layers and creating sequences: these were described really well in the articles in WSM#1. 01 Start with an INIT patch and turn off all the layers 02 Turn on W1 and load in the "Analog04" soundset from Famous Keys vol 2 03 Open up the Wave Sequencer for W1 and set the speed to 1/16 and the loop start/end to be 1-16 04 Turn on W2 and load in the "Analog14" soundset from Famous Keys vol 2 05 Open up the Wave Sequencer for W2 and set the speed to 1/16 and the loop start/end to be 1-16

So this is really our starting point for seeing the features. Try playing some notes and see how boring it sounds. To save you the bother of these steps, I've provided this as a preset called "Starting Point" Let's spice it up by adding a pan sequence to W1 - but we'll use the keyboard to enter it. While we're doing this, you might notice a strange thing

Creating Sounds about the numeric indicator. When you edit a pan sequence with the mouse you get a numeric range of -100 to +100. When you edit with the keyboard you get a range from 0 to +127. So be careful:the numbers I'm giving you are for editing with the keyboard. 01 Set the first sequence to be a "Pan" sequence 02 Click on the left-most step with the mouse 03 Move the mouse pointer away from the sequence (e.g. onto the word "Pan") so the numeric indicator works

If you play some notes you'll hear the pan effect on one of the sounds. Wouldn't it be cool if the other sound panned in the opposite way? But that's a lot of editing... No it's not! Just follow these steps: 01 Click on the sequence 02 Press the 'C' key (or Ctrl-C, for some hosts) - this copies the sequence 03 Open up the Wave Sequencer for W2 04 Set the first sequence to be a "Pan" sequence

04 Press the down arrow 5 times to set a value of +13

05 Press the 'V' key (or Ctrl-V, for some hosts) - this pastes in the sequence you copied earlier

05 Press the right arrow to move to the next step

That's pretty easy but the pan effect is going the same way for both sounds. So, right-click over the sequence and a menu will appear. Choose "Seq Functions->Inverse" and the sequence will flip so it pans the other way.

06 Press the down arrow repeatedly to set a value of +33 07 Press the right arrow to move to the next step and carry on setting these additional values: 3,83, 103,73,53,83, 113,123,113,83, 53,43,33,13

Hopefully, your Wave Sequencer looks like this:

Now

we can do a similar thing with a volume sequence to create a gate effect in each Wave Sequencer: 01 Open up the Wave Sequencer for W1 02 Create a Volume sequence 03 Use the keys to enter the sequence: 30,60,0,30 0,80,40,0, 10,0,50,70, 0,0,0,40

Your Wave Sequencer should looks like this:

Next page Wusik Sound Magazine

Creating Sounds Play some notes and you can hear the gate effect on the first sound. Now let's get an inverted gate effect on the other sequence: in other words, when W1 is playing (or loud), W2 is not playing (or soft): 01 Click in the volume sequence 02 Press C (or Ctrl-C) to copy the sequence 03 Open up the Wave Sequencer for W2 04 Set the second sequence to be a "Volume" sequence

Broaden your sonic palette. Try our soundsets for the Wusikstation.

05 Press the 'V' key (or Ctrl-V, for some hosts) to paste in the volume sequence you copied earlier 06 Right-click over the sequence, and choose "Seq Functions->Inverse" to invert the sequence

The only thing now is that the entire sequence is too loud (i.e. there's no silence - it just gets softer/louder). So here's how to adjust the entire sequence: 01 Double-click on the sequence (the entire sequence should become a slightly lighter colour) 02 Now if you press the down arrow it will adjust the entire sequence down.

The final version of W2 looks like this:

The Prepared Rhodes, unique electro-acoustic percussive sounds from a real Rhodes Mk 1.

The Marching Band Horn (3 volumes), add a brassy flavor to your songs. The IYTTIW modified trumpet sample set, 41 waveforms of processed staccato trumpet.

Electronic Drums/Percussions kits, 161 original percussion samples. From Jazz singer Julie Hamelin Julie Vocal FX vol.1, a collection of one-shot female vocal FX and scats. Julie Scats Collection, female jazz scat singing one-shot samples.

Visit our Products Page for details, dowloadable demo soundsets and MP3s. http://www.lesproductionszvon.com

Wusik Sound Magazine

The Synth Romance

by WilliamK

was very happy with my Reverber effects:

ArtsAcoustic and the Anwida DX Reverber. Until I saw some comments about some new stuff like the CSR reverber. I already had done several tests with PerfectSpace that came with my SONAR 5 Copy, not to mention the other Reverbers that came along.

he main problem was that I couldn't just

use whatever was best, it also had to come with low-cpu usage. Otherwise I wouldn't have much room to add as many Wusikstation instances I would need on my regular projects.

lthough, ArtsAcoustic has more options,

including the neat Modulation and Echo options. But I found out that if I add a Stereo-Delay after the Spazio, it will sound much better to my taste.

see that people complain that Anwida

stuff is only in DX format, some even say that they won't buy it for that reason. I don't get it, most Hosts do work with DX Plugins, and the ones that don't will take a DX to VST Wrapper without problems. I know that, as I was using Tracktion 1 with the DX Reverber without problems inside the DX Wrapper.

o be honest, I was happy, very happy

with my current selection. But it's funny on how you can feel bad about something once people start talking about newer stuff. So I went testing it all over again, to see what were my options. Got the Demo version of the Waves Masterverb 5, some Impulses for the PerfectSpace, listened to the CSR examples and so on.

nyway, what have I learned with all

this? There are better tools, but I'm not ready for those. It could be related to the extra costs, lack of CPU power, or just been lazy to learn something new. So I will stick with what I got for now. Maybe later, when I get my DuoCore Processor, I can run more advanced Reverbers.

hat I found? Well, to be honest, I was

still happy with the ArtsAcoustic Reverber. But I had to check something else, the new Spazio Reverber by Anwida. I was impressed, as it would use pretty much the same CPU usage as the DX Reverber, but was much easier to use, thanks to the new Interface. But I still sense that Spazio is just the DX Reverber with minor modifications, and a new interface. They even share the same preset-names. Still, I like it.

"Sometimes, the best tool is, the one you know how to use."

Wusik Sound Magazine

TT ii pp ss

&TT rr ii cc kk ss

To make future WS sessions load faster: 1. Load the INIT preset, located in the root of the preset folder. To do this open the preset browser, and click the top-most entry in the directory side of the browser.

2. Select "Init". 3. Open the Configuration window. 4. Setup your WS how you like in the config part. I usually set my volume to "high" here too. 5. When you are done, choose "Set Defaults" button. What this will do is setup the tiny INIT preset which has no sounds but loads very very fast, as the default for when WS is inserted into your host. 6. Close wusik, your host project, and then create a new one and watch how much faster WS will load.

Taking to the next level...

Wusik Sound Magazine

A Chat With Autodafe

by Funky Chicken Dance

s anyone who hangs around the online chat forums like KVR is aware, every synth ever invented has someone who loves it. But the fact that Wusikstation has a strong following encourages designers and users like autodafe. “Wusikstation is growing quite an active community around it, and this big user base is a nice thing for someone who wants to develop sounds for it, be it for free or for commercial purposes.” ecently, I caught up with someone I’d wanted to talk to for a while, autodafe. He’s been a regular partner on Wusik.com for a while, where he has a fine (and huge) Steinway piano sampleset, and his extensive basses collection has been a favorite of many folks for some time. He’s contributed quite a few samples to Elektro Wusik, too.

He’s been a regular partner on Wusik.com for a while. t turns out that he wasn’t being especially reclusive – you can’t tell with computer music people, you know? – but had recently been derailed by a car accident with his VW Beetle. “It threw everything out of my mind,” he says. Fortunately, he wasn’t hurt too much. Ironically, the collision was with another one of Dr. Porsche’s more recent creations. He also mentioned to me a while back that he was restoring a VW Camper – very cool! – so I guess we can put him down as an auto enthusiast.

o, what is it about Wusikstation? What makes it so attractive to sound designers? “It’s the ease of use and mod matrix first of all, and also it has quite a big user base/community. I bought Wusikstation 2 in September 2005 and soon learned quite a bit on it. I love the MOD matrix, it’s very powerful and flexible...”

I love the MOD matrix, it’s very powerful and flexible... ow it’s well along its development path in beta form, we can start looking forward to v3 being widely adopted, over the next few months. Autodafe comments: “Well, WS3 adds some nice new features, but to be honest I guess that many people are still on WS2, and another good number must be still on V1, since it has be released for almost free. .[with that in mind Ii think that my next creations will be in both V2 and V3 format for some time...of course William would like to see more "v3 only" soundsets to boost V3 sales and upgrades, but it won't happen really soon, I’d guess...”

He plans to be around Wusikstation for a good while. lthough he’s not a prolific producer of soundsets and presets, autodafe (he) plans to be around Wusikstation for a good while. “I didn't make many soundsets and presets, but I have many open and unfinished projects...I will mainly provide sampled materials for Willy...However I am quite proud of the overall tone of my piano set...I think I managed to get good authenticity with it...”

Wusik Sound Magazine

Total of 600 Meg Uncompressed for this Issue. Acoustic Collection - Volume 1

Babel Sounds - Volume 2 -

58+ SoundSets - 246 Meg - 46+ Presets

by Paul Walsh 8 SoundSets - 30 Meg - 18+ Presets

Location: Collection"

"Wusik

Sound

Magazine\Acoustic

Percussion: Rain Maker, Triangle SFX: Outdoors, Watter Feature Ethnic: Didgeridoo This is the Start of our own Acoustic Collection. Every issue we will add new instruments and sounds.

Artvera NewAge Collection - Volume 2 68+ SoundSets - 129 Meg - 50+ Presets Location: "Wusik Sound Magazine\Artvera NewAge Collection\Volume 02" Vera Kinter aka Artvera is a graphic artist, sound designer and musician from the Czech Republic. She has worked with various developers and now brings her talents to Wusikstation. Her sonic collection is destined mainly for New Age and Movie music styles, but her presets can be use also for Ambient, experimental music or any other kinds of music. In her collection you will find mainly atmospheric pads, strings, choirs, but also FX effects and vocoder sounds. Carefully chosen preset names let you see what the author had in mind. This collection forms part of a bigger sonic library, which will be available in future editions of WSM. http://www.artvera-music.com 22

Wusik Sound Magazine

Location: "Wusik Sounds\Volume 02"

Sound

Magazine\Babel

This is a very special set of multi-sampled unusual and eclectic samples. Percussion, Strange Leads, Drones, Sequenced Textures and Electric Pianos. Who is Paul Walsh: A musician, writer and cultural anthropologist with eclectic musical tastes ranging from experimental electronic works and ambient drones through to post rock, alt. folk, Indian classical music, and Bollywood hits. Over 2006/2007 he will be launching Tower of Babel Recordings as a channel for offering unusual and eclectic samples, as well as musical releases and field recordings. Stay tuned. Recent sound design work includes the DR-660 sampleset for Nusofting's DK+, and presets for a number of other VSTi products including Wusikstation soundsets from Dangerous Bear and Nucleus Sound Labs. Recent writing and editing work for VST and digital audio includes texts for Kjaerhus Audio, DashSignature, Pro-Sounds, otiumFX and White Noise Audio.

NSL Outtakes by Nucleus-Soundlab 5 SoundSets - 80 Meg - 10 Presets Location: "Wusik Sound Magazine\Issue 0004\NSL Outtakes" About Jeremy Janzen: Jeremy is a former blues/rock bass player who fell in love with computer music around 1998 with Cakewalk Pro Audio. Around that time he started sampling his bass guitar and other instruments into soundfonts.

Wsm #004 Sounds After many years of practice creating freely available sounds and patches, in January 2006 Jeremy founded Nucleus SoundLab, a sample development company with a focus on high-quality, low-cost libraries. Current Nucleus SoundLab concentrates on Wusikstation as its target sample format. Visit Jeremy and his company at www.nucleus-soundlab.com ZVon Machines by LesProductionsZvon.com 20 SoundSets - 20 Meg - 68 Presets Location: "Wusik 0004\ZVon Machines"

Sound

Magazine\Issue

Set of looped waves that make machine like sounds with variations. The 3 main waveforms are: 1 Machines.WusikSND - All loops, one key each 2 Machines No attack.WusikSND - All loops, no attack portion, one key each 3 Machines attack.WusikSND - All sounds, attack only or no loop, one key each

Electro DrumLoops by BeardedLazies 48 Loops - 16 Meg - 94 Presets Location: "Wusik 0004\BeardedLazies"

Sound

Magazine\Issue

There are 2 Sub-Folders, one is pure one-shot WAV loops, but non-looped. The other folder is only for the latest V3 version. It uses a sort-of TimeS function using some new Wavesequencer functions released on our latest V3.0.4. Try PitchBend and ModWheel.

LiquidBrad Extra Sounds and Presets 5 SoundSets - 12 Meg - 8 Presets Location: "Wusik 0004\LiquidBrad"

Sound

Magazine\Issue

Requires WusikEngine V3

All other waveforms are one loop only mapped across the keyboard. Root is C3 unless noted differently in the name. The waveforms that have 'bounce' in their name and the Big Hit waveforms are taken from Maxime de La Rochefoucauld CD 'Collection Somnambule' (Music for sleepwalkers). They all were made with his Mechanical musical automatons. For more information, please visit his website: http://www.cam.org/~maxime/ The other waveforms are derived Electronic Drums/percussions kits.

from

Details here: http://www.lesproductionszvon.com/zvon_bundle. htm About the presets: There are 68 presets. The ones that begin with 'dk' were created by dnekm, Sonicfire created the ones that begin with 'prodyon' and I made the others. Zvon Visit our website for more sample sets: http://www.lesproductionszvon.com

PLUS: Extra Original PhotoShop PSD (CS format) Files for the GJ Skin Location: "Wusik Sound Magazine\Issue 0004\GJ Skin Source" And 3 Extra "Combi" Presets located under "Wusik Sound Magazine\Issue 0004" All Tutorial Presets are located under "Wusik Sound Magazine\Issue 0004\Tutorials"

Mp3 Songs and Examples For everything http://wsm.wusik.com Wusik Sound Magazine