Magazine Layout: MoniKe Editors: Paul Evans and MoniKe
20 issues and we are still here, wow. Can you believe it? As the magazine’s life gets longer, we as a staff just keep getting stronger.
Articles by:
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all! In the holiday spirit, this month we have some amazing sounds for you. You’ll get a dose of Artvera's Drumatoxin, Karmacomposer whipped up a set of bone chilling voices and sounds that would make the stiffest board shake, and Warren Burt put together some amazing Toy Piano Samples! Of course there is more!
A. Arsov www.arsov.net DamBros Especial thanks to Claudia Picchi David Keenum Ginno 'g.no' Legaspi www.myspace.com/gnomusic Johan Vaxelaire Kevin Burke www.kevinburke.ca Paul Evans - aka Triple-P (PPP) www.triplep.wusik.com Sergio Bersanetti - aka Sir Joe sergio@planet-interkom.de Simon Cann www.noisesculpture.com Squibs www.musician.ie Warren Burt www.tropicapricorn.com Wouter Dullaert - aka Kyran www.kyran.wayouthere.co.uk
Proof-Reading by: Kevin Burke www.kevinburke.ca
Pictures: www.dreamstime.com
Wusikstation V4 Advertising Background: Michael Knubben
With each passing day, it is a challenge to try and stay on top of what we do here. We’re always trying to find ways to make the magazine a good read while also providing great sample content. Last month we had some complaints about the number of reviews, so this month we refocused and have created, I think, a very balanced issue. The articles and sounds may be some of the best we have put together. Thank you to all who contributed this month, and special thanks to those audio wizards who provided us with sounds. WusikVM has been completed and released out of beta. This is going to be the base code for WusikXtation. If you would, please let us know how it is working for you and report any bugs that occur. William will expediently squash any you may find. The more help you can give us the better WusikXtation can become. This is a monumental project for Williamk, and I predict greatness! Next month we are going to kick off our first themed issue with a focus on drums, drums, and more drums! If you have any ideas or requests for this upcoming issue, pop in the forum for Wusik on KVR and give us your ideas.
Cover and Back Cover: jC
Also, if anyone is interested in taking part in the creation of our magazine, just e-mail Williamk or myself with your thoughts about how you can contribute.
Wusik Magazine
#018 October 2007
CD Review Barry Schrader's Pictures by: BettyFreeman, Damian and Kalvos
As promised, IK opened their doors to us and we have reviews of their all of their latest releases. I also submitted a list of tips for SampleTank 2.5XL. Please remember, too, that Williamk is still running the "Give Wusik Feedback" contest. To enter, all you need to do is give feedback of what you like, love, dislike, and (god forbid but even) hate. Let us know what we can improve and we’ll aim to both fulfill your requests and find solutions to any problems.
Again, Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night. Enjoy the issue. ppp
MoniKe
Paul Evans akaTriple-P
The Dream of a Sabiรก by DamBros
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Creating Sounds: Toy Pianos! by Warren Burt
Interview: Guillaume Jeulin by Paul Evans
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The Frozen Autumn by Sergio Bersanetti CD Review: Barry Schrader by Warren Burt
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GH05ric by Johan Vaxelaire Introducing Automation by Simon Cann Diversions: A Human Network by Kevin Burke
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Gear Review: CSR - Classik Studio Reverb by Ginno 'g.no' Legaspi
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Sample Tank 2.5XL by Paul Evans
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Wave Arts MultiDynamic 5 by A. Arsov
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Print Review: Sample This! by Squibs
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Sonic Capsule by A. Arsov
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What's New: DMC-842
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#018 October 2007
Analyse That: Blue Cat Audio by Paul Evans
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Trance Inducer by Ginno 'g.no' Legaspi
Wusik Magazine
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Sample Moog by A. Arsov
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Sound Review: Ambiosis by Ginno 'g.no' Legaspi
Sonik Sense: Sonik Synth 2 by David Keenum
Ohm Force Ohmboyz and Quad Frohmage by A. Arsov
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How to Write a Pop Song Naked Woman by A. Arsov
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Amplitube 2: Jimi Hendrix Edition by Wouter Dullaert
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The Dream of a Sabiรก
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
by Visconde de Taunay
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Hi there! Here is a text to be published in two parts, in the same way the author wrote it. Those who like music, like to find it wherever it is. I have just found it an old book called Seleta em Prosa e Verso (Anthology in Prose and Verse) by Alfredo Clemente Pinto, published in 1884, that is a moving story that talks of music. The music is composed and performed by a very common bird in Brazil called Sabiรก. Click on the link to see and hear a sabiรก singing: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMqsDDcenBA&feature=related The author of the tale is a Brazilian named, Alfredo Taunay (Viscount of Taunay) who was born in 1843 and died in 1889 in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Best regards, DamBros.
The Dream of a Sabiรก
In the old and dirty bamboo cage, hanging on a tavern wall, there lived for long months incarcerated an ugly, unhappy, melancholy sabiรก. All that surrounded him provoked deadly boredom and deep sorrow. Instead of the celestial blue ceiling, at night embroidered with brilliant stars, that served as a majestic canopy to the virgin forest, where, until then, he had enjoyed a happy and carefree existence, all he saw, through the rough bars of his narrow jail, was the dark tile of the repugnant dwelling, to which, imprudence or disgrace had taken him one day. Instead of the gentle perfumed breezes of the serene dawn, that inspired so many songs, or the warm whiff of tropical days, that had helped the beat of the anxious hot young heart, he breathed now, the violent and impure air, a mixture of all the smells that filled the gloomy inn. Wusik Magazine #020 December 2007
Instead of the weak flexible twig on which, taken by inexplicable joy, he swung among the leafy thickets, instead of the perfumed orange branches, where, at sun dawn, hiding modesty to sing with zest, he had to be day and night, hanging on a rusty long nail that sustained the cage, whose iron roughness hurt his little claws. > >
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The Dream of a Sabiรก
Week by week they threw some slices of sour oranges or some pieces of half putrid bananas, that importune swarms of flies and mosquitoes came fast to devour, with discordant and terrifying drones. As for water, to satisfy thirst, it created in the chipped clay bowl, where they put it, a crust of greenish slime, before it was renewed. It is impossible to weigh the bitter anguish that tormented the poor little bird twenty four hours a day! Not even sleep he could, so strong was the pain that hurt his heart.
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
Soon his feathers would fall: he saw himself, thin, bare, horrible, like those birds specters, that the Italian musician, poet, landscaper, Salvatore Rosa, painted in his fantastic compositions, he saw, his departing life concentrating on two furious eyes shooting hate and indignity, Pop-eyed, fixed eyes, as if anchored over the sharp provoking beak.
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He thought seriously of suicide, but did not know how to do it. If, in a desperate impetus, he hit his head on the prison bars, it painfully scratched his skin, without making the littlest breach on his hard skull, wrappings of such dark scheming. To let himself die by decline...was sure, a way; but in these extreme cases philosophy, unfortunately, insinuates in the core of the soul its sweet balm, and slowly submits the most rebellious spirits to the tame law of resignation. > >
The Dream of a Sabiá
Therefore the sad sabiá, despite the cost, sometimes competing with the voracious flies, got a few bites from the disgusting food.. Sometimes, by mistake, he happened to swallow some of the more excited and intrusive ones. A vengeance, though, he knew how to take from the barbarian who had robbed his freedom. - I don’t sing, and won’t sing any more! He said to himself, drawing up a solemn and unbreakable protest. And that was, what really bothered him: the imbecile innkeeper. -So, he inquired, pointing his nose to the cage and staring at the prisoner, with a terrible look – When are you going to give us the air of your grace? What a good life yours is, filling your gut, and not doing anything useful! For dignity, he did not answer the reverberation of the brute, whose look he challenged with valor.
#020 December 2007
To be continued in the next issue.
Wusik Magazine
And so it went, slowly, dragging, day after day, without the sabiá dissenting, not even an instant, from his studied muteness. When he felt more disturbed by disgust, more anxious to release his feelings, full of reason against his tyrant, he threw to his face scornfully, some dissonant yells, that made the inn’s cat open, from fright, his sleepy eyes, and frown with his scarce eyebrows.
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Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
Toy Pianos! by Warren Burt
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Toy Pianos!
A toy piano, familiar to many of us from our childhoods, is actually more a set of keyboard bells than it is a piano. Round metal rods are struck by plastic or wooden hammers, activated by the simplest kind of lever-based key mechanism. Despite being mass produced, vagaries of production mean that each one is usually a unique, one-of-a-kind instrument. Typically, each toy piano has notes vastly out of tune with its intended scale, and the responsiveness of each key varies, sometimes wildly, across the instrument. In short, the toy piano is the very antithesis of digital electronics, which aims for complete reproducibility and standardization, and not just in the music field.
Wusik Magazine #020 December 2007
Toy pianos come in a variety of ranges and sizes, from ultra-cheap knock-offs with a few diatonic white keys, to well crafted fully chromatic models which have better tuning and more reliable key mechanisms. The range is usually higher, starting on middle C and going up for 2 or 2½ octaves, limited to that range because of the “metal rod struck by hammersâ€? mechanism. Because the rods are usually glued into a crossbar which is directly attached to the soundboard, toy pianos ring and resonate. In fact, in their highest register, the low resonance tones the keys excite in the soundboard are often louder than the fundamentals of the rods themselves. This can be clearly heard in the pianos included here. In fact, two presets are made with just one sample each - a high note from each of my toy pianos, so that this low resonance can be heard across the keyboard. > >
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Toy Pianos!
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
I have two toy pianos, a chromatic Schoenhut, covering about 2½ octaves, and a diatonic Bei Lei, covering 2 diatonic octaves, with painted-on black keys. Both are in unique tunings, and both are out of tune with each other by about 1/4 tone! Middle C on the Schoenhut roughly corresponds to true Middle C (261.63 Hz), but on the Bei Lei, true Middle C would be found somewhere about 30 cents north of the Middle D key.
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The Schoenhut is fairly expensive as toy pianos go (we got ours from Amazon.com). The Bei Lei was found at a seaside flea market in Coledale, New South Wales, for $10. The Schoenhut has a fairly tight, constricted tone that emphasizes the upper partials. The Bei Lei has a more lush tone, with a very prominent fundamental and a more gradual decay. Both tones are useful, with the different characters suggesting use in different contexts. And in both pianos, there is considerable variation in the ease of speaking, and the response of each and every key.
In making samples of these, I decided that I would first try to sample the pianos just as they were, and then try to make versions which adjusted their tunings to conventional tuning. Of course, the amazing resonance of the toy piano, with its interacting vibrating bodies of wood and cross vibrating metal rods is lost, but at least some semblance of “toy piano essence” remains. Recording each and every tone, and listening carefully to its resonance, tuning, and spectrum was an amazing, hour’s long exercise in ear cleaning. I recommend it! > >
Toy Pianos!
The first two presets, “Bei Lei Original Pitches” and “Schoenhut Original Pitches” are made from sampling each key on each piano twice - one soft and one loud sample - and mapping those keys to the same keys on the keyboard that they were on the original pianos. Thus, each preset has precisely the same range and tuning as the original pianos. They are still both out of tune with each other, and out of tune with normal tuning. They retain their own unique identities.
“Bei Lei Original Pitches Full Range” and “Schoenhut Original Pitches Full Range” are exactly the same as the previous two presets with one difference - the range of the lowest pitch is now extended to the very bottom of the MIDI range, and the range of the highest pitch is extended to the top. This creates a curious instrument - full range, with the upper and lower ranges in 12 tone equal temperament (but not tuned to A-440, by any means), and with the middle range still in the unique tunings of the original pianos.
Wusik Magazine #020 December 2007
“ET 4 Samples Bei Lei” and “ET 6 Samples Schoenhut” are mappings of loud and soft C samples from each piano, tuned as closely to C=261.63 Hz as I was capable of. Each sample covers about ½ an octave above and below its fundamental. These mappings have much less timbral and pitch variation than the original pianos, but they are in tune with normal tuning, and when de-tuned with .tun files, the microtonal scales will be accurately in tune with other instruments using the same tuning. Timbral variety is here traded off for tuning accuracy. > >
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Toy Pianos!
Finally, “Bei Lei Hi E Mapped to All - C261" and “Schoenhut Hi Eb Mapped to All - C261" are two presets made with just one sample each, the Hi E Loud of the Bei Lei, and the Hi Eb Loud of the Schoenhut - tuned to C=261.63 and mapped to the whole keyboard. As mentioned earlier the high tones of both pianos have prominent lower resonances, and these presets enable that resonance to be heard across the whole range of the instrument, something not possible with the physical rods of the original toy pianos.
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
Enjoy!
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Artvera presents her first commercial sound project for Wusikstation - MISTRAL. This sound library offers Wusikstation users the chance to own a collection of ethnic sounds - string instruments, drums/percussion, woodwinds, vocals and more. With more than 300 presets and 300 megabytes of sample data it's a great inspiration for musicians in any kind of music, especially composers of Film, Ethnic, NewAge or Ambient music. The presets contain not only individual instruments but also longer melodic sequences. Many presets take advantage of all the new features of Wusikstation version 3. In addition, there are very interesting pads with extra sounds which can be used in different music styles. These pads have been created by combining multiple ethnic instruments. The package also contains percussive/drum sequences and even some nature sounds, which have been used to create some special sound effects.
MISTRAL contains also a free bonus - two variants of a new skin for Wusikstation, in both normal and large sequencer formats (see the preview of main page below). The MISTRAL presets have been created by Vera Kinter (Artvera), Daniel Kemp (dnekm) and Stephan M端sch (rsmus7). The price is very friendly - only $30. Release is scheduled for March 2007. www.artvera-music.com/ Wusik Sound Magazine April 2007 #012
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Introducing Automation: Controlling Wusikstation
Introducing Automation: Controlling Wusikstation
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
by Simon Cann
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When making music, creating a sound is only the start of the challenge: the other main consideration is how you then use that sound within the context of a track. Depending on how you play, you may want the sound to be louder or quieter, brighter or duller, staccato or looser, or any other variable you can think of.
Introducing Automation: Controlling Wusikstation
Many of these variations can be brought into your sound programming: for instance, you could control the loudness or brightness of your sound by linking levels or the filter to the incoming MIDI velocity. Hopefully you already knew this!! If you didn’t, then I suggest you go to my website www.noisesculpture.com/htman and download the free version of my book How to Make a Noise. While using the modulation matrix in Wusikstation is a great way to give you control over your sound, there is nothing quite like grabbing hold of the knobs on Wusikstation and adjusting them as Wusikstation plays to get real-time handson control. Even better, you can then record the automation in your host (or program it directly, and also edit it) so that the automation can be included when your track replays. For this piece, I’m going to show you how to automate Wusikstation in Project5 from Cakewalk (www.project5.com). Why Project5, you may be wondering? Well there are several reasons:
• First, I’ve just written a book about it (Project5 Power! www.noisesculpture.com/p5p) so I’m pretty familiar with what it does. • Project5 comes at a very reasonable price and then is very powerful while retaining a straightforward workflow. • Project5 uses ACT (active controller technology). If you’re unfamiliar with this, you really should check it out. What is does is to map your hardware controller to control the currently selected device. This gives you much more control than is available with MIDI learn where you are limited to mapping each control on your hardware only once.
Wusik Magazine
While I’m using Project5 to illustrate this article, the principles I am discussing can be applied to virtually any sequencer on the market. Equally, as this piece is about Wusikstation (and is not intended to focus on Project5), I will not be showing you all of the ways you can automate Wusikstation in Project5 and I’m not going to show you how to set up Wusikstation to work with ACT in P5: for both of those you need to get hold of the book. > >
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Introducing Automation: Controlling Wusikstation
So What is Automation and What Can You Automate?
Automation the Easy Way: Recording Automation
Automation is the process by which a knob or slider on Wusikstation (or any other control which may be on a synth, FX unit, or the host for that matter) can be moved without human input. On Wusikstation you can automate every control: this is also the case for many other synthesizers although some only allow you to control a limited number of parameters.
The easiest way to set up automation in Project5 is to record the automation. To do this in Project5:
As figure 1 illustrates, perhaps one of the most common parameters that you might automate is the cut-off frequency.
1. Arm the Track you intend to automate by clicking on the Track Arm button (see Figure 2). You will see that the Arm button turns red. 2. Hit the Record button (which should be flashing red). 3. Move the parameter (or parameters) you want to automate as the song plays. You can move the parameter on Wusikstation’s interface either by clicking and dragging with a mouse or by using a hardware controller in combination with MIDI learn or ACT.
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
4. When you have recorded the automation, disarm the Track (unless you want to record further automation) by clicking on either the Track Arm button or the Global Un-Arm button. > >
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Figure 1: Automating the cut-off frequency in the filter section.
Introducing Automation: Controlling Wusikstation
Figure 2: The controls to record automation in Project5.
As you can see, this is a very fast way to automate Wusikstation.
Automation the Slightly Harder Way: Drawing Automation There are several reasons why you might want to draw in the automation by hand. The two main reasons for this approach are:
• You can edit the automation (both automation you have drawn in and automation you have recorded).
1. You assign an automation lane to control a specified function (for instance, the cut-off frequency in a synthesizer’s filter). 2. You then draw the automation. Let’s look at that in a bit more detail. If you’re using Project5, then load up an instance of Wusikstation—if you’re not, then follow the pictures. > >
Wusik Magazine
• You can get greater accuracy (drawing a straight line will get a much smoother change than twisting a knob and the timing can be precisely controlled).
The process to draw automation in Project5 is straightforward:
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Introducing Automation: Controlling Wusikstation
Assigning the Automation Lane Hidden out of sight, Wusikstation exposes its parameters to its host. It’s good that these parameters are out of sight: there are lots of them and they’re a bit confusing at first glance. Added to that, you’ve got the interface to make most of the changes you want to make. To access the automatable parameters in Project5 you need to click on the drop-down menu in the Track Pane: this will access several sub-menus that give you lots of options, see Figure 3.
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
From the drop-down menu, you should select DXi > DX Automation. This will expose Wusikstation’s automation parameters. If you look at Figure 3, you will then see that the menu gives you lots of options and it’s quite hard to understand what’s going on. Don’t freak out at this point!! You have this many options because Wusikstation is a powerful piece of kit, and once you get your head around how
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Wusikstation exposes its automation parameters to your host, everything will make much more sense. So take a deep breath and we’ll continue with the menu selection. Now choose O1F1On – O1EQ2On > O1F1Freq. You have now selected the cut-off frequency of filter one on oscillator one as your automation destination. Once you have selected the automation destination, it will show in Project5’s automation drop-down menu selector (as you will see later in Figure 4). I’m not going to explain every parameter here, but I suggest you take some time to look at these menus. You will see that all of the parameters on Wusikstation’s interface have a corresponding parameter in the menu (even the modulation matrix can be automated), so as we’ve seen, O1F1Freq = oscillator one, filter one, cut-off frequency. > >
Introducing Automation: Controlling Wusikstation
Figure 3: Assigning the automation parameters in Project5.
Wusik Magazine #020 December 2007
> >
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Introducing Automation: Controlling Wusikstation
Figure 4: Drawing the automation in Project5.
Drawing the Automation
To draw the automation in Project5:
Once you have selected the automation destination, you can draw the automation (see Figure 4).
1. Click on the Show/Hide automation button. This will expose the Automation Lane (which will lay on top of any clips that you may have in that lane.
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
2. Select the Automation Tool. Now whenever the mouse cursor is held over the Automation Lane, it will turn into a pencil tool.
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3. Draw the automation with the Pencil Tool. If you make a mistake, you can edit it. You can also use this same method to expose and edit other automation (for instance, any automation that you have recorded). > >
Introducing Automation: Controlling Wusikstation
A Few Other Things to Think About… This has been a very brief introduction to automation and there are many things I have missed out that I recommend you think about, for instance: • Automating several destinations. This example showed you how to automate the filter’s cut-off frequency. While you’re doing this, why not also tweak the resonance too?
• Deleting automation. What happens when you don’t want any automation, or don’t like the automation you have got? • Snap to grid. In certain hosts you can quantize your automation for greater accuracy (however, this may not always be desirable and may lead to unwanted “stepping” when you really want a smooth change).
• Re-assigning automation to a different destination. This example worked with filter one in oscillator one: in your host, check out how that automation could then be assigned to filter one on oscillator two.
About the Author Simon Cann is a musician and writer based in London. He is the author of: - How To Make A Noise - Cakewalk Synthesizers: From Presets to Power User - Building a Successful 21st Century Music Career
- Project5 Power! Check out www.noisesculpture.com to find out more about Simon’s books.
Wusik Magazine
- Sample This! (with Klaus P Rausch)
#020 December 2007
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BlueTubes
www.nomadfactory.com
A Human Network
A Human Network by: Kevin Burke
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
www.kevinburke.ca
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One of the benefits to growing older is the wisdom garnered through retrospection. It is only through looking back, and in my case - my experiences in government and the corporate world, that one can truly see the value of networking – specifically, human networking. In fact, a large part of the direction my life has taken can be attributed directly to people I’ve met along the way. As a twenty-something, I had sold half of my worldly possessions in what would be a futile attempt to “go West young man” to seek a new life and new opportunities in an environment with which I was not familiar. Unexpectedly unemployed, my directed fate would be steered through an unexpected corner by a friend who blind-sided me with a local job offer. “No, I don’t want it,” I cried. “Yes. You do,” he replied. “No. I really don’t.” “Yeah… you do.”
> >
A Human Network And then … the pause. The pause occurs because I knew very well, at that moment, that my life was about to change. I was losing control of my destiny and firmly placing responsibility into the hands of my friend, someone I trusted implicitly and with whom I could not continue to argue. Maybe his assessment of the position and my “fit” to it was something I couldn’t, or shouldn’t even, turn my back on. I grew weak. “OK. I’ll try it.” Almost two decades later, it isn’t hard to see the impact that this had on my life. This chance initial meeting of my friend, through a common interest in computers, innocently led to a profitable and satisfying career.
Eight years ago, my partner and I moved into a new home in a new waterfront community. As people do these days, we conversed with others online in a private community forum. Weeks later, a pot-luck dinner was arranged. Forty-eight people showed up. So far, so good. We now knew forty-six people more than we did hours earlier. Forty-six people with unique lives, abilities, and contacts.
#020 December 2007
Three of the group decided that a new organization was need in our community. It would provide support and services to a niche group of people, and lobby government for social change. I joined in; it sounded like something we needed, and I am a proponent of volunteerism. I knew the significance of asking people to work for no money, but I also knew the social value that the work would provide. > >
Wusik Magazine
My life, it was apparent, would transform as a result of networking with this “new blood”.
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A Human Network
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
Networking built organization.
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an
What I didn’t know is that I would be elected as inaugural President of this new non-profit organization, or that I would be responsible for delicately steering up to twelve other volunteers, each with their own uniquely individual personality, toward a common goal. I didn’t know I would garner significant project management experience, would have to write and deliver speeches, would be sitting across a desk from prominent Federal politicians, or dealing with Mayors, town councilors, and leaders of other similar organizations from communities of up to six million people. I was also tasked with the onerous responsibility of carefully directing people in crisis to appropriate community services. In this time, I also learned to write News
Releases and deal with media (such as radio and television), prepare incorporation papers, and most important to a struggling non-profit – attract corporate sponsorship. It was a lot of work, but I had a great team rallying alongside me – also comprised of interesting and knowledgeable people I wouldn’t otherwise have had an opportunity to meet. The organization provided new networking opportunities. In my third year I transitioned in a new management team, and the organization is now in its fifth year of providing much needed services to a grateful public. It’s hard to believe all of this came about from just moving house. Great expectations can only be realized by withdrawing from the comfort of our own cocoons. > >
A Human Network
She changed me, as surely as I have changed others.
The ones we remember have either gifted us with ball and chain, or wings. But use either as a springboard to new networking opportunities, and enhance your being with fresh experiences garnered through all that is the Human Network.
#020 December 2007
I met a lot of people, but I didn’t have to like all of them. People will enter and exit your life without leaving so much as a
shadow of an imprint upon it, but there will always be the extraordinary meeting that will ricochet throughout your life – sometimes to your last exhalation, and for all we know – perhaps even beyond. You will not be able to predict, upon first meeting, or even several meetings, that this will be “the one” who will affect your life (positively, and it has to be said, sometimes negatively). But you will recognize it only when it’s too late to reverse your investment in the relationship which arose from the meeting. With luck, you are profiting considerably from your paths crossing. If not, ask to meet their friends.
Wusik Magazine
One of the things that fascinates me about my life is that I’ve been able to evolve from an extremely quiet and introspective (read: timid) child and adolescent into a much more outgoing and engaging (read: extroverted) adult. But I didn’t do it alone. You might guess where I’m going with this, but it was a fortunate meeting with a friend-of-a-friend who, herself, extroverted, was able to bring this sheltered individual out into the real world of networking (I swear – she knew everybody), and in doing so, helped me on my path to being unafraid of any new meet-and-greet. I adopted the old “if it won’t kill me, I’ll do it” adage.
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IK Multimedia CSR Classik Studio Reverb
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
by Ginno 'g.no' Legaspi
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CSR
Convolution or Algorithm?
The Interface
#020 December 2007
When I opened up the plug-in in my host, I was instantly in love with its clean GUI. Users won't get lost navigating the GUI because it has the familiar look of the acclaimed digital reverbs which graced studios in the 80's and 90's. It has a bit of a vintage look, yet at the same time, it captures a modern reverb's vibe and functionality. The display mimics the digital LCD's most commonly found on any 70's and 80's electronic products, but utilizing LEDs. The buttons, sliders and dual meters are laid out beautifully, and are easy to use. And with everything right there in front of you, tweaking its functions is a breeze. > >
Wusik Magazine
Nowadays, many audio software developers try to create high end quality convolution reverb plug-ins for the masses who seek them. These convolution reverbs use pre-recorded samples (a.k.a. impulses) of actual acoustic spaces such as rooms, halls, auditoriums, cathedrals, etc. They are loaded directly into the plug-in and what you have is a more satisfying, realistic result. You can really get some nice lush, warm and natural reverb sounds depending on how the impulses were recorded. However, IK Multimedia didn't follow the current trend and took a different route. Instead, they went algorithm. Enter Classik Studio Reverb or CSR for short - a reverb plug-in modeled after classic outboards. Although there are no specific listings as to what high-end hardware reverb processors were actually emulated, many suspect IK Multimedia sought after the sound of popular outboard reverbs units, such as TC Electronics, Lexicon, etc. CSR gives you a complete suite of 4 different plug-ins (Plate, Hall, Room and Inverse) with different algorithms and 4 different skins.
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CSR
The Controls Modes
and
Operational
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
There are two modes in which you can operate CSR: Easy and Advanced. For quick and easy access to the reverb's functions, the Easy mode gives you all the most common controls needed to quickly make adjustments. Up to six most-used parameters, such as Diffusion, Decay Time, Decay Level, High Freq and High Damp are displayed on the front panel. Enabling the Advanced mode gives you a plethora of extra controls: I/O, Time, Reverb, Color, Reflec, Echo, Mod and Macro. Additionally, the Advanced Mode also brings up an 8x8 Modulation Matrix. It lets you route 4 modulation sources (with 2 envelopes, 2 LFO’s) to any parameters in the reverb
using 8 sources and 8 eight destinations. If you're looking for cool and crazy effects, the Modulation Matrix provides an exciting way to manipulate the sound. The Macro control lets you assign up to four sliders to control any combination of up to 8 parameters. This means that you can manipulate up to 8 destinations because of its 8x8 Matrix structure. CSR's parameters and controls can be fully automated from any sequencer. Knobs and the Macro sliders can be automated as well. Of course, with automation, the potential for creating new sounds is endless when using the Modulation Matrix. Imagine tweaking the sliders real time, or doing wild automation to morph one reverb sound to another; CSR is able to do it. > >
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Easy Mode displays the commonly used parameters to suit your sound.
CSR
In Use The first thing I notice when loading up instances of CSR is its ability to keep the CPU requirements low. Unlike other reverb plug-ins and the processor-hog convolution reverbs CSR runs efficiently. How does CSR sound? It sounds great and musical. It has a character which is undeniably 'vintage'. All four reverbs sat well in any mix I tried. I auditioned some of the included factory presets with various sources (a piano sound, drum loops, one-shot FX samples and dry guitar sounds) and was very impressed with the results. I had a drum loop running in my sequencer and loaded up the Room reverb, then
selected the preset called "Cool Sn Room" and whoa! The drums sounded huge. It reminded me of the big reverb drums as heard on a lot of 80's new wave albums. Out of the four reverbs, the Hall reverb is my favourite. It is sweet sounding and lush. I find it particularly useful when feeding piano and vocal sounds into it. Standout presets include "Small Concert" and "Large Hall" (for that touch of "widening"). The Plate reverb is good for drums and vocals. If you want to add a cool FX-type sound to your source then the Inverse reverb is the answer. There are a couple of nice presets but the "Nonlin Verb" and "Tape Reverse 1" are good starter FX presets. > >
Wusik Magazine #020 December 2007
Advanced Mode gives the extra control hardcore tweakers seek.
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CSR
Verdict
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
Overall, I was pretty impressed with CSR. IK Multimedia did a good job of creating a goodsounding, classic digital reverb plug-in. The Room and Hall are my favourite reverbs because they sound rich, thick and lush. Not only is CRS easy to use and CPUefficient, it is very attractive looking. If CSR was a hardware unit, you would admire its interface design and praise its solid build. The Modulation Matrix is a real treat for users who are into experimentation. They will be happy to know that the modulation controls offer vast sonic possibilities. If you're considering a new reverb plug-in for your arsenal then look no further than CSR. Highly recommended.
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Contact: www.ikmultimedia.com Price: Full price: $399 / €329 Crossgrade price: $249 / €199 Formats: Power PC based Macintosh® Minimal: 866 MHz G4 processor, 512 MB of RAM, Mac OS X 10.4 or later. Suggested: dual 1.25 GHz G4 or G5 processor, 1 GB of RAM, Mac OS X 10.4 or later. Supported Plug-in formats: AU, VST, RTAS. Classik Studio Reverb RTAS requires Pro Tools 7.0 or later. Intel based Macintosh® Minimal: 1.5 GHz Intel Core Solo processor, 512 MB of RAM, Mac OS X 10.4.4 or later. Suggested: 1.66 GHz Intel Core Duo processor, 1 GB of RAM, Mac OS X 10.4.4 or later. Supported Plug-in formats: AU, VST, RTAS. Windows® Minimal: Pentium 1 GHz / Athlon XP 1.33 GHz, 512 MB of RAM, Windows XP / Vista or later. Suggested: Pentium 2.4 GHz / Athlon XP 2.4 GHz, 1 GB of RAM, Windows XP / Vista or later. Supported Plug-in formats: VST, RTAS. Classik Studio Reverb RTAS requires Pro Tools 7.0 or later.
IK Multimedia
Amplitube 2:
Jimi Hendrix Edition
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
by Wouter Dullaert
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Amplitube 2: Jimi Hendrix Edition
Endorsement is commonplace nowadays. Celebrities (or what has to pass as one) endorse products ranging in scope from breakfast cereals to cars and razor blades (for those interested: yes you can shave your beard with Wilkinson). Of course, the music software industry is no exception: NI utilizes half their website for interviews with artists who use their products.
#020 December 2007
The first thing you notice about the product is the
The next stop is the installation and activation of the software. Installation went flawlessly, just like you would expect from a bigname company such as IK Multimedia. The validation works with a challenge response system, which I find a minor downside. These systems are just as easily cracked as a normal serial number system; they are just a nuisance to legitimate owners. It is, of > >
Wusik Magazine
Whether using Wilkinson will magically make you a tennis god is debatable, but if you’re after *that* sound (which your idol has a patent on), it actually makes sense to use the same tools as them. IK Multimedia realized this and decided to take the whole concept to the next level. Enter Amplitude 2: Jimi Hendrix Edition (be happy this is written text, because you’ll be out of breath before you’ve pronounced it completely).
quality of the packaging: it comes in a very sturdy box with great artwork (sporting the unavoidable “legendary” shots of the man himself of course) and a manual that can compete with your average paperback book in size. It explains all the different modules available in great detail. I really like that sort of thing. Having something you can touch, and a manual you can read whenever you feel like without risking severe eye fatigue, really adds to the overall value.
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Amplitube 2: Jimi Hendrix Edition
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
course, no showstopper (a dongle is whole lot worse), and you’re allowed to validate the software on three systems, which should be ok for most users. I did not encounter any problems.
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Now that the entire introduction is out of the way, it’s time to see how it actually performs. So I start up FLStudio, load ATJH and … it all crashes. Other hosts seemed to be unaffected, but I just couldn’t get it work with FLStudio. A mail to their support (which responded very fast and to the point) and I found out that I have to enable the option “use fixed buffer size” in FLStudio to remedy this. I was surprised that a company of this size can’t fix this problem, and that they did not put any information regarding it in their manual. FLStudio is a popular host, after all. ATJH comes as a standalone, a VST, an RTAS and an AudioUnit version: in short it supports all possible formats in Windows and OSX. The package is meant to model the entire rig of Jimi
Hendrix (guitar and talent not included). It consists of 9 stomp effects, 4 amp models, 7 cabinet models, 5 microphone models and 4 rack effects. All of these are modeled versions of real life, sometimes even hard to find, products. Most of these are also unique to ATJH and not available in other versions of Amplitube. For most other “endorsed” products, modeling the kit of the artist in question is about as far as they go, but as I mentioned in the introduction, IK Multimedia decided to add some “next levelness” to ATJH. Besides the usual batch of presets, they have included every guitar sound from the entire back catalog of Jimi Hendrix. So if you’re after that purple haze lead guitar sound, it’s just a preset away. This is accompanied by a music player in the standalone version. It allows you to load a backing track and jam away, or play your favorite Jimi Hendrix track and practice the solos, which is all the more fun because you do not have to > >
Amplitube 2: Jimi Hendrix Edition
worry about getting the settings on your rack right.
#020 December 2007
I must say that ATJH really sounds as good as it looks (and if you have seen the screenshots you’ll have to admit that it looks good). I
ATJH is, in my opinion, a very good option for beginning guitarists or guitarists that are after *the* Jimi Hendrix sound. The modeled kit that is included costs a multiple of the 200 Euro the program costs itself, sounds great, and the possibility to load a backing track is a very nice touch. Of course, you really need to realize its limits. It is meant to emulate the Jimi Hendrix sound, so don’t expect big metal distortion. This lack of flexibility is probably my greatest problem with ATJH: it is extremely focused and does what it was made to do very well, but I can’t help but feel that its bigger brother, Amplitube 2, and major competitor, NI Guitar Rig 3, offer much more value for money, despite costing 50% more.
Wusik Magazine
ATJH is very easy to use. On the top the signal flow is pictured: going from tuner, over stomp effects to amplifier, cabinet and rackeffects. Clicking on any of these will show them in the center of the screen. There, you can easily switch between the different models available. All these models strike a nice balance between tweakability and ease of use: they all contain some parameters but never so many that you are overwhelmed by them. You can configure two cabinets, stomp boxes, racks etc. per patch. There are 8 predefined ways of routing available. These cover all the common ones, such as all modules in series, two parallel chains and some mixed variants, but being able to completely customize the routing would have been nice.
really enjoyed playing along to backing tracks, IK Multimedia really nailed the Jimi Hendrix sound, but running other sound sources than a guitar through ATJH gave very satisfying results as well.
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Sample Tank 2.5XL
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
by Paul Evans
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Sample Tank 2.5XL
Tips for using Sample-Tank 2.5
notes of polyphony. This does not mean you need or will have to use this much. To save CPU cycles, do not use more than you need.
I could go on and on gushing over the new effects system, it really is quite amazing. Along with the included 1800 sounds, the effects are most impressive. AM and FM effects are also offered, in a very simplified way, for crazy sound manipulation. > >
#020 December 2007
How you ask? Well, let me break it down for you. Sample-Tank is a 16 part multi-timbral instrument. Each of the 16 parts has 5 effect inserts (the 1st insert, however, is fixed with and EQcompressor). That is nothing new though. What is new is the 5
effect sends as well as a master section with 5 inserts! The send and master slots are freely assignable to any of the 33 DSP effects included with Sample-Tank. This enables you to have 90 effects applied across Sample-Tank’s 16 parts! Yes, 90 effects. Another welcome addition to the effect section is a CSR reverb preset. The 33 effects cover all the bases, from Lo-fi to modulation to EQ's and compressors. Plus more.
Wusik Magazine
1. Sample-Tank has 256
Have you ever wanted an all in one solution in the box? With an easy to navigate interface, super powered sound engine, and a huge selection of instruments to choose from, the new SampleTankXL is just that! Before the 2.5 update, Sample-Tank was an already capable instrument. This update has brought powerful new features and a totally revamped FX section with amazing capabilities. The new effects section could be the most powerful of any virtual instrument on the market.
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Sample Tank 2.5XL
2. In the preferences menu, there is an option to "relist" the samples. This is only useful if new samples have been added to your collection. If you have not added samples, turn this off otherwise it scans all of its
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
sample folders for new
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As you have read, the effect section is deep with almost endless possibilities. SampleTank, though, has so much more to offer than some superb effects and routing possibilities. The 1800 sounds I mentioned total 6 GB. The 16 parts in ST can be loaded with different instruments on their own midi and audio channels. So, by using midi outs, you can run 16 instruments independently of one another. With the effects section, it is very easy to make tracks using nothing but the instruments and effects in SampleTank. This allows you the ability to ignore your host mixer or any other plug-ins if you so choose. Or, since there are 16 separate audio outs to route through, you can use you favourite effects to
process more.
them
even
samples. This makes load times a lot longer than they need be.
The samples are processed at 32-bit floating point for maximum quality. The instruments in ST are supremely multisampled instruments as well. They cover every area. Pianos, synths, drums, horns, orchestral, strings, ethnic, and many, many more. It is one of the most comprehensive sets I have ever used. The sounds are just amazing. With the effects and sounds, ST also offers up to 50 synth-sampler controls to shape all those sounds. What’s more is these controls are independent per part! The controls are made up of 9 sections; Macro, synth, filter, 2envelopes, 2lfo’s, velocity, and range. > >
3. Don’t load multiple instances of Sample-Tank unless you have used all 16 parts and need more. It has 16 midi and audio outs thus making it possible to play 16 different instruments independently. Multiple instances are in no way necessary if all parts are not used.
Sample Tank 2.5XL
The synth section controls let you choose from 3 different sample-engines: Resample, Pitchshift/time stretching, and the newly added Stretch engine. These give you the ability to manipulate pitch and tempo very precisely per part. It can also be very effective for experimenting.
4. In previous versions, ST only had effect inserts perpart. This meant that if you
parts then you had to load it on each individual part. This was at your CPU's expense (of course). The new send and master effect additions make things much smoother
you want the same effect on different parts, use the sends. CPU is precious for some.
> >
#020 December 2007
and certainly more efficient. If
So what does Stretch do? It is an advanced algorithm allowing control over pitch, tempo, and timbre. What it does is similar to Melodyne. It allows you to adjust pitch and tempo with a control for harmonic
Like most samplers, ST has zone editing features. This enables you to apply the synth sampler controls from zone to zone. Talk about flexibility. This means you could have totally different settings on each key of an instrument. That is live performance power. You are also able to import and convert sounds to ST format right inside of SampleTank. WAV, AIFF, SDII, AKAI S10003000, and Sample-Cell are all supported with this great feature. It is setup very
Wusik Magazine
wanted reverb on 4 different
The new Stretch engine is by far the most interesting and effective. When selected for an instrument for the first time, it performs a pre-analysis of the instrument. It analyses the note and phrase of the sound.
preservation. This allows you to manipulate how the formants of the sound will track the fundamentals’ pitch. The synth section is very powerful. It allows you to bend and twist sounds in ways that simply are not possible within another instrument.
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Sample Tank 2.5XL
5. The 33 DSP FX are top grade. They are also much lighter on CPU than typical effects you use in your host. Try to mold and mix your Sample-Tank sounds using its on-board effects. It is possible you’ll not have to touch your hosts’ mixer for ST.
conveniently as well. However, I would like to see a few more formats supported. Then again, with software such as Extreme Sample Converter, you would be able to convert more formats for SampleTank use as well, thus making the possibilities endless.
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
I hope with this review you can see just how powerful ST 2.5 is. From a glance, you might never realize it has so many amazing features - and such raw power. All of this is accessible from an intuitive interface that is a breeze to get around.
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It does, like any instrument, have some drawbacks. It does not support disk streaming. This is essential to any sample-player with 16 parts. ST is listed on IK's site for $499: this puts it in the same price range as Kontakt. I don't think it is
overpriced at all but NI's monster sampler has some key features ST does not, such as the aforementioned disk-streaming and a built in wave-editor. The wave editor could be enough of a reason for someone to buy Kontakt instead. Everything can be controlled via midi but only a handful of ST's parameters are able to be automated. That’s a real shame. There is also no way to minimize the display screen. This is not a big deal but certainly it would be welcomed. These are all pretty minor issues - ones that do not affect the quality of the sounds or the power of the engine. It is not enough to change my mind in saying ST is arguably one of the best in its field. It offers extreme control over what’s important. The 33 DSP effects are of top quality and, as stated in its manual, > >
6. Sample-Tank has the ability to save files of Presets, Combi's, and effect setups. This is a great function that can save a lot of time and make working with it a lot smoother.
Sample Tank 2.5XL
they were designed with sound shaping in mind.
7. It can import different sounds; if you have any of the supported formats, I suggest you use Sample-Tank to convert them. It offers sound manipulation and qualities
It is cross-platform so PC and Mac users alike are able to indulge in the action. A standalone version comes with it also, allowing you to use it live or to focus on designing your sounds. It ships with loads of combi patches. Even if it didn’t - building, layering, and zoning samples could not be much simpler.
The acoustic collection of samples that are included are superb. Also, IK's Sample-Tank has one of the biggest and best 3rd party sample-makers in Sonic Reality, as well as plenty of other 3rd party support. It can load any “powered by Sample-Tank� instrument sounds.
This is a truly inspiring instrument.
that other samplers simply do not.
Wusik Magazine #020 December 2007
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A Perfect Christmas Gift: WSM Imagination sound library by Artvera Christmas is one of nicest holidays in the year. In some lands, it is in this season that snow and frost come, in others heat or rain rule. But every Christian land on earth people decorate little trees which are the main visual symbol of Christmas. A lot of Christmas frills, decorative chains, candles and big stars are put on the Christmas tree. And it was this star which inspired me to create small sound library, WSM Imagination, for you, the subscribers of WS magazine. You can immerse yourself in unknown worlds, full of stars, nebulae and planets, and leave your imagination to levitate in a deluge of atmospheric sounds which this sound library offers. Also, the skin which comes with this sound library is in a lustrous blue color to even more inspire your imagination when you listen its presets. I did not have much time to create a totally new skin, so I modified the skin of Mistral, but I hope that you will like this skin. WSM Imagination Sound library includes 100 presets overall, all with an atmospheric theme; 40 basic presets include, always sound of one soundset but they are also little programmed to get a wide panorama effect; 60 presets are the total of combinations made by of all the soundsets. I wish you a very nice Christmas, many gifts and much happiness in the New year. Enjoy WSM Imagination :-) Artvera
Wave Arts MultiDynamic 5 by A. Arsov
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
If I were a sensible woman I could make one of the shortest reviews for this effect ever: “Wave Arts MultiDynamic 5 sounds so beautiful that I always cry when I listen to it.�
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But I'm not a sensible woman, so we should do this in the regular way.
Wave Arts MultiDynamic 5
Regular way Wave Arts MultiDynamic 5 is a multi band dynamics processor. It provides up to six bands for compressing or expanding the sound, plenty of knobs for controlling these bands, two large main graphical windows and a lot of presets for all those “I hate to start from scratch� people (like me).
Let's take a closer look at the controlling knobs, Lo and Hi gain, for expanding or compressing the sound. Lo gain is applied when the sound is bellow a threshold and Hi gain when the sound is above the threshold. Attack, release, ratio and threshold are standard compression controllers while the soft knee button is a controller which is not found on every compressor. > >
Wusik Magazine #020 December 2007
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Wave Arts MultiDynamic 5
Another not so common option is a switching button for choosing vintage or clean compression modes. The former simulates vintage analog compressors with all those distorted rich overtones.
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
MultiDynamic 5 comes with two main displays: the frequency response display and the dynamic response display. The first shows the whole frequency range and has shaded parts and lines for easily finding and tweaking the Lo and Hi gain. One band is always selected, so when adding a new band we just have to press the add button lying under the Frequency response window. It splits the current band in two. By dragging left or right we can change the frequency range of the selected band.
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With the dynamic response display, we can manipulate with the level of Lo and Hi gain on the selected band. It's hard to explain how it works and for what purpose it is best suited, but when you start tweaking all the controls you will easily find that it is a very handy and excellent tool for fast manipulation.
Selected bands can be deleted, muted, copied or bypassed. At this point we could go on forever with all these technical details, but let's just say that MultiDynamic 5 was built for easy handling and it comes with a clear graphical interface. It is also equipped with every controller that a multi dynamic compressor should have, and finally – it sounds excellent.
What is it good for? A multi band compressor can do things that only an equalizer or compressor can't do. Finding a small frequency range and compressing or expanding it can drastically improve some sounds. Multi band compression is always used just for specific tasks. It can add an air to the vocal, compressing it at approximately 12 KHz. It is good for taming bass or emphasizing the snare in a loop. I've tried MultiDynamic 5 with vocals, drums, basses and even with some synthesizers. Plenty of virtual effects (which simulate analog ones) sound a little bit on the harsh side when they reach the upper frequency range. They add some higher sub harmonics > >
Wave Arts MultiDynamic 5
and they also generally improve the whole sound, but it is hard to say they sound sweet. When adding MultiDynamic 5 on a vocal track, I was really surprised how sweet it sounded. I'm not sure if this sweetness was the result of this socalled analog emulation or not, but who cares? It just sounds really pleasant. It is a real pleasure to hear that messing with a higher frequency range brings also some sweetness and not just better definition. I've tried it also on a few instruments and got really satisfying results. Let's make it clear, it is not a compressor, it is a multi band compressor, so there is no need to put it on every channel. It is designed for exposing, fixing or just improving
the frequency range in a way that no equalizer or compressor can. Wave Arts MultiDynamic 5 can work as a multi band compressor, expander and even as a de-esser. Honestly, I prefer some more specialized tools for specific tasks like de-essing, but it is nice to see it packed along with all the other presets. There are many multi band compressors around and nearly every one of them has some specific character and specific sound. I prefer this one because it has a clear, pleasant and sweet sound. Visit www.wavearts.com, download MultiDynamic 5 and cry with me. It's so sweet.
Wusik Magazine #020 December 2007
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Sonik Synth 2
Sonik Sense
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
by David Keenum
50
A look at IK Multimedia's
Sonik Synth 2 and creating a song using the instrument
Sonik Synth 2
Sonik Synth 2 is advertised as a synth workstation and can be compared to hardware workstations. With its extensive list of sounds, 8 GB of samples, and over 5,000 presets, you can see where they get that description. Sonic Synth 2 (hereafter referred to as SS2) covers all of the usual instrument groups needed in a workstation, but, in addition, it also has a great collection of vintage synth sounds. The web site (www.soniksynth.com/Main. html?prod_SS) can provide detailed information.
Every song has to start with an inspiration, and, for me, many times an instrumental song's inspiration is a sound. For this song the inspiration was an ebow guitar patch in SS2. Another inspiration was the demo to Equipped Music's Slo Motion Tokyo Soundscape collection (www.equippedmusic.se). One of the demo loops was also an ebow guitar, so I played with it a little and came up with a 4 bar loop. I like ethnic sounds, and I found a Log Drum sound and created another 4 bar loop with it. Even though the track ended up with 25 tracks, the ebow guitars and the Log Drum formed the basis of the entire song. > >
Wusik Magazine
I have owned SS2 for a few months, so I felt that a normal review might not be the best. Besides that, SS2 has had a number of positive reviews. That’s why I wanted to take a different approach to the plug-in. I wondered how well SS2 actually achieves the workstation designation. Do its presets
work well? So I decided to create a song trying to use only SS2. As you’ll see I didn’t completely achieve my goal, but I found a lot to like about SS2.
#020 December 2007
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Sonik Synth 2
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
Everything else was spice and sweetening.
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For pads I started with Voochhcals as the basis of the pad/atmospheric sounds. I added a little of Hmm Ooh to give it a little more mid-range weight. I used Angeline and Mystery Pad as added textures during the song. The pads in SS2 remind me of hardware keyboard pads in that they don't evolve over a long time. Instruments like Cameleon 5000 and Wusikstation excel at pads that change over time. SS2's pads, generally speaking, are better as "padding" behind a pop song. This is not meant as a criticism. To me, it is indicative of SS2's description as a software workstation. That said, Vooochhals is one of my favorite pads. I also added a string part using the Romance Strings preset.
For drums I used SS2's Brush Kit drums. The Brush Kit high-hats had some sizzle that I intensified with some of the IK's CRS Plate reverb. For bass I have been using Manytone’s ManyBass, but I thought it best to use SS2 this time. I used the J-Frngrd preset, and it worked really well. But I broke down and processed it through IK's Ampeg SVT plug-in. The SVT gave the bass some nice low-end enhancement. Even though my goal was to only use SS2 for all of my sounds, I didn't quite achieve that. I've already mentioned the Slo Motion demo WAV files. Besides the ebow sound I also used a percussion loop. And I used a Brush Conga loop from Spectrasonic's Liquid Grooves collection as well as a shaker loop from a Sony Creative collection. I felt the > >
Sonik Synth 2
percussion needed something more, so I used a preset from Sean Beeson's Taiko library, Tsaiko, for a big boom. I wanted some kind of bell sound, but I didn’t want orchestral bells, Celesta, or Chimes. I did find a SS2 preset called Chime Vox that worked, but the other bell sounds, though good, were not what I wanted. So I decided to look somewhere else. I found a couple of Belllike presets from Sophistry that worked. The SS2 preset, Chime Vox, and the Sophistry bells complemented each other well.
And that brings up a point about SS2: the presets all have a certain uniformity and polish, much like a keyboard workstation. The sounds are all the same volume and easily blend, and I didn’t find a preset that didn’t sound good. It may > >
Wusik Magazine
I posted the song on my Wusik site (http://providence.wusik.co m/). For lack of a better title, I’ve called it ‘Sonik Sense’. If you have any comments or questions, just write me from that site.
So I guess I failed at using only SS2 for my song. But in my defense, the creative juices got the best of me. And as for SS2, it had plenty of sounds I could have used. Hey, the piano is really nice, and I could have used it for my bell sound. I was really happy, in fact, with all the SS2 sounds I did use. They needed very little editing or extra effects. I used a little CSR Plate reverb on the hi-hats, cut a little at 250 Hz on the Log Drum preset, and lowered the level of the delay on the ebow patch. All in all, very little was needed.
#020 December 2007
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Sonik Synth 2
not be the sound you want, but the presets are of high quality. If I need a piano, I tend to go to my Sampletek pianos or Art Vista’s VGP, but SS2’s pianos are completely serviceable. And, as I said before, they are nicely uniform.
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
Now before I begin to sound like a fan boy, I should point out that I’m not as big a fan of SS2’s electric pianos. But, then again, I don’t usually like workstation electric pianos either. I’m
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more a fan of Scarbee’s electric pianos. I’m sure others would disagree with me. Overall, I really like the sounds in SS2. Its synths and vocal sounds are unique and creative, and its presets cover all the areas you need to make music. The sound has a polish and sheen that reflects a lot of programming care. As far as the exercise went, I think it really helped me to at least try to restrict myself to one plug-in. > >
Sonik Synth 2
• 16 parts sample-based synth workstation. • Unprecedented workstation soundset. • Over 5,000 sounds and 8 GB of samples. • Built in 32 DSP effects - 5 per instrument. • The largest collection of vintage synths ever assembled into one product. • Many times the sonic power of the most expensive hardware workstations. • Sounds compatible with SampleTank® 2. • For Mac OS® and Windows®.
Crossgrade/Upgrade price: $249 / €199 (if you already own an IK product)
n.html?prod_SS
#020 December 2007
www.soniksynth.com/Mai
Wusik Magazine
Full price: $399 / €329
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Ohm Force Ohmboyz and
Quad Frohmage
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
by A. Arsov
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Ohm Force Ohmboyz and
Quad Frohmage
Welcome to France
Some sort of De Gaulle nation – you can't beat them, you can't join them.
Ohm Force
#020 December 2007
Yes, they are from France. They've made a lot of excellent virtual effects. Among others also the Ohmboyz filtered delay and the Quad Frohmage filter. The first one is a replicator and the second one is a destroyer; in a unique and useful way. > >
Wusik Magazine
I've read a few books written by French authors lately, saw many French films and I'm also acquainted with their music. Knowing all this, I have to say that there is something funny with all these French fellows. They are constantly trying hard to convince us how unique and different they are in an original way – without seeing clearly that they actually already are unique and completely different from all the others on our planet.
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Ohm Force Ohmboyz and
Quad Frohmage
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
Encore!
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Ohmboyz comes with everything that a delay could have: four predelays, two delay lines, LFO filter, resonant filter, high shell filter, a lot of knobs, endless controls, one crazy skin and another nearly normal skin. All these delays, predelays and filters can be controlled and manipulated in all possible ways. There are plenty of delays with some sort of filters, but it is really hard to find one which could sound so ordinary and odd at the same time. Ohmboyz sounds like it is not from this planet, but at the same time it can also serve as a normal delay with all the common delay times and signatures. It is not dead easy to manage, but after spending some time tweaking various knobs it easily becomes not only familiar but also a source
of having some great time generating all those mad scientist sounds. At the same time, there is almost no need for any tweaking because Ohmboyz comes with a galore of presets. At first I thought there were just a few of them in a main pop up preset window, but glancing over the manual I found that it was just the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Some of the presets have given the strangest results and have sent the original sound directly to hell, but thankfully in a more or less pleasant way. All in all, they are very useful and can inject new life into boring sound. I've tried a few filtered delays along with pre recorded back vocal lines and have generated some pretty impressive results. It is nice to hear those filtered > >
Ohm Force Ohmboyz and
echoes coming from a far distance. With Ohmboyz, it is easy to make a pulsating unrecognisable sound just from hitting a single percussion note. After spending a few hours with it, I can hardly imagine my mixes without these effects. It injects a st peculiar 21 century flavour.
Laissez faire
triggered ADSR for modulating all other parameters inside the module section. I presume that you are expecting a more detailed overview of all those filters, delay and distortion functions, but it is pretty much impossible to describe all those filter types and parameters and functions because Quad Frohmage is filled with so many goodies that it would take up few pages just naming them.
Nostalgie
#020 December 2007
Like all the other Ohm Force effects this one also has an enormous bank of presets. I've tried them with one drum loop and just few minutes later I fell in a deep nostalgic mood. After selling my old E-MU sampler, I’ve really missed those legendary E-MU Z-plane filters I used to use in almost every song. After all those years it finally happened that I got > >
Wusik Magazine
Quad Frohmage is a complex filter effect. It has four identical modules with delay, multi mode filter and distortion sections. Those modules can be routed in parallel, serial or in any of an additional eight combinations. Along all filter types there is also a comb filter and a ring modulator. All these goodies can be controlled and manipulated in endless ways. Quad Frohmage also contains an LFO, envelope follower and
Quad Frohmage
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Ohm Force Ohmboyz and
Quad Frohmage
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
similar results – with Quad Frohmage - with one big distinction: Quad Frohmage has many more parameters for tweaking, so you can go far beyond the sound destruction as was possible with my exsampler.
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Quad Frohmage can make your drum loops warble like little birds or make them rage as an old lion with a bad cold. It is also an excellent tool for changing an old boring guitar into a rattling synthesizer. It is an ideal tool for changing the sound character and bringing it to another level. If I needed to pick just one filter for all musical purposes then Quad Frohmage would definitely be my choice.
1,2,3, c'est la fin Ohm Force Ohmboyz and Quad Frohmage offer endless fun in usage combined with top notch quality of results. Compared with other rivals, both effects stand out of the VST crowd because Ohmboyz is not just a delay and Quad Frohmage is not just a filter. They can easily overgrow their primary functions and, with just a few tweaks, they can also add a recognizable and unique character to all processed sounds.
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Wusik Magazine
by A. Arsov
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SAMPLE MOOG
#020 December 2007
SAMPLE MOOG
Back in the early seventies I was a very young kid addicted to Rock 'n' Roll thanks to my older sister who had brought those types of records into our home. It was Moog time. I still remember those sounds from back then. They started like an old elephant with a fast attack, with a sustain like wild hogs whimpering, and all to mutate in the last few seconds into something like a dead chicken's gargling. Man,
it
was
so
refreshing
to
hear
something like that and I really loved those Moog sounds. And gosh, how my mama hated them.
I still remember the day when Rock 'n' Roll died. It was Sunday afternoon in the late seventies. I was sitting on a sofa watching some rare broadcasting with few music clips. That was before MTV, when music clips were played only once a week. My mama was back washing the dishes, when suddenly a music clip from a dirty hairy band started. She stopped with a plate in one hand and a dishcloth in another, looking at the band for few moments,
Something died in me when I heard that.
Hadn’t
she
ever
heard
of
the
Wusik Magazine
and then said “They are not so bad.”
generation gap? Should we now start together? Something has gone terribly wrong. It was the end of the Moog era for me. The Bay City Rollers and other ga-ga bands had totally spoiled the party.
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#020 December 2007
talking about chicks and stupid teachers
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SAMPLE MOOG
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
Let's save what's left
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Since then I've heard a million Moog VST reincarnations. Some of them are really good, but most of them are average. IK multimedia decided to hop on the Moog band-wagon by using their Sample Tank engine as the base for a new sample based Moog rompler called Sample Moog. Ladies and gentlemen – turn on your computers, because it's time for...
IK Multimedia Moog
Sample
There are 1700 presets and 4 GB of samples. A sixteen part multi track and sixteen stereo outputs cover sixteen of the best known
Moog models. Because Moog has ruled the world for more than a decade, it is necessary to name all of the Emperor’s sons: Modular Moog model 3C, 15 and 55, Minimoog D, Polymoog, Taurus, Prodigy, Multimoog 9 Vocoder, Concertmate MG-1, Source, Rouge, Memorymoog, Etherwave Theremin, Minimoog Voyager and Little Phatty. The main Sample Moog window is configured with midi channels on the left, and on the right side is a browser that allows us to load a desired sound with just one click. The whole engine is surprisingly easy on the CPU and the loaded preset can be modified with all the necessary parameters. Sample Moog contains thirty two analogue > >
SAMPLE MOOG
And Sample Moog?
modelled effects from Sample Tank. That means that four of them can be used per single instrument and all Sample Moog sounds can also be loaded in a Sample Tank.
Impressive, but how does it sound?
Non emotive explanation IK multimedia catches all of this portamento monophonic behaviour and all of those legato sound changes together with multi layered samples authentically from old Moog models. It really sounds fat and “twangy” like a Moog - and what is far more important - it behaves like a Moog, especially in the mid range. It is (Austin Powers) Shaguar for keys. It's definitely the most authentic software re-creation of this forever-young hardware.
– the beast is back!!
#020 December 2007
Put on your sunglasses and enjoy the revolution
Wusik Magazine
I think I've tried all Moog emulations available. Well, almost all. There is one common problem with these emulations: if they are a VST instrument, they are missing the “twang” attack and the overall recognizable hardness of the sound. If they come in a sample library, they sound good as separate notes but usually they can't provide correct portamento behaviour, and every sound changes when you switch from staccato to legato mode. It is not just a matter of attack absence. Until now, I hadn't found a Moog modulation that could provide all the insanity in the middle and high ranges as heard on the original hardware models. So my expectations were not so high.
I turned on my new Edirol keyboard, loaded Sample Moog, played a few notes and ... Wow ... What a pleasant surprise, they’ve finally made a Moog clone!! I put my sunglasses on and started smiling like Stevie Wonder while playing around and browsing through patches. Wild hogs are back. I could hardly resist not calling my mama to play her a few notes. I just know she would start hating it immediately. Ruthless, noisy, piggy, punchy, and annoying in the most beautiful way, the sounds were fat, unpredictable and recognizable. That was Moog. Ah, memories, how they can fade so fast. I really loved all these sounds.
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AnalyseThat
AnalyseThat
Blue Cat Audio
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
by Paul Evans
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AnalyseThat
#020 December 2007
There are many analysis tools, but Blue Cat Audio is quickly becoming the leader in this field. Over the last few months they have been releasing an onslaught of updates and new analysis tools - all with the handy interconnected features that make their plug-ins so useful and special. Not only do they analyse but they also can become internal controllers. These very well could be what you need to precisely deliver the perfectly shaped mix. > >
Wusik Magazine
We have all heard the saying "mix with your ears." Now, I don't disagree at all but a good visualization can be priceless in helping to make it all work, especially when you have been holed up in a studio with music thumping all day and into the night. Your ears can and will get tired, sometimes to the point that you can't trust them. This is when audio analysis tools are essential.
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AnalyseThat
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
Blue Cat Audio (BCA) has six top-class analysis tools for use as a visual aid in your mixing environment: Stereo Scope Pro, Stereo Scope Multi, Freq Analyst Pro, Freq Analyst Multi, Widening Meter Pro, and Peak Meter Pro. Between these six tools you can measure any and nearly every aspect of your audio. All except Peak Meter Pro have similar parameters for defining and fine tuning the measurement and display of the analysed audio signal(s). They offer simple click-anddrag zooming capabilities to precisely zone in on areas of analysis. With ultra slick visual
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feedback and super slick response, these are second to none. Unique analysing, such as the mid/side meter, enables you to see all aspects of your audio. The multi versions are, in my opinion, the most unique of the tools. They offer up to 16 curves that are user definable. This gives you multi-track analysis on one screen. It is very simple to set up as well. For example, if you have four tracks to analyse, you simply load up an instance of the multi on each track. > >
AnalyseThat
They also have a routing buss that you can go into and click on the curves 1 through 16. Now you can view all signals at once from one of the four instances. The routing bus offers four different ways to analyse the audio. Even more outstanding is the fact that each of the 16 curves can be named so that on the analysis view you know exactly which is
which. This is extremely helpful. Imagine having 16 curves without names. It would be very difficult to differentiate between them. The multi versions alone are enough to place them a cut above the rest. With control over the precision, and the speed of the display, you will not miss anything. > >
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AnalyseThat
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
The stereo scopes show exactly how a signal is spread across the stereo field. This is an amazing aid in keeping sounds and mixes balanced. Another key use for the Stereo Scopes is for uncovering phase issues. A lot of effects can cause phase problems. With the scopes, you are able to see how each effect is affecting the stereo field. This allows you to deal with phase issues at the root of the problem. > >
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AnalyseThat
The pro versions of the Stereo Scope and Freq Analyst offer three different views: spectrum (this is the multi view), spectrogram, and an output view. Forget the saying "mix with your ears," Blue Cat audio gives you the ability to mix with your eyes. All of the BCA plug-ins can be connected with one another and in different ways. With these, you can use the audio signals’ output for ducking, side-chaining, and controlling other effects. This is possible since the analysers generate an envelope that can be routed via midi. > >
Wusik Magazine #020 December 2007
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AnalyseThat
Each analyser has envelope controls which allow you to adjust how your signal will control the other effects. An example (used on their website) is controlling a filter using the pitch from a studio signal. Ducking, for instance, can be achieved by simply using one of the analysers and BCA's freeware Gain Suite!
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
This is a remarkable set of plug-ins form BCA. This company impresses me more and more with each update and release. I believe these tools should define the standard for audio analysis. They are totally worth demoing to see if they can be of use to you. Before you say there are free alternatives, try the demo to see how precise and feature rich these are. I know of no free or payware plugs that achieve some of the unique things these particular analysers can. > >
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AnalyseThat
They are not only analysers but internal controllers that can bring side-chaining to any host that does not support multiple input plug-ins. They present the ultimate visual perspective on audio - hands
down. Among the great quality and features is BCA's willingness to listen to customers. The mid/side analyser was born from customer requests, as was as the naming of curves for the analysers. > >
Wusik Magazine #020 December 2007
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AnalyseThat
All are available in VST and DX format and are priced fairly. They can be purchased separately or in packs. Trust me - if you find one useful, you will find them all useful. In my experience, analysers are hit and miss. But the extreme control of the visual feedback and the smoothness of what you see, coupled with a multitude of ways to analyse a signal, make these a huge hit.
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
This company is quickly approaching the pinnacle of digital effects for musicians. > >
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AnalyseThat
Head over to www.bluecataudio.com. There you will find pricing and very detailed and informative product information from Blue Cat Audio.
Wusik Magazine
Their site also has a slew of tutorials on offer for all of their plug-ins. These, as well as their other products, have so much potential but it could be wasted if you are not so sure how to use them. Thankfully, they are upfront and very understandable, and explain the advanced midi capabilities and envelop generation for controlling other effects and working together with their own plugs.
#020 December 2007
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Guillaume Jeulin from
Blue Cat Audio by Paul Evans
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
Guillaume, could you tell us about BCA? How it was started and the idea behind it?
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Blue Cat Audio is the combination of two passions: music and software engineering. The goal is to enable musicians to create music with just an instrument and a computer: we believe in the concept of the virtual studio, and think we can bring an entire studio or live setup within a computer without sacrificing stability. On the other side, we believe in efficient software engineering processes and think we can reduce costs to provide audio professionals and amateur musicians with the best audio tools for a reasonable price. Blue Cat Audio historically started a long time before even being a company. It was a need for me and other musicians to find affordable and efficient audio plugins for our home studios. We ended up a few years later with company selling audio software all around the world. > >
Guillaume Jeulin
Lately you have been updating your line of plugins like crazy, like the analyzers and the amazing Dynamics model. What is planned for future releases? Yes indeed, we release very often. That's part of our process. It allows us to get constant feedback from our customers and deliver enhancements as often as possible. We focus today on the audio plug-ins market with a strong emphasis on audio analysis and mastering audio effects. We have several other analysis plug-ins in the works, as well as new powerful audio effects. With the Intel Macs and the new Leopard operating system just released, we should also be looking a bit more at the Mac platform in the coming months.
I have been in the software industry for almost ten years, and I have being playing music since I was 6 years old, so the transition has been quite smooth :). To sum up in a few words, I have an engineering background with a lot of math and physics, and my first job was an audio software engineering position for a startup company. I then worked in the software field for several larger companies in entertainment or industrial businesses before launching Blue Cat Audio. > >
#020 December 2007
Thanks for noticing our efforts. First we sell "software made by musicians for musicians". It means that we all use our
Has it been hard to break into selling software, and what were you doing before BCA?
Wusik Magazine
You make unique features with your plug-ins; they communicate with each other and are very intelligent. What gives you the ideas for these?
software on a daily basis, which helps a lot. Then, we have great customers who bring a lot of value to our products: part of the 'Multi' and 'Widening' series was inspired by customer requests. Last but not least, our consulting activity keeps us involved in many professional audio engineering projects. It is a good opportunity to think about what kind of tools could improve the life of audio engineers and recording musicians.
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Guillaume Jeulin
What music are you really feeling now? And how would you compare the music business to say 10 years ago? I have been listening to jazz, progressive rock and blues for years, and I am getting more and more interested in electronic music as well as "composite" music mixing several styles. I think the Internet has been a revolution in the music industry and it's very exciting to see how many talented self-produced musicians are now able to produce and distribute high quality titles on their own. We often receive audio files from customers and it's really great to hear what they are able to do with our tools. Send us your music, we like it
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
Are you the sole developer of BCA or are there others behind the scenes as well?
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I am not the only person behind Blue Cat Audio, and that's great news for my health :)! We are organized as a network of freelancers, which is very handy and flexible. Plus, there is a lot to do besides DSP and software engineering: presets, graphics, UI design, marketing, communication,
press relations, customer support‌ It requires many different skills. Are there any plans for a BCA synthesizer or sampler, any instruments in the pipeline? Today we are focusing on audio effects and analysis tools, but why not a synth in the future? The thing is, we really want to bring something new, and the synth market is really very crowded today. Furthermore, we really like the challenge of creating effects that have to sound well when fed any kind of audio signal‌ It also lets you have a lot of creative freedom. Anyway, there is something you can be sure of: Blue Cat Audio will release other kinds of tools in the future. If it's useful to musicians, if it can help in producing or playing music, and if we can bring something new, we'll do it ‌ be it a plug-in or anything else! What advice could you give to musicians using your products and what is the reason they should try them if they have not already? If you are already using our products then experiment, > >
Guillaume Jeulin
experiment, and‌ experiment! I think our plug-ins really offer great flexibility and it takes a lot of time to explore all the possibilities. Don't limit yourself to the presets, try "unusual" settings and surprise yourself! Also, take some time to read our tutorials; there might be features you haven't noticed yet.
What is your goal with BCA? And has it been achieved yet?
I don't think I have any particular wisdom or knowledge to pass, that would be very pretentious. The only thing I'd like to say is: just do what you like! If you like it, others will do as well, and at least you will be happy with what you have done. And forget about rules: do it your way, try new things, and be creative!
#020 December 2007
Our goal is to bring an entire recording studio (and more‌)
Do you have any knowledge or wisdom to pass onto our readers? Wusik Magazine
Why should you try these plugins? They are really unique and will bring new ideas into your sound and music. I can bet they will change the way you record and mix, and I think their particular features are also a good way to learn: be it analysis or processing plugins, they all show you what's actually happening on your audio signal. Even if you have "magic ears", the visual feedback might teach you things you have never heard before. And if you start playing with their interconnection capabilities, you will discover new interaction possibilities between your sounds and instruments.
into a computer for an affordable price, and create innovative tools to help musicians and audio professionals focus on music creation. I think we are currently living in a transition period: most of the work that has been done until now consisted of copying (and improving) what we know in the "real world" and adapting it to Digital Audio Workstations. The new capabilities offered by computers and their growing power let us now really innovate and create things that were not possible before. That's where we want to go. I guess it's obvious our goal has not been achieved yet, even though we are getting closer to it every day. :)
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The Frozen Autumn by Sergio Bersanetti
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
(aka Sir Joe) sergio@planet-interkom.de
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The Frozen Autumn
The Frozen Autumn is one of the most exciting dark-wave groups in circulation, with a strong and devoted following in Europe and South America. We had the pleasure to meet the Italian duo formed by Diego and Arianna (a.k.a. Froxeanne) and asked them a few questions in order to know them better.
How does your creative process work when you compose a new song?
As a musician, what kind of hardware or software would you like to be invented?
Froxeanne: Sometimes I also start from synthetic string pads harmonies or from lyrics. Anyway the vocal line is the last thing to come into being. What is your favourite piece of gear (hardware and software) that you own? What is in your shopping list? Diego: as a hardware piece of gear my two Elka Synthex, and as software - the virtual PPG Wave. In my shopping list I would put an additive soft-synth called Morphine. And also that one called Philharmonic. And the Cronox.
#020 December 2007
Froxeanne: As a hardware my S.C.I. Pro - One. As a soft-synth the Pro-V. In my shopping list I would put everything really compatible with Windows Vista, if anything exists! > >
Wusik Magazine
Diego: I’m convinced that almost everything has already been invented as far as new hardware and software is concerned, even though there are probably lots of revolutionary devices which only exist as prototypes in some MIT or Carnegie Mellon research group etc. Well, it may sound weird to you but I often have vivid dreams in which I listen to incredibly beautiful never-heard-before melodies and sounds...but most of the time when I wake up I can’t remember them anymore, to my big disappointment. So, I would like some neuroscientist to invent an audio recorder for music heard in dreams.
Diego: I always start from sounds as a raw material for composition. They give me a melodic direction to follow, by inspiring me, sound layer after sound layer, resulting in a whole musical structure.
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The Frozen Autumn
How do you see the future of the music business? Are you in favour of the diy process? D & f: the music business cannot stay the way it is for long. Too many people not actively involved in the artistic creation of music earn too much from it. We are talking about labels and distribution especially. We are totally in favour of the DIY process. Probably in the future the only incomes directly related to music will be the one coming from live gigs, for music will be most likely distributed for free on the net.
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
Is it difficult to reproduce your songs live? How does your live stage look like? What kind of problems do you encounter in the setting up?
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D & f: the most difficult thing is the fact that we are an electroband who really plays synths on stage. Nowadays, probably due to the harsh electronic invasion,
many promoters expect us to do nothing but playback and when they discover that we just use playback for drums and bass lines, sound technicians (who in Italy are mostly used to rock bands rather than electro) get disorientated. Also, some promoters abroad consider that as a big problem, as they have to rent perfectly working keyboards for us, and not only scenographic fakes, whose power supplies are not even connected to electricity plugs. On stage we use 3 synths as master keyboards, we use then digital rack units as slave synths, we’ve got a live guitarist and we both sing; sometimes we also use audio-synchronized background videos created by us. What is your opinion concerning the "analogue vs. Digital" debate? D & f: no reason to progress such a debate in our opinion, at least not anymore. > >
The Frozen Autumn
Digital technologies are nowadays so refined and advanced that they have made potentially impossible to tell apart digital sounds and analogue sounds. It’s a question of habits, and a question of working method. Some people are knob-addicted, some others prefer mouse as a control tool. Some people hate scrolling through parameters, some others could not do without a PC screen. It’s just the same thing with MP3. If you use a good codec, you should not be able to tell acoustically apart a compressed file from its original source, as it should just suppress the redundant sound information that would in no way be detected by our hearing system.
I would like to know more about your music and the group in general. What is the easiest way? D & f: the easiest way is starting a query on any web search engine. And of course our official website (http://www.thefrozenautumn.co m) and our official fan club website (http://www.fcashes.com) could be a good starting point. Someone put our videos on YouTube, for example. It’s all promotion, so it’s welcome. Well, that’s it. Thanks for your time and all the best for your career. D & F: Thanks for your interesting questions. We hope to see you and all the readers of WSM to our next gigs. Ciao!
#020 December 2007
Sergio Bersanetti (aka Sir Joe) is based in Barcelona and has been making electronic music for fun for 13 years. He's an active member of the digitalmusician.net community as a singer and arranger.
Wusik Magazine
Digital sounds can be as warm and fat as the analogue ones, you just do not notice the difference. If you
think that the first Fairlight could reproduce acoustic sounds being equipped with an 8bit quantization only, and nobody would notice the difference from the real ones!!!!
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V4
Barry Schrader Four Electro-acoustic Music CDs by Warren Burt
EAM: Innova 575
Lost Atlantis: Innova 629
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
Beyond: Innova 640
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Fallen Sparrow: Innova 654
www.innova.mu
Barry Schrader
I’ve just completed a long journey with an old friend, someone I’d lost contact with for years. And even though the journey only took a bit under four hours, it covered almost 30 years. And through the medium of music, that most artificial and abstract of art forms, I think I’ve heard things that I might not have noticed, even if we had been in contact for all that time. I first met Barry Schrader in 1971 when I was a graduate student at the University of California, San Diego, and he had just started teaching electronic music at California Institute of the Arts, in Los Angeles. We were both involved in electronic music, although from slightly different angles – while I was involved with performance art, Cageian ideas of nondeterminacy, and conceptual-art inspired “incompetence’; he was involved with musique concrete, Pierre Schaeffer’s ideas of abstract listening, and the idea of the carefully sculpted, elegantly finished
musical surface. Despite our stylistic differences, our preferred medium of expression at that time was the same, the analog synthesizer, and for a while, more specifically, the Buchla. Despite the Buchla’s incredible range of possibilities, both of us felt somewhat constricted by it, and we both found ways to extend it, by developing creative patchings; in Barry’s case, by having custom modules built; and in my case, eventually by building my own electronics which extended the Buchla’s principles in directions more sympathetic to my interests. Along the way, we both wrote a number of pieces with the Buchla, and in the mid-80s, we both made the transition to digital music machines. Now, more than 30 years later, Barry has released a series of four CDs on the crusading new music label Innova (“The different drummer is on our label” is their slogan), and on them one can hear what he’s been up to all these years. > >
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Barry Schrader What he’s been up to is crafting a body of elegant, beautiful, and sensitive work, and if you use the electronic medium, it’s work that you will enjoy hearing, and re-hearing. The work ranges from lovingly restored Buchla pieces from the mid-70s, through to pieces from the past few years using the latest digital technology, and concludes with a CD of works for acoustic instruments and electronics that show a surprisingly well developed gift for writing traditional melodies that can soar and sing. But why surprising? Simply because with the segregation that exists for many people between the electronic and the acoustic instrumental mediums, one usually hears work by a composer for one medium or the other. Genre crossing works and composers are rarer than one would think. Barry may have been writing achingly beautiful melodies such as those in his “Love in Memoriam” from 1989, all along, but I, and many other listeners, weren’t in a position to experience them.
Born in 1945, Barry has lived and worked in the Southern California area ever since he started teaching at CalArts in 1971. He’s been there ever since, with brief times teaching at other institutions such as the University of California, Santa Barbara, and California State University, Los Angeles. As well as being a composer and a teacher, he’s been very busy as a producer of concerts, and an organizer - he’s one of the forces behind SCREAM (the Southern California Resource for Electro-Acoustic Music) and is the founder of SEAMUS (the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States). He’s also written a number of books and articles on electro-acoustic music. As well as composing, he enjoys vegetarian cooking and caring for potbellied pigs. In fact, he’s so enthusiastic about potbellied pigs (a rare breed), that he’s even collaborated with Duke, a potbellied pig composer, on the electronic composition “Duke’s Tune.” More on that highly enjoyable piece later. In short, Barry’s been busy for the past few
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
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Barry Schrader
decades, and it’s high time that his music was made available for those of us not connected with either the Los Angeles new music community or the larger academicbased electro-acoustic music scene.
#020 December 2007
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Wusik Magazine
The earliest pieces on these CDs are the two analog pieces that appear on “Lost Atlantis” (Innova 629). These are works for the Buchla synthesizer, augmented by custom built modules by Fukushi Kawakami. In the CD booklet, Barry discusses the kind of patch he used with the Buchla - one that enabled him to do additive, subtractive, fm and am synthesis simultaneously. For those of us working with software synthesizers, this small essay is worth the price of admission alone, as it gives valuable insights into the thinking of analog electronic music composers of that era. The two pieces, “Trinity” and “Lost Atlantis” are long, multi-sectioned works -
one might almost call them electro-acoustic symphonies. “Trinity” features a characteristic gesture, often heard in acoustic music, but not so often in electronic music - a wedge-like crescendo up to a sudden cut-off. This is repeated in a number of ways, making a piece which grows and ebbs in intensity. The piece has a wide variety of timbres as well - vocal like sounds, long bands of sound that waver between pitch and noise, brass-like sounds, and wavering amplitude modulated voices that create new timbres through rapid alternation of pitches and loudness. These timbres have an energy that is propulsive, forward-moving, and intense - even when played at very soft volumes. The variety and inner-life of the timbres is, for me, the most impressive part of this piece. It’s hard to believe that all these sounds were created with the same basic patch.
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#020 December 2007
Barry Schrader
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“Lost Atlantis” lives in a similar timbral world to “Trinity,” but the structures are larger-scale, and there is a program here - the depiction of imaginary events in the history of the mythical Atlantis. The piece is full of timbral delights - there are some lovely panning atmospheric sounds in st the 1 movement - soft blushing chords, shimmering, descending, moving, and echoing. There are even a few Hollywood film score moments, which reminded me of one of the sources of film music, American impressionist Charles Tomlinson Griffes’ “The Pleasure Dome of Kublai Khan” (1912), which itself was a musical depiction of an imaginary place and time. Attractive moments fill the piece. The third movement, for example, consists of veils of sound that cover and uncover each other, in a splendid progression. The fourth movement starts with some lively sour trumpet-like sounds, while the seventh has some engaging snare-drum-like sequences near its end. Overall, it’s a large, sprawling canvas with many moments of great tenderness and beauty. The timbral palette Barry draws from the Buchla is very different from the one that, for example, Morton Subotnick used. Subotnick’s early Buchla works (“Silver Apples of the Moon”, “Touch”, etc) may define the Buchla world for many listeners. Hearing Schrader’s work, one can hear some of the many other things the Buchla was capable of.
Two CDs of purely electronic works are the next offerings in this series of Innova recordings, with works written between 1986 and 2005. “EAM” (for electro-acoustic music) is the earlier of the two CDs, “Beyond” is the later. The pieces on offer range from jolly compositions using materials from J. S. Bach (“Bachahama”) and Duke the Pig (“Duke’s Tune”) to the slow, meditative, deeply-felt, and very beautiful suite “Death.” Those expecting transcriptions in the manner of Wendy Carlos’ “Switched-on Bach” will be surprised by EAM’s “Bachahama.” This is no mere transcription, but a full-blown recomposition of two well-known Bach pieces. Especially attractive is the beautiful stretching and overlapping of segments of “Air on the G String”, in which new facets of the piece are revealed, while remaining recognizably related to the original. The luscious harmonies Barry uses remind one of other Californian composers such as Harold Budd and Lou Harrison, although he uses very different means and media than they do. > >
Barry Schrader
extremely simple melodies. The use of these really simple tunes allows one to concentrate on the development of tone color in the piece - but it must be pointed out that the melodies themselves are very worth listening to. In his liner notes, Schrader talks about the almost didactic nature of “Triptych”, with three sections that concentrate on pitch, then rhythm, then timbre. I found it a most pleasant and agreeable piece - in fact, despite its didactic purpose, I found it quite a genial sonic companion.
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“Triptych”, the last work on EAM, is almost orchestral in conception. There is never an example of instrumental imitation here, but the combining of different electronic families of timbres has an orchestral feel to it. Schrader is, as usual, timbrally inventive, with electronic timbres that suggest some kind of scratched metallic striking - these sounds have a kind of acoustic life to them. Some of the sections of this piece are based on
“Beyond” has mostly more recent works than “EAM.” And some of Barry’s most engaging work is found on this CD. Although he mostly works with electronic sounds, on this CD, he also works with concrete sounds, and found object melodies to great effect. “Beyond”, the title track, is made with waterphone and harpsichord samples - but stretched and pulled to make gorgeous extended timbres, assembling a progression of slow, stately, beautiful timbres with inner life and depth. “Duke’s Tune” is the result of one of Barry’s hobbies - caring for pot-bellied pigs. At “Little Orphan Hammies,” the animal shelter where he volunteers lives Duke, a potbellied pig who plays xylophone, guitar, paints, draws, and in general, lives the life of a subsidized and supported artist. Schrader and Duke worked together on this piece - Duke supplying the basic melodic material, and Shrader extending, elaborating and orchestrating it. Suffice it to say that Barry’s contribution to the piece is slightly greater than Duke’s (unlike say, Rimsky-Korsakoff’s contribution to Mussorgsky’s works!), but the basic gestural world of Duke’s melody remains intact. > >
Wusik Magazine
“Still Lives” (also on EAM) is the flip-side of “Lost Atlantis” - unlike that long, complex piece, this one is five extremely brief explorations of one single musical idea each. The movements alternate slow and fast sections, pitch-oriented and noisy sections, and rhythmic and sustained textures. More “note and gesture” oriented than, say, a French or Canadian electroacoustic composer, and more timbrally oriented than, say, a pitch-oriented composer, whether pop, neo-Romantic, or “avant-garde”, Schrader has made his own niche in traveling the gamut between pitch and noise. I found the polyrhythms in the nd th 2 and 4 section of “Still Lives” especially compelling.
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Barry Schrader
On a more serious level, Schrader has developed a compositional technique, heard in a number of pieces on these CDs, where he takes a tiny scrap of musical material and elaborates it into a whole piece. Duke’s tune is one of these fertile bits of melody, and Barry’s treatment of it is both virtuosic and affectionate. Crystalline timbres of clear pitch arranged into boppy minimalist textures alternate with slower, murkier textures, but the overall feeling of this work is a happy one. In fact, it’s one of Schrader’s happiest works.
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The CD concludes with a long and serious work - the title, “Death” may put many people off, but Schrader is here dealing with one of the basic mysteries of life, and doing it in a most beautiful
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manner. Again, he showcases timbres that seem to alternate between vocal and noisy qualities between an invocation of the singing voice and the breath. This is a slow moving, almost mystical work, with breath rhythms creating overlapping curtains of sound. In the rd 3 movement, some harmonic-series gestures make for a continual sense of forward motion. The harmonic series, of course, has been used by a number of composers as a symbol of cosmic unity or transformation. In the case of this “Death,” the harmonic series yields to a series of major chords, and other gestures which bring the piece to a close. If you like your music to be in a contemplative vein, in which serious issues are treated in a sensitive and insightful way, you’ll want to give this piece a listen. > >
Barry Schrader
outside his house, this is another serious meditation on death, growth and life. In this work, lovely modal melodies for violin are accompanied by shimmering electronic arpeggios. Again, I’m reminded of French composers - the violin writing of Debussy or Franck comes to mind. Schrader is a composer who can use whatever historical material he wants, and elaborate it into lively and engaging electronic textures. In “Fallen Sparrow,” lush electronic timbres take the place of either strings or horns in traditional orchestration. And in the later parts of the piece, long slow elegiac buildups full of delicate timbres and extended phrasings shape the listeners’ experience.
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“You’re the Frenchest we’ve got,” the late Melbourne poet John Anderson said to his colleague Kris Hemesley in the early 1980s on the publication of Hemensley’s prose-poems based on mistranslations of Jean-Paul Sartre. Similarly, considering the spectrum of composers in Southern California, one can say the same thing of Barry. This is nowhere more the case than in the final > >
Wusik Magazine
The final CD, “Fallen Sparrow,” is the most surprising of the lot, and, for my money, the most drop-dead beautiful. Four works for acoustic performers and electronic accompaniment are on this CD. “Love, In Memoriam” (1989) written for the voice of the late French counter-tenor Frank Royon Le Mee, is just plain luscious. This is a set of three French art-songs - I was immediately reminded of the exquisite melodic writing of the early-20th century French artsong composer Francis Poulenc. In the first song, the voice floats beautifully above nervous and echoed electronic piano sounds. The second song is an unexpected waltz. Since this poem deals with Lewis Carroll, one is not surprised by that - the accompaniment getting more and more elaborate throughout the piece also reflect Carroll’s interests. The words to the three songs are included in the liner notes. Do follow them while listening - it will increase the impact of the songs immensely. “Fallen Sparrow,” the next piece on the CD, is for violin and electronics. Inspired by finding a dead sparrow
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work on the CD “Ravel,” a large scale work for piano and electronics based on 2 very short excerpts from works by the French master. At times sounding minimalist, at times Romantic, this is a post-minimalist tour de force celebrating the material’s potential. The form here is similar to “Trinity,” although much more note-oriented, given the fact that the piano has center focus here. There is a consistent building up of climaxes with noisier, denser timbres which are succeeded by a softer, clearer working with the basic musical motives. “Ravel” is a gorgeous piece that doesn’t shy away from the sensuality of the composer whose work it is modeled on.
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However, there is a certain rhythmic forcefulness and emphasis in the composing and the performing which is not Ravel’s but Schrader’s. In short, this is a work you will want to return to again and again.
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Overall, what I learn from listening to all this music is that Barry is a very serious and gentle composer. Despite the loud noiseband sections in many of the works, my overall impression is of a sensitive person with an ear for the well shaped timbre and the well formed phrase. And for works which engage through a constant sense of ongoing development. If you want music that is attractive, and yet requires serious listening, music which is definitely foreground, not background, listening, and which has lots of lovely timbres, constantly evolving forms and complex textures, then you should give this music a listen. And those who would like to read more about Barry’s ideas can read an interview with him at www.tokafi.com/15questions/15questions-to-barry-schrader.
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GH05ric
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"Drop"
GH05ric
"Drop" by Johan Vaxelaire
GH05ric "Drop"
As you may know, if there is a quest a lot of musicians pursue it would be to make music which relays to the listener both technique and feeling. It is a just balance which is difficult to achieve. Very often the difference between good and very good musicians results, by extension, in good and very good discs. I guess that was GH05ric's motivation for their first release - "Drop". In GH05ric are two talented musicians, Gavin Harrisson and 05ric. The first is well known to be one of the better drummers in the world, having played in Porcupine Tree, for his educational video, his multiple collaborations, and soon was in the new line-up of King Crimson (with Pat Masteloto). 05ric is likely the lesser known, but is also an excellent drummer, a talented singer, and an especially incredible bass player. He plays an extended range bass (you can see a video demo on his MySpace page.)
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Enough of the introductions: let us close our eyes listen to the album’s opening song, Unsettled, a song which I have to say directly sets the tone of this album. You will be surprised very certainly by the 05ric’s bass playing. This track gives one the impression of speed; the notes and the arrangement of those notes give the impression of a sort of rhythmic tablecloth of sound. The rhythmic efficiency of his “game” is simply terrific. When I said that this opening sets the tone it is especially due to the alliance of these rhythms and > >
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GH05ric "Drop"
complex melodies coupled by a larger than life harmony of vocal instruments. This is a feeling which immortalizes itself with the titles which follow; the same recipe is used yet each results in a different atmosphere. And, with the same bass, every title gives 05ric a freedom to express his own originality. It is a homogenous, high quality album. The second title, "Sailing", presents a Robert Fripp soundscape to close the track. The third track, “Life”, presents a stunning solo which elicits almost as much emotion as “Clock”. And the song "Where are you going?" is a great jazz song which demonstrates all the technical talent of our protagonists: very impressive!
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The best way to have an idea of the quality of this album is to listen to the available extracts (see the links below).
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To conclude, the qualities present here are the excellent instrument playing of Gavin Harrison on drums; the incredible vocal harmonies, sense, and inventiveness and originality of 05ric’s bass playing. The close relationship between technique and emotion makes this a disk showcasing technical skill and yet so pleasant to listen to from beginning to end. The guests, Robert Fripp, Dave Stewart and Gary Sanctuary make one very beautiful appearance and each (of course) with their own personal style. Even those who dislike jazz-rock fusion will find this highquality album enjoyable, or at least find a means to appreciate the technical and emotive abilities of the musicians involved. One the best discs of the year for me...
Links:
GH05ric MySpace page: www.myspace.com/gavinharrison05ric Gavin Harrisson MySpace page: www.myspace.com/gavharrison 05ric MySpace page: www.myspace.com/05ric Burningshed: (disc is available in CD/MP3/FLAC) www.burningshed.com/store/gavinharrison
Naked Women
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
by A. Arsov
100
How to Write a Pop Song
Naked Women
About you Why should this concern you? As far as you are concerned, you can't write any decent lyrics and at the same time you are aware of your bad vocal abilities. And, let’s not forget how hard it is to find a good vocalist.
About me Exactly the same. I'm a lousy vocalist, have trouble finding a good vocalist and I need ages to write some lyrics because I'm no poet – I'm just a guitar player fascinated with keyboards.
Wusik Magazine
But necessity knows no laws. It happens that I have written all lyrics, vocal lines and music for three albums and a bunch of songs for various local vocalists. All just because of the naked women. You want to know how? Read on. > >
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Naked Women
Once upon a time
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Many years ago I had a band with my roommate. He wrote a few rough song drafts and some lyrics. I helped him finish those songs by adding some instrumental lines and correcting the arrangements. At the same time, I wrote a few good guitar lines and chord progressions for the chorus and asked him to help me with the lyrics and vocal lines. He listened carefully to my lines and told me he couldn't help me because it sounded too odd for him. He didn't have a clue how he could help me. I gave him a dirty look and later that day I decided to make it on my own. I've recorded those guitar lines and played them for hours, mumbling along anything that crossed my mind. Finally, I found some simple vocal lines. Almost an entire day was spent listening to those lines and writing down every word I sang. Seventeen years later, the song ended up on one of my CDs.
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My intention is not to teach you how to play your instrument. I'm sure that many of you are doing that much better than I. I just want to give you a few useful tips on how to start something and how to finish what you have already started.
One, two, one two three four There is no wrong or right way how to start a song. You can do it by grabbing your guitar or piano, starting with a chord or two and trying to find a suitable vocal melody. Which chords? Anything will do, for starters just use C and F. There are a million songs written with just those two chords. Later, when you have a structure in place, you can record it in a sequencer and make an arrangement around those lines. Sounds simple? Well, not for me. I'm usually without any inspiration and scared to death when the time comes for writing lyrics. So let’s try doing it the other way around. We’ll write the lyrics and vocal line when everything else is finished. At the end of this “how to” article, your song will resemble Frankenstein, but never mind, every finished song sounds much better than the original demo. All the additional rules that follow are useful just for one purpose – to break them. But you can't do that until you know what you’re breaking. > >
Naked Women
Crash, Crash Boom First we need a good drum rhythm. There are thousands of free drum loops around on the ‘net and if you don't find any you can just program one. Pop songs are usually written in a mid to fast tempo. So, anything from 120 to 150 BPM will do. While driving in your car listening to the radio, you will notice that most of the time there is only drum and voice to hear. For a good song you need just a decent rhythm that makes you move and a respectable but simple vocal melody.
Back to the rhythm The most common problem is that many home musicians fall into a habit of working on a few bars, and adding new instruments, without progressing any further. The best way to force yourself to finish a song is to copy your drum loop on a track along the time line making it three and a half minutes long. This way you will know how much empty space you should fill.
Markers time
So let's structure it from the beginning right through the end, thusly:
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intro............................................. 4 bars first verse....................................16 bars chorus.........................................16 bars second verse...............................16 bars second chorus.............................16 bars middle eight; guess how many.....8 bars third verse..................................16 bars third doubled chorus..................32 bars > >
Wusik Magazine
Thus far, we have one boring loop repeated over and over again. That's good. Make a marker at the beginning of a loop track and name it intro. Four bars later it will be the right time for a new marker – the first verse.
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Naked Women So, this is the rule number one: a pop song should never be longer than three and a half minutes or so, otherwise, it won’t be radio friendly. This is the most common structure of a song. You can break it up a thousand ways. There’s an eight bar solo before the second or third chorus, or maybe place it after the middle
eight. A lot of new pop songs have a structure taken from hiphop songs. Instead of having an A B A B parts they are composed of three parts A B C A B C. The first part is a repeated phrase; the second one is a verse and the third a chorus. Anyway: Don't ever forget rule number two: verse and chorus must be the same length.
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Back to the business
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I wouldn't recommend that you to start composing a song with an intro. It is like finishing your door before making the walls. I usually work on intro when I'm out of inspiration or when everything else is finished. Take the first four bars from the verse or chorus and start playing with them. Find some chord progressions or a riff for the chorus or verse and try to use it over the first few bars. It can be a bass or a guitar line, or piano chords ... anything that suits your needs. At this point it is good to find some chords for the chorus if you are already working on a verse, and the other way around. Two rules that can help you at this point are: don't start a chorus with the same chord or note you used to start the verse. A dominant or subdominant note or maybe even a third will do the job.
And the second rule is: don't write a busy chorus. You can go mad with your verse, but if you make instrumental lines for the chorus background too complicated, there won’t be much space for the vocalist's line. You can go funky over the verse, but try to play a simple chord rhythm over the chorus. If you are changing a chord on every second bar or even every fourth, it will give vocalist a lot more space to make a good melodic line. You can't miss with an old rule: if you play eight notes in a verse, play twice as many simpler lines two times faster with sixteen notes in a chorus. If that sounds stupid to you, just turn your radio on and listen to it. They have a bad habit of playing only pop songs, so you'll soon find out what I mean.
So now you have an endless drum loop and a simple line for the verse and chorus. Now we can do what we know best, adding other instruments till the end of the day. Put in and loop those four bars of chorus or verse and play along by adding anything that comes into your mind. If you want to make a chorus more pop-like, there is one piece of advice from a book called “How to make a chorus just with your drums – for Dummies” Here it is: “Open a drum sampler or synth and add a crash on every half of the beat.” That's that. > >
Naked Women
The variations
Simple arrangement
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Copy these four or eight bars from your verse to all other verses and make the same with your chorus. Now we have one still boring song with three doubled verses and four doubled choruses (because the last one is doubled anyway). Every song needs a “calm down� moment; that's what the middle eight is for. Use the same chord you used in the verse, but play it just here and there. You can also only use a bass drum for your drums or play just a few notes on the bass.
It is a variation time. Replay some parts to get the live feel, add some variations in last four bars before chorus and act like a DJ. Mute all the instruments except the bass and the drums in the third verse and remove some instruments from the first verse. Come on, be brave. I know it is the hardest part of composing to remove some nice instrumental parts, but when vocals are added there will be no need for any additional instrumentation. Most pop songs contain only a drum, a bass, a guitar and maybe a piano along with a vocal. All those redundant parts can be used for the second or third verse. It is good to have something to use in your buildup. > >
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Naked Women Here is a rule I've learned from a skilled composer, one of the most important and most ignored by home musicians: there must be some change in every eight bars. Some songs sound boring because the first verse is the same as the second - and the same for choruses. It would be enough to add an additional loop or use a drum fill, a new sound or just a sound effect. Anything will do.
Inside out
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It’s time for the intro and ending. Play some notes on a piano or add some FX. There is no need to go further than that. Add something catchy or something funny, anything that will attract the listeners’ attention.
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If you desperately need money and a hit, then you should start a song with a chorus. You could also start it with a normal intro, just don't ever make a long intro; four bars tops. I've met a few A&R people and have been shocked that all of the rumours about them seem to be true. They listen to the first thirty seconds of a song (max) and if they don't like what they hear they skip to another song. If they like it, they also skip to another song. That's life. Don't underestimate the “start with the chorus” advice. Just listen to your radio or watch MTV.
La di da Now, we’ll tackle the most annoying part; the vocals. It is good if you have some general idea what the point of your song will be. It could be about a relationship, a hate or love song, saving the earth or just something for a personal bag. It is up to you. You could start with a verse or chorus. Put a few bars in a loop and start mumbling along. A lot of known songwriters said in interviews that the first few words that cross your mind are the right words to use. Most of the time, I use those first words for the beginning of the first verse. My secret weapon is inventing a lyric under a shower or while washing the dishes. Also, when I was young I read some good advice from David Bowie. He said: “At first I've tried to make a lyric where everything had a sense and it was full to the point but later I saw there is no need to make it all clear.” Lyrics should talk about some feelings, but there is no need for a full explanation. Most of the listeners don't pay enough attention to the lyrics. If you don't believe it, just try to review the lyrical content of some of your favourite songs. You probably only remember just few essential words from the chorus and few fragments from the first verse. > >
Naked Women
If you are totally out of inspiration, use a rhyme book or just go to rhymezone.com. Your listener will be happy and your rhymes will not sound crappy. (They will be snappy.) For the middle eight you can use some spoken words or just give your vocalist the freedom
Let's talk about naked women
Wusik Magazine
Every pop song needs some hook, something memorable or something that will catch listeners’ attention. We are a decent magazine and there will be no naked women in our articles, but I needed something to draw your attention and make you read this article. So, now it is your turn to find the equivalent of some naked women for your songs. It can be a catchy sentence in the chorus or just some repeated memorable word(s), or maybe some instrumental lick or phrase, guitar riff, the name of the song, or anything that makes you and your listeners really happy.
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Sample This
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Sample This “Sample This” dropped through my letterbox the other day. It’s the newly published third edition, and you don’t get to do a third edition unless people have been buying the earlier editions – publishers are quite resolute about this kind of thing. by Squibs
The authors Simon Cann and Klaus P Rausch are well qualified to write about the art of sampling. Simon already has a substantial history as a music technology writer with the seminal “How to Make a Noise” title, as well as the forthcoming “Project5 Power” and many others under his belt. You can learn more at his website(www.noisesculpture.com). Klaus is the sound designer behind Back in Time Records a (www.backintimerecords.de), company familiar to many for supplying quality sample libraries and VSTi instruments at affordable prices.
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The chapter on the sampling process describes getting the audio into the sampler and editing the individual samples. A competent section on uploading samples into playback tools follows and this > >
Wusik Magazine
The first thing that struck me was the size of the book. It clocks in at a very manageable 132 pages. Indeed, I managed to read the entire publication in one evening. This is a book which may well appeal to anybody who is a little wary of music technology books. It’s divided into bite-sized chapters which shouldn’t pose a problem for even the most rabid bibliophobe and it’s sensibly priced at $14.95/£9.95
The first chapter is an introduction to sampling, covering all the bases and setting us up for a chapter on planning and choosing the right tools. We learn to analyse what we are going to sample, the hardware and software we will require for the job, and the format we will use for storing the results. It is a well rounded essay on the subject, although occasionally the depth of the exploration is limited. In the section which deals with aliasing for example, we are told that we need to understand the Nyquist point. The explanation is that it is half the sampling rate and that any sound with frequencies above this point will lead to aliasing. I found this incomplete, but then this is not a book on the physics of sound, and a well programmed sample engine will negate the requirement for any knowledge of such issues.
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Sample This
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covers velocity layering, choking, polyphony matters and other facets of laying out a sample set which you might not otherwise consider. The sound shaping chapter considers filters, envelopes and includes a very cursory look at effects. The chapter finishes with an interesting study of some of the challenges in making a sampled acoustic instrument sound authentic.
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Chapter 7 – “Putting the Theory into Practice” gives the reader an opportunity to practice what they have learned. Download links are provided for the Paax 2 Free sampler and a zip file of samples for use in the chapter. The TSW-X VSTi and an additional range of samples are available if you mail in the form found at the back of the book. This extra content is a valuable freebie. It is in Chapter 7 that the reader will discover whether they have really understood the earlier content and I wonder if it might not have been prudent to distribute the exercises all through the book to keep the reader more involved. That being said, the examples start small and build up, implementing the techniques described earlier in the text.
Chapter 8 is made up of a long list of tips and tricks, broken into a number of categories, which the user can delve into at random when a sampling session goes stale. Chapter 9 deals with the tedious but crucial task of managing your sample library. The book finishes with a section entitled “So I’ve finished the book – What Now?” Here, Simon and Klaus encourage the user to purchase their books and sample libraries. I’ve no issue with the authors advertising their own products, but nowhere in the Further Reading section is it mentioned that Simon is the author of every single book in the list. “Sample This” does exactly what I expected of it. It tells you what sampling is, how to prepare for and conduct your sampling session, and how to process your raw samples into homogenous polished sample banks. The book is concise, forsaking extended histories of sampling and concentrating instead on modern software sampling. If you are already well versed in the art of sampling, you’ll probably still pick up some valuable knowledge. If you are a ROMpler preset hound with a hankering to learn how to roll your own, “Sample This” is a worthy introduction.
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Ambiosis Zero-G SoundSense Series:
Ambiosis by Ginno 'g.no' Legaspi
Ian Boddy is well known around the world as an electronic musician, synthesist and samplist. His work can be heard on many album releases, whether solo or in collaboration with other artists. But #020 December 2007
he has also built himself a formidable reputation by programming, sound designing and producing sample libraries. Popular Boddy titles include Morphology,
Wusik Magazine
Ambient for Reason, A.S.L., Outer
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Limits, etc. His latest is Ambiosis. > >
Ambiosis
Ambiosis is an Acid WAV/Aiff
Apple
Loops-
format sample library from UK-based
sample
developers Zero-G. This 400Mb
library
of
new
content is comprised of 140
atmospheric
and
soundscape samples. The samples
come
in
44.1kHz/16bit format and all of them are recorded as "one-shot" types. Sample length
varies
but
the
longest I've auditioned is
the samples have key info on their filenames, others don't.
> >
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29 seconds long. Some of
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Ambiosis
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
The content of this library can be used on any electronica tracks but is best suited for musicians who want to add sonic spice to their ambient, film/TV soundtrack and drone compositions. Sounds are categorized into 7 folders. Categories include Analogue, Atmospheres, Dark, Light, Spacey, Vintage and Weird. If you like sinister sounds, the 'Dark' folder has a lot to offer. My favorites are "Low Drone" "Scary Place" and "Downward". These samples remind me of the background music used when Keanu Reeves walked in hell in the movie "Constantine".
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In the "Vintage" folder, the selections are more of the FX variety rather than what you would normally use as a basis or foundation of a track. You'll find bleepy, squelchy and raw stuff for adding a twist to any soundtrack. Those who are looking for pure experimental sounds, this library provides a number of samples in the "Weird" category. They are just that, plain and weird. Unfortunately, there are no peculiar alien hits nor odd swirling swooshes included in this library. > >
Ambiosis
VERDICT: Zero-G picked the right person for the job to commission the sounds for Ambiosis. I can’t stress this enough, but the veteran synthesist still possesses the ability to create useable, fresh new sounds from his old analogue and modular hardware. The material is good but thin content-wise. I would've liked it if there were more samples on the DVD. But for the price, one really can't complain. This is a good atmospheric and soundscape library if you need to add a sprinkle of spice to your electronica tracks.
LIST PRICE:
$59.95, ÂŁ29.95 including VAT.
#020 December 2007
FORMATS: About 400MB multi-format DVD, 44.1kHz/16-Bit, Acid WAV and AIFF Apple Loops format (140 files)
Wusik Magazine
CONTACT: www.zero-g.co.uk www.soundsonline.com www.timespace.com
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Zero-G SoundSense Series:
Trance Inducer
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
by Ginno 'g.no' Legaspi
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> >
Trance Inducer
Trance Inducer is geared for producers who are in the hunt for trance, dance and electronica-style samples. Zero-G boasts that this sample library is your one-stop production solution that would suit every music producer. Users of this library can benefit from the huge 4/4 beats, synthetic melodic arps, basses and just about every ingredient to make those hypnotic tracks the clubjunkies crave to listen.
Wusik Magazine
This library is dominated by drum loops with tempos of 140bpm. But the spotlight goes to the "Addon and Perc" loops folder where the materials are superb. These loops can be used to augment an existing drum track to make it more interesting, bigger sounding or to compliment a track for layer builds and breakdowns. Additionally, under the "Drum Loops" folder, you also get a couple of hihat, kick and snare loops to play around. Rounding out the drums material is a large selection of drum hits; in fact, over 120 files.
Seven construction kits populate this library with key info and tempos ranging from 132-136bpm. You'll get a healthy set of drum mix, full mix, and music mix, as well as individual files like synth, bass, stabs, and drum elements. Since they are production-ready, you can mix-and-match or combine the samples in your favorite sequencer and you’ll have yourself an instant bangin' tune. I used Acid Pro to paint some of these loops in, and they sound pretty good without the need for extra processing. > >
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Trance Inducer
Other folders in this library are Arps140bpm, Bass Arps140bpm, FX, and Synth hits galore. Zero-G has laid out the foundation of making a good trance track by including inspiring synth arpeggio patterns and throbbing lowends under the "Arps140bpm" and "Bass Arps140bpm" folders. The included loops should get you started.
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
Verdict: If you are looking for dance samples on the cheap then you might want to consider this library.
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CONTACT: www.zero-g.co.uk www.soundsonline.com www.timespace.com FORMATS: DVD-Rom with over 400Mb of content in multi-format version, 44.1kHz/16-Bit, Acid WAV (574 files), AIFF Apple Loops (574 files) and Stylus RMX compatible REX2 files (250 files) LIST PRICE: $59.95, ÂŁ29.95 including VAT.
Sonic Capsule
Sonic Capsule Bass Guitar and
Sonic Capsule Groove
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
by A. Arsov
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This month I’ve downloaded two sample libraries (also in a Wusikstation format) from esoundz.com. Both have a few common points: they have the same cost – 39 euros each, they are provided in ZIP format (at approximately 500 – 600mb), and you can easily drink your coffee and eat your cookies while passing the download time. Both represent the most important fundamental types of sounds for building your songs. A lot of good songs fail because of weak drums or thin basses. > >
Sonic Capsule Bass Guitar and Sonic Capsule Groove There are also many average songs that succeed only because they have a strong beat and a punchy danceable bass. And speaking of samples: years ago I asked my friend, a well known producer, what his secret was for producing such a great sound. His answer surprised me, “The source. You can't improve a weak sound. You need to find a good source sound to work with.�
Let's do it
Sonic Capsule Bass Guitar Sonic Capsule Bass Guitar offers a big range of natural basses. Fender, Hofner, Rickenbaker, fretless, five string basses, upright acoustic basses and many others are represented. Almost everything is here, except synth basses. So, if you are looking for a synth bass library - this is not for you. All of the basses are recorded dry and have a clean but punchy sound.
#020 December 2007
Years ago I worked mainly with a sampler and tried out lots of bass libraries. It is funny how all manufacturers write the same things about their bass libraries: punchy and smooth with a full and deep sound. I can't tell you how many times I have been totally disappointed with such > >
Wusik Magazine
I’m not going to write about preset structures or multi layers, nor will I enumerate sounds here. Those things are totally irrelevant in a sample world. A preset with just a few notes can sometimes sound better than a big multi-layered one. It is far more important to determine if those samples are any good and how they sound in a particular arrangement. Do they have a
full body and sound realistic, or do they sound thin, poor and weak?
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Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
Sonic Capsule Bass Guitar and Sonic Capsule Groove
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advertising, because most of the time they've sounded thin and fake. Compared to my past experience, these Sonic Capsule Bass Guitars sound surprisingly good. OK, they can't go as low as some synth basses can but that is not the purpose of this library. If you have some basic knowledge about how to play bass melodies correctly you can easily make bass lines sound very real. I've recorded a few parts with my bass guitar along with a few prerecorded midi lines using presets from this library and have been very pleased with the final results after comparing both lines. The majority of presets were very usable and sounded quite good. There were only a few presets that didn't meet my expectations. Upright bass sounds a little stiff now and then and a few other basses have a bit of an unnatural attack.
There are not many good sample bass libraries around, especially not at this price. So, if you don't own a bass guitar and you need some decent, realistic sounding natural basses for your rock, jazz, funk or hip hop songs, then this could be the right library for you.
Sonic Capsule Grooves For 39 euros, you get around 500 drum loops and additional beat sliced versions with the Sonic Capsule Grooves library. Non-sliced loops are arranged in groups sorted by tempo from 80 to 160 BPM. The overall quality of loops is more than satisfying. According to the info there should be all sorts of genres in this capsule: jazz, funk, country, alternative, and swing, as well as rock and jungle. > >
Sonic Capsule Bass Guitar and Sonic Capsule Groove I've browsed all groups, tried all loops and honestly, I haven't found all the noted genres. OK, maybe I'm too picky, some of them could also be rock loops and a few of them could even be electro swing. Anyway, they are not bad, but if you are looking for a library containing some basic root loops for rock, funk, blues, swing and similar genres, then maybe this capsule is not the right one for you.
All in all, this Groove capsule can be a very useful starting pack for those not just into live drumming as it provides solid, not too exotic (and yet unordinary) sounding drum loops for building a strong song foundation.
Wusik Magazine #020 December 2007
Slower loops are intended more for hip hop, downtempo and electro genres. For mid-tempo, there are also many electro and hip hop loops along with additional ones for alter pop, breakbeat and few other more modern genres. The faster ones cover mostly jungle, electro and house along with some other more danceable genres. There are also many filtered loops in all tempos along with some interesting percussion and hi hat loops.
Along with these loops there are also beat sliced versions which are extended in a REX manner along the keyboard. According to the info there should be some midi files along with these beat slices as well, but I haven't found them in my zip directory. I presume this happens only in this Wusikstation format version and I believe it will be sorted out soon. Anyway, be clear about what you want and ask for an explanation on esoundz before you buy it.
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What's New
DMC-842: The first multi-channel
Digital Microphone Controller
Wusik Magazine
#020 December 2007
is shipping!
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Audio AG/RME, December 18th, 2007 (ictw) - Audio AG announced today the worldwide availability of the RME DMC842 – the first multi-channel digital microphone controller. The introduction of digital microphone technology into the pro audio industry has afforded sound engineers a greater degree of flexibility. At the same time it has created a demand for interfaces that control and handle digital microphones. When developing the DMC-842, RME worked closely together with the leading microphone manufacturers to guarantee maximum compatibility and best functionality. As a result the DMC is the most flexible and most compatible AES42 interface available - a true milestone for the broad acceptance of the new digital microphone technology.
One of the best features of the DMC-842 is its price. The device makes the use of digital microphones affordable, as its price is within the same range as conventional microphone preamp/converter solutions. In addition to its role as an interface, the DMC-842 also acts as a power supply and control device for digital microphones according to the official AES42 standard. Mode 1 and Mode 2, as specified in the AES42 standard, are currently supported by Neumann, Sennheiser and Schoeps, among others. Mode 1 permits asynchronous operation. Working with several Mode 1 microphones requires the use of SRCs (sample rate converters), which are already built into in the DMC842. Mode 2 allows microphones to be synchronized. In both modes control data for adjusting gain, polar patterns, hi-pass > >
Further information: Audio AG Dipl.-Ing. Michael Marschall Marketing Manager RME Audio AG Am Pfanderling 60 D-85778 Haimhausen (Munich) Germany Fon (+49) 08133 - 91 81 70 Press contact: integrative concepts - Public Relations and Marketing Services for the Music Industries thomas wendt loefflerstr. 9 22765 hamburg germany fon: + 49 40 398 05 995 cell: + 49 160 967 62 102 skype: ictomwendt
filter and compression settings can be sent to the microphones. Further functions are specified in the AES42 standard and availability depends on the individual microphone.
The DMC-842 is available in Europe for â‚Ź 3050,- excl. VAT. In the US the retail price is USD 3999,-. Optionally RME is also offering the unit with an added I64 MADI Card called the DMC-842-M.
#020 December 2007
The DMC-842 can handle standard AES/EBU signals at the same time as the
To adjust the various microphone parameters, RME includes a Windowsbased software application that communicates with the DMC-842 via MIDI. As with Micstasy, the DMC-842 also supports the transfer of MIDI data over MADI as well as over AES/EBU-Signals. All the main microphone parameters are also directly accessible on the unit itself.
Wusik Magazine
In many respects, the DMC-842 is an ideal companion to RME’s Micstasy. Using the same interface connections as the Micstasy (ADAT, AES/EBU, MADI and other optional formats) it ensures problem-free assembly of combined systems for both analog and digital microphones. The DMC-842 even offers analog line level outputs, so there are no problems to include analog devices in the signal chain, e.g. for monitoring purposes.
Digital Phantom Power can be switched on or off for individual channels. Thanks to the built-in SRCs, these can even be asynchronous.
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