Wusik Sound Magazine April 2008 - Vol II Issue 02
Surf Music
Surf Music by Squibs
Web design for musicians, Using Image Line’s EzGenerator
Wusik Magazine
April 2008
and other tools.
Surf Music
So you’ve bought the instruments and learned how to play them. You’ve written the tunes, and agonized over the lyrics. You’ve learned how to use the recording gear and you’ve tracked, mixed and mastered your album. Now it’s ready for the punters.
access to in-browser mp3 players, blogs, image and video galleries, and tour dates as well as the usual social networking friend tools which will allow you to pimp your wares to a wider audience. Most of these sites will allow you to “skin” your page, customising its look.
Oops… Where are the punters? Traditionally there was one sure-fire way to get your music out there: Touring. Nowadays the internet provides another effective way to promote your music. This article is not about the vagaries of internet marketing. It’s more about the mechanics of designing an online presence, introducing a nifty little application from Image Line as one possible method of doing so. Most bands and solo artists will already have an online presence, via social networking sites like MySpace. These services will allow you to create a page with most of the functionality you need right out of the box. You’ll have
This approach works very well, and there are many successes out there, ranging from the big hitters like Lilly Allen and Arctic Monkeys to smaller acts who have achieved more modest market penetration through social networking sites. Unfortunately, MySpace, Bebo and Facebook sites are instantly recognisable, and usually not in a good way. When was the last time you saw a Facebook page that could compete aesthetically with a well designed webpage? Another issue is that these sites are only customisable within the framework offered, whereas with your own website you can continue to add pages, categories and functionality – limited only by your imagination. Finally, and perhaps most importantly – have
Wusik Magazine April 2008
Surf Music you read the terms and conditions you agree to when signing up for an account? With some sites you appear to be effectively giving away your copyright. No major horror stories have emerged yet, but a time may come when a faceless corporation is using your music to make revenue, and you will be unable to do anything about it. Finally, you are constrained to a URL like http://myspace.com/punkrocklob sters, whereas creating your own site would allow you to use something like www.punkrocklobsters.com So if you decide you want complete creative control over your online presence, you need to consider your options. Essentially, there are two. You can do it yourself or you can pay somebody to design it for you.
Wusik Magazine
April 2008
If you decide to pay somebody, check out their portfolio to ensure they have the expertise to implement your vision. Web designers and developers are professionals and will charge accordingly. It’s a skilled job requiring years of study to get up to scratch, and a
lifetime of playing catch-up with the latest must-have technologies. So no, we won’t do it for free as a portfolio showcase, we don’t do a lease-purchase scheme and we won’t give a discount if you write a song about us. Pay peanuts, get monkeys. Employ the services of your mate’s girlfriend’s geeky nephew at your peril, for such an arrangement is likely to end in recriminations, tears, and a halfassed website. Unfortunately, starving musicians may often only be able to stretch to peanuts and will therefore have no option but to take the job on themselves. You can go about this in three ways. The best way is to learn the technology from the ground up. Your syllabus may involve XHTML, CSS, W3C compliance, PHP, JavaScript, browser quirks, etc. Say goodbye to several months of your life while you digest the basics. If you are brave, www.w3schools.com/ is probably the single best resource for a beginner.
Surf Music The second option is to use a Content Management System (CMS) such as Wordpress, Joomla, CMS Made Simple, Drupal, or any of the other free CMS packages. A CMS will typically allow you to “skin” your site with a template and publish new articles. Most will have “boltons” like image galleries, forums, shopping carts, etc. Some are more full featured, and some are easier to learn, but all require a significant time investment. Most people will prefer to go the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) route, where you lay out your document in an application just like you might lay out a newsletter in MS Word. The undisputed king of web editors is Adobe Dreamweaver. It has a WYSIWYG editor that just works and produces clean standards compliant code that generally works in all browsers. Unfortunately it is expensive, and say goodbye to close to €2000 if you want the Web Design Premium suite which incorporates Photoshop, Flash and other tools which integrate with Dreamweaver to simplify the
design of a website from concept to final tweaks. So what’s free then? Well there are a number of freeware tools. Look for NVU and Kompozer, both open source WYSYWYG editors. Kompozer is really just a bug fix of NVU. These programs work pretty well, but they have some issues and they tend to produce pretty verbose and untidy code. You can partner these tools with The Gimp which is a freeware image editor and may be used to develop your web graphics. Again, it has bugs. It crashes sometimes, and it has an unusual interface (remedied in part by Gimpshop which attempts to place a photoshop like interface on the Gimp engine). But hey – it’s free! So what about the middle ground between Open Source and Silly Money? Well, that’s exactly where Image Line’s EzGenerator fits in. It costs €99 + VAT, and comes from the company that brought us FL Studio. I would be surprised if many people have heard of the software, but it’s been available
Wusik Magazine April 2008
Surf Music for many years and does a steady trade. The software is aimed primarily at an audience that wants a website in a hurry, with as little pain and study as possible. EzGenerator promises to help you make a website quickly by allowing you to select from a library of thousands of templates and then build your website within the design framework of that template. Many aspects of the template are customisable, and you can replace any included stock images to personalise the site. And, get this – if you finish the site and decide the template sucks, you can just change the template throughout the site with a few clicks.
Wusik Magazine
April 2008
The innovative template engine allows you to quickly add pages and populate them, with the navigation menu being updated on the fly. It even generates graphical menu buttons, or CSS based text buttons, depending on what the user selects. It is a little awe-inspiring to see the program generate an entire website with no more than a couple of clicks
from the user. Obviously, the text and images need to be populated afterwards, but the site generation is a very impressive trick. The WYSYWIG editor is flawed however. What you see is almost what you get. I found some discrepancies between what EzGenerator rendered and what the browser displayed. This frustration is compounded by the fact that the amount of control the user has over the underlying properties is limited. You may need to resort to editing the XHTML code in a text editor to track down and eliminate some issues. There are a myriad of bolt-on modules, from simple but tasteful image galleries and editable pages (courtesy of a browser-based javascript editor) to online shops and podcasting tools. It is worth noting that you will need access to a web server capable of serving pages written in the PHP language. Your hosting package will offer this, or you can install a package like XAMPP on your own computer if you prefer to prototype locally.
Surf Music Some of the modules work well, others appeared to have bugs. I encountered a number of PHP errors pertaining to missing "PHP include" files during my testing. Much of the weirdness seems to have happened after creating a site and then switching the template. In general, they work fine though, and the application will allow you to create a password protected admin area to administer the “bolt-ons”. I would certainly recommend the software as a quick way of prototyping a new website if you are prepared to relinquish many of the creative decisions relating to look and feel to Image Line and its template designers. The designs have a corporate look for the most part and have a template feel to them. Then again, highly stylised templates would be unlikely to have a wide appeal. Realistically speaking, with several thousand templates, you are sure to find something appealing, and you can even tweak the look to an extent to suit your own requirements.
It’s certainly once of the quickest ways I have seen to create a website, beating most conventional CMS systems in terms of both speed and range of templates. You’ll still need to delve into the manual, especially for the “bolt-on” modules, but you could easily churn out a static site in an hour, and generate a module-laden site with all the possible add-ons in a day or two. If you find a real noodle-scratcher, you can post in the EzGenerator forum. The key to avoiding frustration is version control. Every time you make a significant change, save the entire project to a new directory. That way, if a change goes pear-shaped, you can revert to the most recent “good” version and continue working from there. The code is pretty clean, and should be maintainable, if you need a designer/developer to add in something not provided in the application at a later date. Find out more at www.ezgenerator.com/
Wusik Magazine April 2008
April 2008 Wusik Magazine
The Emotive Force of Music by Mark Killey
The Emotive Force of Music
Music is a universal language shared by people worldwide. It speaks where words and text can often fail us. Music has helped shape the world, just like visual art, influencing our everyday lives. Art has made the world we live in: music is just another art form. Music has had a profound emotional effect on people. Scientific papers have been written on the topic and studies have recorded the brainwaves of volunteers as they listened to different types of music. Personally, I have felt chills, tingling sensations on my head, going down my spine, up my spine and other parts of my body. These sensations are real and I am sure others have felt them too.
Music has such an emotional, physical mental and effect on people that it can cause them to weep, be sad or angry, feel sexually turned on, grow happy, or remember forgotten memories. It can make people go into a trance or daydream. It has the ability to get us to enter into hero worship, grow obsessed, form infatuations, buy goods, go to war, or feel victorious, creative, uplifted, energised or euphoric. Going to concerts (or other musical venues) can be highly influential and emotional experiences. It can be either a positive experience or a not so good one. Sound is known to have an effect on certain parts of the brain, bringing forth feelings and emotions similar to eating chocolate or taking various narcotic substances. No matter how you create music, whether by tapping two sticks together, using an acoustic instruments or by electrical/electronic means, it will have an effect on someone. So do song lyrics for that matter. What we
Wusik Magazine
Some claim that the places I have mentioned in the body correspond to what are called “chakras”. Chakras are spiritual centers used for healing, mediation, toning, chanting, radionics [a practice dealing with “subtle energies], creative visualisation and relaxation. Some literature has suggested that certain frequencies connect with specific chakras and thereby certain notes; music is after after all sound vibrations at different frequencies. This
correspondnce [brain area –> part of body (with associated chakra) –> pitch] might look, for example, like this: Pineal Gland –> Crown –> the pitch of “A”.
April 2008
The Emotive Force of Music
listen to can have meaning for us and little or no meaning to somebody else. It is a matter of taste. I happen to like a lot of of music, but not everything. There are a lot of genres and artists of music that “do it� for me and I am prepared to listen to almost anything. It might be worthwhile to write a list of music and artists that have had a profound effect on yourself. I, for one, would be interested in seeing the results. I think we would have some similarities, but there would also be differences. There are so may parts to music that it takes a lifetime to explore and, hopefully, to enjoy.
Recommended reading: Randall McClellan.Ph.D, The Healing Forces of Music. Steven Health.
Halpern,
Sound
Wusik Magazine
April 2008
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (published by Knopf)
William H. McNeill, Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History (Harvard University Press, 1995) Steven J. Mithen, The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body (Harvard University Press, 2005). Anne J. Blood*and Robert J. Zatorre, Paper on: Intensely pleasurable responses to music correlate with activity in brain regions implicated in reward and emotion. Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada H3A 2B4. [This paper is available on the internet as a download in PDF form.]
The Emotive Force of Music
In addition, I reccomend books and magazine articles about world music, experimental music, native music, tribal musicl musicology, performers, fans of music (such as “FanClub”) or about recording and playing instruments (such as “Sound on Sound” and “Guitar Magazine”). Basically, anything that influences you on the subject of music as a whole. Artist I reccomend include Kitaro, Vangelis, Talk Talk, Alanis Morrissette, Ken Davis, Steven Halpern, Jean Michel Jarre. Try listening to examples of tribal, trance, world, gospel, classical, opera, (some) electronica, pop, rock, swing and big band and any artist and genre you may wish to
add to the list that has an effect on you or would recommend. A lot of artists have written songs about the joys, pain and angst of love and, relationships. So a lot of people can identify and relate with these songs. Most songs are written about these feelings and emotions. For some people these songs may depress them while other might not be bothered by them.
Wusik Magazine
As a personal observation, during the last 15-20 years I feel the quality of music has declined. A lot of pop music is more manufactured. I don't mean the technical process of how the music is created, but rather the way that songs have become shallower and less about the things that are important, (such as respect etc), at least for me. The entertainment industry has become more focused on targeting certain demographic groups with their marketing money, rather than on the quality of new and interesting talent and music. There is a lot music out there that waits to be discovered and heard, rather than just the over-manufactured, overproduced and over-ompressed noise that seems to clog up the airwaves and take up space. But some people like that kind of music and there is nothing wrong with emotional diversity.
April 2008
Chris Sciurba - aka Ugo www.ugoaudio.com
by Rurik Leffant
Wusik Magazine
April 2008
(xoxos) www.xoxos.net
Chris Sciurba
"Chris.. the first time I encountered you was about a decade ago, when you moderated the Fizmo User Group and webpage. The thing that stands out most in my mind was how lushly illustrated the page was, reflecting the aesthetic of the instrument in question. Understanding that you are a professional graphic designer, my first question is how these creative fields connect for you.. or perhaps on creativity in general. Why create?" The visual and audio arts are very much interconnected in my mind.
As for your question of "why create?" The only answer I can think to give is simply because I feel I must. I think we all feel the need to express ourselves in some way, and some feel that urge more than others. It just happens that it is through the arts that I feel I can best do so. "You have admitted to me that you have no particular social agenda, yet at the same time you have obviously demonstrated a regard for public resource. How do you see the availability of free tools like SynthEdit impacting the development of music technology, and of cultural development in general if you care to field the question, or
April 2008
When I am working on music I often see visuals in my imagination. (Still images, moving scenes, objects, characters.) I don't usually start with that in mind but rather the visuals build as the song builds. Sometimes the visual effects the song, other times I don't see the picture until the song is
complete. Sometimes it's a clear and complete image, other times I only get brief and fuzzy glimpses...like looking out the window of a train on a foggy day. So audio and visual really do seem to go hand in hand for me.
Wusik Magazine
I've been around the visual arts in some way all my life. Both my parents are artists (my mother has been a painter, printmaker, and jeweler, and my father a photographer and filmmaker) and before I became a musician my primary focus in life was visual art. That focus shifted
when I became a musician but I have almost no formal training in music, I do not know theory, and I cannot sight read sheet music. So in place of a knowledge of the written language and structure of music, I applied a combination of my ears and my analysis of visual art to the study of music. As a result, instead of consciously thinking of music in terms of scales, intervals, and time signatures, I find myself thinking of music more in terms of texture, shape, physical depth, layering, placement, movement, shade, etc., and this applies to both sound design and composition.
Chris Sciurba
Wusik Magazine
April 2008
is this concern?"
not
your
In regard to my own participation in helping provide public resources, yes it is true that I do not have any particular social agenda. While I certainly respect those that are motivated to inspire social change (such as yourself), I just like to be able to give something back to the music community that has been so helpful to me over the years. Freeware and inexpensive commercial software was a godsend to me during my more difficult financial times. I know what it is like to be broke and in debt, so I like being able to release free and affordable software in the hopes that it may help others when they are bound by harsh financial constraints but are still craving new tools to express their creativity with. Similarly, I have learned a tremendous amount from people online who were kind enough to share their advice and knowledge, so I like to give some of that back when I can too. As far as the impact free and highly inexpensive tools such as SynthEdit
(and the plugins created with them) have had on things, I think it has been beneficial on the whole. In particular, I think they have helped in the following ways: - There is now a vast and ever changing palette of tools for those on limited budgets to write music with (and without having to resort to warez.) This strengthens the music community from a creative stand point simply by helping encourage the act of musical expression. Similarly, I suspect it may also help encourage people with more flexible budgets to experiment with computer music because they don't need to risk a large investment just to find out if they like writing/performing with a computer or not. If that suspicion is correct, then that would mean that the availability of free and inexpensive software may actually help increase the size of the commercial market (at least to a certain extent) by bringing in more potential customers. SynthEdit and environments like it have allowed people to more
easily experiment and create unique/odd plugins that appeal to niche markets that are often too small for many commercial developers to be able to afford to apply their resources towards. This also creates a kind of proving ground for new and esoteric concepts, which can aid larger devs by letting them see what wild ideas/trends may be commercially viable enough for them to work on in the future. - By always maintaining (and raising) the bar on what can be had for little or nothing, these applications create steady competition that helps fuel much larger advances in sound, functionality, and overall quality within the higher level commercial releases. I know many would disagree with me on these points, and certainly good arguments can be made against them, but this is how I currently view the matter.
"In addition to the F.U.G., you moderated other hardware synth user groups. With software tools such as
Chris Sciurba
SynthEdit, our ideas about how to make sound have been developing rapidly. Your Developer Challenge entry was entirely algorithmic. And you are obviously an experienced instrumentalist given you recent demo of an unusual fretless bass with acrylic strings. What regions of music or creativity do you anticipate exploring in the next few years? The next decade?"
And in the non-music related category, this year I am planning to get more into photography. "Each of your VST feature discretely different interfaces, suggesting that the GUI is more than a matter of functionality. Reaction? (possible rewording of this question to suit answer..) Do you see a continuity in the evolution of form? Perhaps you can describe how one VST concept formed." One of the reasons each of my interfaces is different is just because the graphic designer in me likes the challenge of coming up with something new. It's an excuse for me to be visually creative, and in a way I do not get to
explore at my day job too often. I also like to try to have the visual style of the GUI match how I feel about the tone, functionality, and overall character of the plugin. I suppose it can be argued that, from a marketing standpoint, a more visually unified product line could aid in brand recognition, but I feel that if each product has it's own unique vibe then it should also have it's own look. I also suspect that allowing a plugin to have a more unique "personality" of it's own, it may help improve any emotional connection the user feels with it. However, I feel that skin design and control layouts are ultimately meant to serve the functionality, not dictate it. So functionality and workflow always take priority with my GUIs, and the aesthetics are designed within those confines. And of course I do feel that a GUI should be aesthetically pleasing. Since the users will have to look at the plugin while using it, I think devs should strive to make it worth looking at. Of course there are people out there who are far
Wusik Magazine
At the rate things are advancing, and given my history of shifting/developing interests, I cannot venture a guess as to what exactly I might be focusing on a decade from now, other than I'm sure my obsessions with music and the tools used to make it will remain strong. With that said, over the next few years there some things I am especially interested in exploring in far more depth. One is to work more with the sounds of ethnic instruments, found objects/junk, machinery, and the synthetic hybrid/approximations of natural sounds in order to further expand my
textural and tonal palette. Another is to try focusing on using instrumental music to represent a much more varied and nuanced range of emotions and character traits, going beyond the basics of love, hate, sadness, and excitement, and further into feelings such as curiosity, envy, slyness, jealously, etc.
April 2008
Chris Sciurba
Wusik Magazine
April 2008
more utilitarian than I, and see all instruments and effects (hardware or software) and only means to an end, but I think that when a product looks inviting it can be more fun to use and entices the user to work with it more often. To answer your question on how my VST concepts are formed...my ideas usually come from a perceived "hole" in my current arsenal of plugins. This could either be a type of sound or a feature set I want to work with, but it is always something that I feel my current rig can't quite deliver in the way I would prefer. If I can't buy what I am looking for (either because it doesn't seem to exist quite how I envision it, or I just can't justify spending the money on closest thing), then I try my hand at building it. At least that is where the ideas start, but the final VST is not always what I started out working towards. New ideas, spur of the moment experiments, and limitations/roadblocks experienced during the course of development all help shape the plugin, and the end result always seems to be much more
interesting than what I originally started out to make. "You have an extensive collection. Which instruments (of any kind) do you find yourself using most, and what features attract you to them? Obviously your repertoire indicates that you don't see electronics as an obstacle to expression. Is there an example of an instrument that you use infrequently yet find indispensable?" The list of instruments I reach for the most frequently changes from time to time, and I tend to use a whole lot of them, but I'll try to keep this list down to only my top picks. - Korg padKontrol It may only be a controller, but I see it as an instrument. For the last year and a half I have use one (and sometimes two) as my main controller instead of a traditional keyboard. I was never a piano player so keys were never a natural interface for me. However, the padKontrol's lack of key travel, it's velocity
response, and general tactile vibe seems to connect better with my bassist background. Also, I have found I've enjoyed writing with the notes laid out in a chromatic grid. - Modulus Quantum 6 bass My Modulus gets used more often than my other basses simply because it fits in the mix so well. I tend to go for relatively dense arrangements and my other basses are more difficult to fix in there, but the Modulus drops right in and holds it's ground without overpowering everything else. - Kontakt Kontakt became my sampler of choice years ago since I got it with Komplete and it can do most of what I want, but I've been using it a lot more often over the past year because I've been making heavy use of drum/percussion and ethnic instrument samples. (Particularly from Soniccouture and Precision Sound.) - LiveSlice I bought LiveSlice a few years ago and I've been hooked on it ever since. Being able to so quickly and easily play, edit, and
Chris Sciurba
mix and match drum loops has been fantastic. It breathes new life into old loops and it lets me have more control over them, and be more creative with them, without slowing down my writing process too much. For similar reasons, I expect I'll be using Disturbance a whole lot now too. - Massive In my opinion, Massive kicks ass. I'm a long time fan of the NI sound and Massive is no exception, but I also think it's interface is a blast to use. It's easy to use, a whole lot of fun, and the synth can deliver a huge range of very high quality sounds. It also sits well in my mixes.
You've probably noticed that I've placed an emphasis on ease of use for most of these. I have found that I am easily sidetracked when writing so I need to keep my mind focused on moving the song forward, starting with the skeleton of the piece and fleshing it out from there. If I get too caught up in the sound design details too early in this process, I'm likely to loose my focus/drive for completing the song. As a result, I tend to keep my sound designing separate from my song writing, and I usually prefer to write with synths that I can tweak quickly when I need to fine tune a preset. And generally speaking, I just prefer to have fun with whatever instruments and effects I am using, rather than feel like I have to fight them and wade through cumbersome interfaces to get anything done. (I had enough of that back in my hardware days.)
As for what may be used infrequently but is still indispensable, I'd have to say most of my basses and guitars...but to pick one in particular: my Music Man Stingray 5. It growls like an animal and I've played it for so many years that it's like an extension of my body. It's an old friend of mine and if the house was on fire it's one of the few items I might try to run out the door with. "Can you tell us a bit about your bands? Which artists, styles or ideas are reflected in your musical character? Do you see any of these in your VST?" I've been mainly been solo for the last 13 (or so) years so I haven't been in many bands. The last one I was in for any substantial length of time was an experimental/prog jam band, which consisted of two bassists (me being one of them), an ambient guitarist, and whatever drummer we could find. It was a fun experience and I learned a lot from playing with them, but we never played live and didn't finish more than a handful of songs.
Wusik Magazine
- Ironhead I created Ironhead with a specific kind of sound and goal in mind: to have fast access to quickly tweaked hybrid drum sounds that were different than everything else I had access to. I guess I correct in assessing my craving, and succeeded in my development goals, because I've found myself using Ironhead for at least a few parts in nearly every song I've written since I built it.
I'll also give honorable mentions to Rez, Wusikstation, and String Theory / M-theory. (The latter is still new but I expect to be using a whole lot.)
April 2008
Wusik Magazine
April 2008
Chris Sciurba
It was after that band that I chose to focus on my own songwriting (and start getting something accomplished/finished), first working with an 80's goth sound, then moving into EBM influenced stuff, and going more dance and less dark after that. I also wrote a few scores for a couple of my father's films. Following that I was in a creative rut for many years and didn't find a way to start branching out again until the end of 06, when I had a real breakthrough. I'm not really sure what my music since then would be classified as. It's a hybrid of many things that have influenced me over the years and the vibe definitely can be quite different from track to track. For lack of any better all encompassing explanation, I usually just tell people that it is primarily electronic would probably be well suited for film or game soundtracks. Many artists have influenced me over the years but the main ones I probably see/feel more links to, in either my current music or my general thoughts on sound and composition, would be: Bowie, FLA, NIN, Underworld, Curve, Prodigy, Fluke, Juno
Reactor, Philip Glass, Tom Waits, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Gary Numan. Jeff Rhodes from Perimeter Sound Arts says he keeps hearing a lot of Depeche Mode in my music. Though I've never consciously thought of them as an influence (and rarely listen to their albums), I'm starting to hear what he means. I've also found myself being increasingly influenced by Danny Elfman's soundtracks for Tim Burton's films. I've never thought much about how these influences have found their way into my VSTs (outside of the one or two times I've tried to recreate a sound from an album) but surely they must have since my VSTs are born from my own musical needs, and that music was influenced by those artists. "And lastly, what would you like to create? Is there some technology or idea that would establish a plateau in your musical achievement?" More than anything else, I'd just like to be able to keep creating and progressing and I hope that any plateau is a
temporary lull before the next great step forward. But with that said, there are two things I would be thrilled to achieve. In both cases, a solid development team would be necessary to accomplish them because they will likely remain beyond my abilities to create them on my own. Like many fans of physical modeling, I would love to be able to use a synth that could really recreate the acoustic properties of natural materials and their combinations, and let me design new instruments with them in a very visual manor, instead of keeping it in the abstract of just drop down boxes and sliders. (Think more of a Kai Kraus graphics interface than a standard synth.) The synth should be useable in a way that even someone who is relatively new to this could quickly and intuitively start create new instruments with no real knowledge of either physics or the technical aspects of physical modeling. All that should be required to get started is an imagination and a relatively good idea of how instruments can work. For example, in the
Chris Sciurba
real world someone can look at a banjo and deduce that the combination of a plucked string, a tight membrane, and a bridge to connect the two, produces the sound...even without understanding the physics involved that allow for the creation of that sound. The synth should work in a similar way. It should be a virtual acoustic/electric instrument building workshop, not a tool for academics. Another key feature in making this more useable and more fun for a larger audience is that some of the laws of nature should be broken/ignored in the program. If someone chooses to use glass as a resonant material they should only need to be concerned with if they like the sound, not worry about if it will shatter.
The other thing I would love to be able to help create would be some kind of new MIDI controller. One that is built specifically to match the strengths, needs, and backgrounds of computer based synthesists and sound designers, can also be played as a velocity sensitive, polyphonic instrument, can capture various details of the player's technique, and does not force the user to learn how to play an instrument they have no interest in just because that has become the conventional choice of interface. I have become increasingly dissatisfied with controllers that try to overlay standard instrument interfaces (piano, guitar, etc.) over top of synths and other production tools. While they can help players of
those natural instruments become more comfortable with using synths, I feel that they don't actually make much sense when thought of it from the perspective of the sounds produced and the functions required. The common natural instrument interfaces typically just feel like shoehorned workarounds to me, instead of proper solutions to the interface problem. I think there are pieces of the puzzle already out there...such as the Lemur, other multi touch interfaces (like what Jeff Han has shown), and Novation's Automap...but the magic combination has yet to be hit upon. With technology improving at the rate that it is (along with the decreasing prices of the necessary components) and with more designers becoming tuned into the need for interfaces that are more adaptable and better suited to the tasks computer based musicians (and even just normal computer users) perform, I like to think that we will eventually see a much better solution reach the market...and I would love to help design such a product.
Wusik Magazine
A synth like this has long been a goal of many devs over the years. Critics have said that it would be pointless because the majority of the instruments created would "sound terrible"...and surely many probably would...but for me that would be part of the fun and I think many of these weird concoctions could be fanstasic and unique
sounding instruments. But then again I also feel that all sounds can be potentially useful in music, so a program that let me build my own instruments to whatever impractical and ill-advised real world specs I wanted would be loads fun and and very useful in my own compositions.
April 2008
Robert Ashley
1975
Wusik Magazine
April 2008
2006
A Contemporary Master of Electronic Opera by Warren Burt
Robert Ashley
Robert Ashley: Now Eleanor's Idea – Lovely Music LCD 1009 – www.lovely.com
Wusik Magazine
For those who came in late (to quote the well known beginning of innumerable Phantom comics), opera is not just an historical art form, but is alive, well and flourishing. Although 20th and 21st century opera infrequently appears in the opera houses of the world, outside the established opera companies, the form is growing, evolving, and moving in some pretty exciting directions. Many contemporary composers have written operas, but the three composers who have done the most to advance the artform in the last quarter of the 20th century, and the first decade of the 21st are Robert Ashley, the late Karlheinz Stockhausen, and R. Murray Schafer. All three have not just written an opera or two, but have each produced a sustained series of works over the past 35 years. In sheer quantity, they have produced enough opera to keep the genre going for at least the rest of this century.
And they've all done it outside the constraints of the contemporary opera companies. Stockhausen's “Licht” series, probably the most traditional of the lot (if you can call a series of 7 evening long rituals involving electronics, avant-garde mystical theatrics, virtuoso instrumental playing, and advanced stagecraft traditional!), have taken place in established opera theatres in Europe, but the performers have largely been drawn from his own ensemble. Schafer's “Patria” series of operas has the distinction of being performed out in the environment - in remote locations in Canada. In order to hear the works, the listener has to travel deep into wilderness areas, and camp for a period of several days in order to experience the opera taking place all around them. The distinction between performers and audience still exists, but much more tenuously than in other forms of music. Robert Ashley's series of operas, which have appeared regularly since the late 1970s, are perhaps the most radical of the lot. Originally conceived for television, they dispense with acoustic instruments in favor of electronic
April 2008
Wusik Magazine
April 2008
Robert Ashley
orchestration, and mostly don't use operatic singing, but instead explore the world between speech and song. One of Ashley's interests has been making a form of opera, and song, that would reflect the unique inflections of American English. In “Perfect Lives,” “Atalanta,” the four operas that constitute “Now Eleanor's Idea,” “Dust,” “Concrete,” and other works, he has been doing this for thirty years with grace, wit, elegance, humor, and compassion. To do this, he's formed his own ensemble, which has consisted, for the past 3 decades, of some of the most virtuosic contemporary singers and electronics players working today. “Now Eleanor's Idea” is a series written between 1985 and 1994. It consists of four 90-minute operas
in which some of the characters from his earlier opera for television, “Perfect Lives” continue to pursue their individual paths, after the transformative spiritual experiences that ocurred in that opera. “Improvement (Don Leaves Linda),” “el/Aficionado,” “Foreign Experiences” and the finale of the series, also called “Now Eleanor's Idea” are the four sections of the work. “Perfect Lives” took place in the American Midwest (more specifically in Galesburg, Illinois) and in each of the four sections of “Now Eleanor's Idea” the individual characters head west for other locales, and careers. One becomes successfully involved in business (Linda), another (Don) entrapped in espionage (a recurring subject in Ashley's operas), yet another is trapped in a dead-end life (Junior Junior ), while the subject of the
Robert Ashley
fourth section, Eleanor, (formerly a bank teller) gets involved in the media, and through her work reporting on the HispanicAmerican automotive artists of New Mexico, achieves what can only be termed "enlightenment". Her enlightenment, and spiritual realization occupies the entire 22 minutes of the final act, surely one of the most ecstatic sequences in contemporary music. The four 90 minute operas are available on CD - “Improvement” on Nonesuch, and the other three on Lovely Music, all are well worth listening to ,even if you don't have any interest in opera.
Due to technical difficulties, “Now Eleanor's Idea” is the last of the operas to appear on CD. It's been well worth the wait. Ashley had to wait for the technology to catch up with him in order to record the piece as he conceived it. Now that the technology is there, we have the recording of the work, and it's a honey. Central to “Now Eleanor's Idea” is the community that Eleanor interacts with – the Hispanic-American low-rider artists of northern New Mexico. To quote Ashley, “The Lowriders of
Wusik Magazine
In these operas you will hear no overblown, vibrato-wobbling voices, and no hysterical battling between singers and orchestra. Instead, you will hear speech, speech-song, and singing that advances the meaning of the words, without dominating them. If you only experience of the voice is singing in pop or folk music, you will be in for quite a pleasant surprise in these operas, that feature lush electronic orchestras backing up singers and speakers
who speak one moment, chant the next, and break into song the next – all driven by the onward thrust of Ashley's often surreal narrative texts. Each of the CDs of these operas also come with the complete printed texts. The combined texts of these four operas are a major monument in late 20th century experimental poetry, as well as being the basis for these luminous works. If you have any aspirations towards making any kind of contemporary musical theatre, you would do well to acquaint yourself with Ashley's work.
April 2008
Wusik Magazine
April 2008
Robert Ashley
Northern New Mexico, many based in Espanola and Chimayo, are a large group of artists of devout spiritual and aesthetic seriousness. For many years, they have practiced the art of converting that secular American icon, the automobile, into a moving, religious shrine.” Again quoting Ashely, the Lowriders have developed “a 'pure' form of Catholicism that could only have happened in America.” The voices of two of the artists, Joan and Arthur “LowLow” Medina, appear in the opera, describing work on two of Arthur's projects. Their comments quite clearly show the nexus of spiritualism, automotive engineering, and art that go into the making of this work. The liner notes for the CD show a number of the automobiles by artists Medina, Julian Quintana and Dennis
Martinez, and the opera is filled with a loving appreciation of these artists, their work and their lives. Although mostly in English, as the opera progresses, and Eleanor gets to know her subjects (and eventual friends) more and more personally, the opera makes a transition, until by the end of Act 3, it's almost entirely in Spanish. This is done so gradually and skillfully that even a listener with no Spanish, such as myself, is able to follow the action completely. Then in the last section of Act 3, we suddenly shift back to English, which prepares us for the apotheosis of Act 4, Eleanor's transcendent aria. The performing throughout is stunning, but special mention needs to be made of one of the most amazing voices in contemporary music, Joan La
Robert Ashley
Barbara – her performance as Eleanor is riveting. When I saw this opera live at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1994, it was one of the high points of my musical life, and this was partly because of La Barbara's singing. Now 14 years later, the recording is equally affecting and wonderful. Tom Hamilton's electronic orchestrations are masterful, as are the rest of the voices: Amy X. Neuberg, Marghreta Cordero, Thomas Buckner, Jacqueline Humbert, Sam Ashley (who also programmed some of the electronics), and of course Robert Ashley himself. In each act, the vocal techniques used change, from unison speaking/chanting of selected parts of the text, to interactions that derive from talkback radio, to juxtaposed streams of several narratives at once, to the ecstatic song of Act 4.
The electronics used throughout integrate seamlessly with the voices – like Stockhausen, in the 1980s Ashley discovered that commercially available electronics had caught up with his desires, and the electronic orchestra is made up of many familiar sounds, handled with elegance and sophistication. I could go on, but I won't. All I'll say is that if you want to have a mind and ear expanding experience, and come face to face with an honestt o -w hat ever-d ei t y-yo u-d esi re post-modern masterpiece (a contradiction, I know, but there you have it), you owe it to yourself to discover Robert Ashley's operas, especially “Now Eleanor's Idea.”
Wusik Magazine April 2008
Samplitude Music Studio 2008
Wusik Magazine
April 2008
by Johan Vaxelaire
Samplitude Music Studio 2008
Magix Samplitude Music Studio: perhaps you have already seen this name in the software rays of some big multimedia stores. Here in France, it can even be seen in supermarkets. It may seem surprising to find a sequencer in stores of common consumption, especially since it is now branded Samplitude. Some of you may have doubts concerning this sequencer so let us see what it actually offers. Start The box contains an installation DVD and a quick userguide which lists the features of the sequencer and explains the basic functions of software. A regular userguide is availlable as a PDF file. Installation is handled without any problems by an automatic
instaler. The installation takes a few minutes and background music plays in a continuous loop while you wait. The installation process gives a taste of the seriousness of the software, and I must confess that this feeling is reinforced by the Samplitude Music Studio user interface. It is really similar to Samplitude Pro. The Magix Team made every effort to make the software approachable to those starting out in computeraided music. There is even a video presentation that explains the basics, mirroring the content of the quick userguide. Note that the video (as well as the manuals) are normally translated to your language. The user interface also manifests this accessibility in several presets that change the working area of the sequencer: "Power User" covers all functions, "Easy" presents the most common ones, while presets such as "Record" and "Master" display only options necessary for these specific tasks.
Wusik Magazine April 2008
Samplitude Music Studio 2008
What's new since Music Studio 2007?
Magix
Already there's big news: Magix Music Studio has become 100% Samplitude. This has the effect of giving Samplitude Music Studio 2008 the Hybrid Audio Engine (a combination of the Low Latency Engine and the Samplitude Playback Engine). It guarantee low latency for direct audio recording and for VSTis. This new version also brings some news in the MIDI aspect of the software, by supporting VSTi multi out, adding big improvement to MIDI support and the level of the automation, which can now be added directly in tracks. This version also bring us new effects and virtual instruments. For VSTi, there's Vita and Revolta2. Vita is a VSTi specialized in the reproduction of acoustic instruments, enriching compositions with sounds of metal and rock guitars (powerchords) and percussion with sounds from Yellow Tools. Revolta 2 is specialized in the reproduction of analog sounds, great for electronic music.
Wusik Magazine
April 2008
Beyond the new additions, the remaining instruments are Sample Tank LE, Drum and Bass Machine,
Beatbox, Livid (acoustic drums), Robota (electronics sounds generator) and Atmos (natural sound generator) for VSTi. Concerning VST effects, this new version gives you your money's worth with a very complete list including the Vintage Effect Suite (chorus, flanger, delay, distortion, filters), tube amp simulation, reverbs, and all that is needed for mixing and mastering.
The MIDI Software...
Aspect
of
the
I have read (without having tested myself) that the previous version seemed to have major issues with MIDI. I've seen no problems for this version. The MIDI espact is very well done and effective. I find the software is really intuitive and that, even without reading much of the userguide, I never felt lost. For those who will make their first steps into using VSTis, Magix gives all you need to arrive there without having to spend three days studying carefully just to hear the soft sound of a single synthesizer. It is definitely great to be able to hear VSTis, but it is still necessary to have a good environment to
Samplitude Music Studio 2008
record them in! As a nice surprise, the sequencer is well conceived and has all the practical advantages of a dedicated MIDI editor. First of all, four recording type are available (Normal, Overdub, Multi-overdub and Replace), each practical for making different types of additions. But the best surprise is undoubtedly the piano roll which is really practical because it has practically all the editing options available, even a score/notation editor, which is not availlable generally in software at this price. Of course the MIDI use is not free from defects, the most notable concerning routing options, which I have to say are restricted. But after all, it's a sequencer first and not modular routing software. I also want to put my comments in perspective by saying that much costlier sequencers often don't do as well as this one.
... and the Audio Aspect! Here we arrive at the strong point of Samplitude Music Studio 2008! Plug a guitar in the soundcard or record with a microphone into your computer and regulate the amp simulation. This immeadiately gives a very good feeling. Audio recording is very nice and really efficient. In this area the software is a real success.
Numerous controls are present to emphasize your instrument's recording with (for example) presets in the mixing table for every type of instrument. Notably, the sound meters react well and the the visualization of audio events is really nice and well done. The Low Latency Samplitude driver makes this software give good initial results even without a specialized soundcard: there will be time to buy one of those later. In conclusion, the audio aspect of this sequencer, is a good alternative to the mastering or mixing capabalities of other sequencers.
Verdict For basic use this economic software is ideally suited for beginners, perfect for allowing you to make first recordings of your band, but it is also great for users looking to supplement a sequencer restricted in the audio department or with incomplete options. As an ideal gateway to eventually upgrading to Samplitude 10, this consumer version is not a toy and allows the user to achieve very good results. With many people only using 45% of the potential of their more expensive sequencers, what is there to think about? Wusik Magazine April 2008
Zero-G
SoundSense Series: Technomatik
Wusik Magazine
April 2008
by Ginno 'g.no' Legaspi
Zero-G
SoundSense Series: Technomatik
This month's sample sounds focuses on Zero-G's budget sample library called "Technomatik" - part of the affortable SoundSense Series. Technomatik is an Acid WAV/AIFF loopsformat sample library from sound developers Zero-G. This 500MB library is packed with the latest heart-pounding sounds suitable for both techno and electro producers. It also contains over 200 REX2 files compatible with programs such as Spectrasonic's Stylus RMX and Propellerhead's Reason 4. Technomatik is produced by DJ Stakka, whom is also the author/programmer of other famous Zero-G libraries such as Firestorm.
The strength of this library lies in the Construction Kits. There are 15 kits available and most sounds are recorded around 130bpm range. You'll get all various kit files (synth riff, bass line, drum loops, etc.) plus a mix file for you to audition. My favorites from the group are the "124bpm Tunnel" and the crushing "Akupuncture Demo". I think these two construction kits represent the quality of samples you'll get from this library. Other included sounds on Technomatik are drum loops (beats), synth riffs, bass, synth hits and FX. There are single drum hits available with good selections of kick, snare, closed & open hi hats and claps. If you like Perc loops, you're not left out as there are 20 of them thrown in for good measure. Worthy of mention are the FX sounds which are all good for transition between song sections or just for applying certain effects.
Verdict: This library is packed with raw, hyper, adrenalin-pumping sounds that will excite even the most seasoned club-goers.
Formats: DVD-Rom with over 500Mb of content in multi-format version, 44.1kHz/16-Bit, Acid WAV (600 files), AIFF Apple Loops (600 files) and Stylus RMX Compatible REX2 files (260 files)
April 2008
List Price: $59.95, ÂŁ29.95 including VAT.
Wusik Magazine
Contact: www.zero-g.co.uk, www.soundsonline.com, www.timespace.com
Viral Outbreak
Wusik Magazine
April 2008
by A. Arsov
I used to own a Virus B some years ago, just let me make this clear at the beginning: No, Viral Outbreak is not a Virus clone and yes, it is a hell of a good virtual synth based on sounds from Access Virus TI.
Viral Outbreak
What's Going On? As far as I understand, the fellows from Nucleus SoundLab have gathered waves from the Virus TI and programmed fresh new presets with of them. But this is not the only reason why Viral Outbreak is not an exact clone of the Virus. The original synth had a lot of presets containing some aftertouch modulation and I really miss this feature on most of
the virtual synths out today. Plenty of the presets on my Virus also had some wild modulation routing linked to the MIDI controller's modulation wheel. Filters, LFOs, pan and all other parameters were dancing while I went totally mad with the mod wheel. To be fair, I should mention that there are presets in Viral Outbreak using this ability as well, but not as many as on my Virus B.
Wusik Magazine April 2008
Viral Outbreak
Wusik Magazine
April 2008
Another distinction is the arpeggiator. There are a lot of excellent arpeggiated presets in a Viral Outbreak, but the original synth had a very cleaver solution for this type of sound. Pressing just one key on a keyboard played a gated rhythm, while pressing two or more keys made for an arpeggiated multi tonal heaven. This way all sounds
could be gated or arped at the same time. Most of the modern VST synths have separated the gated presets from the arpeggiated ones. These differences explain why Viral Outbreak is not a Virus clone, so let's take a loot at why it is a hell of a good virtual synth.
Viral Outbreak Virtual Synth Epidemic Viral Outbreak sounds good; surprisingly good. Presets have the clean punch and character of the original synth and there are many very interesting and useful presets. My honest opinion is that bass presets sound even better than those on the Virus. I had ordered Viral Outbreak for review just to satisfy my curiosity if this fellow could even come close to my
old synth, but now I'm more than happy to add it to my synth arsenal. Virual Outbreak VSTi is filled with strong, rich presets with a distinctive character. Killer basses, rich pads, heterogeneous leads and cool effect presets. What impressed me most, is the fat and powerful sounds that aren't simply drowned in reverb as it is the case with many other virtual instruments. I presume this is a possible asset of sample based instruments.
Wusik Magazine April 2008
Viral Outbreak
Diagnosis of the Details
Prescription
The Viral Outbreak sample library comes with Wusik Engine V4, making it a very flexible synth. 3.5 GB of multisamples come with nearly 950 presets. All these goodies are packed into a skin made by Vera Kinter (better known as ArtVera). This sexy, black graphical interface contains all the controllers that can be found on the Wusikstation. I believe that there is no need to go into the details about the structure of Wusik Engine or Wusikstation. This sampler has been fully presented so many times before in our magazine that we are all well acquainted with all its capabilities.
Just as was the case with the Virus B, this is not a synth for emulating real instruments. It doesn’t matter if the foundation for this library is a sampler – it remains a lethal virus designed primarily for electronic musicians (though it can supplement your real instruments with extra spices).
Wusik Magazine
April 2008
Feverish Conclusions For just $99.95 (Canadian) you get a virtual synth filled with a bunch of useful, powerful, rich and lush sounding sounds. Thanks to their raw, clean character and versatile selection you can easily make a whole song just by using this library, something that is not always the case with other modern virtual instruments. It definitively doesn’t sound like just another analog modelling virtual synth, and if you own Propellerhead Reason you can also get this library in the form of a Refill for the same price with new, additional combinator presets.
So be aware – the past is history: this is the sound of the future. No acoustic sounds included. Electro drums, synth basses, electro pianos along with all other synth sounds and effects are the name of the game, and Viral Outbreak is there.
For additional info and examples visit www.viraloutbreak.net
audio the
Wusik Magazine
April 2008
Wusik Magazine
April 2008
Beat me, Smash me, Squeeze me.
by A. Arsov
Beat me, Smash me, Squeeze me.
It's a compressed, uniform world we live in. No one is supposed to stick out. Don't be too smart, neither too stupid; don't be fast, don't be slow – this should keep everybody happy in the long run. Brave New World was fiction back then, but now it is slowly becoming our reality. The same thing has happened to music. First of all, everything needs to be compressed, smashed and squeezed to fit beautifully into our spoiled ears. Second, the more smashed the sound is, the louder it can be. Squeezed sounds can also be better glued together with other smashed sounds. Don't
get
me
wrong:
I'm
not
an
old
moralizing bugger. To tell you the truth, I'm not even a nature lover. I love concrete sounds; I love wildly artificial sounds; and I love compression, because I can smell the future when everything becomes loud and proud. As long as no one presses on my head, I have nothing against compression. I can even remember when I heard about compression for the first time. I was ten or so and a friend of mine told me an (ageappropriate) joke: “Hey, have you heard that but it is only three inch by three inch big!� I believe
we
now
have
the
compression
mentioned in those days: 20-pint songs squeezed to the threshold of pain; we love when our ears are bleeding.
Wusik Magazine
the Japanese have invented a 20-pint bottle,
April 2008
Beat me, Smash me, Squeeze me.
Voxengo Elephant!
Wusik Magazine
April 2008
It's not easy to find a good limiter today. There’s always the same Catch 22. As women used to say about men, they are like toilets: spoiled, soiled or already taken. No good options. It’s the same with limiters. There are good and expensive ones or cheap and useless ones. Most limiters are good if you use them on individual tracks in an arrangement, but when you put them where they belong (on the main output bus), you soon see the difference. When all sounds burst forth from the main output like a bunch of barbarians, cheap limiters quickly collapse. They have a bad habit of changing the mix in undesired ways.
Beat me, Smash me, Squeeze me.
One more time – Voxengo Elephant!
To come to a short conclusion: it has an excellent sound, is easy to use and very light on the pocketbook. I can hardly imagine my musical life without this little Elephant.
Wusik Magazine
I have fallen in love with this limiter since the first day I got it. It costs 70 dollars (U.S.), sounds like the most expensive ones and is an excellent value for the money. It has few presets that cover almost all music styles. No, they don't have names like rock, pop, dnb and the like. Instead, they are arranged into categories like fast, slow, punchy, electro, hi-gain and smooth. Even my nine-year-old son could find the appropriate preset in a minute. I’m no slouch when it comes finding my way around gear or tweaking things, but I adore designs for dummies. We are musicians and not highly trained sound engineers. I like to open the effect, find an appropriate preset, tweak just a bit here, a bit there and have it work. Speaking of tweaking, thank Zeus that Voxengo Elephant is not one of these “Microsoft-sort-ofuser-friendly-plug-and-pray” type of effects. It has all the essential controls on the main window, so you
won’t be condemned to using “the almighty preset”. It has a limiter mode with options, ranging from a clean to pumping sound, and a limiter speed control spanning from slow to fast. Then there is a dithering drop menu to choose to dither at depths from 8 to 24 bits or leave it bypassed. A stereo link menu let’s you choose from 0 to 100 % linking between the channels. The Oversample menu lets you specify the amount of oversampling. Then there are the Noise shape, DC Filter and DC FL type menus. Finally, a metering-option-menu to adapt the view of the real-time gain-reduction meter is just a click of the question mark away. As you can see, all the elements are there to make things more complicated than they need to be, intended for (and invented by) all too picky users, who constantly ignore the excellent factory presets.
April 2008
Beat me, Smash me, Squeeze me.
Voxengo Marquis Compressor
Wusik Magazine
April 2008
Maybe not as intuitive as Elephant and not as dead cheap but it still offers more than just good value for the money. It costs 90 dollars (U.S.) and yes, there are a lot of compressors in this price range, but this one has nice, clean sound that can not be found with most of its competitors. It has plenty of presets. As you have already noticed, I'm a preset freak. I have to admit that somehow I can't find a common
language with the Marquis presets. There are plenty of guitar, bass and drum presets but with all these exotic drum presets I am unable to find one basic drum preset. It’s the same with guitar and bass. As I have mentioned, Marquis is a high quality compressor, but somehow I missed all these basic presets: drums, kick, snare, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass, upright bass, strings and these sorts of fundamental things. Okay, maybe we can presume that I'm just a sober customer who wants all the amenities. But I should mention that besides this preset issue, I find
Beat me, Smash me, Squeeze me.
nothing to complain about. With a few tweaks, all things can be solved and the result is really pleasant. So if you are a “do-it-yourself” fan, you can't go wrong with this one. It has everything you could possibly expect from a high quality compressor: variable knee, opto mode for emulating analogue compressors, harmonically enhanced sound, different colouration types, release contour controls and key signal filtering [also called sidechain EQ] along with all the other more common, essential compressor controls. If I were to express myself in a compressed way: this could be compressed heaven for everyone.
Compressed Conclusions
Wusik Magazine
I should not write, if you need a compressor, because it is clear that you need one. Every musician needs a compressor, and compressors are like cars for boys or shoes for girls. Good or bad, the final decision is always just a matter of taste, so don't miss this one when you start looking around for your chic compression model. This “Squeezed by Voxengo” model also boasts a really nice colour that goes nicely with your blue guitar or black and white keyboard. It is light on the CPU usage so it can be used on every channel of your song. No, not "Coco Chanel", my dear: audio channel.
April 2008
db audioware
Flying Haggis
Wusik Magazine
April 2008
by A. Arsov
Flying Haggis
Flying Haggis is a unique virtual guitar amp made by db audioware fellows from Scotland. As you might
While
have
simulate
already
heard
about
the
their
competitors well-known
tried
to
hardware
Scottish, they are supposed to be
amplifiers, the db audioware fellows
proud, independent and a bit of a
went their own way. They made a
peculiar people. They don't like to
universal guitar amplifier and (as
follow in other people's footsteps and
they have written on their site)
they hate being second best. So
tweaked it until they got some good
Flying Haggis is not like Amplitube
results. Of course the first thought in
nor is it a Guitar Rig clone. No, thank
my spoiled and twisted mind was:
you. It's a guitar amp with an
“Oh, they offer a good excuse for
attitude ... and without the shorts
why it might not sound as good as it
under the skirt.
should“, but as soon as I tried Flying Haggis, I changed my mind.
Wusik Magazine April 2008
Flying Haggis
The Graphical Case Flying Haggis interface looks like a Pop Art reproduction of a classic hardware guitar amp. It is a funny blue little beast with a sort of futuristic-retro look, almost childlike in a kind and likeable way. It reminds us, that playing guitar should be fun and joyful. So, enough about the visual part of the deal: how does it smell, taste and sound? Ladies and Gentleman, Dear president, it is time for...
Wusik Magazine
April 2008
...The Sound of a Flying Haggis "Swiiiish" with a "splat" at the end, I presume, but let's talk get back to talking about the guitar amp. Browsing through a few presets, I soon come across a sound that reminds me of Zepps’ second album. Browsing further reveals more and more sounds from that golden era of guitar. Ah, memories, memories. Actually, I'm an electro musician so sounds from the past are not essential for my work, but this authentic scent from the past fits nicely in all modern music genres. Clean and punchy with timbre like a well-known authentic amplifier, granting a metal-like addition sound to the essential tone. Not metal as a music genre, just metal as "metal". Sometimes words mean what they were originally intended to. To tell the truth, I've only heard this metal addition to a guitar sound on my trusty old Pod 2 from Line 6. There's nothing similar from virtual competitors so far. Flying Haggis is not buffed up with a zillion effects and doesn't have
endless presets either. It has its own sound, some essential effects and a few different types of general presets. The categories are Clean, Drive, Effect and Valve with around 10 presets each. That's that. Take it or leave it... and I like it. As I have said before, it is not buffed up with endless options like Guitar rig, but it definitively has a character all its own.
Components While sheep entrails and oatmeal are included, Flying Haggis also contains a nice effects section with Gate, Autowah, Phaser, Tremolo, Echo and Chorus, each with all the essential controls. Above the effects section is an amplifier window divided into two sections. On the left are Bass, Mid and Treble knobs, along with Drive, Distort and Compression. On the right are Reverb and Master (volume) knobs along with buttons to switch between various microphone placements as well as buttons for switching between Tweed, Blues, Twang, Vintage, Modern and Rock cabinets. In the middle of the amplifier window is a switch to choose between controller and preset view. Useful, handy and nice, that's all: the rest is the sound. To Serve This little fellow is an amplifier with a big "A". It has a unique character that doesn't sound cheap or artificial. All included effects have the characteristic of some wellknown hardware models made especially for guitars. Good chorus,
Flying Haggis
delay, phaser (or any other quality guitarspecific effects) are hard to find these days, but thanks to db audioware ... do I really need to finish this sentence?
an excellent addition to your axe amp arsenal whether you already own Guitar Rig or Amplitude or have none at all.
Come on. Do yourself a favor and download the demo from db audioware. It won't bite you, and at the end of the day you might just grow to like it. Guitar amplifiers have always been a matter of taste. This one has its own sound and character, so it can be
In Short Enough words: I'm going to plug in my guitar and play it all night long. That's the main reason why they made Flying Haggis anyway.
Wusik Magazine April 2008
Board Instruments
Board Instruments - and the importance of surprise.. by Warren Burt
Board instruments – or to give them their full name –
Wusik Magazine
March 2008
electro-acoustic percussion boards, have been around for a long time.
Board Instruments
You can trace their ancestry to the work of Pierre Schaeffer in the 1950s, listening minutely to the sounds of closely amplified objects from everyday life; and to the live electronics work of John Cage and David Tudor at the same time, using phonograph cartridges (and later contact microphones) to amplify small sounds such as springs (Slinkies), feathers, and the like. The more recent manifestation of these instruments has many origins, but the one I'm most familiar with is in the work of San Francisco instrument builder / composer / improviser Tom Nunn, who has developed the electro-acoustic percussion board to a point of great beauty, and refiend performance on it to high degree of virtuosity. More information on Tom and his marvelous instruments and music can be found at www.edgetonerecords.com/nunn.ht ml.
www.scientificsonline.com/product.a sp?pn=3035200&bhcd2=12067720 62 www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?Mo duleNo=3202&TabID=1&C=SO&U= strat15&doy=search There is also an excellent article by Richard Lerman - one of the leading users of piezo transducers - that shows how to build contact mics from them. The article can be found at: www.west.asu.edu/rlerman/PDF%2 0Files/Audio%20Schematics2.pdf Once one has a contact mic, the sky is the limit. You can listen to all sorts of small sounds. For board instruments, what you first need is a board – a piece of wood. This can be plywood, or cheap, untreated pine, or whatever you fancy. Just don't make it too thin (it has to support the weight of things placed into it) or too thick (it has to be esy to drill). I use both 10 mm plywood or 18 cm pine, and get good results.
Wusik Magazine
The nicest thing about board instruments, is that anyone can make them and perform them in just about any way imaginable. Unlike, say, a violin (or a software synthesizer!), just about everyone has the skills and facilities available to make a board instrument. All you need is a source for hardware, and a means of amplifying them. These days, piezo electric contact mics are usually used to amplify boards. These can be made very cheaply – one can obtain piezo discs from online electronics dealers, such as
www.scientificsonline.com, or one can even buy them from your local Radio Shack or equivalent, although the ones bought from an electronics shop usually require you to take off the plastic casing they come in. Here are two recent places I found piezo transducers; one in the US, and one in the UK.
March 2008
Board Instruments
I attach my piezo disks to the board with simple foldback clips; they're cheap, easy to get at any stationery store, and easy to install and remove. Having amplified the board, any materials one wants can be attached to the board to be heard. I once taught an experimental instrument building class in the Music Department of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. One of our first class sessions was a trip to the local Home Depot - the local hardware mega-store. The assignment for the students was to wander through the store, then gather back at the front entrance in 30 minutes, telling me what sound making sources they had discovered long the way. Of course, they came back with more ideas than we could possible realize in two years, much less a one semester course!
Wusik Magazine
March 2008
My own board instruments are directly inspired by Tom Nunn's instruments, but are much simpler. My first choice of material is plain
steel threaded rods. These can be attached easily to the boards, are available cheaply at a hardware store, and can be easily cut to any desired length. You can scrape along the sides of the rods; strike them percussively; place washers around them and let them flutter down, or 'play' them in any number of other ways. You can arrange the rods in ascending order, or in a random sequence. My instrument “RodsPaperClipsCombs� has 13 pieces of threaded rod bolted to the board in a row, along with a number of large paper clips, clipped to different lengths, and screwed directly into the board. These make quite resonant metallic chord-like sounds when plucked or struck with fingers or tiny wooden beaters, such as kebab skewers. To this instrument, I recently added two combs. Running one's fingers along the tines, of course, will produce a nicely resonant sound.
Board Instruments
The “Mini-Canon”
Wusik Magazine
Four very long rods are also attached to my instrument called the “Mini-Canon”. This instrument consists of 11 guitar tuning mechanisms, attached to the board in the crudest possible way. Holes are drilled in the right places, and the mechanisms is just screwed into the bottom of the board, attached to guitar strings that are simply screwed into the board at the other ends. Fine tuning is accomplished with bridges – these are the back ends of arrows, with plastic flat head screws glued into the bottoms to make a quick and nasty, but effective, bridge. These 11 strings can be tuned “somewhat accurately” to a desired scale. They provide a source of plucked string timbres, bends and glides (when played like a koto), and various scraping sounds (when fingers are run longitudinally along the wound strings). Additionally, the left-over parts of the guitar strings were not trimmed – they are allowed to hang off the end of the board – these make a very resonant riffling kind of sound, and when they are dragged rapidly through the hands, they can make quite a dramatic racket!
March 2008
Board Instruments
Wusik Magazine
March 2008
The “SpringBoard� is the most recent of my board instruments. It is also the most laden with different kinds of sound makers. It consists of a piece of 18 mm thick untreated pine, with wood screws used in a variety of contexts. The screws are used to support 5 springs of various lengths and thicknesses. Apparently these are very cheap in the US; in Australia, they were surprisingly expensive (the two big springs costing around $13 Aus. each!). The springs not only resonate themselves when struck or rubbed, they also
provide a bit of resonance for any other sounds made on the board. The SpringBoard also has several rows of wood screws (which make nicely pitched metallic sounds), 7 assorted corner braces (tuned to produce different pitches), two cup hooks, and an old piece of fibreboard on which various surfaces are glued; different grades of sandpaper, cork, and even a piece of carpet. When wooden beaters are rubbed against these, a variety of granular textures are produced.
Board Instruments
The instruments can be played with just about anything, but some of my favorite implements are combs, chopsticks, skewers, dowels, washers, and aluminum strips. Rubber bands can also be used – they can be placed around just about any vertical object and stretched and plucked. Not illustrated, but also useful, are old toothbrushes.
An overview of the complete ensemble (see below) shows one way the instruments can be arranged. In recent performances, I've had one contact mic on each instrument. The “MiniCanon” was panned half-right, the “RodsPaperClipsCombs” was panned half-right, and the “SpringBoard” was panned in the center.
Wusik Magazine March 2008
Board Instruments
When it came time to make samples for the 'Wusik', I decided I didn't want to simply record each individual sound and make samples with them. Not only did that seem to work against the nature of the instruments but, if people wanted to do that, they could easily make boards like these themselves. One of my aims is to encourage you to explore this wonderfully low cost, easy, and sonically rich sound world. So if you like these sounds, and want to hear them in isolation, go for it, and start making your own. Any object that can be attached to a resonating board is fair game!
Wusik Magazine
March 2008
What I decided to do for Wusik was to record very short (between 1 and 2 minutes) improvisations with this set up, and then cut the improvisations into random chunks using the “Edit-Random Chunks” function in Composers Desktop Project. The Composers Desktop Project is a set of about 300 sound modifying and processing tools developed over the past 25 years by a collective of mostly English composers. Information about it can be found at The www.composersdesktop.com/. “Edit-Random Chunks” function will take any sound file and cut it into as
many random segments as you want. Each chunk can have any duration you desire (up to the length of the sound file), chosen from a random range in which you specify the shortest and longest durations. In the screenshot below, the soundfile is being cut into 61 chunks, each lasting between 2 and 7 seconds. I did this to get gestures that I wouldn't normally get if I was choosing the samples “by ear.” That is, I wanted to get away from the limits of my own tastes and get gestures which would not only surprise the user, but me as well.
Board Instruments
Once the sound files were made, I assigned them all to individual keys, across a 5 octave range (from Midi 36 – 96), and looped them for their entire length. I also made four improvisations, each divided into chunks (some quite short, some longer), assigned onesample-to-a-key, and looped. Users who like these sounds but don't like the looping, can use the Wusik Sample Editor to remove the loops (or adjust them more to their tastes).
There are six presets. The first four, called “Improv1LOOPS.WusikPRST” through “Improv4LOOPS.WusikPRST” present the samples one at a time with fast attacks and decays. The last two, (“FourAtOnceLongDecay.WusikPRST,”) and “FourAtOnceCrsFadLngEnv.WusikPRST”) combine all four soundsets, one per Wusik layer, to make skittering, scurrying complex textures. Additionally, the second preset adds very slow layer crossfading as well as slow attack and decay envelopes to build textures of continual change. Another trick: If you put any of these presets into a microtonal tuning of many tones per octave (such as any equal temperament of more than 36 tones per octave found in the “Equal Temperaments Tun Files” folder), you'll get a keyboard layout where each sample appears on more than one key, all slightly detuned from each other. Which samples appear on which keys, and how many adjacent keys have the same sample, will vary from tuning to tuning. This is a setup which will reveal a wide variety of delightful rhythmic surprises and unexpected combinations of sound as you explore it.
If you like these sounds and want to explore this area more, just get yourself to your local hardware store and start exploring!
Wusik Magazine
There are a wide variety of loops here, ranging from the very loud and dramatic, to the almost inaudible and subtle; some with very smooth shapes, others that abruptly change in texture and looping.
March 2008
Plucked Instruments
Wusik Magazine
April 2008
by Leslie Sanford
Hello! I’m Leslie Sanford, the author of the Cobalt VST synthesizer. Cobalt is a subtractive synthesizer built around many of the waveforms found in “hybrid” synthesizers from the 80s. Click here to go to Cobalt’s web page for more information.
Plucked Instruments
Introduction In this article, I’ll be describing the basics for programming plucked instrument sounds using Cobalt. If you would like, you can download a demo (Cobalt Demo) of Cobalt to follow along with this tutorial. However, any modest subtractive synth will work as well. The follow techniques I
describe are general and will work on a wide range of synthesizers. I’ll use a clean electric bass guitar as an example of a specific plucked instrument. My hope is that by the end of the article, you’ll have a solid handle on programming not just a bass guitar but plucked instruments in general.
Wusik Magazine April 2008
Plucked Instruments
The Waveform The pulse waveform is ideal for imitating plucked instruments. In theory, when you pluck a string, the result is a pulse waveform. The width of thepulse is determined by where you pluck the string. Plucking it at midpoint generates a square waveform, or a pulse waveform with a pulse width of 50%. Plucking it at 1/4th of its length generates a pulse waveform with a pulse width of 25%, and so on. In reality, what you get when you pluck a string is not a perfect pulse waveform. An instrument’s properties affect the resulting waveform such as its resonant body, the string material, and a myriad of other factors. However, for a synth programmer pulse waveforms are a good starting point when trying to imitate a plucked instrument.
Wusik Magazine
April 2008
We’ll attempt to program a clean electric bass sound using a pulse waveform.
to MONO and set the Trigger mode to LEGATO for the envelopes. Bass players rarely pluck ever single note they play and often use “hammer-ons” and “pull-offs” to glide between notes, so using the monophonic mode with the legato mode can add realism to your playing. However, bass players can play chords, too, so you may want to stick with the polyphonic mode. It depends on what kind of style you’ll be playing. Set the first oscillator to use a pulse waveform. In Cobalt, this is done by setting the waveform to Sawtooth and turning on the PWM switch. Make sure the PWM SOURCE is set to None; we don’t want to modulate the pulse width. Next, we need to decide what pulse width to use. Let’s imagine a bass player playing the bass guitar. Picture the position on the strings where they are being plucked. As a general estimate, we’ll say they are being plucked at 1/10th their length. So we’ll set the pulse width for our oscillator at 10%. We can play around with this setting later.
The Oscillator
-
A bass guitar is a solo instrument, so we’ll only use one oscillator. Make sure the second oscillator’s output is turned all the way down. You may want to set the Polyphony voice mode
-
Set an oscillator to a pulse width waveform. Set the pulse width to 10%. Turn off any additional oscillators; we’ll only be using one for this patch.
Plucked Instruments
The Amplitude The amplitude of plucked instruments generally evolves the same way. After being plucked the string slowly fades in volume until silent. We can imitate this by setting the amplitude envelope’s attack time to 0 for an instant attack, the decay time to 5 seconds, and the sustain level to 0. The release time should be very short, set it to 25ms or so. We can come back and tweak these values later. -
Set the amplitude envelope’s attack time to 0. Set the decay time to 5 seconds. Set the sustain level to 0. Set the release time to about 25ms.
The Filter
Set the filter to a Lowpass type; it’s the most appropriate type for the kind of sound we’re creating. We want the sound to be pretty dark by the time it fades out, so set the cutoff frequency to around 100Hz. Setting the modulation depth, how much the envelope modulates the filter’s cutoff frequency, will determine how bright the sound is. This is a place to experiment. We may want a very dark bass, in which case the modulation depth will be set low, say at 50%. If we want a brighter bass, we’d bump this up a bit. -
Route an envelope to the filter. Set the filter to the Lowpass type. Set the cutoff frequency to around 100Hz. Set the envelope’s attack time to 0. Set the decay time to 4 seconds. Set the sustain level to 0. Set the release time to about 20ms. Set the modulation depth to about 50%.
Wusik Magazine
In addition to the amplitude, the tone of plucked instruments evolves the same way as well. The attack is usually bright and as the sound progresses, it loses more and more of its upper harmonics thus becoming darker. We’ll route the amplitude envelope to modulate the filter’s cutoff frequency. Set the filter’s FM1 source to ENV1. We could use Cobalt’s second envelope to modulate the filter, but I’m saving it for a different purpose later. If you’re
synthesizer has three envelopes (or more), feel free to use a second envelope to modulate the filter. You may find when using a second envelope that it’s decay time should be a bit shorter than the amplitude’s decay time.
April 2008
Plucked Instruments
The Attack It’s been said that the most important part of an instrument’s sound is its attack. The attack is what most readily distinguishes one instrument from another. It’s important to get the attack right. So let’s look at what happens when a string is initially plucked. When a string is plucked, the pulling action displaces the string from its resting position. This action causes the pitch of the note to go sharp. After the string is released, it quickly snaps back to position and resume its normal pitch. Imitating this characteristic is key to synthesizing a plucked sound.
Wusik Magazine
April 2008
Route Cobalt’s second envelope to modulate the pitch of the oscillator. We’ll do this by setting OSC1’s FM1 SOURCE to ENV2. Set ENV2 to an instant attack, a fast decay, no sustain, and a fast release. Experiment with the modulation depth until it sounds right to you. If the modulation depth is too low, you won’t get much of a plucking effect. If it is too high, it will sound too, well, “twangy.”
-
Route an envelope to the oscillator’s pitch. Set the envelope’s attack time to 0. Set the decay time to 15ms. Set the sustain level to 0. Set the release time to 10ms. Experiment with the modulation depth until it sounds right to you.
Key Tracking As you play notes higher up on the bass guitar’s neck, you’ll notice that they decay more quickly than lower notes. This is a characteristic of all plucked instruments. We can achieve this by applying key-tracking to both envelopes. Set the key-tracking rate for both envelopes at around 50%. Experiment with this until it sounds right. -
Route key tracking to modulate the envelopes. Adjust the key tracking so that the envelopes track more quickly as you play higher up the keyboard.
Plucked Instruments
Velocity Sensitivity
Conclusion
Another characteristic all plucked instruments have in common is that the harder you pluck them, the louder and brighter they become. To imitate this, we need to turn up the velocity sensitivity for both envelopes. You may find that after you’ve set the velocity sensitivity you need to turn up the modulation depth for each envelope a bit.
I hope you’ve enjoyed the article and learned something new. The above approach works with most plucked instrument sounds. In addition to what I described above, try applying effects to the sound such as chorus or overdrive. Mess around with the filter and modulation settings. Change the envelope times. As always, experiment.
-
Route velocity sensitivity to the envelopes. - Adjust the velocity sensitivity of each envelope until it feels right to you when playing notes from soft to hard.
You can hear a bass guitar patch I programmed with my VST synthesizer Cobalt here (please excuse my lousy keyboard chops): Cobalt - E. Bass Demo And you can download the E. Bass preset file for Cobalt here: Cobalt - E. Bass Preset Thanks, and happy programming!
Wusik Magazine April 2008