IMSTA FESTA 9 Sep 2010, 1:12 pm

I will be speaking on a panel with Peter Kirn (Create Digital Music), Micah Frank aka Kamoni (Sound Designer & Founder of Puremagnetik), and Julie Covello aka DJ Shakey (DJ, Creator & Promoter of the Warper Party, Music Collector) on Saturday, September 25 at the SAE, 1293 Broadway, 9th Floor, New York NY 10001.

The IMSTA FESTA is free and should be good fun and of great interest to anyone who reads this blog. It’s a pro-audio manufacturer get together and panel series. It’s from 11:00AM – 7:00PM. Some of the exhibitors include Ableton, Arturia, Bias, SSL, Celemony, IK Multimedia, Image Line, Native Instruments, Pianoteq, Propellerhead, Rob Papen, Steinberg and Waves.

“IMSTA FESTA, a celebration of music software is coming to the heart of New York City. The First IMSTA FESTA started in Japan where it was highly successful for technology companies, producers and hobbyists alike. IMSTA FESTA brings a collection of the top audio technology companies together in an environment where they can interact with music makers face-to-face. If you use music software you will benefit from this event in a number of ways.” – http://www.imsta.org

For more info: http://www.imsta.org

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Moog VoyagerXL 8 Sep 2010, 11:53 pm

Moog VoyagerXL. Is this real or a Photoshop? Matrixsynth says $4995. Here’s the post where people are discussing this monster: moogmusic.com/forum/9853

“Looks slightly photoshopped–but perhaps only to correct colors for posting to the web….To that point, I think that this thing looks real. Nothing jumps out at me as indicating that it’s polyphonic. But it does appear to have something like a ribon controler between the keyboard and the control panel! In all It looks like a Voyager with extended patch capabilities–something that expands the Voyager’s playability further towards the modular synthesis roots on which the original Minimoog was based. This could be quite interesting.” Jaguarfooger

For more info: moogmusic.com

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Depeche Mode Bar in Estonia 8 Sep 2010, 12:35 pm

If you happen to be in Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia and you’re a huge Depeche Mode fan you may want to go to the Depeche Mode Baar. The owner Dan Buinenko says the band has been there a few times and expects them to stop over again. When I lived in Germany I noticed regular Depeche Mode nights at bars and clubs all over the country.

“What did the band make of the bar/the concept in general? I think they liked our bar. Actually, we were quite surprised when they visited us first time. But second time we were really prepared and waiting for the band, although we hadn’t sent them an official invitation. Probably they would come again, if possible. The last few times they’ve had quite good security and a nice, warm welcome.” – drownedinsound.com

Read the full interview with the owner of the bar: click here

via iPad Today

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Back from a West Virginia vacation 7 Sep 2010, 12:56 pm

I spent the labor day weekend in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. I took Amtrak down from Penn Station, NYC to visit my friend Matt. Matt who by day is a programmer by day at a company down there called The Library also records under the name Satronica. My brother also met us in WV and when he’s not in the science lab (he’s a neurobiologist) he records under the name Acrosome.

We tubed down the very warm Potamac river, biked 27 miles to Harpers Ferry, had a few meals in the trendy Shepherdstown, saw the movie “The American” and played a few competitive rounds of Fruit Ninja and Glow Hockey on the iPad. Matt lives on what seems like a few hundred acres of pseudo desert. The insects are far louder than anything out my window in NYC.

Matt has a bedroom studio where he sequences with Cubase and has a Sherman Filter Bank and Dave Smith Prophet 8. My brother just bought about 4k worth of new gear and is about to start recording again. He picked up an new Oberheim module, Jomox Mbase & Mbrane, DSI Tertri, Motu Volta and Vermona DRM1 MKIII (you can see he reads this blog!). I would have checked in via Facebook Places but why tell the world I’m a few states away? On the way back I was pleased to see the Amtrak Acela train had WiFi so I caught up on a few KVR Audio forum posts.

It was a good trip and if you’ve been stuck in the studio too much I hope this post inspires you to call some friends and head outside.

For a few more photo: click here

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Apple Ping 2 Sep 2010, 2:32 pm

As a musician the word to describe how I feel about the new Apple Ping social network is: exhausted. Musicians have become the tech industries guinea pigs. Why not? We try anything and work cheap right? After creating and curating profiles on MySpace, Last.fm, Imeem, Facebook and then Facebook Fan Pages and on and on now it’s time for Ping. Of course most musicians I know won’t be able to create and artist page yet will they? At this point in time indie artists will have to create normal user profiles and watch the Lady Gaga’s get all the love. As an Apple fanboy I’ll download iTunes 10, create my profile, share it with the world and friend a bunch of people I don’t know. Let’s hope the new network really does help music discovery.

“Follow your favorite artists with a click and become part of their inner circle. Get in on the action with artist photos and status updates. Even add comments to join the conversation. Find out what music an artist likes and pick up a few recommendations. Ping is built into the iTunes app on iPhone and iPod touch. So you can see artist updates from anywhere.” – apple.com/itunes/ping/

Download iTunes 10 with Ping: click here

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My current iPad music creation apps 1 Sep 2010, 12:03 pm

Here are screenshots of the two pages of music creation Apps I currently have installed on my iPad. The apps are: Aeolian Harp, audio palette, bleep!BOX, Beat Counter, Bebot, DopplerPad, Dropophone, Everyday Looper, FunkBox, iElectribe, ImproVox, iSample, iStylophone, iVoxel, Loopseque, Jasuto, Magic Piano, Melodica, MorphWiz, nanoloop, NanoStudio, NESynth, NNN MONO, Radarhead, sampletoy, SongMaker, SoundPrism, Soundrop, SoundyThingy, synthPond, Tiction AV, technoBox, TOPLAPapp, TweakyBeat and VoiceKeyboard.

Some of the Apps are iPhone Apps but because of screen size are much more fun on the iPad. There are a few music creation iPhone apps I have that I didn’t put on my iPad because they work fine on the smaller screen. Interesting the combined total price for all the Apps above if you bought them today is $137.74. I think that’s pretty good for all the touch screen sounds and creativity you get.

“The iPad has two internal speakers that push mono sound through two small sealed channels to the three audio ports carved into the bottom-right of the unit. A volume switch is on the right side of the unit. A 3.5-mm TRS connector audio-out jack on the top-left corner of the device provides stereo sound for headphones with or without microphones and/or volume controls. The iPad also contains a microphone that can be used for voice recording.” – Wikipedia

If you have any questions about any of these or want my own review just let me know.

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The Tell Tale Beat 31 Aug 2010, 10:10 pm

In the late 80s when I lived with my mother I learned the craft of making music in the basement. Mostly I just blasted endless loops of kick drums. I don’t know how she put up with it. To this day she says she still hears me down there.

“xkcd is a webcomic created by Randall Munroe. The comic’s tagline describes it as “a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.” It has been recognized in such mainstream media as The Guardian and The New York Times.” – Wikipedia

For more info: xkcd.com

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New Martin Gore and Vince Clarke 31 Aug 2010, 2:24 pm

As a die hard all things classic DM fan the tweet above means something. Let’s hope the music is good. Guys please put your minds in a time machine for this one.

“If you just can’t get enough of early Depeche Mode, you’ll be happy to know that Vince Clarke & Martin Gore are working on a techno-ish track called Zaat.” – Synthtopia

For more info: vinceclarkemusic.com

via Synthtopia

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XILS Lab XILS 3 30 Aug 2010, 12:15 pm

The XILS Lab XILS 3 is a recreation of the EMS VCS synthesizer. It comes in two flavors. There is a LE version for $37 and a version with more features for $181. There is a demo. All versions including the demo require an iLok. There is an extended review of the XILS 3 in the August issue of Sound on Sound: click here. Basically they say it’s not a spot on emulation but a very interesting plug-in. Hardware lust and purism aside is the XILS 3 in the realm of the TimewARP 2600, UHE ACE and the Korg Legacy Collection?

“Given the DSP power available nowadays, you might think that it would be possible to emulate the VCS3 in software. You could imitate its unstable oscillators, model its unpredictable filter, recreate its loopy envelope generator and all its other facilities, iron out its idiosyncrasies, add a few enhancements, and then stick a pretty GUI on the front that forces players to approach it in the same way as the original. So, what is XILS 3? On the surface, it’s a soft synth designed to look, feel and sound like a VCS3. However, as we delve deeper, we’ll find that it’s much more than that.” – Sound on Sound

For more info: xils-lab.com/pages/XILS-3.html

photo credit: The Standard Deviant

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Franz Keller’s Radarhead 28 Aug 2010, 5:31 pm

Multimedia designer Franz Keller has created an iPad app called Radarhead. It’s a rotary sequencer in which you can control the speed, direction and center point. The sounds are represented by colorful 8-bit alien images. It’s fun and well worth the .99 price: click here The video of the band using it below inspires me. This app reminds me of those 80′s puffy stickers mixed with a bit of synthpunk attitude.

“Kinduv a rotary beat sequencer. Looks weird (but cool) at first, but not hard to make interesting stuff if you play around with it for a bit. My fav thing to do is make several constellations of aliens and move the radar guy between them. You can also reverse or speed up the beams by dragging the arrows–don’t just tap on it!” – Milo Cantos (iTunes Review)

What do you think?

For more info: franzkeller.com

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