Modulate This! - Electronic & Experimental Music Tech, Technique, & People

Thomas Dolby Sole Inhabitant Concert DVD, CD, and Podcast

In my last post, I offered links to Thomas Dolby's recent appearance on NPR. In this follow-up post, I  want to  mention that he has produced an audio CD, DVD and podcast with live material from his 2006 'Sole Inhabitant Tour'.

I recently eceived the DVD as a gift and have to say its simply fantastic! I was in the audience during the show in Denver last spring and think the DVD does a nice job of capturing the feel of the show. In addition to concert footage, the DVD contains the following special features:

• Thomas Dolby: An Interview with DAvid Hoffman
• Layering.looping technique explained
• Story behind the songs
• A voyage around his rig

If your a Dobly fan, a digital musician, a computer-based producer, or a someone interested in performing live with computers I think you'll find the DVD both entertaining and informative.

Below I've provided a link to the DVD on amazon. www.thomasdobly.com has a list of other outlets as well as a cool video podcast section.

Thomas Dolby on NPR Weekend Edition

Thomas Dolby recently paid a visit to NPR's Studio 4a. The interview was broadcast today on New Years Eve. NPR has posted links to the interview as well as links to performances of 'She Blinded Me With Science', 'Hyperactive', 'Airwaves', 'Your Karma Hit My Dogma'. Click here to visit the NPR site. There are is also a link to a 1993 interview on the same page.

Visit www.thomasdolby.com for more details on Thomas Dolby.

Makers of FL Studio Release Poizone Subtractive Synth - Save 10%

Image-Line, the creators of FL Studio have announced a new software synthesizer called Poizone. Poizone is a subtractive synthesizer (click image above to see full resolution snapshot) and according to Image-Line is "designed to bring you professional quality results, without a learning curve that hinders your creativity. The concept behind PoiZone was to design a synthesizer that had the smallest number of controls while providing the maximum flexibility and features."

The synth runs as a VSTi on both Windows and Mac OSX and costs $79. It's currently on sale for $49 till the end of the year.

Click here to Save 10% on your purchase | Learn More Download a Demo

Features Include:

• 2 oscillators that can produce the two most popular and useful shapes for subtractive synthesis: fat, bright SAW and PULSE shapes, with adjustable pulse width.
• Noise generator.
• Ring modulation
• Sync modulation
• 16 voice polyphony
• 4 voice UNISON with user-adjustable stereo panning and 'Octaver'. The Octaver expands the harmonic range and flexibility of the unison sound to support the creation of realistic 'vox-like' effects
• 2 ADSR envelope generators. One for traditional envelope duties, the other can be user assigned
• 3 FILTER modes - low pass, band pass and high pass. PoiZone features a warm, super-trooper-extra-analog-moog-like-mega filter with self oscillation. Special attention has been given to precise filter tuning so that when KEYTRK is set to maximum, the PoiZone filter will track keyboard frequency precisely so it can be used as an oscillator. The PoiZone filter has bright and clean sound or it can be 'grungy' and 'angry' when resonance is introduced as it features some light distortion. And even with distortion the filter sounds clean on high frequencies as it has no aliasing
• Keyboard and Velocity tracking for the filter
• Multi-mode Arpeggiator
• Noise Gate with an adjustable 16 step pattern. The gate features smoothness control and the ability to import/export patterns to .fxp files
• DELAY effect, with tempo-synced click-free stereo delays and delay time modulation. Lo-cut and hi-cut for trancers!
• CHORUS with a warm sound with great unison emulation
• MIDI learn feature with the ability to save/load MIDI setups to/from a patch
• LFO and MOD WHEEL modulation. Can be assigned to a wide range of performance parameters in PoiZone 

Ableton Live Update 6.0.3 is Now Available

Ableton has released an update to Live - version 6.0.3. What's new in Ableton Live 6.0.3? It contains many bug fixes as well as some minor improvements. I'll high lite a few improvements and fixes below, but visit Ableton's form for a full list of changes here. The update is available here.   

Some improvements include:

• Context menu in zone editor has two new entries:  Select all parts with same range, Reload loops from file
• Easier macro-mapping by adding the "Map to Macro .." menu
  to each context menu of a device parameter within a group.
• Performance improvement for the loading of Live clips
• Several multi-sample import improvements

Bug Fixes:

• A problem with the first MIDI note of a MIDI recording (great fix for those who do a lot of MIDI recording!)
• The check to prevent the creation of frozen files > 2 GB would not work properly.
• When soloing multiple tracks using learned midi or key, the un-soloing
  could keep a single track muted.

Image-Line, the makers of FL Studio and Various Plug-ins are Having a Huge 50% off Sale on Many Items - 24 Hours Only!

Image-Line, the makers of FL Studio and Various Plug-ins are Having a Huge 50% off Sale on Many Items - 24 Hours Only! Some items are slashed even more. If you are in the market for DirectWave, Sytrus, Toxic III, or Juice Pack this is probably the best deal your going to get.

Looks like this 10% discount link will still work even with the sale items.

Juice Pack by the way is a collection of some of the most popular effects from FL Studio in VSTi (PC only) format. Below is a list of what's in Juice pack. Note that Fruity Vocoder is in this list and considering that Orange Vocoder is $245 US, this is an unbelievable value if you want to run these effects in a host other than FL. Equo and Edison are simply fantastic as well. You can grab a free demo from here.

• IL Delay - Creates echoes with echo filtering options
• IL Delay Bank - Creates impossibly complex echoes and filtering
• IL WaveShaper – Define your own distortion curves.
• IL EQUO - Graphic Morphing EQ with spectral learning capability.
• IL Parametric EQ - Control bandwidth and target frequency of EQ bands.
• IL Flangus - Phase cancellation effect.
• IL Vocoder - Sound like a robot or make a synth sound talk.
• IL Edison - Audio recorder / editor.
• IL Spectroman - See what your noise looks like with a sonograph or spectrograph display.
• IL Stereo Enhancer - Simulate or enhance stereo effects.

Hybird Synth Toxic III 1.4 Has Been Relased - Get 10% Off

Update - for the next 24 hours this $99 synth $99 on sale for $39 bucks!!!!

Image Line has announced the release of Toxic III Version 1.4. This is a free upgrade for existing owners. The synth is $99 and if you are interested in purchasing it, use this link and save 10%.

According to Image Line "Toxic III features a hybrid synthesis engine, combining the best of FM and Subtractive synthesis. With the addition of a warm, analog-modeled filter and set of built-in effects, the Toxic concept remains one of convenience, simplicity, and superb sound quality."

The synth also features built-in effects, a multi-mode filter, and a built-in step-sequencer. The synth runson PC and Mac OSX.

The 1.4 update includes fixes and enhancements: fixed denormals on some Intel systems,  removed clicks in some hosts, banks are now saved in a compressed format, saving space 36 new presets added
no more external wave files.

More info and to download a demo...

Filmsound.org - Site Dedicated to the Art and Analyses of Film Sound Design

If you are interested in the ins-and-outs of sound design for film I have the site for you ,
http://www.filmsound.org/ . Lots of great articles, a beginners guide, historical information, industry terms, and much much more.  

LA Ballet Opens Inaugural Season with Combo of Live & Virtual Players

I just got a newsletter from Cakewalk  with a link to an interesting story from Broadcast Room.com about the use of a virtual orchestra in Los Angeles Ballet's latest production.

"The Los Angeles Ballet launched its inaugural season at the Beverly Hills Wilshire Theatre with an original production of 'The Nutcracker.'  In a landmark first, 22 live musicians were augmented by 33 virtual players to round out the 55 musicians called for by the Tchaikovsky score."

Ends up they only had room in the orchestra pit for 22 players yet wanted to play the full score - so they augmented real players with virtual players using Garritan Personal Orchestra (Learn more | Buy ).The software instrument was hosted out of Sonar 6 Producers Edition  (Learn More | Buy ). Gary Garritan even helped with the production.

The story also indicates that the "Musician’s Union Approves Landmark Use of Garritan Personal Orchestra" :^).

Read the full story here...

New book - Cakewalk Syntheizers: From Presets to Power User

Those of you looking to learn about and/or dig deeper into Cakewalk virtual instruments will want to check out this new book Cakewalk Synthesizers: From Presets to Power User.

The book is written by   Simon Cann, a musician and writer based in London.

According to the press release - "Cakewalk Synthesizers: From Presets to Power User will show you how to operate and get the best results from Cakewalk™s complete range of synths, from those that are bundled with Cakewalk's main products (including SONAR, Project5, and Kinetic), to the rgc:audio synthesizers (such as Z3TA+), to Cakewalk's newest synthesizers, including Dimension Pro and Rapture."

Chemical Brothers Video - Believe (Live)

 

Just found this on youtube - Chemical Brothers "Believe" Live. Enjoy.