Modulate This! - News, Tips and Links for Electronic Musicians and Producers

Modulate This! - Best Products of 2008 for Electronic Musicians

Hope you all are having a restful holiday season. I continuously strive for the leanest rig that will give me the best results. In this post I’ll offer a list products that make up the core of my rig. Consider this my “If I was stranded on a desert island” list for 2008.  Note that some products in my list were not new in 2008, but I’m still using them tons so they’ve made the list. If you want to see all the elements of my rig, check out this photo album on MySpace.

Best DAW – Ableton Live 7, $499
For me, Live has been become more than a DAW. It’s at the core of everything I do and after years of use feels more like a musical instrument to me than some piece of software. See all my posts on Live here. Official Live site is here.

Best Hybrid Synthesizer - Camel Audio Alchemy , $249
Camel Audio just released a new synth called Alchemy. They've been working on it for 4 years. It's an additive, spectral, granular, virtual analog synth. The interface is really well done with a clever scheme for routing modulation. I think it’s one of the finest virtual instruments I’ve ever used. I’ll be writing more posts about this synth in the future. For now you can learn more about it here.

Runner up for me in this category is Native Instruments Absynth 4. It’s not new this year but is also a great synth. I also want to mention Spectosonics Omnisphere. I don’t own it and I haven’t tried it (no demo available), but from what I’ve read and seen in demo videos it’s a monster synth. I went with Alchemy because it has a much smaller footprint and has more features for those like me who want to manipulate our own samples.

Best Virtual Analog Synthesizer - Rob Papen’s Predator, $179
Predator is a virtual analog synthesizer for Windows or Mac that runs as a plug-in (VST, Audio Unit, RTAS).  It ships with a huge library of presets, and built-in tools for patch browsing and search.  It also has some innovative features such as preset morphing, intelligent preset variation, and chord memory. Even though Predator didn’t release this year, Rob Papen keeps the synth fresh with free updates. More posts here …

Best Controller Keyboard - Novation Remote SL, Starting at $299

I still love the way this controller and Automap 2 software helps make using software more like using a physical instrument. Check out official site here. I still get a lot of traffic on my posts on the M-Audio Axiom series controllers so it’s clearly a popular choice if you can’t afford the Remote SL.

Best Controllers for Those on the Go -Korg Nano Series, $49-59

This year Korg released USB powered slim-line controllers nanoKey, nanoKontrol, and nanoPad. I have Key and Kontrol and can say they are fantastic if you want more control while making music from your laptop. More here http://korgnano.com/.

Best Bang for the Buck USB Audio Interface - Novation Nio, $249
Microphone/instrument or line-level sources, low latency effects (Direct Mix Monitoring, 'Overloud' Guitar amp and distortion pedal effects, effects from the Supernova II and signal processing from Focusrite), two headphone outputs, four RCA outputs. All this for $249! See official site.

Best iPhone Music App – iDrum, Ocarina
Hmmm. This is a tough one as there is so much innovation going on in this space. My two favorites are iDrum and Ocarina.

iDrum has a great interface for making beats on the go and synchronizes with iDurm for the PC and Mac. Read more about it here.

Ocarina turns your iPhone into a true musical instrument. It uses every feature of the iPhone and has some fantastic social connection features. Checkout the official site here.

Best Field Recorder – Zoom H2, $179
I just got one of these back in November. It’s really fantastic. It weighs 4 ounces and has 4 mic capsules onboard for 360° recording in a W-X/Y configuration. You can also use it as a USB mic. I blogged about it here.

Buy Online
Most of these items can be purchased online. Support Modulate This! buy using these links: Musicians Friend, Guitar Center, Zzounds.

Share Your List
I’m sure many of you out there have a your own list so feel free to share your list using the comments link at the bottom of this post.

See You in 2009!
Have a safe new years eve and I’ll see you in 2009.

Mark Mosher
www.modulatethis.com
www.markmoshermusic.com

Video Tour of Image-Line's Gross Beat Plug-in

Last night I bought Image-Line's Morphine synth. As part of their holiday sale, I got their brand new plug-in Gross Beat for FREE ($99 value).

It's a great plug-in - so much so I stayed up way too late experimenting with it. To help you get your mind around the plug-in and jump start your use of it, I produced a video tour.

Links:

• Gross Beat Web Site (Download free trial, listen to samples...)
• New Image-Line customers use this link to get a discount on purchases over $99 - http://affiliate.image-line.com/CCFADC404

Mark Mosher
www.modulatethis.com
www.markmoshermusic.com

Image-Line Holiday Sale - Maximus and Morphine Only $99 a Piece + Free Copy of Gross Beat

   

There are a lot of sales going on right now so make sure you stop by your favorite companies site to see what deals they might have.

Image line has put both Morphine (virtual synthesizer that does additive synthesis and re-synthesis) and Maximus (Mastering Maximizer) on sale. Here is the deal:

• Every order of $99 and more comes with a free copy of Gross Beat (value $99).
• Maximus is available for $99 instead of $189 (AND includes a free copy of Gross Beat)
• Morphine is available for $99 instead of $159 (AND includes a free copy of Gross Beat)

I've been waiting for Morphine to go on sale. I've spent a lot of time with the demo and think it has a great interface for additive synthesis. I especially love the re-synthesis capabilities and plan on using it to create some custom sounds for future projects. Needless to say I just hit the buy button. So it's now official, I own all of Maxx Claster's synthesizers (Poizone, Toxic Biohazard, and Morphine).

Links:

• Visit Image-Line Sale page
• Modulate This post on Morphine
• Image-Line Video Tutorials Page (Morphine and Maximus are both represented).

Mark Mosher
www.modulatethis.com
www.markmoshermusic.com

Slicex Available as a Stand Alone VSTi - On Sale for $79

One of the most interesting new features of FL Studio 8 was the introduction Slicex. According to Image Line, the makers of FL Studio, "Slicex uses advanced beat detection algorithms to slice song/percussion samples into pieces and make them independently playable from the Piano roll or controller."

Image Line has made this tool available as a Stand-alone VSTi so you can run the tool within your favorite host.

I don't really see a need for this plugin for Ableton users considering we have slicing with drum racks, but this might be just the ticket if your using a host that doesn't have built-in slicing.

They are selling Slicex for $99 but it's currently on sale for $79.

Links:

• Learn more, download a trial, and purchase
• Watch licex Tutorial Videos

Mark Mosher
www.markmoshermusic.com
www.modulatethis.com

Celemony's Direct Note Access Pitch Correction for Melodyne 2 Lets You Edit Notes Within Chords

View video on YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE-wrYK8JSY.

Celemony's Melodyne is an established tool for pitch shifting, time stretching, correcting the intonation and timing of singing, audio quantization, producing harmonies, and remixing and restructuring the melody, tempo or timing of existing recordings.

The video above shows a technology preview of their new Direct Note Access (DNA) which will allow you to access and edit individual notes in polyphonic audio material!!! The demo is pretty mind blowing.

Applications for this sort of technology are:

• Edit individual notes within polyphonic material
• Reshaping harmonies and rhythms
• Tune a guitar after recording
• Correct harmony vocals that are out of tune, or fix their timing
• Turn major chords to minor (and vice versa)
• Switch tone scales
• Mute single notes
• Remix volume levels after a performance has been recorded

This feature set will be available with Melodyne 2 which is due out in the Fall of 2008. According to their webiste, "The full version will cost US$399 (349 Euro); the update from Version 1 will cost US$129 (129 Euro). Customers purchasing Melodyne plugin after the 12th March 2008 will receive the update free of charge.

More info: http://www.celemony.com

Mark Mosher
www.modulatethis.com
www.markmoshermusic.com

Image Line's Juice Pack 2.0 (10% off link) - Now You Can Use the FL Studio Core Effects as VSTs Within Other Programs

Image Line, the makers of Fl Studio and Deckadance, have released Juice Pack 2.0.  Juice Pack is a collection of the most popular effects from FL Studio in VST form. This pack is normally $99,You can download a demo here, but when you go to buy you can save money by using this 10% off link. It's a pretty big bang for the buck!
 

If your an FL Studio user who normally uses rewire to access FL Studio effects, you can use these effects natively within another VST host (such as Ableton Live, Cubase, Sonar...). Click the image on the left to enlarge a screen shot of some effects mapped into Ableton Live.

If you are not an FL Studio user, you owe it yourself to check out the out this pack of VSTs as it contains some fantastic effects, most notably Fruity Vocoder, Fruity Love Filter, The Edison Wave editor. Last year, I posted a video tutorial of using Fruity Vocoder within Fl Studio. Note, I'm working on a tutorial for using the vocoder with Ableton Live, subscribe to this blog to be notified when this and other articles are posted.

Here is a summary of what is in Juice Pack 2.0...