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

Your 2011 Modulate This Holiday Gift is Ready! - "Outpost: Airlock" Free Soundset for Zebralette & Zebra 2

Your FREE holiday gift is now ready for download!

OUTPOST: AIRLOCK is a soundset made up of patches for U-HE's free freeware synthesizer Zebralette. The patches will also load into Zebra 2. This themed soundset picks up where “Sounds from a Distant Outpost” soundset left off (which has been downloaded over 2500 times to date) and again takes place at the fictional dark and distant “outpost”. This outpost exists in the same “signals universe” as my two albums REBOOT and I HEAR YOUR SIGNALS. The 12 patches in this soundset will help you experience the journey through the airlock which connects the outer ring of the outpost to the first inner chamber. You might hear creatures along the way so stay alert.

Learn More & Download

To learn more, read about project goals, production notes, performance notes,  and download the soundset - visit the Outpost: Airlock web page.

Happy Holidays

Enjoy and have a safe, happy, and musical holiday season! Drop me a note if you end up using these patches for a project. Pass it on.

Mark Mosher
Electronic Music Artist, Boulder, CO
www.ModulateThis.com
Official Web Site: www.MarkMosherMusic.com
Listen/Download Albums: www.MarkMosherMusic.com/music.html

Ableton Holiday Sale - 25% Off Selected Products

Ableton is running a holiday sale - http://www.ableton.com/holiday-special.

They are also giving away a free live pack - Solid Sounds to all registered Live/Live LE users. Click here to download Solid Sounds. If you do download Solid Sounds, make sure you check out this Modulate This post on the topic - http://www.modulatethis.com/2008/11/solid-sounds-free-live-pack-for-ableton-live.html.

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

Solid Sounds Free Live Pack for Ableton Live

Ableton just posted "Solid Sounds". It's  a free Live Pack for registered Live/Live LE users and contains over 400 MB of content featuring 400 loops, 128 Simpler presets and 12 creative instrument Racks in a variety of musical styles. The library was created in collaboration with Loopmasters.

Samples are loaded under "Samples->Loopmasters".

Simpler presets are under "Instruments->Simpler->Loopmasters".

 

Racks are under "Instruments->Instrument Rack->Loopmasters".

 

The racks are setup so that Macro knob 1 allows you to quickly scroll through layers in a rack. Very cool!

Download this free Live Pack from http://www.ableton.com/solid-sounds.

Mark Mosher
www.modulatethis.com

Installing and Using Ableton's Free "Designer Drums" Operator Live Pack

Ableton has released a new free Live Pack called "Designer Drums". You can listen to a preview and download the Live Pack from here.

The cool thing about this collection of drum presets is that they are not samples but Operator synth presets. For the most part the installer integrates presets inside of existing folders so finding all the presets can be tricky. In this article I'll walk you through installing and finding presets and offer usage tips.

OPERATOR OVERVIEW

For those unfamiliar, Operator is an add-on synth you can buy from Ableton's web site. If you already own Live, it will cost you EUR 129/USD 159. Ableton is running a promotion for new users that's pretty amazing - Buy Live, Get Operator for Free.

OVERVIEW OF DESIGNER DRUMS

Ableton's blurb.

We're giving all Operator fans some "Designer Drums", a free Live pack with brand new Operator presets. It features classic analog drums, a number of innovative percussive sounds and dedicated drum racks for
instant and intuitive beat-making.

 

DOWNLOAD "Designer Drums"

Download from here http://www.ableton.com/designer-drums. Extract the DesignerDrums_v01.alp file on to your computer.

INSTALLATION

From the file menu select "Install Live Pack..." and specify the DesignerDrums_v01.alp.

The install requires 24.7 MB. 

FINDING THE DRUMRACKS, CLIPS, AND INDIVIDUAL OPERATOR PATCHES

The kit presets are implemented as Drum Racks. They are not installed in their own folder called "Designer Drums" and are instead integrated into "Instruments-> Drum Rack -> Kit" and the new presets are labeled with "(Operator)" in the end of the name. See example on the left.

There are a series of clips saved as live sets in "Library -> Clips -> Designer Drums".

The individual Operator patches that make up the drum racks are again integrated within existing folders in "Presets -> Instruments". For example, there are two 808 high-hat presets (open and closed) at "Presets -> Instruments -> Drum Rack -> Cymbal -> Hihat-808(Operator)".

 

DRUM RACK NOTES

Most of the Drum Rack presets place Devices in a cluster around the same set of 16 locations which is fantastic if you are using a controller like a Trigger Finger. The Kick, Snare, Hihat Open, Hihat closed are in the same position for most kits which I really appreciate since I like to hot swap kits.

IN CLOSING

Operator had been around a long time and I've always liked it. This Live Pack really shows off the range of sounds that can be produced from Operator. Once you start working with the presets you'll be amazed at the amount of work that went on behind the scenes to create this Live Pack. Thanks Ableton!

MORE OPERATOR LINKS

• More Live Packs
• Covert Operator Live Packs
• Puremagnetic's Mutations Live Pack

Mark Mosher
www.modulatethis.com

Green Oak Crystal VST - Free Semi-Modular Synthesizer for PC and Mac

I've been doing some research to find new synths to increase my palette of sounds. Along the way I "re-discovered" Crystal which is a very cool Semi-Modular synthesizer. It reminds me a little of Zebra 2 and Absynth 4 but - it's free! Pretty amazing considering the feature set - "...semi-modular software synthesizer featuring both subtractive syn  and frequency modulation (FM) synthesis. It offers abundant modulation control with over 90 parameters which may be modulated, multi-stage envelopes with graphical editors, extensive tempo sync of envelopes/lforates/delay times, built-in effects for chorus/flanging/comb filtering/echoes, and a band splitter for effects processing by frequency band. Not only that, Crystal has wave sequencing, granular synthesis, program morphing, MIDI learn, and imports soundfonts. The musical applications for Crystal are literally boundless."

Installation is manual but straightforward. Simply follow the instructions on the download page. Don't forget to grab the additional waveforms and patches. 

As I mentioned this synth is free and the developer, Glen Olander, says creating Crystal is a "labor of love, so I don't accept payments from Crystal users." He does accept donations on behalf a senior center though so if you want to donate go to the bottom of the about page.

• Official Crystal Web Site
• Users Guide
• Join the Crystal discussion group
• Other plugins by Green Oak

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

MP3TAG - Great Windows Shareware Tool for Editing MP3 Tags

I've begun releasing .mp3 singles for my new album REBOOT. Prior to releasing the songs, I spent a fair amount of time researching the the best way to tag my MP3s. I wanted to add information to the .MP3s so that I could "bind" songs together into a virtual album via the tags, make my album art show up in your favorite player, and embed info within the tracks so you could find my web site from within the song info.

One issue with tagging with your favorite media player such as iTunes or Windows Media Player is these applications don't support all the tags all the possible tags and tag formats. Also, media players assume you want import your songs into your music library. Rather than import songs into my music library, I wanted to leave the songs where they were - in their own project folders on my system - and simply edit their tags.

The solution I picked is MP3TAG. Here is the marketing blurb:

"Mp3tag is a powerful and yet easy-to-use tool to edit metadata (ID3, Vorbis Comments and APE) of common audio formats. It can rename files based on the tag information, replace characters or words from tags and filenames, import/export tag information, create playlists and more. The program supports online freedb database lookups for selected files, allowing you to automatically gather proper tag information for select files or CDs."

I found the software simple and easy to use and recommend it. Give it a try yourself by downloading the software from here - http://www.mp3tag.de/en/index.html. The software is free, but if you use it and like it I highly encourage you to donate to support their development efforts.

Tweakbench - Free Instruments and Effects VSTs

I found a great site with many unique free VSTs called Tweakbench. Tweakbench is an "audio software project" by one person, Aaron Rutledge, and offers free VST instruments and effects for windows VST hosts.

Right now the site has links to 14 Instruments (carillon dropout field minerva monomate padawan papaya peach pippo rebar ritual tapeworm toad triforce), and 8 Effects (breakdown cairo grumblebum maelcum mashup pudding sideslip yoink).

To give you a feel for  type of  plug-ins at Tweakbench,  I'll briefly discuss one I started playing around with called Peach.

Peach is a synthesizer "based on the classic nintendo entertainment system's psg audio system. more than 30 waveforms from many memorable sounds and tones have been meticulously deconstructed and tamed." This is a fun little synth for sure and will make you reminisce about classic gaming music. Check out an MP3 sample.

As I mentioned all VSTs are free and have documentation. Note that you can get ALL the VSTs in a bundle for $5  (the 5 bucks to cover bandwidth costs).

If you really dig some of these VSTs and want to support this sort of development, Tweakheads accepts donations and are also selling t-shirts.