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

Modulate This! - Best of 2009 Electronic Music Tech

Despite the economic downturn, 2009 was thankfully a huge year when it came to new technology for electronic music artists. Rather than try and cover every significant release, I’ll instead list some of my favorite products and notable trends.

The Year of Ableton
What a big year for Ableton. Live 8 with great new features set, Max for Live, 10th Anniversary of Ableton, launch of Live Intro, dedicated hardware controllers (APC40 & Launchpad). Awesome!

Grid (Matrix) Controllers
 

Grid controllers everywhere in 2009. New controllers like the APC40, Launchpad and Bliptronics 5000. Continued development with existing controllers like Tenori-On and Monome. The grid metaphor also became quite prevalent in apps as well. I have the APC40 and Tenori-On and simply love them.

Percussa Audio Cubes “Tangible Interface”
 

Not new in 2009 but new to me, Percussa AudioCubes are self-powered wireless computer systems. Cubes can detect and interact with each other and can detect the proximity of your hand near a cube face sensor and send this controller information to your DAW or to various free software apps provided by Percussa. I working with a 4 cube configuration within Ableton Live.

Fantastic Synths
A great year for virtual instruments. Below is a list of new and updates synths that I used over and over again in 2009 for both sound design and for music performance.

• u-he ACE (Any Cable Anywhere)
  
  This synth just released by I use it all the time now! It’s a fantastic virtual analog synth with a great UI with patch cables. Sounds like butta’.

Holiday Gift from ModulateThis! FREE Presets for Harmless Synthesizer

 
Rather than send a greeting card to you all with a yearly letter ;^) - I spent some time yesterday and today making some presets for you with the fabulous new Harmless virtual synth. FYI - I updated my previous post on Image-Line's Harmless to include a mini-review.

As I mentioned in my previous post, you can get Harmless "name your price" ($9 minimum) until 12/31 or you could also just grab the free trial to experiment with these presets.

Visit the Modulate This Download page for a link to the presets.

Also, check out this video tour I created where I walk throught the presets. My personal favorite is "The Krell" at 3:48.

Happy holidays!

Mark Mosher
Electronic Music Artist, Composer, Sound Designer
Louisville/Denver/Boulder

http://www.modulatethis.com
http://www.markmoshermusic.com
http://www.twitter.com/markmosher

Download/Buy my album REBOOT on Bandcamp
Buy on iTunes

Image-Line Harmless - Name Your Price till 12/31/2009

 
(click image to enlarge) 

Image-Line, the makers of FL Studio, have released a new synth called Harmless. I’ve seen posts on this on other blogs but wanted to post here as well as this is such a good deal. You can name your price on this new synth ($9 min charge to cover overhead) until 12/31.

According to Image-Line,

“Harmless is an additive synthesizer doing subtractive synthesis. Or if you prefer, a subtractive synthesizer powered by an additive synthesis engine….Simpler to program, yet packed with evil features. Under the hood, you will find unique options, like linking the phaser's output to partials frequencies. The LFO section can act as a special modulation source, linking the phaser's width to the velocity, or the pitch to the filter's envelope.”

I can’t personally vouch for it as I’ve only started playing with it but it seems like a pretty awesome offer for a synth of this caliber.

Update: I've now spent many hours with Harmless and think it's one of Image-line's finest synths. I own many additive synthesizers and while I like additive, I think that for most it's just too complicated to get a predictable result for most people.

With Harmless, Image-Line has done a nice job simplifying additive. Rather then having to edit mutliple "harmonic snapshots", you instead use modulators, filter, phaser, and a harmonizer to automate additive harmonics. This is a really fun and fast way to go. If you know subtractive synthesis, it shouldn't take you long to get to the point where you are creating fantastic patches. They've included some nice tutorials in the manual and some template presets to help you get your mind around how all this works.

Another great feature is that the filters and phasers slopes can even be defined in Hz resolution instead of octaves. Filters also support self-oscillation.

The synth has an adequate effects section with chorus, delay, reverb and compressor.

Most importantly, it sounds terrific and is more CPU friendly than many additives. It has incredible sonic range and fantastic bottom end. Checkout some of audio demos of the FREE presets I'm working on to hear for yourself.

Harmless is one of Image-Line's best efforts, and my guess is that this will be priced in the $75-$100 US range after the group buy so seems like now is the time to buy.

Links:

• Official Harmless Page - Download, Buy, Sample MP3s

Mark Mosher
Electronic Music Artist, Composer, Sound Designer
Louisville/Denver/Boulder
ALBUM: http://www.rebootalbum.com