Ableton Live: Tom Cosm does a “power run” through 10 Ableton Live tips.

Cosm’s tips cover:

1. Resetting a parameter to its default value
2. Moving everything in the piano roll up or down an octave.
3. Drawing lines freehand with the pencil tool
4. Changing the grid size intro triplets, or off completely using key commands.
5. Moving just a few notes in the piano roll, select them by holding down Shift and clicking.
6. Playing back the audio exactly where you last stopped it.
7. Duplicating a loop AND it’s automation.
8. Consolidate chopped loops into a neatly timed loop.
9. Zooming everything out to 100%
10. Using the virtual keyboard to trigger samples in the drum rack.

See Cosm’s post on this video for more details on the tips he covers here.

This is one of the stranger official product demos we’ve seen in a while. And strange is good.

First, the beautiful tattooed underground superlegend Kendra demos the Electro-Harmonix V256 Vocoder by doing her best T-Pain.

After a little technical background and some gender-bending discussion, Rick sings the Electro-Harmonix V256 Vocoder song.

Later, Rick demos the Metal Muff.

This is a demo for Drawdio – a pencil that lets you “draw” instruments.

While creator Jay Silver compares it to a theremin, it’s closer to a Tannerin or Electro-Theremin.

via wakeupsilver:

Imagine you could draw musical instruments on normal paper with any pencil (cheap circuit thumb-tacked on) and then play them with your finger. The Drawdio circuit-craft lets you MacGuyver your everyday objects into musical instruments: paintbrushes, macaroni, trees, grandpa, even the kitchen sink…

One day I bought a “harmonium” kit at the street market in Bangalore. I hacksawed the keyboard off to make the first ever Drawdio circuit. We played with it at a local school in the slums using plants, water, our foreheads, etc. My friend told me graphite would work too. Meditating on it, I realized the Drawdio circuit should be literally attached to a pencil to “draw audio,” and that’s where the name came from: Draw + Audio.

DIY: Make it. Remix it. Play it.

See http://drawdio.com

This is a demo video for a video theremin, created with Max For Live in Ableton Live 8. 

via akihikotube:

Max For Live (ableton & cycling’74) Video Theremin Tutorial Patch

The Sherman Filterbank is a powerful, real analogue, solid hardware instrument, with a unique sound. In this interview from Electronic Beat’s Slices, Herman Gillis talks about origin of the Sherman Filterbank and more.

Click here to view the embedded video.

via acodike

iPhone Music Software: Check out this visual demo of PatternMusic (App Store link) a gorgeous new matrix synthesizer for the iPhone.

PatternMusic retails for $4.99. Detailed specs below.

If you’ve used PatternMusic, leave a comment and let me know what you think of it!

PatternMusic Features:

• The Stage
  • Intuitively mix and arrange your songs by moving instrument icons.
  • Effortlessly add, duplicate and delete instruments.
• Multi-Touch™ Pattern Editor
  • Easily create unique looping note patterns.
  • Editor zoom – because not everyone has the same size fingers.
  • Up to 64 notes per pattern via the scrolling timeline.
  • Scroll through a 4 octave range for each instrument.
  • Solo mode – focus on a single part of your composition.
  • Dynamics for individual notes.
• Voices
  • 50 instrument voices to choose from.
  • Change voices at any time.
  • A full drum kit and percussion set.
• Built-in Help and Tutorials
  • A complete Help system is accessible throughout the app.
  • Access built-in and on-line Video Tutorials without leaving the app.
• Instrument and Song Settings
  • Tempo (including “tap tempo” for interactive tempo matching).
  • Time Signature
  • Scales – work within a mode and avoid “wrong” notes (more than 40 scales available).
  • Note length configurable from 1/16 note triplets to dotted whole notes.
  • Looping control – infinite or counted.
  • Configurable instrument start point.
  • Swing – create shuffle effects.
  • Transpose – up or down up to two octaves (an 8 octave total range).
• Song Management
  • Auto-save – PatternMusic automatically saves your songs when you quit or when you are interrupted by a phone call, and it automatically restores your last session when you return.
  • Manage your songs including song duplicate, rename and delete.
• Play along with your iPod Music
  • iPod Music Library access and control without leaving the app.
• Small app download
  • You’ll be creating music in no time.

WTF?

In this KorgTV exclusive, Dr. Funk rocks the Korg Kaossilator, while Go Go Girl kisses the camera and plays air guitar.

The festivities are only marred by Inset Man’s unfortunate placement of the closeup camera shots.

via KORGTVGERMANY

Steven Ness is working on a version of Terry Riley’s minimalist classic In C, using Max For Live and Ableton Live 8.

In C consists of 53 musical phrases, lasting from half a beat to 32 beats that should be played in order, but can be repeated any number of times.

In this video demo, Ness explains how he’s using Max For Live to recreate the logic of In C using the capabilities of Max For Live.

Best quote: “Oh my god! Max For Live Is Going To Blow Your Mind!”

This video demonstrates using Max For Live with a Wacom Tablet to control the Analog synth instrument in Ableton Live 8.

The “Wacom Theremin” offers a lot of expressive musical potential, with 5 degrees of control over the sound.

Details below.

via rerunnermusic:

The live.remote~ object passes data at many times the resolution of MIDI (one of the great things about the Wacom tablet and sample accurate modulation from MSP to Ableton Live using the API objects in Max for Live).

The Wacom tablet has 5 degrees of hi-res expressive freedom (see below for mappings). Very promising, this is just a quick little study… Cheers.

x axis = pitch (tempered)
y axis = volume
pen pressure =vibrato amount
tilt axis y = vibrato rate
tilt axis x = detune +/- semitone.

rishabhrajan demonstrates his MacGyver multitouch surface, with some general applications and then with a Flash version of Brian Eno’s Bloom ambient app.

Below, a “paper piano”, created with Community Core Vision, Pure Data and Logic Pro.

Do you think 2010 will be the year somebody packages this concept and turns it into a general music app?

The guru of symphonic electronica, Vangelis, demonstrates his approach to virtual orchestration in this video, Vangelis and the Journey to Ithaca.

If anyone has more information on this video, leave a comment!

The Realistic Concertmate MG-1 is vintage analog synthesizer that was distributed by Radio Shack under their “Realistic” brand name.

It was one of the worst synths that ever bore the Moog name. But, as the video demonstrates, that doesn’t mean it couldn’t make some great analog sounds.

Features:

• Two oscillators with sync & detune, one producing either a Square or Sawtooth waveform, with the other producing either a Pulse or Sawtooth waveform.
• One low pass filter/VCF, that can use the envelope generator, has limited keyboard tracking, and is capable of self oscillation.
• Limited envelope generator with variable attack and release, and a switchable sustain (no decay).
• Oscillator 2 can be tuned independently or synced to oscillator 1.
• Noise generator.
• Ring modulator (called “Bell Tone”).
• Polyphonic oscillator. This oscillator is routed through the filter, but not through the envelope generator or LFO.
• LFO that can modulate the oscillators and the filter using a triangle, square or random waveform
• Portamento (called “Glide”)
• External Control inputs for pre-MIDI CV/Gate.

The Concertmate MG-1 is notorious for it’s inclusion of a cheesy polyphonic organ sound and for using black foam on the interior which decays into a sticky black sludge over time.

If you’ve used the Moog Realistic Concertmate MG-1, leave a comment with your thoughts!

The History Of The Moog Realistic Concertmate MG-1

Synthesis Technology’s Paul Shreiber, who’s known for designing the Cadillac of modular synths, the MOTM, has explained the origin of the Concertmate MG-1:

Radio Shack has no engineering. Rather, that falls (er…’fell’) under TSD (Tandy Systems Design). Also, twice a year Radio Shack holds a private version  of COMDEX/CES, just for them! Vendors line up 50 deep and present their wares.

Back then (early ’80s) about 40% of gear in a Radio Shack was bought ‘outside’. Most electronics was made in a Korean factory that Tandy owned a majority  share called EnCal (EnCal made all of Pioneer’s and Alpine’s car stereos there).

So, during one of these mini-trade shows who is on the presentation list (which TSD got in advance) but a one ‘Dr. D. Luce’. Well, when I saw Mr.  PolyMoog on the list I had to see this. So sure enough here he wanders in with a hand-made small synth. He demos it. Bernie Appel, the #1 decision maker (er…the *ONLY* decision maker of what went in the store or not) had this type of conversation:

BA:  What the f*** is that piece of s***? (BA enjoyed treating all new vendors this way. This was his equivalent of “Hello.”)

DDL: It’s a music synthesizer prototype. [Proceeds on a 3 minute demo. You had 5 minutes to present. Period!!]

BA:  (interested, but certainly not going to show it to the Yankee geek) How the hell do you plug it in?

DDL  points out the 1/4″ jack.

BA:  Where in the holy hell, in my store (they were always referred to as “my stores”) does that thing go? Up my ass?

See, RS had not a single piece of gear that had 1/4″ jacks! All RCA. BA knew this.

DDL at this point looks like he’s gonna puke. He’s quivering & sweating like a whore in church (sorry, that’s another BA expression!)

BA:  Play me a tune. [DDL one-fingers a classical thingy.]

BA:  That damn thing busted? What’s with this 1 finger shit? [DDL explains about monophonic blah blah blah.]

BA turns to me.

BA:  You know what the hell he’s talking about?

Me:  (thinking this is a trick question) Err…yeah.

BA to DDL: We’ll look at it. NEXT!!!!

So began the Luce/Schreiber effort. What he had was the boards out of a Minimoog, no A440 osc, no noise, in a box. So, I got handed that, designed  the MG-1 version (added the organ stuff BECAUSE BA was convinced that typical  RS customers wanted more than 1 note). Added RCA jacks, ring mod do-dad. Then, had to specify parts that Moog never had to use: cheapo pots. I’ll admit it: CHEAPO. They were ALPS and I think we paid (back then) about 23 cents apiece.

That is because the RS gross profit margin was an unheard of 63% (the average of ALL the Forture 500 is like 8%) and lastly, I spent about 3 weeks on just the panel layout and color scheme & wrote the Owner’s Manual along  with, oddly enough, Steve Leininger who designed the TRS-80. He played a Vox  in a jazz band and BA wanted his opinion as well.

Luce and I went back & forth about 5 months until they delivered the “pre-production” units. Moog made them, Tandy supplied most of the parts (we had a company in Japan that bought parts and resold them to Tandy. One day I’ll tell my funny modem capacitor story.)

So, the story was:

• Moog presented the original idea to RS
• They dumped it on me. I had to make it “Radio Shack compliant”. Which meant a re-design. Used the 3046 + Tel Labs tempco for the VCO. More Electronotes than Moog! Moog ladder filter, 3080 VCA. Prototype had mod wheel; *PUNT!*. Cost like $3. Get real.
• Moog built it.
• Tandy had 18 months exclusive. Moog then made the Rogue which is my design without the organ/ring mod, wheels back on.
• No, I didn’t get a free MG-1 or a Rogue.
• No, I didn’t get a lot of money. At that time I was making about $21,500/yr.

Final note: NO!!! I DID NOT pick that stupid black felt that lays over the sliders, then turns to tar. That was Luce’s deal. But, I DID get Luce to send me *every* piece of Moog literature at the time: still have it!

Paul Schreiber
Synthesis Technology

Resources:

• The Moog Realistic Concertmate MG-1 at cykong
• Synhouse plans for adding MIDI to a Concertmate MG-1 synthesizer
• Video via Thalassa77: During the last few days I’ve been restoring this Moog Realisitic Concertmate MG-1 and now the synth is like new. The Moog MG-1 is basically a Moog Rogue with a polyphonic section, it has 2 VCO , 1 LFO with S&H , 1 AR envelope , noise,ring modulator and a genuine Moog filter. The sound is amazing and you can get a lot of different kind of sounds from deep basses to soft leads and brass sounds. On this video i’m just showing a few of sounds that can be created on moment with this little synth
• Wikipedia entry

Michael Una looks at using the $44.95 Highly Liquid MD24 MIDI decoder kit to control a handmade analog bass line sequencer and drum machine via Ableton Live.

This set of videos offers a visual introduction to Native Instruments’ Maschine 1.1.

This is a video demo of IK Multimedia’s GrooveMaker Electro – a beatmaking app for the iPhone.

via ikmultimedia:

Hear the sounds of the new GrooveMaker Electro: mechanical and aggressive uptempo beats, weird and chemically altered sounds. A huge collection of phreaked out bass lines and alien noises. Includes 4 songs, plus 1 FREE song by registering, and a total of 315 loops in 85-98-100-120-135 BPM ranges for 215 MB of samples.

The Casio CZ-1000 is a vintage (80s) Phase Distortion Synthesis synthesizer, that’s basically a CZ-101 with full-size keys.

It offers 8-voice polyphony and a 49-key full-size keyboard. A two oscillator per voice option lets you get thicker sounds, but reduces the polyphony to 4 voices.

The CZ’s aren’t true classic synths, but they are reliable and offer a great vintage synth value.

If you’ve used the Casio CZ-1000 synthesizer, leave a comment with your thoughts!

Resources:

• Casio CZ-1000 editor librarian at SoundQuest
  

via AnalogAudio1:

The Casio CZ-1000 is a digital synthesizer with the “phase distortion” synthesis. It came out 1985 and it was one of the first low cost synthesizers with MIDI multimode.

The CZ-1000 looks like something between Yamaha DX7 and Korg Poly-800. Like the Korg Poly-800, it can run with batteries. The CZ-101 is virtually the same, it just has small keys.

Casio had the idea to develop a digital synth with modern digital sounds, which is easy to program like an analog synth. Indeed, it uses similar terminology (DCO, DCW, DCA) – if you understand subtractive synthesis, the CZ will be also easy for you to understand.
Instead of real filters, you have the DCW – this is the unit, which distorts the phase of the DCO. Resonance is not available, but you can produce similar sounds with special DCO waveforms. There are 8 waveforms, two of them can be used at once.

It has portamento, monophonic / polyphonic modes and cartridge storage. Like the original DX7, the display is not backlit.

The Casio can produce digital and analog-style sounds. Great house organs can be produced. Some “filter sweep” sounds are interesting (the bass in the movie). But other analog-style sounds are a bit static and boring to my ears, I would recommend the Casio for digital sounds – not for the analog sounds. Analog sounds are better on the competitor Korg Poly-800.

The timing of the sound engine is not the best – a three notes chord causes a significant delay between notes (you can hear it in the movie). But okay, it was a small budget synth.

In the video I played the CZ-1000 with a Lexicon MPX 500 reverb.

Vince Clarke used to have one in the eighties.

This is a demo of the Korg Minipops 20 S, the stereo Minipops, a rhythm box/drum machine from about 1970.

The Minipops was probably most famously used by Jean Michel Jarre.

via AnalogAudio1:

Jamming around with the Korg / Keio Minipops 20s.The Korg Minipops 20s is an early rhythmbox from Korg. It’s the only one Mini Pops model which has stereo outputs. Different sounds come from the two outputs – that’s great!

I used them like single outputs with different effects in the video. I used a Yamaha ProR3 reverb and a delay from Roland DEP-5.

On the second half of the video I sent one of the outputs through an old ELECTRO HARMONIX HOT TUBES.

I love the Minipops boxes – I recently bought the 20S. Now I have them all

Sunday Synth Jam: This video demonstrates jamming with the JazzMutant Lemur and Ableton Live.

It starts with a demo jam and then digs into the set up of the Lemur with Live.

via tonvibration:

playing a ableton live set with my current live control surface on the jazzmutant lemur.
(the soundquality is a little poor – sorry – next time i shouldn´t record it directly with the cam…. but it is only for demonstration purpose anyway…)
i talk a little about the controls at the end.

This video demonstrates the effects of using compression in a mix.

Discussing compression is opening a can of worms. Robert Henke (Monolake) avoided compression on his latest release, commenting:

Radio, and more recently mp3 players and laptop speakers influenced the way popular music is composed, produced and mastered: Every single event has to be at maximum level all the time. This works best with music that is sonically simple, and music in which only a few elements are interacting. A symphony does not sound convincing thru a mobile phone speaker, and a maximized symphony does not sound convincing at all.

My take on compression is that extreme compression would ideally be left to playback devices, unless it’s being used as a creative tool. If you’re listening to that classical symphony or Monolake release in your car, you could push the “compression” button and hear the quiet bits, without the need for for the track to be squashed.

via muzicali:

Wondering how much compression you should use in the mix? Maybe you’re skeptical that compression really makes a difference? Its a difficult effect to get a handle on and to really use effectively. It starts by being able to hear the difference between a mix that has compression and one that does not. To this end, Ive cooked up a phat drum beat and given it a mix with lots of compression. In this video, I switch all of the compressors on and off while the beat is playing, so you can hear the difference. And, at the same time I flip through the compressors on each channel so you can peep my settings. Enjoy!

This is a demo video for the modern mini-synth classic, the Korg microKorg synthesizer.

Description:

State-of-the-art analog modeling and multi-band vocoding are available in a compact, portable instrument. With 37 keys and 128 user-rewritable programs, the microKORG Synthesizer/Vocoder is designed for the performer, producer, computer musician or beginner looking for an affordable synthesizer.

Korg microKORG Synthesizer/Vocoder Features:

• 128 user-rewritable programs
• 37-key mini keyboard
• Powerful synthesis
• Classic vocoding
• A full range of effects
• Great sounds and expression
• Flexible arpeggiator (6 types)
• Clear control and classic looks
• Can serve as a compact MIDI controller

EM’s David Battino had this to say about the Korg microKorg:

It’s easy to slip into critic mode and forget that making music is supposed to be fun. The MicroKorg is frustrating if you expect to play and program it like a full-size keyboard synthesizer, but as a portable, creative gadget, it stands alone. If you can justify spending $500 on a terrific-sounding musical toy (and I use that word in a very positive sense), you won’t go wrong with the MicroKorg.

The Korg microKorg retails for $399.

If you’ve used the Korg microKorg – leave a comment with your thoughts!

Specifications:

Sound Generation Method:
Analog Modeling Synthesis System

Synthesizer Program:
Multi Timbral:
2 (max, Normal/Dual Mode)

Voices:
4 voices

Sound Source:
2 Oscillator + Noise Generator
Multi Mode Filter (-24dB/oct LPF, -12dB/oct LPF/BPF/HPF)
EG x2, LFO x2, Virtual Patch x4

Vocoder Program:
Voices:
4 voices

Sound Source:
1 Oscillator + Noise Generator
EG x1
LFO x2
8 Channels vocoder
Level and pan of each channel can be edited
Formant Shift function

General Specifications:
Programs:
128 programs

Effects:
Modulation effects (3 types)
Delay (3 types)
Equalizer

Arpeggiator:
6 types

Keyboard:
37 Keys (mini-keyboard, velocity sensitive)

Inputs:
AUDIO IN 1, and 2

Level switch:
LINE/MIC
[AUDIO IN 1, 2 (LINE)]
[AUDIO IN 2 (MIC)]

Outputs:
L/MONO, R and Headphones

MIDI:
IN, OUT and THRU

Display:
3 characters x1 line with 8 segment LED

Power Supply:
DC 9 V (AC adapter), or six AA alkaline batteries (sold separately)

Power Consumption:
6.4 Watt maximum

Dimensions:
20.63″(W) x 9.13″(D) x 2.76″(H) 524mm(W) x 232mm(D) x 70mm(H)

Weight:
4.85 lbs. 2.2 kg

Accessories:
AC adapter (DC 9 V, 600 mA)
Condenser Microphone

Korg microKorg Resources:

• Official info page
• EM review