Bloom for the iPhone and iPod Touch

Brian Eno, who has been exploring the outer fringe of electronic music since the 1970's, has again fused music and technological innovation in the creation of Bloom, a generative ambient music application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The user sits mesmerized, poking the screen, which responds both visually and musically, effectively turning the device into an interactive audiovisual ambient music generator. Bloom doesn't come off merely as a piece of software, but more like a combination of software and a music album which never sounds the same twice. While using generative and fractal music in regular electronica recordings is nothing new (Aphex Twin has done this to great effect), crossing it with a consumer device like the iPhone is definately a step in a new direction. I say that a user-editable version of this program would turn a lot of heads, and would lead to some more very interesting art and music. As it is, Bloom can be had via Apple's iTunes store for a paltry $4.00us.

Soundcloud.com: Twitter for Musicians?

.:Soundcloud.com:.

So tonight at 6:00 PM Eastern Soundcloud.com officially launched to the public. I jumped at the chance and signed up to it right away to give it a quick run down and find out what it is all about. After exploring the site for an hour or so I think the simplest explanation of what it is, is Twitter for music sharing. The core of the site exists around musicians being able to upload their music (of any size and length) and then share it with followers. It has a similar followers system to what Twitter uses and you can subscribe to artists on the site.




Sounds pretty basic right? Well it is, but there are a whole slew of other cool features on the site that make it really cool. For example, one such featured is what they called a timed comment. While you are listening to a track an user and insert a comment on the timeline of the track right where they want. They can for example say "That was a great buildup" and insert it right at the point of the track where it occurred.





Also on the site there appears to be some excellent sharing features to embed your music externally. But, one of the coolest features is the dropbox feature. Soundcloud provides you a link to to allow anyone to drop music off for your to listen to. Feel free to drop music at the link below

Dynamic Interplay's Dropbox

So, overall this site is very cool and has a huge potential to allow for musicians to interact with each other. If anyone else out there is using the site or signs up, send me a request on the site and we can get to sharing some music. My username is DInterplay. Let me also point out that there are no file size limits to the music you upload!!!!

VST Oversampling: Reduce the Aliasing on your VST's?

VST Oversampling

The oversampler "hosts" another VST plugin, and oversamples it by 2. Because of this, aliasing has twice the frequency range to unfold, which means that the aliasing that enters back into the audible domain is much less, and upon downsampling, the upper range (containing only aliasing) is discarded. This results in audibly reduced aliasing.

Interesting concept, but who knows if it even works. Question is, what is the impact it has upon your CPU as well. The trade of quality vs. CPU might be interesting. Any Windows users out there brave enough to tray this out and let us know how it works?

Show Your Vocoder Some Love

See more T-Pain videos at Funny or Die

Here is a quick lesson to you. Don't mess with your Vocoder, it might just turn on you. You know, now that I think about it I would love to see that battle play out. Daft Punk vs. their Vocoder. FIGHT!!!!

Dave Smith Releases the Mopho Desktop Synthesizer

 

DaveSmithInstruments.com

Who doesn't love Dave Smith and analog gear?  Unfortunately for most of us the price is just too much for most of us to bear and even if we could afford the equipment the thought of exposing that nice Prophet eight to the possibility of a spilled beer is enough to make any LivePA artist cringe.

Dave Smith Instruments has announced a new monophonic synth module called the Mpho.

Mopho is a compact and affordable—but powerful—monophonic analog synthesizer. The voice architecture is identical to a single voice of the Prophet '08, but with a couple of unique twists to distinguish it from its award-winning sibling. We have added two sub-octave generators—one per oscillator—for additional girth and crushing basses. It also has an audio input that lets you process external audio and mix Mopho's own audio output back in pre-filter for feedback effects that can range from subtle distortion to extreme skronk. The Push It button is a manual trigger that lets you play a specific note or latch notes and sequences on. It can also step through a sequence to play short melodic lines without a keyboard. Of course, Mopho can also be used with a MIDI controller or external sequencer.
Mopho is fully programmable and all the parameters can be tweaked from the front panel. The four Assignable Parameters controls are assignable per program for optimum performance control. A free editor is available for Mac OS and Windows to facilitate programming. (And, if you already have a Prophet '08, most of Mopho's parameters can be controlled from the Prophet's front panel via MIDI!)

Ohh, did I mention it is only $399? Yeah, real analog, real Dave Smith. $399. This looks like a very nice compliment to the original evolver.

via LivePA.org

Roland VP-550: The Best Tool No One Knows About?

While browsing on some of the shopping sites this evening I stumbled across this instrument called the Roland VP-550. Never seeing it before I had to look into more about what it was. I found out it is a dedicated harmonizer/vocoder vocal synth.

In fact it is perhaps one of the best sounding vocal harmonizers I have ever heard, creating fairly realistic sounding choruses

Jordan Rudess has some excellent Youtube Videos that showcase some of the versatility of the VP-550. Quite frankly I am blown away and surprised no one else is really talking about this interesting instrument.

Jazzmutant Lemur Releases v2.0 Firmware on October 3rd

Jazzmutant Lemur Releases v2.0 Firmware on October 3rd

Everyone's favorite touch screen interface that no one can afford has just released updated firmware. The full list is below. New features, enhanced junk. Any Lemur users out there? I have always loved this thing, but it seems like it is just one step away from being the ideal touch screen interface. 

• Breakpoint object – Offers total control of synthesizer or sampler envelopes with a multi-segment envelope editor to allow you to really get inside a sound, live on stage!
• Gesture object – This emulates a trackpad control with advanced gesture recognition and has three novel ways to interact with your sound.
• Alias – Now you can easily produce a copy or alias of a controller object that sends exactly the same information to your computer.
• Tabbed Container – Containers are virtual panels that contain a selection of controls.
• Mouse and keyboard control – Now Lemur's objects can be used to remotely control the mouse cursor or computer keyboard.
• Workflow improvements – Setting up your custom performance interface is a breeze with the improved and new-look Jazzeditor.
• Extended scripting abilities – You can now modify the physical behavior, appearance or size of an object in real time.

 

via LivePA.org