| Sound
Development Journal of Rich the TweakMeister while Making the
Post-Industrial CybrSound Depot
10-10-00
I've decided to do it and make an
EOS only version of my Emu format sample CD Rom "Ice Kold
Tekno". I am already a week into the project. Every preset will be
re-tweaked in EOS 4.1 and more controllers (cords) will be added to each
patch to make your Emulator sing like a vintage MS20. Plus I will be
adding more samples and more presets, how many more is still up in the air
at this point, but I won't stop till I break some boundaries. As some of
you know I don't stop till I blow myself away! Already I've got a few of
the Ice Kold Tekno Orkestras I made when doing the SoundFont
version mapped in and you will find them powerful and useful. Plus there
will be some far out space effects I learned while making Celestial
Windowpane (ACID cd rom) and there will be plenty of tempo synced
loops and tempo modulated stuff. I just have to add a few samples tweaked
with all the great plugins I have. Finally, I will be adding some Trance
'N Dance presets. ESi users should still order the original Ice Kold
Tekno 2.1 as this coming "EOS only" disk will not be compatible with their
samplers. EOS users should definitely postpone buying Ice Kold Tekno till
this update is in the can. Its going to cost a little more, but it will be
well worth it.
10-21-00
The Ice Kold Project moves along
with great momentum. I've sampled in about 125 all new ms20 samples so far
and the bank is now 126 megs, 602 samples and 514 programs. I'm retweaking
all the sounds to make them contemporary with an industrial electronica
edge. It's interesting to note how my own tastes have changed in the 3
years since I published the original Ice Kold. The new disk has a harder
and softer edge to it. The dancey sounds are bright and quick and the pads
are dripping with luxurious softness. Making great use of the morphing
filters in EOS and have lots of trance like bpm presets made up. I
also am not shy about using my great plugin library to add effects to
samples before sending it to the e5000. I am at the point of deciding to
go beyond just doing a great update to the Ice Kold project and calling it
a different product. Ice Kold Electronica perhaps, as its more trancey
than techno. Debating including my great 808/909 set, which I've yet to
release anywhere. If you all want to give input, now's the time.
Email me or o to
the Guestbook. Rich
11-02-00
Tweaking like a madman every night
since the last update, except last night when I had to update the mp3
page.. Two of my songs hit #1 in their genres! Making projects of
this scope is intense. Time flies away so fast. You
open up something like a 128 meg bank and start tweaking then the
sun-comes-up-again and..the next night we do it again. Every night,
new discoveries, new sonic terrains explored, gems excavated and polished
in the search for the newest and coolest sounds. Sound development is the
quest for quality, something ineluctably subtle, but powerful. I am
reminded of the old book I read in college, Zen and the Art of
Motorcycle Maintenance, and the discussion of Quality.
Added about 50 more samples. more drums to round out the kits, 808 toms,
some deep kiks, and a more authentic sounding dance snare, more hats,
snarey filters (stuff you can edit to make more snares) a crisper and
thicker handclap, more hand drums (which work great as mallets) and of
course I can't resist effects samples of the ms20's idiosyncrasies.
My old kits and new kits are retweaked in EOS and the envelopes are made
precise and exacting. Of course I fixed all occasions of emu's
translation bugs from the ESI to EOS. I've added more analog
replicas of orchestral instruments, violins, violas, cellos, sections,
and made up new woodwind waveforms. I'm making sure the analog
orchestras sound better than they do in the Ice Kold Tekno Orkestra.
That's not easy as those are tweaked as deep as SoundFonts will go.
But EOS tweaks even deeper, and these will be great when finished!
I've added most of the ms20 sourced loops that i made for Celestial
Windowpane. But I downsampled every one to make them small, munged
them up, added delightful weirdness, and placed them all in a kit so they
would play together. The kit is one of the coolest lo-fi presets
I've ever made, bizarre, yet usable, ala Mystik garage.
11-15-00
Last Sunday I hit the 640 preset
mark I had set for myself. We are at 726 samples in the 128 meg
bank. I've added my custom 808/909 samples tweaked out of rebirth
and have put in a multisampled 303 bassline keymap too, where every key
has a different 303 filter. The 808/909 kits give you that classic
dance/trance drum sound which you have heard before. But what you
have not heard is my ms20 kits (and there are many many all new ms20 drums
in this project) layered with the 808/909. This allows you to get
drums that are classic and crunchy with totally original and unique
colorings. You may not be able to find better analog synth drums
anywhere else.
Right now I am making demos and
just tweaked up the original Ice Kold Tekno demo "The Ogre pops In" on the
new project, to ensure compatibility between the two. I want to make
sure those of you that have the original Ice Kold Tekno will be able to
play your older songs. That part, thankfully, is done, and I can get
back to breaking new ground. There is a (rough) demo of some of the
bpm presets on my mp3 site.
Listen to Demo 1 (MP3 download)
The way these work is that when
you have the midi tracks running in your sequencer, you can speed up or
slowdown the tempo and EOS will automatically make these looping sounds
stay in sync. This is absolutely great for trance and dance tracks,
and it gives the project some incredible uses in diverse forms of
electronic music. I've also made sure that there are many presets
that are arpeggiator ready--i.e., short attack and release. I've
made dozens of new synths out of the ms20 samples, lots of bright Junos,
Jupiters, prophets, Moogs, Oberheims that have a dancey edge. While
there were a handful of these in the original ice Kold, now they are here
in plenitude. These work great with block chords and with
arpeggiators, and also make great synth loops if you like to construct
those. (They will be a critical part of my next acid loops project,
so i am making sure they are as loud and bright and mix cutting as
possible.) As I did with the ESi, I have found the tricks in EOS to
make loud and huge soundscapes. I think i have even found ways to
make the harsh distortion of the 'harder' filters to sound tasty.
There are precious few settings that do that and you have to hunt a long
time to find them.
Probably one of the more striking
features of the bank are dozens of all new 'FX waves'. I discovered during
the original Ice Kold that i could loop and idiosyncratic blerp, bubble,
or blip on the ms20 and come up with awesome stereo synth FX. Well I
have more of those and I've gone farther down this road. In the
waveform editor I look for those miniscule moments where an ms20 patch
fall in/out of sync/ tune, or completes a filter cycle and starts another.
Then I crop to just that little segment, loop, and viola, new
strange synth sample. I recorded hundreds of ms20 patches of knob
twists and scrutinized each one for novel, interesting transformations.
I found a bunch of cool stuff, and they will smoke your Emulator in very
industrial ways.
I'm not done tweaking yet.
And I'm not done thinking about ways to make this the most mind blowing cd
rom you ever loaded into EOS.
1. Making the project
updateable by sysex. That is allowing you and me to create and
post new patches presets and midifiles. just like people do with
synths. After all, This is a massive bank of synth sounds, with 4
times the memory of a typical modern module. Why not support it just
like a synth? Because SoundDiver has such an excellent EOS
interface, we could easily share small files of sysex data and completely
update the bank as often as we like.
2. Opening a station on Mp3.com
where I will post all of your songs made with the project. I
already got my feet wet doing this with Celestial Windowpane and I like
the idea of developing the community of people using the project.
This is something neither emu nor any sound developer gives you. I
think of it as unparalleled support. Tell me what you think about
that.
I'd like to think that when you
buy into my projects you really buy more than a set of sounds. You
get into a community of artists.
OK back to tweaking.
11/20/00
OK, I admit. I am having a
hard time putting this project to bed. That's because I MUST blow
myself away before I release and I am not there yet, nor even close.
And believe it, I am working like a madman on this project. Decided
the MS20, no matter how extensively i tweak it, cannot deliver the
Kraftwerk/Orbital type sounds I am wanting. I can get close tweaking the
EOS filters to the max, but it's just not the same. So i have gone
to the fountain of gear and slapped a used TX7 in my rig. Just a note
here: I have tons of synths and samples here, but I will not sample
anyone else's samples. I program from the ground up. This
assures you of getting a real royalty free disk, and I can sleep better
(hah! what programmer ever sleeps!)
Now the basses sound right and I
have some wonderful FM strings. I know FM synthesis from the years I
played with a TX81Z. Thanks to the great editor in SoundDiver,
patch-making is intuitive. Yes! The editor is that good! When
you need clean and precise sounds, nothing does it like FM! I've
already made 100 patches and I've only had it one day. I'm excited because
FM is the perfect antidote for the MS20. The ms20 is analog and
sloppy, gritty, and wonderfully imprecise. FM is clean, precise,
almost surgical. So Yep, the disk is going to have both, plus the
808/909/303 stuff.
So! This disk is going to let you
do what many of us remember from the 80's. Blending analog with
digital. Some of may remember the sounds of the Juno and Jupiter
with the DX7 and how nicely these made music. Well the MS20 is the
granddaddy of all these analog synths and when sampled it can mimic them
all. You want those brash Jupiters and tweezy Junos? There
here! I even tweaked up the ultra cheese-mo CZ Violin on my ms20 (in
addition to very warm sounding legato strings and tons of intense analog
orchestras. Now with the TX samples making their way in there's a
clean sheen on the top. I am not gonna stop till the sound of this
project is absolutely breathtaking. We are closer. Pleased stay
tuned!
11-22-00
We are now at 770 Samples and 708
Presets. The big news. You guys are in for a treat, you are going to
get my newest batch of FM Noise forms. The inspiration for these
comes straight off the cutting edge, which for me is like hyped
electricity. There's 17 of these. I was saving them for a
later project, but decided they had to be in here. These are the
most interesting FM noise based waveform I have ever heard. When you
are doing industrial you need lots of sources of noise. The Analog
Noiseforms from the MS20 are in this disk too, and its a softer, richer
noise. FM noise is harsh, grating and more metallic with odd
overtones and ripping harmonics. The thing about noise harmonics is
that the EOS filters react to them as there are more frequencies present.
. For instance, put one of these in the bat-phaser and you get
shards of metal falling like snow.
Since I have the TX7 all hot and
bothered (the flat top makes a great coffee warmer) I just had to sample
in the classic DX7 piano. Ok, you tweaks, I can just see you guys
rolling your eyes. For those who are new to this game, the DX7 classic
"bell piano" is probably on more hit records than any other synth sound
ever made. Every general sound module on the market tries to imitate
it. So why did I add it? Well, it sounds exactly like a DX7,
and I think that sonic footprint is needed to make a range of other cool
ambient sounds. Its just 4 samples, but it sounds great.
I am now focusing on ambient
sounds. Just listened to Orbital's album "Diversions" and made a
list of 20 ambient sounds I want. These are all short little samples
of a filtered bell tone. Then there is a matter of pads with
inharmonic bell qualities that create beautiful atmospheres you have
probably heard in some of Vangelis stuff and Kraftwerk. To me this
is the critical offset to analog. As we paint with colors, contrast
illumines the qualities of the opposite. Maybe now you see why i had
to add the best patch the dx7 ever made. I am not the first person
to layer it with others sounds, and when you hear it in my bank you'll
hear the ghosts of many great tweakmeisters when FM and analog was all we
had.
Also just about finished demo 2,
which demonstrates the 5 velocity layered TB303 patches. Each of
these 5 has 4 layers of velocity so you get those idiosyncratic
"squelches" when you play hard, "edges" when you back off, "glurps" in the
middle and does the classic spectral lowpass when played light. Also
note the new awesome ms20 sounds--from woodwinds to classic synths, new
outrageous filter effects, hehe, and a sharper drum kit.
Listen to Demo 2
I still
have 2 megs free from my last cleanup/relooping. Some of those MS20
samples from Ice Kold Tekno were really long so cut them up, more
efficiently looped them and downsampled where I could get away with it.
The mystery: what will make the cut.
11/25/00
Looks like I am going to take a
bit longer and go the extra mile Right before finishing demo 2 I got into
making up the set of space sounds out the the fm noisewaves and fm bell
tones. You'll hear 3 of them in the introduction. Yesterday I
also made up more basses and pads, and cleaned up and fixed more stuff.
I'll be making another demo soon--there's no better way to test things.
I'm making sure every preset is useful in practice, not only good
sounding. We are up to 756 Presets. I know what some of you may be
thinking "Yeah, but how many of them are actually any good". Answer:
all of them. I certainly know the sentiment. I have a stack of
cd roms 3 feet high and about 85% of that footage has been a
disappointment. I am shooting for the top of my stack.
11/28/00
I now stand reminded, thanks to
Andrew from the Emusaic list, of the preset RAM limitations in the older
Emulators of 456k. This limitation is going to force a rethinking of
things, as the unfinished Master bank now sits at 1177k. So I will
divide it up into smaller banks as an option and make sure I keep it
within the older machine's max bank specs. It's possible i may
simply remove all of Ice Kold Tekno yet leave the new ms20 sounds.
If i do this I'll have to remaster the original Ice Kold CDROM adding the
EOS 32 meg native master bank. Freeing up 32 megs means more room
for more stuff in a 128 meg bank and I'm looking at my Wavestation and
Ensoniq VFX and dare i say some LA synthesis partials. Hmm might have to
hook up the Atari to review some of the many thousands of LA and WS
patches I made in the early 90s. Man that would be awesome. But it
will add significant delay to release. Your thoughts are important
to me. So you should know the Ice Kold section of the Cyber sound
depot may be axed.
Demo 3, the Ambient demo, is up. Hi Fi Mp3.
Listen to all those cool little bell-like things and the nice oriental
synth flute
12/02/00
We have now reached 833 presets
and 824 Samples. My last clean up has resulted in 10 more megs free.
Decided the longest ms20 samples had to go. The master bank from Ice Kold
Tekno is still in. Now we have plenty of creative space left to add
some powerful samples from my synth modules. I've decided to add
tweaked up stuff from my VFX and Wavestation. Both of these are
vintage PCM synths. More than sample playback, and filling in the
middle ground between analog and FM synthesis. I am finding the
truly unique and best waveforms, tweaking then sampling. Decided not
to multisample, unless its absolutely critcal, like on strings. This
gives you a vast sound palette, a synthmaster's delight. With
these new waves in I could go on forever. With the PCM waves in, the
sound is now massive. The more I add, the more patches become
possible. I'm already looking forward to organization and am
considering a number of schemes. By the way, the true test of any
bank of samples is organization, so you can find things. There are 8
full 88 key kits where every sample is represented, in addition to at
least 15 different drums kits. You will find them very useful as you
construct you songs.
12/08/00
Bank organization in progress!
I've been organizing for 5 days! Whew! Every sample and preset
is named with prefixes that tell you what kind of patch it is, and in the
case of samples the source instrument, original key and genre. Go
ahead, see how much work it is to do this with a 850 sample and 870 preset
bank. Not only is everything named, but the samples have been
successfully moved and put in order. Yep, all the drones, kiks, and
basses (and everything else!) are now almost perfectly organized.
This makes programming sooo much simpler, you will love what I have done.
I think I have always been ahead of the pack on organization on my cd
roms, now, I am WAY ahead of the pack. Organization should be
finished this weekend, then we go on to the final creative tweak. This
project is just beginning to cross the threshold from being an all-around
great cd rom and into the realm of the fantastic! Hard work pays
off. It's starting to blow me away. Organization does the
trick.
12/10/00
Decided the project cannot end
yet, though its already good enough to go out. Today I got the new
pro52 VST plugin--this is a modeled replica of the old Prophet5 synth made
by Sequential Circuits. Yep, your gonna get a dozen or so samples
from this synth--I find it rounds out the synth section of the disk rather
nicely. I also am adding some custom tweaks made in Dynamo, as in
Reaktor fame. The sound of these virtual synths is phat and awesome.
I really like the ring modulation possibilities in Dynamo. With it,
I am filling the the little gaps in the CyberSound palette of colors,
retweaking anything that sounds weak or redundant. I really like
this stage of the project as ever move I make adds value.
12/14/00
Having a marvelous time with
Dynamo and the Pro52 software synths. They are so tweakable, its
rather mind-blowing. The drawback with using software synths in a
sequencer is latency, the ever so slight delay from note on to sound. The
really cool thing about then is that you can spend some energy making a
waveform, sample it, and its sounds better in the sampler. The
latency problem is gone and you have a new stack of filters and envelopes
to throw at it. So there's even more samples and presets.
Looking like its going to wind up at 912 presets and 905 samples, a very
well endowed palette indeed, and tons of fun to use. What remains is
making a few more drum kits with the new drum sounds I tweaked up, one
more 88 key kit (which will make 11 for the disk). 15 more samples, the
creation of a few more performance-oriented presets, then bank
reorganization#2, the chop down into smaller banks for older eos machines,
the master burn, cd artwork and posting to the secure site, the writing of
support pages and deciding on price. I'm estimating 2 more weeks and
a few days
12/17/00
Still at it but can finish a
within hours if I want, but I don't want to just yet. As we approach the
finish, I am working around the clock. I filled the remaining 15
sample slots then decided I wanted more 'Orch hits'. So I found
another 3 megs by tightening some loops and re-sampled away. Made
some beautiful stuff today (err...yesterday, it 4:40am): some really huge
pads. The synth orchestras are very powerful, wispy, bombastic, pastoral,
dark, bright, hi-fi, lo-fi... There must be over 100 pads and 50 synth
orchestras on the bank, but today's are, if i say so myself, better than
any I've made, and better than any presets in all my synths. With
930 presets, the possible combinations seem nearly endless. Also
retweaked the basses today.
12-21-00
Many new developments in the
project. I finally after a few years, got my d110 running again.
Went into SoundDiver and found my old patches and sampled the heck out of
them. The D110 was a Roland synth based on the D50. it had LA
synthesis, which was a combination of PCM samples of instrument attacks
attached to a analog like oscillator with filters and resonance. It
also had a facility by which the voices could be combined, like a dx7
combines sine waves. So you are going to get some of the best
sampling from this type of synthesis. These samples form the middle
ground of the palette. We now have the ms20 with the gritty vintage
edge, the TX with its crystalline purity, and the d110 and wavestation and
VFX in the middle. The Software synths add the modern phatness, and
there you have it: Synth Power!
As a result, the orchestras are
upped in sound quality. There is also another new drum kit--the
Cyber kit. These are tweaks out of the d110 and processed in Sound
forge and they are unusual. They don't sound like the old d110's mushy
drums. Spent hours on them to make them really hot for DnB. I
also made some discoveries about the envelopes in EOS and tweaked the
basses again. Many are now optimized for Trance. The old Ice Kold
Basses are all transformed with the exception of 3 or 4 that could not be
improved. I sequencer tested them yesterday and they will be some of
the best sequencer basses you have played. They work in a mix.
You will like them! I'm uploading a new preset list now.
Check it out,
At this point, no more samples can
be added, without deleting something else. I'm in critical mode now.
If i hear anything objectionable it gets fixed or killed and replaced.
12-24-00
I am tentatively closing the
Master Bank. I will be back for 1 more sampling session and one more
programming session and the final re-tweak. I am moving to begin to
create the secondary banks for older EOS users.
12-26-00
Happy holidays. OK, enough
of that. Back to sampling! The sample set is finished, and yep,
there are 998 samples on the bank and i cannot fit any more. The
final samples were some wicked drum samples from my archives.
Developed a new kit just for them, called the "Hard Kore" kit. They
are smokin! Now I am finally happy with the drums! There's
great variation. Also sampled in some consonants and vowel tones using my
voice. Use these as attacks to synth tones, esp. basses.
Unique and gutsy! Finally, i am revising the bpm patches tonight.
EOS is not as complete as the proteus units for making these, but I am
coaxing out the secrets. Those of you who have not yet experimented
with the time divisors might find my presets to be of great value as you
will find out how its done.
12-29-00
Well I thought I was done.
The past 2 days were spent doing a "final" bank reorganization. As
always, this is a true nightmare with Emu samplers, which do not allow the
insertion of samples in a packed list. The larger the bank, the
worse it is as the more there is to be moved. I will only say after
a scsi glitch took my computer to its knees, that I am glad I had 4
backups on 3 different drives. Man! Samplers really need to dump
scsi once and for all!
Anyway. Positively, the 128
meg bank is totally reorganized again. Is a breeze to program now,
just like a great synth. So I am going to make this great tweak
machine and stop tweaking? No way. Right now I am tuning, all
the samples. This is another bit of drudge that comes with making a
sample cd rom. Tuning the programs is not enough. Samples have
to be tuned at the sample level and again at the loop level and finally at
the preset level. With 1000 samples you can bet this is a daunting task.
But the good thing is that once tuned, problems with samples either
disappear or fully reveal themselves and as these problems are eradicated
the whole bank begins to lock into a domain of quality
Relooping and retuning gave me yet
another 4 megs. I made up a new acoustic guitar, sampled direct to disk.
Its very nice, best one I've made. Picked out 2 snips from my Pink
Floyd-ish super vox archive I made while doing Celestial Windowpane.
When I made the file I had the best Vox in all my synths singing together
in logic Awesome. So more new samples are in, more old samples are
out. Where does it end? It ends when I am 100% confident that
when you load this disk the 1st time you will be extremely happy. So
I ask myself, if I paid $100 bucks for this would i be happy?
Answer, yes. very satisfied. Would I be blown away? Ummm. not
quite. Satisfied, appreciative, pleasantly amused, but not blown. :)
That's not enough for me, folks! So we continue onward. What makes
for a world class sample cd rom?
The way i figure it, the cd rom is
art that intends to be included in your art. To be included in your
art, I must capture your heart and imagination with my sounds and you must
be convinced that you can capture the heart and imagination of your
audience. This is the whole point to music, is it not? Music
is a message. Sounds are the vehicle. Even the most meticulously sampled
string section, for example, has utterly no value if it can't evoke the
creator to use it. And on the contrary, I have kept old synths
because they can make one or two sounds that I cannot live without in my
music. This is what is going on in my mind. Climbing the ladder of
creativity, I'd say I'm finally near the top on this massive project,
I have seen night turn to day and day to night all in the same session
more times than can be counted.
01-01-01
Happy New Year! I thought
for sure this would be the final message, but it isn't. The last few
days were filled with more retuning, relooping and adding/replacing.
Just added: The acoustic guitar inspired me to add more guitar samples, so
I dusted off my vintage Ibanez Cardinal, a dual humbucker from the 70's
that is known for interesting tonal colorations. I plugged it into
my little Marshall amp and sampled all day, coming up with 8 new samples
that are to die for. 4 of them went to getting a clean electric
guitar sound and its warm and fantastic. The other 4 are samples of
distortion. This is very tricky business sampling distorted guitars.
I believe I have found usable results that actually will work in a
sequencer environment. 95% of the synths I have heard do not have
usable distorted guitar patches. This really rounds out the sound
set and I've decided to sacrifice some longer ms20 waves to keep them
in.
Also added a few more drums to
replace the weaker of the Ms20 drums and a killer lo-fi timpani, tweaked
out of a combination of timpani's, and made an Orchestral drum kit.
Let me remind the purists that this is a synthesized set--do not expect
accurate sounding orchestral timbres. I want everyone to understand
this is a quirky, intense synthesized orchestra that is very cool, not an
attempt to capture what an orchestra really sounds like. Got it?
Cool! (I keep fearing some purist is going to buy the disk and do me
like they did the new emu orchestral module in the newsgroups.)
Back to making demos today and
making sure all the new guitars actually will work for you. They do.
I was mildly blown away while making the sequence up--the acoustic guitar
is so pure! And I have a new flute--a combo of waveforms from the d110 and
wavestation, with a puff of of my own pan flute added in. Evocative?
Yes! Retuning is just about complete. I will do
another retweak of the 100 noise based patches. With noise stuff
there is a fine line between genius and insanity, between utter garbage
and art. So many noise effects in synths sound corny. These
will not. I already have tons of patches where noise crosses the
threshold into the modern sonic beatific realm. . I just need to
make sure they all do.
1-5-01 We are in Overtime,
folks. I added a few more DnB style snares--rim shots with select
frequencies removed and the kits just blow me away. I am planning to
make one more super preset. This is going to be something you will
not find anywhere. I'm going to take some ms20 super saw waves and
route them to everything in EOS. That's right, to ALL the
controllers. This will allow the closest thing to true analog
synthesis on your emulator. Just think, you can take this preset and
point it to other samples for the ultimate in real time cords modulation.
The new demo, Rave at the Temple
of Tut is up, and a new sample preset list has been updated.
1/13/01
Many refinements added during the
last week which you will appreciate, and hundreds of samples are
retweaked, re effected, eq'd, gain optimzed, and cleaned of pops and
blemishes. and many are being replaced. I've got to like it for it to
stay, or it gets marked for removal. Most newsworthy is the drum
kits which are now slammin' hot, and quietly cool. While I
liked the snares i cooked up a real lot, I decided it was time to add a
real snare drum and real hats to my arsenal. So you'll hear the
samples of my new Tama 5.5 x10 snare. This snare is great for DnB
samples, it really has an attitude. Out of about 50 pedal hat
samples I made last night I found one that was perfect for the project.
I am also replacing some of the redundant synth FX with acoustic samples.
So I am putting in some new sound effects elements for that ambient touch,
bamboo wind chimes, stereo babbling brook, an alternate sample of my
Mystik chimes which were featured on the Mystik garage, a hit of my
Egyptian Tambourine. So things are rounding out in a nice way.
The project will be going to beta
test next week. We are getting closer. But you will be glad it
took so long, when you get it.
1/25/01
I finished tuning, then decided
after doing the Rave at the
Tomb of Tut demo (which makes me recoil in horror at
parts) that overall the bank was bass heavy so I swept through all 1000
samples and re-eq'd them. Now they stack up in a mix a lot better
and the top end is cleaner. Of course I can't just leave in a dud
sample or two so I decided to add CZ101 Brass and Violin. Hey I know
they are cheesy, that's why they are in. Fixed some DC offsets and
then when back to the preset level, calibrated my Ultra and mixer to 0db
with the on board test tone and then set the preset volume for every patch
so the peaks of each sound dance around 0db. This has added real
polish to the overall sound. You can run your Emulator with the
master volume on 10 and the midi volumes at 127 and there will be clear
sound with a crisp edge, but no distortion even holding down a chord..
Back off from 127 and you can stack to your heart's content.
And I am back to demo-ing.
Trying all the presets and learning which don't seem to work so I can
modify them or replace them. I'm going to take my time here and make
sure its final before I do, yep, one more bank reorganization and make the
non-ultra banks. I made a killer Sitar out of the acoustic guitar
samples and reworked many of the drum kits and refined "just 4
kiks", "all snares" and "kiks and snares" which will be useful at mix time
if you like to isolate channels of these central drums.
So we are miles ahead of where we
were on New years day, and my ears are still open. My feeling is to
hold off on release.
I just updated my article,
"Secrets of Sampling"
since I am working so furiously the last few months. if you want to
read up on my methods, here it is!
You climb a stairway to the top
only to find a door. You knock, no one answers but you can hear
muffled voices inside. You touch the doorknob and realize it's open.
You know you are ready because you have painstakingly prepared for this.
Ah. back to tweaking, inspired.
1-30-01
Hyper critical mode! I am
slashing samples from the project with a vengeance Doesn't matter if
I spent a day on it, if it doesn't please me, it OUT! Readily
replaced by a new candidate that will satisfy. This is slash and
burn time before the final, long dreaded day of reorganization #3.
2-4-01
Another week has passed and
improvements were made every night. Tossed out samples and replaced
them with hot new stuff from Dynamo's new Juno plugin and sample munger.
Also Sampled in more acoustic stuff, my new Aztec drum and Ocarina,
Maracas, straight Tambourine, and one African drum that I don't have the
name for. Also made a full Cyber Disco song, available in a few
days. finally. I'm psyched, because at last I am hearing the kind of
music that has inspired the project a 21st century Dance music, resting
solidly on the shoulders of the '80s, but with an intensely modern
cyber-spacey feel. My friends, you will not find anything like this bank
anywhere else. And more good news is, I only had to go into
SoundDiver one time to fix something wrong with a preset
2-12-01
More tests; more tweaks, and more
real world samples. Went out and got a new set of windchimes, the
Matador Jazz Chimes and made up a nice long stereo glissando which will
give a nice ambient touch. Decided this weekend I wanted to be a
bongo player! Put two hard slaps in the set that will gut through
the mix and shake booty. Irritated by the lack of long cymbals in
synths I added a strong China Cymbal. Decided too that one of my
long stereo MS20 drones didn't have to be stereo and added a Korg
Electribe animated sweep that is very reminiscent of the old Morpheus
samples. Finally, added my new "Goat's Nails". These are actually
the rattling toenails off dead goats and they sound exotic.
Retweaked all the major drum kits and built Cybr Kit III.
The interesting thing about the
Cybr Kits is that they start out like a solid hard hitting electronica kit
for the 1st 2 octaves, but each successive octave gets a bit more abstract
and spacier till you hit the c6-c7 where its "way out" but still makes
sense musically with transposing up a basic pattern. . Incorporated
the Aztec 'tongue drums' into the Ambient kit at their natural pitches and
with the new chimes and goat's nails, this kit will softly rock you into
mysterious realms. Added 2 more basses that cut through on the low
end. Tonight I started getting ready for sample
reorganization,,,dread of all dreads; its almost here.
2-17-01
The last samples were added--mini
bongos, a beautiful maracas with a long tail, a mbira hit, vibraslap and
cleaner congas. These have really made the ambient kit sound worldly
and I just love it. Finally, I put in a few Korg electribe hits and
drones adding yet more color. I am finished with the set! I spent the last
2 days going through the awful reorganization process (about 10 hours of
button pushing in extremely repetitive ways, battling all the file system
bugs in EOS on the way). It's now done. All samples and
presets are in perfect order. End in sight!
2-24-01
Now we are having fun. When
you get to this point in a project of this scope, that is when all the
pieces are in place and everything is good, you keep at it and add value
with every move. I logged over 50 hours this week on the project.
Hundreds of presets refined, hundreds of samples retweaked and a few
replaced. I have tons of ideas for new samples and sometimes I can
actually manage to justify a replacement. SoundForge 5.0 arrived at
the lab and I've been making good use of the new WaveHammer
compressor--really nice for samples. Spent most of today and
yesterday tweaking kiks--very tricky and oh so important. Getting it
loud and thumping without destroying the sonic field is a matter of art in
itself. You will love my 808/909 kit. I have never heard a better
one! I invested in a gabber/hardcore cd to see what they are doing.
Lots of distorted kiks. While I am not a hardcore guy, I have let it
influence me in an artful way. Many of the pads are simply
awesome with textural beauty now, basses are retweaked again, the space
sounds are deep and evocative. I am also tweaking the onboard fx.
But this is just for those who like the Emu effects. I will probably
recommend that the FX be globally turned off for thick arrangements.
Even with the sends set to 2-3% the emu reverb seems to get in the way in
a mix. It can be useful for sparsely tracked ambient mixes. I
will make sure that patches sound great both dry an wet if I use the FX
options.
Today I added a cold satellite
from my VFX set and an ambient sample recorded outside the clubs of
Chicago at 4am. Metaphor of the day: Endless abyss of possibility.
When you get the idea behind the Cyber Depot, you will realize you are in
an audio universe where anything is possible, Tonight auditioning
patches, I was at last strongly blown away. But I am still not ready
to call it quits--we are waiting for the point of diminishing returns, the
point when adding makes things worse. I am already there with the sample
set. It takes a long time to come up with better stuff than I have.
Yet there is still some room among the 980 presets. I like to have
presets where all 88 keys do something meaningful in a related fashion.
And I love throwing in surprises. I like every preset to be a "portrait"
that totally stands on its own. Yet I also insist that it be useful
to another artist. And at every point I am thinking of all of you.
What will you need when you call up this preset? What do you need to make
your project stand out? This cd rom will only be successful to me if
you actually use it. My goal is nothing less than to make your music
great. So when I think of adding a sound, I am thinking of every angle by
which you might approach it.
2-27-01 The Landmark Day
Arrives
Last night I realized, while
making a new song called CyBr DisKo, hunting for patches, that I am
truly blown away. Then today, as soon as I started
programming the feeling was stronger. Didn't stop me from running
out to pick up one more instrument for the set. I added a Doumbek to
my arsenal and yer gonna get it soft and hard. Gotta have it when you go
ambient and need those subtle deep bass tones. Then later as the Tweak had
to mow his yard today, I found some forgotten old rusty bells in the
backyard. They are simple gorgeous in their exotic qualities.
So I crafted a stereo loop of them and they will please and relax you.
Finally, I added some 11k lo fi samples of my phone dialing and 56k modem
connecting. I mean really, how can i approach the sounds of
cyberspace without a modem sound? You'll like it.
Then I started a new song
"Ambient Two" and within suddenly the wash of emotion came on like a warm
ocean wave. Realization: I've made it past the threshold of
Quality, and the overall vibe of the disk is speaking with
a clear voice. Its like the clouds have finally passed and I realize
the sun is shining. The sounds are smiling! No
kidding, You will smile! You play through the
presets and you'll hear it too. No I am not crazy, stoned or
tripping. I'm a TweakHead, I know about these things. This is a set
that will engage not only your musical mind, but your heart as well.
Wondering how sampled electronic music can have a heart? Buy this
disk and you will find out. Believe me, i am not just saying this to
sell disks. Its not easy for me to be blown away. I've heard
everything and rarely get past detached amusement. This is not
another techno-industrial-dance set. Consider it enlightened
techno-industrial, infused with feeling. Genuine raw dance
power, yet with a perspective on the beautiful, the beatific, the worldly
and other-worldly. Its a very good vibe. You will put sounds
together and you and your audience will feel the irradiating soul of
the 21st century. Many of the sounds touch on memories we are
only about to first experience. Read that again OK? As you
see, I am confident. I can sell with confidence knowing you will not
be disappointed. And my bet is that you will instantly hear what I
am hearing and this disk will be on top of your stack of cd roms.
Also I can now announce the release date: March 9th at midnight.
There is a new just
uploaded list of presets and samples. in the online Manual. I will
have a logic environment ready by the release date. (ed. Done 3/11/01)
And later I will make a cubase .dev file and cakewalk .ins file. All
of these will be downloadable. There will be a dedicated MP3 page
for user songs (ed. Done 3/11), I will set aside a page on TweakHeadz for
user presets in SoundDiver format. The price? Come back on March
5th. Or subscribe to my newsletter.
3/1/01
The Latest demos :
1.
Ambient Two
2.
At the CybrDisKo
3/3/01
Try as I might to shut it down, it
won't let me. And now I've got a deadline to mind. New
instrument at the lab and the final one for this disk: A north African
Kora. Sort of like a Koto, but softer, due to its light nylon strings.
I was going to save this one for the next cd rom, but gosh, I had to
sample it and once I did, I had to include it. Its only 2 samples
(I'll do the full treatment next time) but you will like it because I
tuned it to an exotic scale that will fit in the palm of your hand. Also
in the preset are doumbeks tuned low, mbira, and the aztec drums, so it's
an ambient party ready to play. It's so playable and good sounding
its now in the #6 spot. Also made a BPM string section patch.
You'll hear the traditional fast bowing of an string section on steroids,
but on this one, the bowing speeds up and slows down according to your
sequencer's tempo. There's also a new preset called Bombay Strings,
ideal for a worldly sounding Orch.
3-06-01 5am
I spent my weekend doing nothing
but adding spices to the performance presets, and enjoyed every moment,
watching and hearing keymaps come alive with imagination. A great night!
Sunday night I called an end to sampling and programming. And
started the final disk building process. As of today I have a rough
draft of the disk finished. Right now there are 10 banks, the master
128 meg bank and 8 other smaller banks which include all 980 presets.
There's also a Mystik Garage demo bank. I still have 15 megs on the
515 meg disk free. I'll put something cool there. The smaller banks
are meant for people using non-Ultras with the 456k limit on preset RAM.
They range in size from 17 meg to 62 meg, so those of you using Flash ROM,
(which uses up 64 megs of your total RAM) can still use banks from this
project. Of course, even if you only have a 4 meg EOS machine you
can use this disk. You just browse for presets within the banks and
load them into memory till you run out. I think my range of banks
will have most of you covered.
-
Here's the Bank
List:
-
00 Master Bank 128 meg
-
01 Ambient Bank 48.2 meg
-
02 DnB and Dance Bank 46.7 meg
-
03 Industrial One 63.4 meg
-
04 Orchestral Bank 38.0
meg
-
05 Noiz and BPM FX Bank
62.7 meg
-
06 Guitars Bank 15.5 meg
-
07 FX and Performance Bank
60.1 meg
-
08 Build Yer Cybr Kit Bank
14.4 meg
-
09 Mystik garage Demo 1.3
meg
-
10 Celestial Windowpane Demo
7.4 meg
The cool thing is the 1st 6 banks
can be used by themselves to make a complete song. Each has drum
kits, basses, synths, pads, etc., so you can load it and merge your
favorite bank (s) on top or vice versa. For example, you can load
your Emu Orbit Bank, or World percussion, or one of the many proteus banks
and load one of mine on top. See, i never stop thinking about you
guys and how you will use this disk. The Build yer own Cybr Kit,
Bank 08, has all the drum samples but few presets, so its perfect
for constructing your own kit out of the 250 drum sounds
Looking like we are on target for
the deadline of March 9, but it will be tight
3/8/01 11:30pm
There is 24 hours till my self
imposed deadline and I intend to keep it. Tonight is the last tweak
on every preset and the final burn. So come back in about 24 and
pick one up!
3/9/01 Midinight
Time for me to let go of the
project, and time for you to have fun with it!
We are burning and
shipping Post Indie right now!
SCSI problems hampered the final
burn and my system again went down to blue screens, broken scsi drivers
and I have enough coasters to decorate a Xmas tree. But this
afternoon I isolated and corrected the problem and we had a perfect burn
and successful drive image made. The burn from image was also perfect, and
now l and I am printing covers and burning disks! I can have on in
the mail to you tomorrow!
Because I haven't yet sent the
info to my normal credit card server, I have given you the option to pay
via PayPal. Its very simple and safe, and you don't have to have an
account with them to pay by credit card if you live in the USA. If
you are outside the US you do have to set up an account, but its all free
either way to you. (I have to pay them a percentage). You can
also email me an
arrange to buy the disk by check or money order. I'll respond with
the details.
3/11/01 Revised the
manual
and put up the final preset list and uploaded the logic environment.
Other sequencers will be supported soon. Thank you all for your
support.
3/16/01 The regular secure
server is updated
Its time for me to take a break!
Sound development and the quest
for truth and beauty are one.
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