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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