Sound Development Journal
of Rich the TweakMeister
while Making the Post-Industrial CybrSound Depot
by Tweak
October 10,2000 to
March 18, 20001
(more info on this cd rom)
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!
(ed. note: Post Indie
turned out to be a new product entirely. I did update Ice Kold to V3
during the course of the project, then let Post Indie go its own way.)
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. 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.
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. Here's some ideas--tell me what
you think, OK?
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.
Post indie thinks out of the box
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.
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.
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.
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