Yesterday, February 24, 2009 was the date of my first video Power Review being made available at youtube.com. My web site www.pluginguru.com will be LIVE by March 1st and the 2nd part of the FM8 review should be completed by then.
Exciting times for me !!
In the pop-up box at the BOTTOM RIGHT: Select HQ to play this in High Quality mode...... it sounds and looks pretty bad in normal quality.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Loop Masters Drum Loops
YOUR TOO LATE.....
Still, head over to Loopmasters to bank up on some kick-butt loops.....
The elves at Loopmasters have put out a very special gift for all to enjoy. 3 separate downloads that are online for a very limited time (5 DAYS from this post). They are excellent in quality - They are either 16 or 24 bit, 44Khz or 48Khz .wav or .aiff audio files. Totally free to start using in your music productions. This is different than the sample packs you can download to evaluate a certain library. You can NOT use them in your commercial music productions, while these you can. BUT - you only have until Jan. 2nd, 2009. Then the files are taken down.
You have to register with Loopmasters, but it is free to do so, if you have not already.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Free Sounds for N.I. Kore Player
If you are not familiar with the Native Instrument Kore Player, maybe it is time you took a look. The Kore Player is unique because it contains the "engine" from REAKTOR, MASSIVE, ABSYNTH, FM8, KONTAKT and GUITAR RIG. So you can select one patch and it's a spacey Absynth patch, call up the preset next to it, and it's a map with 50 cool drum samples played thru the Kontakt Sampler engine while the next sound is a very unique ensemble from Reaktor that starts playing when called up. It's a cool concept that is unique in the world of virtual instruments. No other company could do this because, quite frankly, no other company has this many powerful, unique virtual instruments to choose from in the first place. When you download the player (for free) it installs 50 patches that are in many cases, quite useful. Since the release of the Kore Player in early 2008, Native Instruments has been putting a ton of energy into new Soundpacks and currently have over 15 different Soundpacks available for purchase with names like Massive Expansion Vol. 1, Absynth Twilights, Kontakt Retro Machines and even Urban Arsenal. Prices range from 59.00 up to 229.00 with most of them well under 100.00 per soundpack.
To celebrate the holiday season and frankly just to get people to consider buying these soundpacks, N.I. have release Compliation Vol 1. which contains 100 patches from 11 of these Soundpacks for FREE. There are some very useful sounds included. Junkie XL created 5 of the patches including a sample menu with over 60 drum samples. The Urban Arsenal patches are really quite useful with an acoustic piano with record noise in the samples and 4 Hit Hop Sample Kits which have 1 octave of samples (C1 - B1) followed by 1 octave of sequenced patterns that use the included samples. The Sequences are locked to your DAW tempo.
The patches from the Reaktor Animated Circuits are also worth mentioning since they immediately come to life when you call them up and then you can dive into serious Sound Design Nirvana by playing with the 8 way Vector pad or by simply moving knobs that have names like Flow, FrqShift, Grain, Reverb Time.
The only drawback in my opinion is the lack of in-depth editing. Many of you reading this won't want to go there, but there are sounds where changing elements other than the 8 pre-assigned knobs would be nice. But for calling up a sound and using it in a track, then this is a very slick system. CPU usage is minimal, compatibility with all plug-in formats is there. Plus it's FREE.....
If you don't have the Native Instruments Kore Player, Go Here and Download it first. This Compilation pack won't work unless you have the plug-in.
Once you have the Kore Player installed, Go Here to get Compilation Vol. 1. This might be a limited time offer, if the link dies, please let me know.
Monday, October 20, 2008
New Plug-Ins October, 2008
Cool Music Plug-Ins: October 2008
UVI Workstation (Free)
Talk about getting a lot for FREE. UVI have released the UVI Workstation which could easily become your next sample playback "go too" plug-in. It supports all formats, has a very nice interface, Imports REX, Apple Loops, AIFF, WAV and more, has smart synchronization so all your loops are sync'd to your host, built in effects and even a built in convoluation reverb! All for free...
This is worth checking out for the capabilities of the plug-in alone, that is for sure.
Audio Damage Automaton ($49.00/US)
I really dig the Audio Damage plug-ins. While being a newer company, they are bringing out tools that are not simply duplicates of plug-ins you have seen before. They are new and help create sounds and effects that were not possible until this was introduced. It's basically a step sequencer that you can program when a certain effect will happen and the effects are very cool (Stutter, Ring Modulator, Bit Crusher and an effect they call Replicate). It's easier if you just watch the 2 videos they created - the 2nd one is the better of the 2 videos if you're short on time.
QuickQuak Effects
The totally cool interface to Crowd Chamber
It's almost impossible to single out a "must have" effect from the guys at QuickQuak. They are all unique and totally interesting in RealKuhl ways. Quick descriptions:
Fusion Field - a very unique sounding, very nice reverb.
Crowd Chamber - Coolest effect I've seen in a while !! Can duplicate up to 2,000,000 voices of whatever you feed thru it with separate stereo positioning and more. Totally amazing for sound design.
Pitchwheel - Real-Time Pitch Changing plug-in
Glass Viper - Weird name for a cool and very unique sounding synthesizer - very in your face.
RaySpace - a reverb and space designer. You HAVE to hear some of the rooms that are included. You can make your own or even walk around in the "room" by moving where you are in the room.
The prices are very reasonable and there is also a bundle for all plug-ins at once.
In the future, I plan to include video with these mini reviews so you can hear what I'm talking about instead of just reading...... I'm still working on the Plug-in Guru website. It's taking longer than expected but that was to be expected !!
UVI Workstation (Free)
Talk about getting a lot for FREE. UVI have released the UVI Workstation which could easily become your next sample playback "go too" plug-in. It supports all formats, has a very nice interface, Imports REX, Apple Loops, AIFF, WAV and more, has smart synchronization so all your loops are sync'd to your host, built in effects and even a built in convoluation reverb! All for free...
This is worth checking out for the capabilities of the plug-in alone, that is for sure.
Audio Damage Automaton ($49.00/US)
I really dig the Audio Damage plug-ins. While being a newer company, they are bringing out tools that are not simply duplicates of plug-ins you have seen before. They are new and help create sounds and effects that were not possible until this was introduced. It's basically a step sequencer that you can program when a certain effect will happen and the effects are very cool (Stutter, Ring Modulator, Bit Crusher and an effect they call Replicate). It's easier if you just watch the 2 videos they created - the 2nd one is the better of the 2 videos if you're short on time.
QuickQuak Effects
The totally cool interface to Crowd ChamberIt's almost impossible to single out a "must have" effect from the guys at QuickQuak. They are all unique and totally interesting in RealKuhl ways. Quick descriptions:
Fusion Field - a very unique sounding, very nice reverb.
Crowd Chamber - Coolest effect I've seen in a while !! Can duplicate up to 2,000,000 voices of whatever you feed thru it with separate stereo positioning and more. Totally amazing for sound design.
Pitchwheel - Real-Time Pitch Changing plug-in
Glass Viper - Weird name for a cool and very unique sounding synthesizer - very in your face.
RaySpace - a reverb and space designer. You HAVE to hear some of the rooms that are included. You can make your own or even walk around in the "room" by moving where you are in the room.
The prices are very reasonable and there is also a bundle for all plug-ins at once.
In the future, I plan to include video with these mini reviews so you can hear what I'm talking about instead of just reading...... I'm still working on the Plug-in Guru website. It's taking longer than expected but that was to be expected !!
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Once Upon a Time....
Once upon a time (say around 1982), there was a guy that loved to make sounds for synthesizers. He didn't just like to make sounds, no, he truly LOVED to make sounds for synthesizers. Well, this guy has made literally thousands and thousands of sounds at this point in his career. Sound that have been used in commercials, albums and films, sounds that are found in over 25 synthesizers and even more sounds that are provided as support for those synthesizers.
Well, fast forward to 2008 and when you look at creating music, today there are some really amazing virtual synthesizers that are available for your personal computer. In fact, some of these virtual synthesizers (or "Virtual Instrument" as they are generally called in "the Industry") are more complex and capable of doing things that don't even exist on a hardware based synthesizer.
Well, back to the story. See, this sound making fellow has noticed that there is very minimal support for these virtual synthesizers..... they are capable of doing so much, but do most people that use these synthesizers know all the cool things that they can do ? NO. Most people call up a factory preset, and use it to write a song without ever diving deeper than the browser window or the default patches....
Well John "Skippy" Lehmkuhl wants to change all that.... soon there will be a web site where you can go and download free video tutorial on how a certain plug-in works. Skippy will personally show you some of the cool abilities and explain how to use them - and it will be easy to learn because you will see and hear the review/tutorial instead of just reading text that makes your eyes glaze over. Watching someone do something is the best way of learning new things and there are lot of new things in all of the Virtual Instruments to lear. So these tutorials will be FREE to view and even download so anybody can also learn and start using the amazing abilities of these cool virtual instruments.
On top of this, Skippy will provide you with a link to download 10 free kick-butt patches for each of the plug-ins that he reviews. If you like those, there will be a link below the free one to purchase 50 more patches for $30 US dollars. The goal is to keep the price down so that nobody feels they need to give these away. Everybody can afford to have their own copy of these sounds and will hopefully tell all their friends to get their own legal download of the sounds. If enough people do this, then Skippy can keep creating reviews and sounds for other cool plug-ins and the world will hopefully be a slightly better place than it was before.......
First up is Native Instruments amazing FM8 - this plug-in has taken one of Skippy' favorite forms of synthesis (FM Synthesis) to new worlds and the 60 patches that have been created will help make this seem like a totally new synth. After this is a ton of new support for Spectrasonic's Stylus RMX including new drum kits, New Multi and MIDI files that re-invent tons of the included grooves and a ton of new Drum Loops in Recycle or native Stylus RMX format !! On top of this the "LIVE" Multi that has Tons of synth parameters, Chaos parameter and even Effect Parameters that change via controllers will also be made available .
Stay tuned !!
Well, fast forward to 2008 and when you look at creating music, today there are some really amazing virtual synthesizers that are available for your personal computer. In fact, some of these virtual synthesizers (or "Virtual Instrument" as they are generally called in "the Industry") are more complex and capable of doing things that don't even exist on a hardware based synthesizer.
Well, back to the story. See, this sound making fellow has noticed that there is very minimal support for these virtual synthesizers..... they are capable of doing so much, but do most people that use these synthesizers know all the cool things that they can do ? NO. Most people call up a factory preset, and use it to write a song without ever diving deeper than the browser window or the default patches....
Well John "Skippy" Lehmkuhl wants to change all that.... soon there will be a web site where you can go and download free video tutorial on how a certain plug-in works. Skippy will personally show you some of the cool abilities and explain how to use them - and it will be easy to learn because you will see and hear the review/tutorial instead of just reading text that makes your eyes glaze over. Watching someone do something is the best way of learning new things and there are lot of new things in all of the Virtual Instruments to lear. So these tutorials will be FREE to view and even download so anybody can also learn and start using the amazing abilities of these cool virtual instruments.
On top of this, Skippy will provide you with a link to download 10 free kick-butt patches for each of the plug-ins that he reviews. If you like those, there will be a link below the free one to purchase 50 more patches for $30 US dollars. The goal is to keep the price down so that nobody feels they need to give these away. Everybody can afford to have their own copy of these sounds and will hopefully tell all their friends to get their own legal download of the sounds. If enough people do this, then Skippy can keep creating reviews and sounds for other cool plug-ins and the world will hopefully be a slightly better place than it was before.......
First up is Native Instruments amazing FM8 - this plug-in has taken one of Skippy' favorite forms of synthesis (FM Synthesis) to new worlds and the 60 patches that have been created will help make this seem like a totally new synth. After this is a ton of new support for Spectrasonic's Stylus RMX including new drum kits, New Multi and MIDI files that re-invent tons of the included grooves and a ton of new Drum Loops in Recycle or native Stylus RMX format !! On top of this the "LIVE" Multi that has Tons of synth parameters, Chaos parameter and even Effect Parameters that change via controllers will also be made available .
Stay tuned !!
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