Writing about music may indeed be like dancing about architecture, so why not give music a listen?

If you’re not already familiar with the terrific Los Angeles label Brainfeeder, founded by Flying Lotus, now’s the time to discover its artists. If you are familiar with them, you barely need read this blurb before skipping ahead to a lovely compilation.

Onboard: Thundercat, Martyn, Samiyam, Tokimonsta, The Gaslamp Killer, Jeremiah Jae, Taylor McFerrin, Teebs, Austin Peralta, Matthewdavid, Mono/Poly (the artist, not the synth, but we can love both), plus (exclusive) Lapalux.

BRAINFEEDER SAMPLER [Download, info]
Brainfeeder Label Site

And the timing is fitting: Brainfeeder has won well-deserved recognition in the Gilles Peterson Worldwide Awards 2012. (Other fine labels in the runners-up — Numbers, Hotep, R&S, Young Turks.) These awards dig through our world’s plentiful quality music to find things that are really special; you can check out some of their picks in the award setting in London in the short film below. It was also gratifying to see Machinedrum (Travis Stewart, also of Sepalcure) take home the “John Peel Play More Jazz Award,” as one of our favorite musicians of 2011.

More:
Worldwide Awards 2012 – The Winners [Gilles Peterson Worldwide blog]

I tend to tune out when it comes to sample libraries, but here’s one that takes the scripting capabilities of Native Instruments’ Kontakt sampler to extremes. The Grid Machine line developed by Lindon Parker (Channel Robot) and distributed by LoopMasters brings to Kontakt the sort of grid-based, sliced-up sample manipulation we’ve seen in the monome community and in custom tools in environments like Ableton Live and Renoise. Using KSP, the scripting environment in Kontakt, these produce entirely-custom instruments that cut, chop, stutter, reverse, mix, trigger, sub-loop, re-trigger, and modulate. You can change speed, mute, skip, reorder, and play patterns, and even mix between loops.

Even before you get to Kontakt’s effects, this kind of work really challenges the notions of what people imagine a “sampler” or “loop library” to be. And that’s been true of the sample sound design community, generally – they can brew things beyond the expected boundaries of a sample. I could even see this becoming a performance instrument.

Now, for those of us not content to use existing loops, I hope we can somehow convince Lindon to explain how he did the KSP scripting work to make it all happen. Drum ‘n Bass and House libraries are £29.95 each.

Loopmasters: Channel Robot

Some House for those of you who weren’t into the DnB version:

MOTU’s MachFive sampler, while perhaps not getting the kind of attention rivals from NI and Steinberg have, has had in its history some compelling features. Those features were in a multi-window interface, though, that not all of us loved – while I can’t find the review, I know when I covered it for Keyboard, I praised powerful editing features like the slicer but lamented the UI.

MachFive’s new UI looks radically different. The tabbed layout and modules and preset browsing all recall NI’s products, but there are new twists, too, like slick, readable waveform views, gorgeous EQ visualizations borrowed from MOTU’s DP DAW, and plenty of shiny. The results look far more usable, which means easier access to new sonic capabilities. And that’s good news, because it’s those features where things get interesting. Just a few highlights:

• Granular stretching and re-pitch sounds, licensed from IRCAM. I’m fairly certain this is the first time I’ve seen the Paris research center as a specific bullet point in product promo, but there are samples that sound terrific.
• New scripting which MOTU touts for modeling things like strumming and fingering on guitars – and lots of other things, too. New sound content will take advantage of the scripting features. And, oh, yeah, if you’re thinking that scripting is available elsewhere, CDM’s nerdier readers will like this: the scripting engine is now in Lua.
• Hybrid synth engine covering wavetable, subtractive, and FM synthesis. Earlier today, readers were talking about disappointment that Omnisphere, the massive sample-based synth, lacked samples. Well, here you go – here’s one strong sample/synth hybrid contender. (Omnisphere’s another animal, but that doesn’t make this any less interesting.)
• Modular effects architecture, convolution reverb mean greater ability to apply effects, from buses to individual oscillators and keygroups.
• Oberheim-style Xpander filter.
• Tons of ready-to-use MIDI scripting.
• Powerful arpeggiator and micro-tuner.

You also get 45 GB of sound content (wowsa), full-screen mode, an updated slicer/looper, and expansion of MachFive’s already-extensive support for third party samples, even including obscure old formats.

I’m intrigued: the intelligent new layer rule interface, the overhauled UI and sound engine, and then extensive micro-tuning and Lua scripting start to make me interested, even with intense competition in this arena. For experimental sound design, there’s some real potential here. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, pictures:

More:
http://www.motu.com/products/software/machfive/

http://www.motu.com/products/software/machfive/technology.html

Native Instruments today launches a new version of its flagship Kontakt sampler with new filters, effects and processing, improved sound quality, and sound design features. NI also refreshes Komplete – including, at last, a Komplete bundle that really does include kompletely everything. And we see new products covering drum samples and grooves and studio effects, too, as well as a major update to the sound design and processing capabilities of Guitar Rig.

Sadly, that isn’t the Komplete Infinity package we saw lampooned last week, which promised “quite literally every sound that can be possibly be acoustically produced in free space on Earth … ” even including “the sound of one clapping on the North side of a Forest in Tanzania at four o’clock in the morning 60% humidity and low air pressure with a Neumann U87 at a distance of three feet.” But it does include a lot – optionally everything NI makes, bundled on a hard drive.

Here’s the parody ad, wherever it came from (I’m happy to provide credit if someone will step forward):

But what we do get is a Komplete I think may come closer to what users have wanted from that bundle.

Aside from Komplete, though, let’s talk Kontakt 5, which in this upgrade promises a whole host of new processing, filtering, and sound design tools, as well as worthy-looking new releases in the studio effects, guitar processing, and sampled drum groove categories.

Kontakt 5

The creator of Massive, the terrific “no, you don’t only have to make dubstep with it” synthesizer, is behind the new Kontakt. As a result, you get:

• 37 new filters, from Moog-inspired ladder filters to state-variable models to modern formant filters.
• Adaptive Resonance, which manages “excessive resonance peaks” (I assume by adjusting either gain or the resonance curve or both, but I’ll have to find out)
• TimeMachine Pro time-stretching.
• New EQ and compressor algorithms from an upcoming “Solid Mix Series,” plus a new Tape Saturator.
• Vintage sampling modes from Maschine.
• Transient Designer, available separately, is now an integrated effect. Ed.: confused here, as NI refers alternatively to Transient “Designer” and Transient “Master.” I’ll clarify. Hmmm… “Transient Lord”? “Dark Sorcerer of the Transients”?
• MIDI file support for KSP scripting users.
• 16 internal stereo buses for routing flexibility.
• New retro synth presets.

To me, it looks like the biggest Kontakt update since the sampler added scripting capability, and a very big deal. It’s really part of the challenge of NI’s product line, honestly – you could easily enough lose yourself in just Kontakt without needing a whole suite of stuff, even before you get into Kontakt’s 43 GB bundle of sounds.

If you are a completionist, though, the new Komplete is looking good.

Komplete 8

Komplete 8 is the obligatory update of Komplete that brings together the latest software releases. The standard version now includes 27 products, adding Kontakt 5, Guitar Rig 5, the West Africa percussion instrument, Studio Drummer, Transient Master, plus 1300 additional presets for Absynth, FM8, and Massive.

More interesting, perhaps, is Komplete 8 Ultimate, which packs all of the currently-available “Komplete instruments and effects” (so, the current active NI product line) onto a USB 2.0 hard drive, with 13,000 sounds and 240 GB of samples.

Clarification: As observed by reader aje of Keyquest Music, the hard disk is a convenience for installation, but not, sadly, a self-contained external means of running the software. As NI words it in their press release:

The hard drive enables a fast and convenient installation process, and also constitutes a compact and robust backup medium for the software.

To be sure, hard disk upgrades are inexpensive these days, but it’d sure be nice to have a version of Komplete you can plug into any machine and use as-is.

This note is interesting, too, suggesting NI sees Massive at the kore (sorry, poor choice of words) of its new strategy:

Both new KOMPLETE versions are optimized for Native Instruments’ groove production system MASCHINE, offering direct browser integration with attribute-based preset search as well as convenient automatic parameter mapping for the rotary knobs on the hardware controller.

So, that gives you a lot of presets. To me, the ease of having things on a hard drive is the real draw. I wonder if we’ll ever see custom hardware/OS combinations for software distribution, but that’s another discussion. (For previous examples, see early custom versions of Final Scratch, Native Instruments’ own Komplete shipping on the Linux-based, rack-mounted Muse Receptor, or, to get really obscure, Emagic’s C-Lab’s work with the Atari Falcon.)

Guitar Rig 5 Pro

I’m glad I didn’t have to write NI’s press release. Guitar Rig includes more guitar rig things. It has more guitar things in its rig than it did before, covering the things that they added to the guitar thing.

What’s new:

• New amp models, “Van51″ and “HotSolo+.”
• New effects: a new “classic” compressor model, “vintage” plate and spring reverb, studio-grade convolution based on Reflektor, 8-band filter bank, “stereo tune” chorus, “Resochord” harmonizor.
• Convolution-based speaker emulation with “Control Room Pro,” which adds 27 cabinets, 16 mics, combinations of eight cabinets (which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me relative to real world sound, but sounds interesting, at least), and mic placement and room sound controls. Since where you put mics and speakers in rooms has such a profound impact, this has been a kind of holy grail of guitar modeling; it’ll be interesting to hear how it stacks up to rivals.
• Sidechaining with modules. (Invent guitar dubstep!)
• Effect chains can be combined into macros NI calls “Containers” – very cool.

I’ve always been a fan of Guitar Rig for creative sound design, not just, you know, guitars, so this looks like a terrific combination of ingredients to me.

New Effects: Solid Mix, Transient Master

The effects developed for Guitar Rig are also being adapted into studio products. The Solid Mix Series is a 4-band EQ and compressor with sidechain capabilities, and a dynamics section and stereo compressor. Really, it’s somewhat surprising that these didn’t appear previously; it finally gives NI an entry in the bread-and-butter signal processing category for producers. (Aside from some intended for use in Reaktor, or presets based on those, I can’t think of a straight-ahead product from NI that did that.)

Transient Master is basically a dynamic-reshaping envelope follower.

Studio Drummer

Sampled drum kits meet a groove player in the newest drum product from NI. It’s an old idea – simulate what a drummer does by combining sounds with patterns – but the twist here is integration with Kontakt. The actual drum samples sound interesting, too, based on Pearl, Sonor, and Yamaha kits sampled at Berlin’s Teldex Studios and an 18-mic array for 17 GB of velocity-layered samples. That means I could see some people using the samples minus the grooves – and you do get some modern-sounding kits. Otherwise, we’ll just have to hear what the 3500 rhythmic patterns sound like.

In fact, my only real complaint is that the interface to me looks absurdly like the interface in Cakewalk’s Session Drummer. (Heck, they have almost the same names.) The sample content is very different – Cakewalk’s offering even includes electronic drum machines, which gives you the odd experience of looking at an acoustic kit and hearing a LinnDrum.

Anyway, that was just my first impression. Upon looking closer, you can see that the Studio Drummer UI has no rug, and parquet hardware floors instead of hardware floors.

Enough of nit-picking the UI. NI has cowbell and tambourine. Advantage: NI.

Putting it all together…

Pricing and availability, in short:

Komplete: US$559 ($229 update)

Komplete Ultimate, US$1099 ($559 update) with hard drive

Kontakt 5, US$339 ($119 update)

Guitar Rig Pro: US$199 for software, US$449 with pedalboard controller; US$79-only software update

Solid Mix Series: US$229 for the set or $119 a la carte effects

Transient Master: US$119

Studio Drummer: US$169

Everything’s available in September, and all the software is now included in Komplete.

Yes, that’s a lot of software. I hope my few months in Berlin this year prove to be this productive. I’d better chug the Club-Mate.

The word on the street I’ve been hearing is that a lot of users are curious in which direction NI is headed. A lot of users are, understandably, frustrated by seeing Kore discontinued after NI had pushed it as a central strategy, and because they worry about their own personal investment of time in tools. We also saw a shareholder reorganization in May, which returned the company to self-owned status. With the original founders and executive team now also in full ownership of the company, that could give NI freedom to focus on their priorities, and it comes at a time that they’ve seen significant sales growth. (Despite a rough economy, and past claims that music software doesn’t grow the way hardware does, I’ve heard several makers say they’ve seen healthy business right through the global recession. You can probably thank the passion of musicians for that.)

I’ll be interested to see this latest generation of NI software, and more of the company’s direction.

He’s built an open-source, retro-tinged 8-bit sampler, “Where’s the Party At?” (I’m been building the second generation now, so expect a review by early August.) He’s had electronic instrument designs on shelves at the retail chain Target and on the walls of the Whitney Art Museum in New York. He just completed a set of luxury chandeliers, when he wasn’t making waves in the circuit bending scene. Todd Bailey is the kind of Renaissance artist at the center of the new DIY scene. There was a time when engineers and artists were separate groups, and big laboratories worked how to get them together. Now, they’re the same person, a bundle of creative power.

If that makes you feel intimidated, don’t be: an overwhelming common theme as we gathered Todd and other DIYers last month at the Solid Sound Festival was that almost no one in the scene planned to wind up doing what they were doing. Instead, an appetite for new sounds and lots of trial and error led them to teach themselves, aided by wealths of information and communities in sharing.

Todd has done a terrific interview for Art:21, a real champion for new and experimental visual art in the US, in a scene that often lacks the kind of quality independent, non-commercial TV and Web reporting the outfit does. Adding to Todd’s badass aura is the fact that he’s picked up some “gnarly” (his description) injuries from a bike accident. (The US needs better bike infrastructure, too, but we’re working on it.)

We’ll have more thoughts from Todd and others this month as I share video from Solid Sound, but I’ll let Art:21 get the first word:
A Good Engineer [interview w/Todd Bailey] [Art:21 Blog]

And for the sampler, see Todd’s site:
http://narrat1ve.com/

I’ve been following Maschine since prototype stages. The idea was at once obvious and welcome: build a software workstation, tightly integrated with pad hardware control, that fuses hardware sampler working methods with the on-screen flexibility of software. It’s software that focuses on working with sounds and patterns, outside the DAW-style metaphors.

Of course, there’s one thing you might quickly miss about your DAW – certain software instruments or effects that are available as plug-ins. That makes 1.6 the version a lot of people have been waiting for. With plug-in hosting capabilities, it could now be your all-in-one production and performance workstation – without losing the focus that first made it appealing.

Maschine comes of age in other ways, too, from 64-bit Mac support to better control of pads and drag-and-drop function. It really seems like version 2 – and like the revision that makes an already-growing choice ready for primetime.

Accordingly, while it is a marketing video, it’s fantastic to see what Underworld are doing with Maschine live.

Naturally, you’d make the obvious comparison to Ableton Live, but it’s nice to see Live face an alternative. In fact, I think Live might even benefit from having an alternative with which to contrast. Most of the comparisons have turned to DJ tools live, or conventional DAWs – minus the live performance features – for production, or hardware. Maschine is different than Live – a pad-based sampler at heart rather than Live’s combination of sample-playing tracks and arrangement view. But it’s also finally a tool that has the flexibility of Live (for things like integrating plug-ins), while at the same time encouraging live, physical play and kinetic control, whether in a studio or onstage. (And, of course, there’s nothing stopping you from using these two tools side by side.)

I’m enthusiastic about new drum machines introduced earlier this year, hardware and software alike. But it’d be tough to compare any of them to Maschine, particularly with this update. This isn’t a full review, but you can expect one (or perhaps more than one, from different perspectives) soon.

New in 1.6:
VST and AU plug-in support. Bring in instruments and effects, and – in a feature first seen in NI software in their Kore product – automatically map parameters to Maschine’s knobs.

Bundled instruments and effects. 1000+ sounds cover factory contact selected from Kontakt, ranging from Vienna Symphonic Library sounds to synths, guitar amps, and Abbey Road drums. Of course, those of you who have been chomping at the bit just to use your existing plug-in library won’t care too much about this, but it increases the appeal for those starting out.

More effects slots. There are CPU cycles on your machine not yet being used by crazy Reaktor patches or your library of plug-ins. Problem solved. The architecture of slots in general has been expanded for easier assignment to modules.

Pad-Link. One pad in a group can now trigger one or more additional pads. This opens up more sophisticated drum programming possibilities, or live performance grouping for triggering more complex arrangements of samples.

Clip and sample renaming. Yeah. ‘Bout time.

Swing individual sounds. Ideal for constructing the exact groove you want – and, indeed, often far more useful than global swing.

Drag-and-drop anything.Drag and drop single or multiple files from your Windows or Mac file manager, and move audio around more easily in Maschine. (I recall the latter was what I found a bit frustrating early on – the ability to freely move audio from place to place can radically change the feel of working with a tool that focuses on sound.)

Multichannel audio output 16 output channels out should be ideal for those working with hardware mixing. I’m just waiting to hear a Maschine artist do a set in surround.

64-bit Mac and Windows support. 64-bit computing offers both expanded memory (useful for large samples) and marginal but measurable improvements in performance. (It has really nothing in particular to do with 64-bit audio, which I know sometimes confuses people unfamiliar with the term. 64-bit is a reference to the resolution of a number; in this case, it means the ability to take advantage of the native capabilities and memory addressing of newer computer architectures like the Core 2 Duo.)

Snap to grid.

Import REX 2. REX is the still-surprisingly-popular sample storage format developed by Propellerhead for their ReCycle product.

Speaking of Propellerhead, what isn’t in Maschine, as far as I know: ReWire support. ReWire doesn’t support 64-bit computing, and as far as I know, no plans are in the works. I think it’s time for a new solution, anyway – and maybe time to do some JACK tutorials here as a possible replacement.

I always feel a little dirty adding promo videos from the manufacturers, but let’s give Ski Beatz a few words, too. I’ll say this: a lot of the time, when you talk to artists – no vendors around listening – you get similar testimonials about products people love. That’s a good thing; it means people get enjoyment out of this stuff into which developers invest so much time.

Also, Ski Beatz’ hat and I would like to remind you that tomorrow afternoon is Yankees opening day here in NYC.

Maschine @ NI

Images courtesy Native Instruments.

Hey, by the way, will anyone help with my campaign to pronounce Maschine with the German pronunciation (since it has a German spelling, rather than Machine)? Maybe, um, at least German people?

Who says we should have only one set of assumptions when it comes to how music software should work? Renoise remains a vision of an alternate reality where mod trackers – musical editors with vertical, pattern-based views instead of horizontal, linear piano roll views – are our present and future. And Renoise keeps getting better and more modern, demanding less of a sacrifice from those coming from other music production tools while strengthening the unique elements of its musical workflow.

We get a first look at the new features here for Mac, Windows, and Linux users, as well as the inside story from the developers.

The new 2.7 release, released in beta this weekend, adds some changes that could dramatically improve working with this tool. Renoise 2.6 was all about hacking and developers; 2.7 is focused on musical utility. (Of course, that means the two combined is a nice one-two punch.) The new features are detailed in the video above, but here are the highlights:

• Smart sample slicing. It’s about time – you can now easily slice a sample using markers or transient detection, and instantly map them using either a keymap or Renoise’s pattern slicing. Yes, other tools have similar features, but slicing is actually more of a natural fit in Renoise, because of its emphasis on pattern triggering, integrated sampling, and fine-tuned edits. DIY instruments did some of this, but having it as an integrated feature is invaluable.
• Better sample keyzones. Renoise’s sampler now acts more as you’d expect a sampler, with the ability to map samples to velocity, key release and not just key press, and to stack and overlap sections. Again, a “traditional” feature takes on new meaning in the context of Renoise, because of Renoise’s advanced mixer routing and pattern triggering capabilities.
• Automation snapping and other tweaks. You can now adjust zoom, snap, and whether or not the edit position follows playback. I actually wish Ableton Live’s automation envelopes worked more like Renoise’s now do. It’s also very accurate, now with 256 steps of precision for each line of the pattern view.
• Multiband sends and more track DSP improvements. Multiband send — oh, yes, indeed, hello. I’m not sure why this isn’t more common, but this feature alone could make Renoise editing wortwhile for effect-loving users. There’s also better DSSI support for Linux users.
• MIDI input routing to individual instruments and tracks.

There are many other improvements, too: pre-count metronome (’bout time), undo/redo that doesn’t view each note played live separately, real-time rendering if you want it, new Lua bindings, and lots of usability tweaks. I’m also quite fond of the phase meter spectrum view you see at the beginning of the video.

Renoise requires some learning and adjustment if you’re used to more conventional editors, and it’s still better suited to production than it is to live use, though people are working on that. But to me, the sample slicing and sample mapping alone could put a lot of people over the top; they’re what has personally held me back from doing more production in Renoise instead of elsewhere.

Don’t forget, as the press release observes:

Renoise boasts full ReWire and Jack support, FX and instrument VST/AU/LADSPA/DSSI plug-in support, automatic plug-in delay compensation, multi-core load balancing, MIDI I/O, OpenSoundControl, audio recording, flexible audio output, graphical & numerical parameter automation, modular parameter routing, and much more.

I think it’s now probably the most complete music tool available on Linux, and even on Mac and Windows, has the most sophisticated native, built-in API for manipulation and customization and OSC control. On both Mac and Linux, by the way, powerful Jack control means that Renoise, Ardour and Harrison Mixbus, and Pd (Pure Data) can all play nicely together – an insanely-powerful combination of tools that you can get, incredibly, for under a couple hundred dollars.

If you’re a registered user, you can grab the beta right now. Release notes and download link:
http://www.renoise.com/release-notes/270

But the developers also have some reflections on Renoise that they wish to share with CDM. They actually did this, much to my delight, unsolicited, and they offer real insight and even usability tips. It’s great to get this right from the people working on the project.

Kieran Foster (dblue)

Known to plug-in enthusiasts for his fantastic, free Glitch plug-in for Windows, dblue has now joined Team Renoise.

Hi, my name is Kieran Foster. I was born in 1979 in the North East of England. I grew up with computers like the Sinclair Spectrum 48k and Atari ST, and have been fascinated by sound, graphics and programming since a very early age.

Why Renoise: I’ve used trackers exclusively my entire life, so Renoise definitely doesn’t feel like a niche product to me; it’s simply the only way of making music that I feel comfortable with.

As far as what attracted me to the project, it was a completely organic process that just kind of happened on its own. When I first became a registered user in 2003, I simply enjoyed using the software and felt proud to help support it. I later joined the community forums in 2004 and gradually became more and more active there, and found myself completely caught up in it all.

After using Renoise for so many years now and watching it grow, it’s obvious to me that’s there’s something very special and unique going on here, produced by a small team of very smart and creative people. It’s impossible not to be attracted to that and want to be a part of it somehow.

Ideas for the future: I’d like to see a more flexible clip-based approach to arranging chunks of pattern data and automations on a global song time line, making it easier to get an instant overview of your whole song, as well as quickly rearranging sections and experimenting with new ideas. This is one of the few remaining things that really bugs me about working with trackers these days, since it’s often a total nightmare to work with fixed patterns and keep track of where everything is. I will always love the tracker style of composing, but there’s definitely a lot we can do to modernise things and make it more friendly.

I’d also like to see a more modular approach to handling internal DSP effects and signal routing, with the ability to take complex, unmanageable chains of devices and combine them together into self-contained modules or ‘racks’ that are easy to use and only expose the handful of important parameters you actually need to tweak. It’s possible to create some truly incredible DSP chains in Renoise, but managing the huge number of devices and parameters involved can be rather daunting – especially when trying to share your creations with others.

Tips for new users: Don’t judge a book by its cover; Renoise may look insanely complex at first glance, but it’s really not that difficult to get to grips with. Be patient and you will soon fall in love with the incredible low-level approach to making music that only trackers can offer.

Become a master of the LFO Device!

Erik Jälevik

An early member of Last.fm’s development team, Erik is now a core Renoise developer.

Hi, my name is Erik Jälevik. Born and raised in Sweden, moved to the UK at a young and impressionable age, now in Berlin since about a year. Music has always been my main passion, but once I realised I wasn’t going to be able to make a living from making music or DJing, I decided to get a degree in computer science and embark on a career as a software developer. I’m in a lucky position in that I get to combine my passion with my profession.

Why Renoise: Last.fm certainly wasn’t mainstream when I joined, it was just a handful of guys in a rundown 2-room flat in east London. What it grew to become was part of the reason I left however. But what attracted me to Renoise really had nothing to do with its mainstream or niche status, I really knew next to nothing about the people behind it before starting working it. It was simply a case of thinking it was a great piece of software, and getting in touch asking if I could get involved.

I don’t think Renoise will ever be the perfect solution for everybody. And neither should it. It occupies a certain niche and provides a refreshing alternative to other computer-based music production software. Rather than heaping on shiny, new, big bang features, I’d like to gradually refine what we have, getting rid of all the little annoyances and limitations that are still there, and really make Renoise shine at what it does best, i.e. being a modern tracker.

Tips for newcomers: I’m all about workflow so here’s some (perhaps somewhat boring) tips that make life easier for me:

• Take advantage of the vast keyboard shortcut customisation options so you have everything at your fingertips. I have keyboard shortcuts set up to open all of the major tabs inside Renoise, for example.
• Forget about reusing patterns in the pattern sequencer, just always add new patterns into the sequence so that each pattern is unique, it saves a lot of headaches later on.
• Always set LPB to 8 and enable quantization to 1 line for new projects. I find that the most comfortable way to record with Renoise.

What think you, users? Those of you Renoise users trying the beta, we’d love to know what you think, and if you have any particular tips to share.

Let’s be frank. Computers really don’t demand any musicianship; they’re a blank slate with which you can do anything you like, and quantization is always close at hand. But bragging rights aside, whatever anyone else may think of the results, playing musical elements live can often be more satisfying. And it’s refreshing, at a time when software seems to be bending over backwards to offer bleeding-edge technology to compensate for your lack of time and tune, to see people getting more dextrous, not less.

Ukrainian-born, Toronto-based artist Andrew Andriyashev, going under the name Triple A production, sends along a video of his work in a friend’s studio. What’s nice about it is that everything – from instrumental parts to sample slicing – is played live. It’s not a new idea, but it’s nice to see it documented, and I was curious to learn how Andrew got lucky enough to get this studio and skilled enough to make it work.

He explains his tool set to CDM:

[The setting is] my friend’s home based studio in Toronto, called “Studio Dynamic.”

Yes I was using [Apple] Logic for recording. I chopped and changed the pitch of the sample in [open source audio editor] Audacity beforehand and loaded everything in EXS, which I later played along to the beat. It consists of 2 parts, instruments + the chopped up vocal sample.

All the other instruments were recorded live into Logic separately.

About my background: I was born in Ukraine but live in Canada now. I have been making music professionally for about 4 years now. Had placements on MTV in Europe and MuchMusic in Canada. Also I am currently an in-house music producer at one of the biggest recording studios in Canada, “Cherry Beach Sound“.

While my main website is under construction, some of my work can be found here:

www.tripleaproduction.com

Thanks for the nice work, Andrew. So, readers – got any tips and techniques you like to employ in production to keep it live? Or, alternatively, anything more you’d like to know?

I thought the promo video from Elektron perfectly explained, in practical terms, how their recent Octatrack sampler works. You plug it in, push some buttons, turn samples into techno, and then everyone turns into squids and dies. (Hmmm… that does suggest something perhaps a future firmware update might want to address.) But it seems some readers wanted more than sci-fi short films and inscrutable jams – they want to know how this beast actually works.

Happily, reader Genjutsushi has obliged us with a video that explains its functions; see top — it’s shaky, but useful, and no squid are in sight.

Matrixsynth also picks up on a couple of videos that show how to use the Octatrack’s flagship feature, its powerful slicing functions.

Not all users are happy, as evidenced by our comments. A friend of mine had an Octatrack fail on him within hours of it arriving, though to Elektron’s credit, they’re sending a replacement. Other users are apparently not satisfied with the reliability or functionality of the current firmware. Now, all user complaints should be taken with a grain of salt, but just so you’re aware, yes, I do read comments and forums when I can. We’ll see if the Octatrack catches on, and satisfies users, as it evolves. I have to say, it’s a terrifically ambitious and promising project, and at least some users are very enthusiastic. I look forward to getting some sounds out of it myself if I can beg, borrow, or steal some loan time, and continuing to hear feedback from users.

More videos:

Updated: Synthtopia has its own round-up.

Doubly updated: genjutsushi adds another video, now with 100% more tripod!

Elektron’s Octatrack sampler is shipping to producer’s hands, bringing this multitrack, time-stretching, step-sequenced, modulation-packing digital sampling hardware to real-world music-making. The results make comparisons like “Ableton in a box” seem pretty fair – and give you more an idea of what the thing does than Elektron’s bizarre (and wonderful) short science fiction film, which seemed to suggest the box would incite revolutions and make you grow tentacles and change into a tortured alien. (See below)

Two of the people I’d most want to see work the device are featured in the videos above – at top, Richard Devine, and at bottom, Matthew Dear. Devine, for his part, makes use of re-triggering features:

Just triggering single shot samples of nord percussion and analogue drum sounds. Using the three stages of LFO’s for each track to control effects animation and various other parameters. Making some use of the re-trigger sample functions spanned across 4 patterns.

Matthew Dear plays live on a New York public radio station program, Beats In Space on WNYU 89.1FM. (Listen to the whole show.)

It’s a story focused on the drum sample library, not the Octatrack, but there’s also a good example of how far you can stretch a single samples in Surachai’s recent hands-on for TRASH_AUDIO.

Elektron have also in the last couple of months shared sound samples via their very, very active SoundCloud account; examples below.

Octatrack DPS-1 Site Sounds by Elektron

Octatrack DPS-1 | Sampling by Elektron

So, what’s really going on inside the Octatrack? That to me is the interesting element of the design. As Roger Linn and Dave Smith focus on analog synthesis and no digital sampling (at least in Dave’s machine) on the Tempest, the Octatrack takes digital features previous seen in software workflows and builds an integrated hardware design around them.

The heart and soul is an 8-track sequencer, with multiple patterns, arrangements, parts, and scenes for putting together a full performance (or performance set), which connects to “machines” for sample playback or external input machines. The combination of those basic modules is where things get a little crazy, with re-triggering, chaining of tracks, and the like, and Elektron promises to add more in future OS updates.

The other side of the machine is a whole heck of a lot of effects: multi-mode filter, parametric and DJ-style EQs, phaser, flanger, chorus, delay with repeat, plate reverb, compressor, and lo-fi distortion.

The most ingenious addition is a single optical crossfader, which allows DJ-style moves amidst all these digital layers, ideal for making sense of live performance.

Live sampling is a big draw; one of the better walkthroughs of how that works is in this video by darenager (who stresses this is not a musical performance, but a demo – I can appreciate that):

Elektron isn’t assuming you’re going to toss your computer in a bin; there’s a USB2 port for connecting to a computer workflow. But it occurs to me that the likely retort of dedicated computer users – that they can do all this and more – is likely the reason others will choose to use this device. It does less, but focuses entirely on what you might want to do most.

I could go further with that, but I suspect we’ll carry on with this balancing act between digital hardware and software until the last human consumes the last flicker of electricity on earth, so, uh, fill in a zillion already-hashed-out debates here. In fact, let’s imagine them all at once, as a mysterious buzzing sound.

Bzzzz.

There. Done.

But yes, at the same time as someone who’s reconfiguring my own live software rig, you have to admit that which features they chose – and how you see them mapped to hardware above – is interesting even if you can’t afford a new don’t want to buy a new Octatrack.

Mostly what makes me happy is knowing that this machine is making other people happy, and then in turn will make some of them make very good music and performances that I get to enjoy.

And yes, I really do love the bizarre short movie Elektron created to promote their device. It’s nothing if not creative.

What do you make of this new design?

In particular, I’d love to hear from those of you who just got new machines. How are you using it musically so far?

Also, if you’re in Sweden, can you tell me what’s in your water that makes you engineer all this insane stuff? Should I wish I had the benefit of your education system? Should I just eat more herring? Both? Or will the herring, at least, make me regret less that I’m not a product of your education system?