In today’s over-saturated virtual instrument market there are plenty of powerful samplers out there vying for the attention (and green) of your average music software consumer. This is much more apparent on the PC end of things where there are dozens upon dozens of alternatives both in plug-in (Kontakt, HALion, DirectWave, etc) and standalone (Gigasampler, Reason’s NN-XT, etc.) forms. It’s tough for a small company to really stand out amongst such strong competition. One such company that has been trying to make a name for itself is Vember Audio, makers of the powerful Surge synthesizer and Shortcircuit sampler. Their design philosophy bucks the current market trends in virtual instruments by delivering quality products designed around the needs of sound designers rather than preset users in much the same way as Native Instruments circa 2001. Their interfaces are logical, but stripped of much of the flash that the big names have (no 3D rendered hardware-style “pots” here). Instead of focusing on huge libraries of sounds, they deliver great platforms for users to create their own sounds from scratch.

Now their sleeper hit sampler Shortcircuit is being released for FREE!

Details after the jump.

I’m a bit behind the eight ball … uh … Rubik’s Cube … on this one, but I think it is worth pointing to the arcane awesomeness of code artist Douglas Edric Stanley. Douglas solves a problem that has plagued humanity since the diabolical creation of the Rubik’s Cube: how can we play with this fun-to-move cube of blocks without having to (augh) actually match up all the colors? (Okay, maybe that problem only plagued me. Or didn’t really plague me, as I’d just fiddle around with the Rubik’s Cube and make interesting patterns.)

The answer: make a three-dimensional step sequencer using the Cube.

As seen on Music thing and (video) Audio Porn Central

I’m not sure I personally need a Rubik’s Cube interface, but I love the idea of three-dimensional sequencers, much as I enjoyed the (preposterous) notion of three-dimensional chess on Star Trek. (Side note. Spock, I suspect, would be equally unbeatable in a live P.A. set with a 1024×1024 three-dimensional Monome Cube.)

As it happens, the story of Douglas and the Rubik’s Cube is an interesting one. You can check out Douglas’ other wonderful creations:

abstractmachine Blog (he’s a wizard with Processing, the Java coding tool for artists)
abstractmachine Flickr set
Interview with Douglas Edric Stanley [we make money not art]

Mr. Rubik himself is equally fascinating — a Hungarian architect, engineer, interior designer, and sculptor who went back to academia, then started making games. Apparently, he’s now turning to architecture and digital games, meaning he can make us feel stupid all over again in a new medium. (Seriously, I’d love to see what Rubik’s Video Game studio turns out; as you’ll see, the Rubik’s Cube is just one of many brain twisters.)

Ernő Rubik

Second Life is one of those things I might try out one of these days, except that I’m quite busy with my first, second, third, and fourth lives at the moment. I’m surprised that while Tom at Music thing catches on to music gear sales in the virtual community, he misses out on all the synths. Search “synth” on the SLBoutique, and you’ll find lots of classic gear rendered in 3D form. Seen recently:

Conbrio Synth
Yamaha DX1
Roland JX10
TimewARP 2600 (a unique virtual version of a virtual version of a real synth - yikes!)

All of these come from SL user Hardmoon Systems. (Hardmoon, are you out there on CDM by any chance?)

Tom also points in an update to the virtual studio featured last year on the Second Life blog SLOG. Now the bad news: a lot of this gear is entirely virtual. It’s just 3D eye candy, a la the Sims, with the disturbing requirement of having to actually pay real money for it. (Money for a non-functional 3D virtual mock-up of a virtual synth? What?) At best, you’ll get an animation of someone playing the synth.

Naturally, this gets my gears turning. While SLOG can only dream of General MIDI integration (oh … boy … wouldn’t that … be fun), I’m thinking about a virtual 3D world that can transmit and receive OSC data and simple audio streams. Second Life can at least do the audio end, but 3D worlds that allow you to control real music sources while in the virtual space could add more dimension. Search CDM for Quake and Unreal and you’ll see some other examples. Second Life, as much as the kids today may love it, may not be the best environment for that.

Second Life is becoming a major international community for music, and Ableton’s David Cross wondered in an email to me the other day if perhaps this would extend from communities of listeners to user groups and communities of music makers. The synths might all be eye candy, but there are free spaces with concerts and chances to experience music — a lot more interesting, as far as net music, than staring at a QuickTime stream. That’s made me wonder, for those of you who do have time for a Second Life, has anyone found interesting communities or resources in SL? Or is it really just hype, and there’s a better alternative virtual community? Let us know.

Elsewhere:
Music gear for sale in Second Life [Music thing]
Wired Magazine jumps on the SL bandwagon