DescentBB

Still leery of spending that much money on something that's barely worked for me for years... maybe in another year.
I already have loads of synth plugins I wish I was using more.

I know, the reason I even started using Arturia was because when my GF gifted me the Jazz Ultra she also gifted me an Arturia Keylab49 Essential that came with software instruments. I still haven't worked out if I'll be able to get the full collection yet for $50 more - I really just want the electric pianos. I know they are businesses making a dime but cmon. Pricks.

Check this out. LOL
https://neuraldsp.com/plugins/archetype-petrucci

Well! After an incredible unraveling of bullfrog (caused a lot by me), I FINALLY got Sweetwater to refund my money after I got Arturia to de-activate the Buchla I purchased for $149 from Sweetwater! The V Collection 8 (that includes the Buchla and Stage73 V2) for $199. Wooof! More keyboards than I know what to do with. And a vocoder I'll use twice before it gets old. And I have to give these customer service reps like heroic gold medals for their service.

and OMG Like, Totally, like I, like totally forgot that Synclavier Pads sound so lovely gah too many RTFMs though

Good god, the Synclavier editing. I'm too old and have no patience for that stuff anymore. I remember spending weeks programming a Yamaha DX27 when I was younger and I got completely turned off of building patches from scratch. These days I only play synths with a lot of presets or synths with some very basic osc/vca/vcf/etc.

Oh, I totally get what you're saying and I use presets all the time after I tweak to liking. But the software that came with the controller Analog Lab is really neat with a bunch of presets that you can tweak to an extent nut it's like a seafood sampler "Capt Dick's Seafood and Botulism", it's to get you to upgrade. Like you may really like a patch but there will be a reverb you CANNOT remove - well, that's a bunch of bullfrog. So you upgrade to the V Collection 8 that gives you full control if you want to geek out or they have simple macros that are pre-mapped to the Arturia controller. So, it's kinda both. Pocket protector or let's go it's goodenough, bob. There are bugs though, like the Wurlitzer works stand alone but I can't load it in Logic, but it comes out to about $7.11 per instrument whereas if I would've just accepted that I missed the Black Friday deal by less than 24 hours it would've been 149+tax for just the Buchla. Now I have ass loads of classic synth clones. I'm obviously a big Prince fiend and this CMI clone and the Prophet are in the 1986-88 wheelhouse yum yum!

This has vocorder, stage73 rhodes, Jup8, and CMI just to layer for fun

Who needs a click or quantize when the instrument is pulsing a tempo? Make your own Christmas Music to be despised by future generations. ;-0)

https://www.arturia.com/products/analog ... verview#en

An offer for this Pigments 3.5 synth popped up for $49 clams (that's how they get ya, and I bit the hook). It's got metric tonnes of buttons to satisfy your pocket protector and divert your attention from actually accomplishing any music. Again, it has presets (1881) with pre-mapped controls to the Arturia Keylab controller in case you're drunk, dumb, or both. The color coding helps a lot as far as understanding the routing. It's got Analog, Wavetable, Sample (including Granular), and Harmonic synth engines. Logic X comes loaded with the Alchemy synth which is excellent (and similar to Pigments) but I get pretty confused by it - this has pretty colors to help you map.

This guy has an extensive tutorial series (bless his little heart).

I stumbled upon this company whilst looking into some of the many Fender Rhodes virtual instruments out there, their version is $20 clams. I'm not really that sure if the company is a new startup or what but they seem to use sample based sounds because the downloads are in the many Gig range. You can download this weird "Angels" instrument and a sampled grand piano for free. Pretty good sounds. You can get their whole library bundle for like $765 (lol blowme). I didn't see linux support but maybe there is a trick or something - the instruments are running from an external ssd and inside of Logic. FYI
https://soundpaint.com/products/free-an ... 5526502571

TheWhat wrote: ↑Mon Jan 10, 2022 9:35 am...looking into some of the many Fender Rhodes virtual instruments out there...

I gotta say, I feel lucky to have acquired some great hardware before the age of soft synths. Twenty years ago I bought a Korg N5EX from a guy for $150. It has over 1000 patches and pretty much every kind of organ, piano, electric piano, etc. imaginable. And they sound great, like really really great. I also have a Yamaha QY100 that I sometimes use as a sound module which also has some amazing sounds (bought it for $200). There is some undeniable convenience to soft synths, but when it comes to value, you can't beat some of this hardware from the 90s and early 2000s -- as long as you have time to read the manual for the MIDI mapping, ugh.

I find there are so many good and authentic sounds out there the question, to me anyway, is do I want "a piano" or "this piano", the latter having some unique quality among it's peers.

I realize the never ending chase gets a little pointless but it is neat to see what is out there. The Arturia Stage-73 v2 is pretty really cool for modeling and I use it just to have fun playing. It’s nothing like this sampled Rhodes though - not that I’m going to buy it, but it sure sound perty.
https://www.soniccouture.com/en/product ... -suitcase/

https://rhodesmusic.com/

Ya know, $150 bud for a sampled Rhodes doesn’t seem that crazy considering the new ones (MK8) are $10 grand! Hahahaha

https://www.musicradar.com/news/sampler ... -samples-1
Often music radar has free samples and loops. I’ve found over time that I don’t use a lot of them because it will be whole keyboard or bass lines that don’t help me (never “never” but not bloody likely). Sometimes they’re cool - sometimes they just help to get the ball rolling and I’ll mute them altogether.

Anyway I did this one using 4 of the loops slowed down a bit with overdrive on them. Probably too busy but who gives a ratsass. Also, there is a drum machine through a bitcrusher, pigments preset the crystal melody, a cs-80 clone doing the chords, SEM clone doing bass.

All in fun. Anything to keep my mind off of the television and all that it trains me to do.

Cool, thanks for the link. I downloaded them, doubt I'll ever use them, but who knows?!

Your track is better than all their examples.

I’ll tell you what about this hobby. It really can be death by a thousand cuts. In August I bought a multitrack library of Clyde Stubblefield playing 8 tunes “published” by Yurtrock. I like their libraries because they are formatted 48/24 bit - the multitrack library was 6 mic channels (kick, snare, hihat, overhead left and right, toms) so you can mix or use the double/replacement function in Logic to assign the hits to other samples. James Brown’s drummer kick drum triggers lazersword techno drum to interesting effect.

Well, they got me to drop another $20 clams this morning for this library (only stereo loops not multi) but it’s real unique and came with a bonus “funk drum” rudimentary library. So about 1.5gig (560 loops) 48/24bit stereo drum loops for $19.50. 3 and half cents per loop of real drumming. Heh. This Terence Higgins guy is slick though!
https://yurtrock.com/products/terence-h ... oops-vol-1

My best pal growing up died in December. I played a lot of music with him. His mother thought I should have his 05'/06' Martin 000-15 . I'm honored that she thought of me to be the caretaker. Minnesota can be a real ★■◆● on acoustic instruments and the back had split on the seam and there was a small neck crack I had repaired at Hoffman Guitars. $367 bux for repair - they had to re-humidify it for a few weeks before the work could be done. Added some square cleats inside. They're a Martin warranty shop.

Don't mean to be an "emo" but I got a new/used instrument under sad circumstances. It's nice to have it around and I'll try to avoid writing any somber, bumout tunes because the guy was pretty half full and the dead pass on and life is for the living or some ★■◆● like that.

TheWhat wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 5:08 pm...I got a new/used instrument under sad circumstances.

I couldn't do it. I couldn't take an instrument from a deceased friend.I guess I'm bad at grieving. A long time ago I knew this girl. She was pretty cool I guess, she wrote decent music. I introduced her to a friend and they dated for most of a year. Later we were klnda in a band together. She died of cancer in her early 30s. That was in the mid 2000s and I still can't even listen to any of the songs she wrote. It just feels weird to me. Ghosts in the music, ghosts in the instruments or something, heh.

The weirdest part was when his brother was bringing it over, I had butterflies, expecting I might lose it. When I opened the case and inspected it I was a little taken aback because the guy took care of the guitar and now it had a small neck crack by the nut on the low E and the wood had shrunk on the back from dryness. Because of the pandemic I hadn’t seen the instrument in a while.

As far as it being “I couldn’t do it” or something I could see that, but I choose to see it as a wonderful way to remember him. His moms chose me and she is the queen Rolling Stones Beatles fan of the universe and their family bailed me out of some big time issues way back - alternate fam. My condition was that I will give it to his kids if they want it back someday and they ain’t some crackhead trying to get a couple of bucks - the instrument stays in the family - it is not to be sold.

I played it for a couple hours last night and it sounds lovely. Better than a photograph any day.

If you care. Didn't get a good before shot of the neck crack, it still held tune before the repair. But it would've just gotten worse obviously. The repairs come out to about 25% of the book value - the case is real nice though which is always important. I've been messing with open D and E tunings. Sounds great.
Neck After:
free image web hosting

Back Before:
image hosting no sign up
Back After:


Cleat (couldn't get both with iPhone)

I finally got around to testing it with a condenser mic yesterday. Holy ★■◆●! This things sounds aces! Way better than my Takamine

A new fad is emerging. It seems that some companies are making their legacy audio plugins freeware. They offer no support for them, but if you can get them to work they’re free.

I tried to install the Audio Damage AU’s but they aren’t showing up in Logic. Maybe some of you people are better at figuring this stuff out.
https://www.musicradar.com/news/23-free ... ers-legacy

Validation (maybe)!
I sent a BookFace link to Terence Higgins of a little thing I made using his drum loops. I wasn't expecting a response really, I just thought it was kind of a neat spin on his beats because he does like New Orleans funk and I made it annoying poppy like. To post music on BookFace you have to upload it as a movie, so I normally just find a funny gif and bring it into iMovie and upload it to my whopping 150 "friends". He actually shared it on his page. It made my day because I've been shoveling ass loads of snow.
One of the responses to his post was:
"I like the drums, but some of those frequencies got me picking up Telenovelas through the fillings in my teeth." - noted, but not exactly constructive. ;p

Maybe he liked it? Maybe he was just being a good businessman and promoting what you can do with his Yurtrock loop/sample library. Anyways, I'm happy with tired arms!

gif hosting

Neural DSP (everyone’s favorite software company from Finland ) released a new plugin. Tone King Imperial MKII. The actual dual channel combo amp is a 1x12 and goes for $2,600 . Too rich for my crotch but this awesome plugin is $99. It’s really unbelievably great. Just small rolling off the volume pot changes the tone so much. The cleans are gorgeous and the tweed sound is as good as you’re going to get without tubes and air moving out of a speaker. It even has room mic IRs to add some realism. It’s up my alley as a lot of Neural DSP’s focus has been metal/prog. If my opinion matters 10/10.
https://neuraldsp.com/plugins/tone-king-imperial-mkii

This is a slobs Carlos Santana thing I did today - if anything you can hear how much just switching from the neck pickup (rhythm) to center position (leads) changes the amps character. Also, tremolo!

https://neuraldsp.com/plugins/archetype-petrucci


Ok. I bought this @ 50% off for their sale. It’s really good and the clean tones are way better than I expected, the wahwah is tuned different as well I like it a lot. I need to stop buying from them! That’s $435 in 2 years for 5 plugins, the only one I really regret is the Gojira Archetype I bought specifically for the pitch whammy effect - but the cleans just aren’t that nice. It’s cool for kookycrazywhacky but not so much for playing. So I’m batting .800 with NDSP.


NO MORE!! Winnebago Man! Stop slamming doors!

Speaking of ludicrous effects techniques with Neural DSP Archetype: Gojira. The pitch whammy and octave pedals are the reason I purchased it. This technique is using the Logic step sequencing pattern editor to automate sweeping the pitch whammy in a 1 measure pattern instead of using a wahwah pedal. It’s a pretty neat effect but I don’t know if it really justifies the $80 whatever clams I spent - if I was a high gain chug metal guy it would be a great plugin. Every time I ★■◆● about it I play around with it and figure out something else. Maybe I should just shut my first world problems having yapper and just roll with it and pull it out when I want to play liquid metal octopus guitar.

TheWhat wrote: ↑Mon Apr 18, 2022 10:11 pmSpeaking of ludicrous effects techniques with Neural DSP Archetype: Gojira. The pitch whammy and octave pedals are the reason I purchased it.

I like the plugin name, can you use it to make something that sounds like Gojira?

There has to be someone somewhere named DJ Mothra who made a mashup of Godzilla samples and a stockbeat and he going on and on about picking up skeeze at a Walmart bathroom…

There is a reason I seem to like the Petrucci clean amp so much, I guess the Dream Theater guy is a big Mesa/Boogie user and they likely modeled some of the amps with Mesas. In another life when I played live a lot my friend would loan me his Mesa 4x10 and I became infatuated and familiar with the tone. Bingo! I was wondering why I immediately liked the cleans - I’m used to it and it’s imprinted.

Heh.

My turn. A friend of mine let me borrow his Fender ]Blues Junior and it's really great. Is there really is a VST that can capture the tube fuzz + spring reverb combo of that classic sound? I've never used amp modeling software so I guess the time has come to start looking into it. I want to use this amp to re-record a song of mine but I'll have to give the amp back before I have time to record.

Have you tried this https://neuraldsp.com/plugins/tone-king-imperial-mkii

IIRC you only use linux but isn't there a way to load windows just to play guitar? IMHO it's the best Neural DSP yet, I've been playing tele like a lunatic again just using the Tone King. Check it out!

** Just a thought. Are there any IR loaders for linux? I have a bunch of free IRs from various companies, one package is called "American Invasion" (the music world is filled with dickhead names for things) and it has Fender Bassman, Blues deluxe, Twin, and Vibro IR captures. I load them from time to time when the NDSP stuff is sounding "too perfect". It adds some nice slob to things.

US

This impulses are free, all are based on the name of the cab and using a neutral poweramp,maybe with the time i¥ll create more and better impulses, but now this are my work for you, hope you enjoy.
Use with an IR loader like Pulse by Rosen Digital, Recabinet, Torpedo wall of sound and many more.
If you like the IRs and you want to support me and tell you are enjoying the IRs, subscribe to my channel for motivate me to make more and more IR.


"Because a budget bass player or guitar player can sound great using free stuff".
Cabs fully compatible with Helix, Amplifire 12, Recabinet 5, TH3, BIAS AMP1,BIAS AMP 2 Rosen Digital Pulse .


1: Bright tone
2: Medium tone
3: Dark tone

Also these IRs are made with an American mic:

API: API 512 Mic Pre





This proyect always be free, but if you think my work had a value, you can donate a dolar, euro, a cent if you want.
Paypal link:
paypal.me/BrianColin

ES
Estos impulsos son gratis, todos estan badados en el nombre del cab y usando un poweramp neutral, quiza con el tiempo haga mas y mejores impulsos, pero por ahora este es mi trabajo para ti, espero lo disfrutes.
Usarlos con un cargador de impulsos como Pulse de Rosen Digital, Recabinet, torpedo wall of sound entre muchos mas
Si te gustan estos impulsos y quieres apoyarme y decirme que estos IR son buenos, suscribete a mi canal para ver que tengo apoyo y asi seguir haceindo mas y mas impulsos gratis y de buena calidad.


"Porque un gutarrista o bajista con poco presupuesto tambien puede sonar bien"
Cabs completamente compatibles con Helix, Amplifire 12, Recabinet 5, TH3; BIAS AMP 1,BIAS AMP 2, Rosen Digital Pulse.

A:Tono brillante
B:Tono medio
C:Tono Obscuro

Estos IRs estan creados con un preamp de mic "Americano" :


API: API 512 Mic Pre





Este proyecto siempre sera gratuito, pero si crees que mi trabajo vale algo puedes donarme un dolar, euro o un centavo si gustas.
Link paypal:
paypal.me/BrianColin

follow me to check the updates of the new cabs.
Sigueme para ver las actualizaciones de nuevos cabs.


Youtube:
youtube.com/user/furbys03
instagram:
instagram.com/brcollinz
instagram.com/seacowcabs

contacto:
contact:
Fb:
facebook.com/BrianCollinz
facebook.com/SeacowCabs
Seacow Cabs page:
https://seacowcabs.wordpress.com/[quote][/quote]

Cool, I'll bookmark those IRs for later. I still have a few things on my plate for May but hopefully by summer I can start looking into some of this. Yes, you can get Windows plugins to run on Linux but it's kind of a pain in the ass because things often break during updates. My first effort will be checking out Guitarix (Linux Guitar Modeling) to see if there is anything that passes as a decent tube+spring sound. I'll have to dig through the LinuxMusicians forum and see what's up.

https://www.izotope.com/en/shop/mix-mas ... anced.html

I picked up this bundle for $199 great American US clams. I’ve been using ozone 9 elements for a while but they had a sale for the 199 rate for ozone 9 advanced and Neutron 4 and Tonal balance 2 and vocal production stuff in case I want to sound like an auto-tuned rapper.

The biggest advantage seems to be “zero to sounds real good” in 5-10 minutes, an “unmasking” feature that helps bring clarity with fighting noise within EQ bands, and also each module within each plugin suite can be used separately.

Pretty helpful to learn by back engineering presets or the “assistant” AI settings. Still, in the end Bob Marley was more effective with an acoustic in dire need of a luthier, a great voice, a great song, and a couple of mics.

No song with nice equipment is just a piece of ★■◆● put through a vegamizer dressed up as grandma’s bunt cake.

Via email I was invited to do an hour long google meeting with Izotope Product Research. Some rep on video chat watching my Logic session while using Neutron 4. It was kinda weird to be on the spot because normally there isn’t someone watching me make noises and explaining my decisions. He actually thought the information I was giving him was valuable because I’m NOT a pro engineer (makes sense since pros probably wouldn’t test out the AI which does suck donkey balls 85% of the time).

Anyway, they asked me if I’d be available again I said maybe. I got a serial number for Izotope RX 9 Advanced and 2 Plugin Alliance plugins out of the deal. Pretty damn sweet for being a consumer Guinea pig. I’ve had the Standard RX version but the Advanced comes with rad dialog isolation modules and other tools.

Yahoo for being a dick giving my opinion on cheesy AIs that want to make everyone a rapper, a metal band, or John Mayer’s pee stained banana republic undies.


This is RX vocal isolation on default with a Library of Congress recording from like 1915. This is not even learning how to use it just dummy press button - you can tweak it so it has fewer artifacts

Huh, interesting. I've become pretty ignorant of a lot of the technological progress in both audio and video since it's not how I make my money these days. There are so many sophisticated audio tools and video filters I know nothing about.

https://www.izotope.com/en/products/rx/ ... tions.html

I learned about RX a few years ago when Sweetwater (your Satan) was offering an Izotope Elements Bundle 7 consisting of Neutron (mix), Ozone (mastering), Nectar (vocals... heh), and RX for $29. Like other companies Izotope trap you into the "Loyalty offers" with drug dealer-esque new pricing. RX was especially interesting when I totally got rid of an amp buzz on a guitar track that had been recorded with little to no detriment to the sound. It was like magic even though it was an intro "Elements" version to get your woody up with possibilities.

Then there was a $99 offer to go from RX 7 elements to 8 standard (better but not Advanced) so I bought the upgrade through Satanwater again. Less than 30 days later RX 9 came out and they wanted $300 MORE - so I threw a hissy fit with Satanwater (which actually means a polite, concise, detailed email to my CSR explaining my first world problems). They gave me the upgrade to 9 Standard for $49 bux - so from RX 7 Elements to 9 Standard for $149 dollars.

RX Standard is really neat and totally worth the money at a $399 price point but Advanced is downright amazing and is designed for Post Production for film audio in addition to music. When you login to your Izotope account it has a section called "My Loyalty Offers" where there are different deals on different weeks. The week I had the hour long google video guinea pig session they were offering an upgrade to RX 9 Advanced for $499 but by the time they got back to me with the procedure on claiming my prize the window had closed. I asked politely again and because they had a record (literally) of the session they gave me the Advanced version outright. My version of RX Standard is a different serial number and I own it although it's no longer installed. With some email exchanges I could probably give it to someone to use but I'm not sure they would honor a sale of it.

So yeah. Free ★■◆● that's way out of my pay grade. I've actually been going through some 10 year old drum samples I have and cleaning up tom and kick drum hits and it works like a charm. Batch processing is one of the strong points for RX - get your settings right and boom it cleans up 300 drum hits in 3 seconds.

Upgraded to RX 10 and Ozone 10 advanced. Nothing too mind boggling in the updates. Ozone added a clipper to the Maximizer which is like okie man (because I learned what a clipper is about a month ago lol). RX 10 has a new assistant dashboard that can be accessed from within Logic (I think, I haven’t tried it) - when I do use RX I tend to use it standalone to do surgery. Izotope be all resource hogs.

Anyway, thanks to izotope for the NFRs because that would’ve been 300 clams for an upgrade I may or may not use. If the internet is any indication a lot of their customers are pretty sick of the steep update pricing (100-150 per year per software suite). I don’t know about that because if you are actually making a living audio engineering I don’t know why you couldn’t just write off your tools or if you would even use their products for mixing. I guess Ozone’s Maximizer is often used in mastering for certain styles and RX is a standard for media post production. But for heavy hitter popular music I don’t think so much - it’s like kids stuff newbie software - like, perfect for me. :p

Really really nice guitar. I bought a tenor sax a few year ago, attempted to learn to play it but life interfered and never did. Got to go to my other comp to listen to your music as this one has no speakers

TheWhat wrote: ↑Thu Sep 15, 2022 9:23 pm...because I learned what a clipper is about a month ago lol...

Please explain. Have we come full circle and are now adding clipping back into our digital masters?

**Not an audio engineer
Soft/medium/hard clipping before the Maximizer in Ozone so it the compression doesn’t “work” as hard is the theory in videos and information I’ve read. So the compressor isn’t noticeably responding on a few transient peaks - it rounds it off - I think!

Now that I have some experience I tend to use the Ozone component software pieces individually rather than as a whole software bundle with 5 things going on. As far as soft clipping used as a saturation technique I’ve been using a free Apogee Soft Limit that makes drums and percussion a lot warmer and keeps the meters in Logic from going red and takes away some of the digital icky.


I think it’s a “headroom” thing more than a loudness war thing.

https://artproaudio.com/product/s8-eigh ... -splitter/



My deceased pally had more equipment. I think he was trying to setup some kind of a remote live rig for bands to record at clubs or coffee shops, or a goddamn chamber string section because I have no idea why he needed 16 channels of xlr splitters? Also, he had a backpack m-audio axiom midi controller and a Gallen Krueger bass head and 40 xlr cables (I own 3 mics and 2 mic stands ) Don’t forget to tell people you love them because one day you’ll have nothing but their left over audio gear!

https://www.roland.com/global/products/a-88mk2/
My new (B-stock from Roland) Instrument 2022 end of the Year. Roland A-88 MKII. Satan Water lists them new for over $1,200 clams - I found it today at Music Go Round for $559.99 with 2 year Roland Warranty I registered it. B-stock is cosmetic damage or possibly electronics that were fixed but they can't sell it new. The production date is January 2020 and the last owner is Roland not an old drunk guy. The manual and paperwork is all there and unblemished but it did NOT come with a box (which sucks because I like having them). My hands are in for a pounding because Ive been playing plastic keys for so long (I used to have a Studiologic 88 weighted Fatar keybed controller in a different life). I'm not a great piano player but I write best on one or acoustic guitar. The Arturia Keylab is still going to be used because I have it midi mapped to all my Arturia and Spitfire VSTs - it was plug and play. I'm stoked, such a great deal for a nice controller basically new!

Thought I would share some of my work:



I like this piece because I achieved something I have been working toward for a while. In a world of effects plugins, virtual instruments, and software guitar rigs, I managed to record something that uses almost nothing. Every instrument is recorded directly into my audio interface with no amps/effects in-between. With the exception of one guitar there isn't any equalization. The tremolo guitar has subtle delay plugin and there is a reverb channel to put everything in some sort of cohesive space, but that's it. This is the most minimal use of digital audio processing I've ever done. (Note: drums and synth come from a Yamaha RY9)