8749 Synth1 Patches !!!

Community can always bring some new, amazing ideas :) EvilDragon (a.k.a. DragonSagoth) has packed all available Synth1 soundbanks into one big rar file which contains stunning amount of 8749 Synth1 presets !!!
Inside the file there's also a little "hack" (reg file) which let's Synth1 to use up to 100 banks at once, instead of default 10 banks (I guess). Amazing stuff.

Update: It's not a hack, It's just the latest Synth1 version (link below) can handle 100 sound banks...

Download: Synth1 8749 Patches | Synth1 v1.08 2010.4

Download: (Updated) Synth1 9006 Patches
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11 Best Synth1 Programming Video Tutorials

Here's a small collection of YouTube's Synth1 programming Video Tutorials, I find the best. About half of videos is about so called trance sounds but there are some non-trance gems too, ie. creating Bell Sound...

Trance Supersaw-like Lead

Nice video, which also introduces the usage of external (non Synth1) effecs such as EQ, Reverb, Compressor.



Bell Sound



Rank1 Style Warm, Trance pad



Harpsichord Sound



Synth pad creation tutorial



Acid, Distorted Synth



Trance Arp Lead



Trance / Dance gated / polysynth sound



Ambient Drone Pad Sound



Drum & Bass - Reese Tutorial



(Classic) Trance Lead Tutorial

Oh no, not another ;)



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Djs and their ears

Did you know, that human ear has thousands of microscopic cilia (hairs), each designed to only respond to one individual frequency ?
Did you know that DJ booth with club system up, monitors up has an average 95 to 105 dB-SPL (while 100db is recognized as concerning) ?
You can learn this and much more, if you read another nice article published on DJ TechTools: When Good Ears Go Bad – It's All Gone Pete Tong

Article: Dj TechTools: When Good Ears Go Bad
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FL Studio Unleashed Master Class

Well, I'm not an FL Studio expert but maybe some of you will find tips & tricks presented on Electronic Musician useful.
Article covers managing the playlist, using multichannel plug-in synths, handling automation, Remote Control Settings and some Slicex tricks.
So if you use FL Studio and want to improve your workflow then go ahead, read this article :)


Article: FL Studio Unleashed Master Class
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Deep Sounding Dub Techno Chords

Another Ableton Live suited tutorial. This time it's about creating deep sounding dub techno chords. Very simple tutorial which shows that certain effects (in this example there's Reverb, Ping Pong Delay and Compressor unit) can bring some life into the sound.


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FM Synthesis Basics Part III

Third part of Brian Trifon's video tutorial about FM Synthesis.



More info: Next Step Audio
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Hammond Novachord Free Sample Library

Hollow Sun offers free, 6 patches, sample library, with 70 year old Hammond Novachord sounds. It works with Kontakt 3.5+ sampler as well as free Kontakt Player.

... "it is not compromised in any way and is extensively multi-sampled across the 72-note keyboard range with long, luxurious samples that breathe and wheeze and grunt their way through the 169 valves, thousands of capacitors and miles of carefully hand-loomed wiring."

If you like to collect some free Kontakt libraries then this one is for you :)

ps. There are more free libraries available at Hollow Sun - check here. Bass Station Synth library, with 90 patches divided into mono, poly, unison basses looks nice too.

Download: Hollow Sun - Hammond Novachord
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Harmonic Mixing

Most people (interested in djing) understand the idea of beatmatching, which means synchronizing the tempo of two tracks, blending between them and as a result creating a mix / set :) But, have you ever heard about Harmonic Mixing ? It's an idea of playing music / mixing in the same key (or changing the scale by using "Camelot wheel"), as a result the blendings between tracks seem very natural, and it's very easy to create all kind of mashups etc.
Who does support harmonic mixing ? Well, there are certainly some big names :) Armin Van Buuren, Paul Van Dyk, Pete Tong from BBC Radio 1 etc.

But the idea of harmonic mixing can confuse some people. First of all, you need to know the root key of each song - commercial software like Mixed In Key can handle it pretty well. Then, quite often, you need to change the tempo of track which also means changing the root key. That's the point where it gets confusing and that's why I decided to share some useful links about harmonic mixing.

Articles: How To Guide: Harmonic Mixing | Understanding key and tempo | Fine Tune your sets with some Harmonic Mixing | To Key Or Not To Key
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Nucleus SoundLab Ambient Space Library

Nucleus SoundLab has launched their new website and as a result, previously commercial Ambient Space I library is now available for free ! :) It's a library compatible with Reason, Wusikstation and all samplers that support SF2/SFZ format. The Reason refill contains over 800mb (32-bit format) of raw samples.

"Ambient Space I is focused on extremely long ambient samples. Sample lengths range from 30 seconds to over 2 minutes! Convolution, timestretching, FFT analysis, additive resynthesis and more were used in their creation"

In order to download the library, you need to sign up the newsletter.


Download: Nucleus SoundLab - Ambient Space I
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How to be a successfull DJ

Another nice article from one of my favourite blogs - Dj TechTools. 'How to be a successfull DJ' breaks down "successfull DJ" into 3 tiers of financial success. First tier is about keeping your current job and getting paid during DJing at some parties. Second tier is about being full time DJ and the third tier, well, we all know what it means - you'll become huge, famous dj who flies around the world and play gigs for serious money :)

Article: How to be a successfull DJ Part I | II | III
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Cinematic Strings Monster Staccatos

Monster Staccatos is a free, small taster of commercial library - Cinematic Strings Pro Edition.
It's is a one ensemble patch (compatible with Kontakt 3.5+, Kontakt Player works too), which means that all sections are spread over the keyboard to allow a huge range to be played at once. The patch is velocity sensitive, so the harder you play... the louder they get.

Well, great freebie :)




Here's the demo of commercial product:


ps. Thanks Ondrej for the tip :)

Download: Cinematic Strings Monster Staccatos (requires registration at their website)
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Djing with Ableton Live

There is no perfect DJ setup for Ableton Live. It's so creative piece of software that every DJ has it's own DJing workflow. To be honest, I thought that I introduced this video few months ago but I guess I was wrong :)

Video lasts about 1 hour, was created by Tom Cosm and overall it presents one way of creating a Live Mix / Set using Ableton Live (and you can learn how to create some useful DJ effect racks).



ps. Embeded video has HD set to off. Here's HD quality Vimeo.com
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Yamaha Pacifica - Electric Guitar Sample Library

As a gift to all YouTube subscribers, viewers and homepage visitors, Theo Krueger gave away Yamaha Pacifica - Electric Guitar Sample Library from his private collection.

Library weights 160 mb (unpacked), requires NI Kontakt (or other sampler capable of handling Kontakt format) and well, it's great :)



Download: Yamaha Pacifica - Free Electric Guitar Sample Library
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Sonic Reality Samples No-Brainer Deal

Almost forgot about it. Another "No-Brainer Deal" from audiomidi.com - it's Sonic Reality’s R.A.W. Exclusive Four DL Multibox, which allows you to choose any four R.A.W. Loop Style Paks (each pack costs regularly $49) out of a series of 10 different titles with loops in REX, Apple Loops and Acidized Wave formats. There are: Blues Grooves, Country Folk Rhythms, Drum & Bass, Hip Hop Dirty South, Jazz Grooves, Nashville Pop Grooves, Sixties Motown, Trip Hop Beats, Vintage Rock Grooves, Vintage Soul Grooves. I'll skip it but only because these are not "my" genres :)

Here you can find a little bit more info about each PAK, there are some mp3 previews available. What is the price ? Well, it's just 20 $ and as far as I know the quality is very good but of course it's up to you to decide :)

More info: AudioMidi.com No-Brainer Deal - Sonic Reality R.A.W.
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Compression Made Easy

Well, I guess I'll just quote the beginning of an article, I'm going to introduce, published on Sound On Sound magazine.

Few things confuse home-studio owners more when mixing than compression. It’s easy to find out what compressor parameters do in the abstract, but answers to more critical (and less tangible) questions are thinner on the ground. How do you know whether or when to compress? How much compression is enough, or too much? What are the right attack and release times? This article should lend a helping hand with such questions. Instead of beginning by explaining about compressor design, as most tutorials seem to do, I’ll start with some common mixing difficulties and show how the main compressor parameters provide tools to overcome them.

So, yea, another article about compression but this time it's a little bit more practical :)

Article: Compression Made Easy
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Secrets Of The Mix Engineers : Lady Gaga - Just Dance

Personally, I love to read Sound On Sound's - Secrets Of The Mix Engineers articles. Each article tells the story about mixing certain track. There are some tips & tricks introduced and overall it's good to know which tools are used by professionals :)
So let's start with Robert Orton. Few weeks after he began his freelance career, quite unknown New York singer contacted him and soon the whole album + one single were waiting on his desk. The single was ... Lady Gaga - Just Dance.

[...] I don’t find sample rate that important. Most of the stuff I do ends up on MP3, so whatever sample rate I use doesn’t make a big difference. I used 44.1kHz/24-bit for ‘Just Dance’; 96k does sound great, but the large file sizes are a hassle: everything takes twice as long and it’s a pain to do backups. There are other factors that make a far bigger difference to the sound than just the sample rate, and I prefer to focus on them.

Article: Secrets Of The Mix Engineers: Robert Orton
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Bassline Tutorial

Ok, I'm back after some short break with some new materials :) First, quite cool video tutorial about creating a bassline (EDM genre), using Ableton Live, Live's native synth called Analog and a bunch of basic effects such as Chorus, Phaser, Delay.

Tutoral is also about layering. An author splits bass sound into three sections (using Instrument Rack and EQ) - high, low, sub and tweaks them.


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