Elektrostudio eSLine - free Solina String Ensemble

Elektrostudio eSLine virtual instrumet tries to recreate that famous ARP Solina String Ensemble. It's probably the best freeware recreation.

The Solina String Ensemble is often thought of as THE String Machine of the late 1970's disco era. It's a multi-orchestral machine with violin, viola, trumpet, horn, cello and contrabass. Instead of attack and decay there are crescendo and sustain controls (which sound more orchestral but are the same thing). Apparently this synth really makes a great string sound, but that's all really... It has gate and trigger outs from the polyphonic keyboard. Completely cased in wood (or wood-like) panels with a clean and discrete layout. It's old, it's vintage, and it's been used by Air, The Eagles, Elton John, Pink Floyd, The Cure, Joy Division, OMD, Josh Wink, STYX, Tangerine Dream, Keane, Japan, and New Order. [via Vintage Synth]

Download: Elektrostudio eSLine
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Indie Dev Collective sale!

Indie Dev Collective is a nice initiative of 12 plug-in and soundware developers who have banded together to bring you a massive collaborative sale on synths, effects, and samples.

So, to sum it up: lot's of good developers (Nucleus SoundLab, De La Mancha, H.G. Fortune, Manytone and more), over 50 deals, more than 90 products with up to 65 % sales.
It's just for two weeks, from May 17th - May 31st! (Update: it's extended till 7th June)

More info: Indie Dev Collective
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Secrets Of The Mix Engineers : Black Eyed Peas - Boom Boom Pow

Here's another nice article from Sound On Sound magazine. This time it's about Dylan Dresdow who back in 2006 founded his own studio - Paper VU, and his credits include Ice Cube, Missy Elliott, Wu-Tang Clan, Michael Jackson, Nas, Common, Chris Brown, Usher, Flo Rida and, of course, Black Eyed Peas.

The total number of tracks on ‘Boom Boom Pow’ was about 64. These include all the different drums, the synths, and the vocals and backing vocals. [...] The main drum parts on ‘Boom Boom Pow’ were the 808 bass drum, a 909 clap, and a loop.

Well, if you want to know a little bit more - read the article :)

Article: Secrets Of The Mix Engineers : Black Eyed Peas - Boom Boom Pow
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How to make... Vespers vs Lady Gaga - Telephone

Ok, this will be huge tutorial :) First, take a look at the final result. It's a remix of Lady Gaga - Telephone made by Vespers. Lot of glitches, wobbles etc. - I must admit I love it :)



But that's not the end. Vespers will takes us to his home studio and shows us how to create such remix (using Ableton Live).



Ok, so here we go:

















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Free Multi-samples

Multi-samples.com offers, free multi-samples. The offer is time limited and at the moment there are three libraries available.
JP-8000 Trance 01 (NI Kontakt + Refill formats) is a 1,5 GB library suited for all trance lovers, especially from ~ 2000-2005 when Roland JP-8000 was very popular in trance music.
Second library is Nova Laptop 01 - again it's trance oriented library (Refill format).
The third one PolySynth Classics 01 - Roland JX-3P will work for all genres :) (Refill format).

Overall, these three libraries weight around 4,5 GB so I would say it's a truly great link :D

Download: Multi-samples.com
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Ableton Live DJing Tutorial

I guess it's ableton videos day - hope you won't get bored ;)

There are many ways to DJ via Ableton Live. This tutorial shows quite basic workflow - two decks, each one with Audio Effects deck created (EQ, Beat Repeat, Filter), Midi mapping your controller, and then blending between tracks using crossfader (well, I prefer doing it by changing the channels volume but like I said before, there are many ways ).

If you're wondering how to prepare your clips (warping the song, Cue settings, finding the root key and Bpm of the song) then watch the first part of this tutorial.



ps. An author didn't show it but I guess there's a Limiter unit put on master bus.
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Recreating Wolfgang Gartner - Undertaker main lead

This video is about recreating the main lead from Wolfgang Gartner - Undertaker tune (genre: Electro House). I would say that, while the recreation is not 100 % accurate, it's actually a pretty nice Ableton Operator sound design tutorial (especially if you're aiming at those Wolfgang's Gartner sidechained pads, leads etc.).


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Dubstep Bass Design

I guess the title explains everything ;) It's a dubstep bass design video tutorial. Tools: Ableton Live, Ableton Operator, NI FM8


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Elektrostudio Davosynth

Elektrostudio DavoSynth is a virtual instrument inspired by rare Italian synth - Davolisint. I know that the author of Elektrostudio plugins wanted to make this instrument similar played as original. I don't know if it worked (because I don't have the real synth) but DavoSynth is definitely pretty unique synth to play.

The Davolisint was made by an Italian company, Davoli Krundaal Musical SRL, established by Athos Davoli. To appreciate the Davolisint fully, you have to understand that 1972 was the year before the synthesizer industry really took off. The Minimoog, EMS VCS3 and the ARP 2600 were already available and the ARP Odyssey was just about to appear, but the first of the more affordable Rolands, Yamahas and Korgs were only to be unveiled a year later, as were the glut of '70s string synths and electronic pianos. In this immature market, every new synthesizer was an object of wonder and respect. Indeed, if Crumar's fabled Compacsynth never appeared in commercial form, the Davolisint was not only the first Davoli synth, but the first Italian synthesizer, and possibly the first from mainland Europe, predating the more famous Crumars, Siels, Ekos and Jens by many years, so it's little wonder that it created a degree of interest that seems quite implausible today.

The other thing to appreciate is that, in 1972, manufacturers were still experimenting with both the form and function of electronic keyboard instruments, balancing costs, flexibility and simplicity in innovative ways that were largely abandoned just a couple of years later. This means that the Davolisint had very little in common with the synths that preceded it, or those that were soon to follow.

Article: Sound On Sound - The Story Of the Davolisint

Download: Elektrostudio Davosynth (10 Instruments Pack)
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Elektrostudio Tapeotronic

Elektrostudio Tapeotronic is a free mellotron virtual instrument. It contains flute, string, and choirs sounds. As far as I know, it's the best Mellotron VST available.

Elektrostudio Tapeotronic is available with other 9 virtual synthesizers as Elektrostudio Analog Pack.

Download: Elektrostudio Tapeotronic
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Analogue Drums - Big Mono Drum Kit

I'll just quote the official website: "Big Mono is a roomy rendition of a lovable Ludwig, a Rogers Dynasonic snare drum, some tasty Zildjians, and a Sabian ride for good luck. Tracked through a '75 Neve desk, and as always onto a nice thick roll of tape. Recorded in mono using a decca-tree configuration, this kit sounds retro with plenty of space."

Nice freebie compatible with NI Kontakt 2/3, Battery and EXS24.



Download: Analogue Drums - Big Mono
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Another AudioMidi.com "No-Brainer" deals

Another AudioMidi.com "No-Brainer" deals - no, I don't work for them ;) It's just a good opportunity to legally buy audio plugins way below the market price. This time, it's IK Multimedia T-RackS 3 Classic Equalizer & Metering Suite. "EQ consists of a high quality six-band parametric EQ, specially designed to achieve high-end performance in a mastering environment. It can be used in Stereo or MS modes". Metering suite is all about ... metering :) Spectrum analyzer, RMS meter, phase correlation and more...
The price is 20 $

Another available deal is Antares DUO Evo Vocal Modeling Auto-Doubler which automatically generates a doubled vocal part from an existing vocal. It provides programmable variation in pitch, timing, vibrato depth, and timbral variation using a simplified version of Throat EVO's vocal modeling technology. The price is 20 $ but it also requires Pace iLok USB key.

More info: AudioMidi.com
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How to make Trance tutorial by 7 Skies

It's just a video review of trance track produced by Ronski Speed : Something Happened On The Way To Heaven and remixed by 7 Skies.

What does it mean ? An author of this remix opens the project and reviews his work. He answers some questions brought by community, he shares some tips (for example if you're interested about creating typical trance piano then this video may help you). The video is splitted into five parts (720p quality except first part), lasts about 50 minutes. Very good stuff especially if you're into trance. I like parts three, four, five the most.

I hope you ll enjoy it and you ll learn something new, the video is going to be pretty boring at some points so my advice is to watch it only if you really want to learn something new cause no one will give you back the 10 minutes you are losing watching this..

Some general questions answered (Part I)





Bass-line



Piano



Synths



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SuperRiff Guitar / Bass Vst Instrument

SuperRiff Guitar & Bass are very simple virtual instruments that contain a limited set of custom electric and bass guitar single note samples for use in computer music production. So it's not another cabinet emulation plugin - it's pure synth, easy to use, fun to play. Well, it's more like a rompler :)

The idea with SuperRiff Guitar/Bass was to create a soundset of samples that contain the most basic ways of getting sound from a guitar (at least in the rock world) and to combine them in such a way that all they could be used to create a simple but reasonable rhythm/lead or bass guitar performance.
Both guitar and bass plug-ins have been created with rock type productions in mind but of course can be used in any genre.

Audio Demo:


Download: SuperRiff.com
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Angular Momentum Unifyer 3

Another Angular Momentum free entry (Freehand vst instrument was reviewed few weeks ago) - Unifyer 3. Anything interesting about it ? Well, it reminds me magware CM Genesis synth a little bit. Just like in CM Genesis, there are two oscillators available, powered with serious detuning possibilities thanks to up to 8 voices unison mode per oscillator. This feature makes Unifyer quite nice for all kind of supersaw-like leads, fat detuned basslines etc.

But there are differences. Unifyer 3 is monophonic synth which means that it's suited mainly for leads and basses. Each oscillator, instead of just classic waveforms only, has 68 waveforms implemented. I must say it's quite fun to just set oscillator to 8 voice unison mode, set some detuning and just scroll through the waveforms - quite nice pallette of sounds can be produced very quick.

Output sound can be shaped with additional effects such as EQ, double delay unit and three filters - one per oscillator and global one. There's also an arpeggiator with groove adjust option available.

Biggest flaw ? In my opition, this synth has a nice potential to create a lot of detuned basses, leads very quick, but there are only 32 presets available. So if you don't like to program your own presets, it's better to just skip this synth. But if you love tweaking knobs just like I do then give it a try... :)

Download: Angular Momentum Unifyer 3
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