Limited time! Line 6 is giving away POD Farm™, the premium tone plug-in – a $99 value! Get the tones you need for pro-sounding recordings. For FREE!

POD Farm delivers industry-standard POD® tone to any DAW. Its comprehensive collection of immortal guitar amps, bass amps, stompboxes, studio effects and preamps are absolutely essential for any recording guitarist.

POD Farm (for iLok): 42 guitar amps and cabs 10 bass amps and cabs 29 stompboxes and effects 6 mic preamps Dual Tone

POD Farm (with compatible Line 6 gear): Standard POD Farm model set Unlock all the amps, effects and model packs from your Line 6 gear and add them to POD Farm! Dual tone

Incredibly easy to use, POD Farm features a carousel-style gear browser that displays every available model at your fingertips. Flip through the dark and smoky American combos, the gain-crazed British stacks, sumptuous effects and more. To build your tone, simply drag-and-drop models into the signal flow. Or use any of the hundreds of presets for classic tones in an instant.

Discover the awesome power of Dual Tone. It’s like having two full versions of POD Farm in one! Split your guitar signal to play through two full rigs of amps, cabs, effects and more and produce classic dual tone combinations or gorgeous new hybrids.

To take advantage of this great opportunity all you need is an Internet connection and an iLok USB Smart Key or a compatible Line 6 product*.

Don’t wait! This offer ends September 30, 2009.

FREE POD Farm Plug-In is a post from: wax&wires

[via prophead's site]

Ever wondered what THE bass sound in THAT track was? How they made the harp glissandos in that movie, the shimmering strings in that commercial, or why the snare in that track sounds so familiar? We did. And that’s why we’re presenting our favorite producer’s and artist’s top sounds.

Check it out

Reason Artist Patch Charts – Get The Sounds Of Your Favorite Artists is a post from: wax&wires

Indaba is a DAW that works with Java within your internet browser. We’ve all seen a million little flash apps, my wife is addicted to some Facebook app game called Farm Town, but this is the first browser-based Java audio tool that shows a bit more promise because of the high quality audio, non-destructive editing, and integrated social element.

That is where Indaba needs to invest it’s resources. The social aspect of collaborating with other musicians online, and having a profile page where you can share your songs is where Indaba can find a niche in the overpopulated DAW market.

Should you not have an internet connection, you can download the mixer to your desktop to work offline too, so your creativity is not contingent on your amount of wi-fi. Though, if that’s your primary way of using Indaba, there are likely a million other DAWs that could give you more functionality for crafting your songs.

Indaba is subscription-based. They do have a free option, but it’s more for you to just test out the interface. With the free “Basic” plan, you only get 5 public sessions and 100 MB per session of storage space. You also do not get access to audio effects, the built-in sample library (which is a really cool feature), or the ability to work offline. For $5/month, you can step up to the pro account which gives you access to all of Indaba’s features, and a bit more storage space, and then at $25/month you get unlimited everything.

I don’t see this replacing my whole rig, plug-ins, and all the goodies I’ve invested in over the past decade; but the collaborative aspect of it is exciting to say the least. Ableton has started beta testing “Share” with Live 8, and that should be available soon. The primary difference is that Ableton requires you to make music, then upload your songs for your collaborators to pick up. Indaba lets you record directly to the net so your collaborators see it instantly.

Ableton has Indaba beat on current market-share and flexibility with third party effects though.

If nothing else, it ought to be quite apparent that music making is going online; and why not? Through my day, probably close to 95% of my functional communication is online, why not my music making? So whether you’re hyped up about Ableton Share, or wanting to test drive Indaba for a while, get ahead of the curve on online collaboration to see where your music might go.

Music Making Gets Social – Indaba Music Now Open is a post from: wax&wires

Part of the program’s charm was in the interface with the DS, so it loses a bit of fun because of that. It was also a bit of a workaround to get it to run well on my Mac. You not only have to install Glitch-Sequencer, but also MMJ (Java Midi Subsystem for Intel Macs), and jump through some other hoops, all which are detailed on the Glitch Sequencer page, but I always get so excited when new toys come; the last thing I want to do is install a bunch of extraneous apps to get it to run properly. That’s like buying a guitar without strings or something.

Nonetheless, it’s a very unique sequencing interface, and it’s free, so give it a go at Glitch-Sequencer.com. If you have a DS, be sure to check out GlitchDS.com too!

The best way to maximize these tools is to feed them into Live or a system in which you have a better sound bank. Check out this video of GlitchDS fed into Reaktor with RepeaterDS:

Glitch-Sequencer For Mac And PC is a post from: wax&wires

As you heard me address in the video, the tempo manipulation seemed to be the feature that had the most excitement around it. How frequently it will be used, I’m not sure. Gerry and Peff gave a quick demo of the software, and drew in a tempo automation for a false ritard at the end of a song. It did sound quite authentic, baiting the applause of all in attendance. There have been a few instances where I’ve completed a song, thinking it sounded great, only to have it drag a bit when played in the context of the album as a whole. How many times in my life has that happened? Not really enough to justify changing my entire work flow, but I could see the program assisting for scratch tracks and pre-production from that end.

Also mentioned in the video, the SSL 9000K emulation, acting as the primary mixer within record. The jury’s out on the accuracy of the modeling. I’ll play with the beta a bit this week and give a more in depth review next week via video.

The interface is clean and intuitive, much like Reason. It operates in three views, Arrange View (standard waveform edits, etc), Rack View (effects rack, just like Reason), and Mixer View (where the much hailed SSL 9000K model is featured).

Record can rewire into any rewire supported DAW (ProTools, Ableton, Logic, etc.), but Reason does not need to be rewired into Record, as the new software opens Reason sessions natively within it. The plus in that is that all tracks are handled the same; you heard Gerry alluding to that in the video, wanting to see tracks as music, not audio. That’s a bit semantic, but the point is that there aren’t “MIDI” tracks and “Audio” tracks per say, as all effects work on any of the channels, and all tracks feed to the SSL.

The next feature that seemed to get a decent amount of attention was the Line 6 amp modeling. The same modeling available in guitar and bass PODs is included with record. The program also can sync up with your hardware POD to exchange presets between Record and your POD. The whole system is designed for quick, intuitive and simple music making.

Propellerhead has been touting Record’s low latency. The months to come with dictate the depth of that claim. After I mess with it a bit, I’ll relay any thoughts I have to you.

Another key feature is Record’s comping. Most of us who are accustomed to vocal comping and the like have grown use to having multiple stacked takes on a single track in ProTools, then copying and pasting the good chunks into a new “comp” take. Record has a much more easy to use GUI for comping, where you can simply drag around the pieces you want from each take to a top “play” take to create your final comp. Nothing too mind-blowing, but the new comping system in Record should help speed up your workflow a bit.

One thing that I forgot to ask Gerry on camera, but did catch up with him about was the fact that Record does NOT support third party plug-ins. All effects, just like in Reason, are hosted within the program itself; everything is entirely self contained. While most would see this as a huge set back, it doesn’t come without reason (pardon the pun). With the incorporation of external plug-ins, you introduce the potential for a plug-in crashing your application. Reason is known for its stability, and the folks at Propellerhead wanted the same reputation to follow Record. Gerry said something to the effect of, “If we let you use whatever plug-ins you want, we’re not really going to be any more stable than any other recording program out there.” Sounds logical enough, though I do think this will impact their market share. For users, like myself, who have spent thousands on quality plug-ins, I want to be able to take those presets and plug-ins with me, to whatever audio program I end up in. I don’t know that Record’s target market is comprised of such musicians though.

On a similar note, all associated files are held within one Record session file. That means, no folders of MIDI data, audio files, and fade files. Everything is self contained. The good in that is the ease of use. The down side is having to bounce stems for use in any other audio environment. Record does take as much of the pain out of that as possible by offering a quick “bounce stems” option to export each track as a separate audio file.

Think of it as more of a sketch pad for your work. It will be the fastest and easiest way for Reason users to lay down song ideas from start to finish, with decent enough audio. If you’re thinking about a major label release, this isn’t really going to be your end all be all solution. For $249, you can’t really expect much more than that though. If you’ve already got Reason, Record is only $149. I’ve spent more than that on a single compression plug that I hardly ever use. Record would likely do more for my workflow than said plug-in, so to me, it’s a worthwhile buy. If you’re new to the computer recording game, this could be an incredible first program for you, a huge step up from garage band, and a bit sideways from apps like Logic Express and the like.

You can get more info about Record at Prophead’s site, and supposedly at RecordYou.com, though the latter wasn’t up last time I checked.

More thoughts to come as I experiment a bit more with the beta, but those are my initial reactions to the features presented. What do you think? Will you be looking for a new workflow when Record comes out this September?

Propellerhead Announces New Software – “Record” is a post from: wax&wires

de la Mancha makes VST audio plugins for Windows based hosts. We aim to make original plugins at affordable prices, so your creativity isn’t compromised by your wallet

If you’ve been eagerly awaiting Plogue’s ChipSounds, you’ll be enthused to know that De La Mancha has several free VSTs for chip emulation: Basic64, Plastique, miniSID, and even a Simon game emulator called “Psymon.”

On the audio effects end, De La Mancha has a really cool fattener called “SUMO” and a lot of other random creation-based plugs.

Check them out and let me know what you think!

De La Mancha VST Plugins – FREE DOWNLOAD is a post from: wax&wires

If you’re new to music making, this would be a great application for you to help wrap your brain around I/O. With it’s Open Source format, it’s infinitely expandable for the future too. Check it out here.

It is great as a production tool and is also very suitable for live performance. If you have a little knowledge of music composition and sound design you will have no trouble making great music with DarkWave Studio.

Features

• Virtual Studio – Wire Machines Together As If You Were Using Real Hardware
• Pattern Editor – Quickly Create And Modify Musical Notes In A Piano Roll Interface
• Sequence Editor – Arrange Patterns Into A Song
• Multitrack Hard Disk Recorder – Record Multiple Tracks To Disk For Post Production
• 32-bit Floating Point Internal Audio Path – High Quality Sound Processing
• SSE and SSE2 Optimizations – Blazing Performance On Recent Processors
• Assembly Language Optimizations – Blazing Performance Even On 32-bit Systems
• Native 64-bit and 32-bit Platform Support
• VST PlugIn Support – Limitlessly Expandable With Virtual Instruments and Effects
• ASIO Audio Driver Support – Low Latency Output For Live Performance

Bundled PlugIns

• MIDI Input – Play Instruments From A Music Keyboard
• ES Mixer – 8 Track Stereo Mixer With 2 Auxilary Tracks, For Mixing And Production
• ES DGenR8 – Synthesize Drum Beats With Roland TR-909 Flavour
• ES BassHead – Top Notch Virtual Analog Subtractive Synthesizer
• ES SpatialVerb – Realistic Reverb Effects With The Smoothest Sound
• ES Stomp – Synthesize That Classic Techno Thumping Kick Drum
• ES AntiAlias – Filter Digital Audio To Make It More Like Analog
• ES QuadDelay – For Trippy Echo Effects

DarkWave Studio – FREE Music Making App for PC is a post from: wax&wires

Are you everybody’s designated musicman, the default iPod DJ at every party you go to, as if there’s some unspoken rule that you have the most complete and party-ready song library on your laptop? I’ve fallen into that role more than a few times, and if you care enough about music to read this tiny little blog, chances are that you have too. Every time I get sucked into the vortex of the dance floor DJ, I find myself wondering why nobody has developed a music player that could read your song’s audio content, and DJ for you.

We’ve had the technology to detect tempo and FFTs to find the keys of songs for years now. Nobody has capitalized on it by making a music player that could automatically string together songs of a similar tempo and related key to keep the music going without human input though.

Mufin player just might be the first music player to show promise in that department. Rather than basing song sorting on genres set somewhat arbitrarily by humans, Mufin actually analyzes the audio content of your song to show you similar songs that you own, and also songs that it has in its database which you can then listen to and purchase online. That part sounds somewhat like Apple’s Genius sidebar, only it bases the suggestions on audio content, not what other customers liked. That feature alone is not going to put Mufin over the top, but the continuous music “mood” playing could help. I also like the feature that allows Mufin to analyze the content of a song you don’t have the information of, compare that to a database, and then download the appropriate track info for the audio file.

In the end, I would expect iTunes to incorporate some of these ideas in a future release, when the new features will be heralded as the greatest thing since sliced bread. Until then, kudos to Mufin for paving the way!

So now you can let yourself slip away into your Kenny G without fear of getting kicked in the teeth by Mastodon on the next track.

Mufin Player Brings Fresh Sorting To Music Playlists is a post from: wax&wires

For more, check out one of my favorites, The Police Roxanne. There are also versions of Oasis Wonderwall and Radiohead Creep, all fed through Songsmith.

Van Halen Does Lite Jazz – Courtesy Of Songsmith is a post from: wax&wires

From Plogue.com:

Plogue today officially previewed its new “Chip Sounds” soft-synthesizer, which faithfully reproduces the sounds and styles of 80′s video game music and sound effects. The product was demonstrated during the show at the NAMM Convention.

This new synthesizer contains hundreds of unique synthesized and sampled and variations of original 80′s sound chip waveforms and sounds effects in a convenient plugin format, usable inside your favorite sequencer or DAW, or as a standalone virtual instrument.

“Whether you want an arsenal of unique RAW tones as the basis of unique modern sounds OR to remix classic game tunes – and you want the to get as close as possible to the real thing without messing with 25 year old consoles – look no further!” Said David Viens, Plogue’s President and lead designer on the product.

Chip Sounds contains seven simulated chips that behave exactly as their original Integrated Circuit engineer intended them to sound:

• 2A03 PAPU (and the portable variant, which powered the big N’s classic consoles)
• TIA Chip (from the 2600 and 7800 Consoles)
• POKEY (400/800 series computers)
• AY-3-8910 (INTV, ZX, ST, Arcades)
• SN76489AN (CV,SMS,BBC,TI,PCjr,T1000, and Arcades)
• VIC-I (from the VIC-20)
• SID (6581/8580 and all know revisions found in the C64)

Additionally, and more interestingly, Chips Sounds also faithfully reproduces the accidentally discovered sounds and abusive techniques that were made famous by innovative 8-bit composers over the last two decades in order to push beyond the boundaries of the of the original chip designs.

Powered in part by the powerful ARIA powerfull 64-bit sampler/synthesis engine (also developed by Plogue Art et Technologie) that also powers Garritan’s complete new product line, and is also featured in many third party applications. Chip Sounds reproduces the exact form spectra of the most sought-after classic sound chips, including their most well-known variations, as sonically accurate as possible without adding any non-authentic aliasing or DSP artifacts.

Research and analysis for this project has been made in house on Plogue’s large collection of cartridges, modified consoles and classic computers owned by the team and also on the chips themselves using custom made circuit boards and low level 8 bit software code.

“The most authentic emulation of C64, Nes, Vic20, Gameboy, and Atari 2600 sound chips I’ve ever heard!” -8 Bit Weapon

For an audio example of the sonic potential, check out 8 Bit Weapon and Computeher.

For more info, stay tuned to Plogue.com.

Get Bent With Plogue “Chip Sounds” is a post from: wax&wires

I’m excited!

So I’m still on Live 6 since I didn’t see anything in Live 7 that made me want to make the jump. Live 8 has wooed me over, and the update definitely earns the version change from 7 to 8.

There are far too many features for me to write an in depth take on each, so I’ll list my favorites out and give some more details later:

NEW EFFECTS:
VOCODER. We won’t be stuck routing MDA Stereo and Vocoder around now, as Live 8 includes it.
MULTIBAND COMPRESSION. Select up to 3 bands to compress different frequency bands to varying degrees.
OVERDRIVE. Basic drive modeler.
FREQUENCY SHIFTER. Ring modulator and flange effects.
LIMITER. New “brick wall” limiter.

EASY LIVE LOOPING:
No more tedious session view sets or external programs to assign complex key commands to single midi notes. The new live looper auto-detects your tempo so that you no longer need a click track to loop yourself live. All features are controllable from a single footswitch.

CROSSFADES IN ARRANGEMENT VIEW:
One of the few things that slowed me down when working and editing in live (versus ProTools) was being able to comp takes together with quick crossfading. Live 8 has it. Maybe I’ll cancel my PT8 order…

TRACK GROUPING:
Again, something that held my main editing to PT. Link tracks together to preserve the relationships between them, but adjust overall parameters with ease.

SCREEN MAGNIFICATION:
Pretty self explanatory. This will help a lot when playing live.

SAMPLE SCRUBBING AND PREVIEW:
Listen through a sample without having to drag it into the session. I used to use SoundHack Instant Player for this. Now that it’s embedded in Live, working should go much faster.

SHARING!!!
Share live sets with others. Click “Share Live Set” to have your live set uploaded to the Ableton server. You can make it private or publicly accessible. It gets a dedicated webpage on the Ableton server that you can send to collaborators to give them access to the files. It only updates the files that have changed since you last worked on the session to keep upload time to a minimum. It also lets you continue working on your set while it uploads in the background. Collaborators can then download the set and upload their versions, again only having to download or upload the files that have been modified to save time. Brilliant.

MAX/MSP INTEGRATION:
I’ve been a user of PD for years, and have loved MAX/MSP for creating custom plug-ins that I couldn’t find on the market. This will be a HUGE bonus to Live 8 for me, so much so that I’ll need to create another post for it in the future.

HARDWARE INTERFACE AKAI APC40:
Think of it as a fully programmable MPC controller, custom tailored to Live. Ditch your mouse and keyboard during live sets. The APC40 makes Live use much more intuitive and natural in a live environment. More on this one to come too.

There are some great details and videos on Ableton’s site.

This has easily become the first thing I will pick up of all the things at NAMM 2009.

Ableton Live 8!!! is a post from: wax&wires

Universal Audio has now announced the UAD-2 SOLO/Laptop, and ExpressCard version of the UAD-2 SOLO DSP accelerator card. That means you get top of the line emulations of Neve, Roland, SPL, Moog, and other great analog products on your laptop; and all without taxing your processor! It supports VST, AU, and RTAS plugs on both Mac and PC platforms.

Expect to see it host UA’s 1176SE Compressor/Limiter, Pultec EQP-1A EQ, RealVerb Pro Room Modeler and the CS-1 Channel strip. You can also add plug-ins for an additional cost down the line.

It’s so small and portable, unlike the TC PowerCore, and you know you’re getting quality effects with UA.

We expect to see it on shelves this upcoming spring, coming in around $500.

Universal Audio Announces UAD-2 Solo/Laptop is a post from: wax&wires

Songsmith is a PC program that retails for $30 and aims to make all users singer/songwriters. It generates musical accompaniment to match whatever the user sings into it. You simply choose a musical style, sing into the computer microphone, and let Songsmith put a band behind your vocals. As elementary as a lot of the generated music is, I really think this could help spark some creative juices in kids and teens. I doubt that our next top 40 hit is going to come from Songsmith, but if people’s musical appreciation is increased from it, it gets a good vote from me. At $30, it sure is priced right. There are also rumors of a Mac version coming out within the year.

You can watch a really cheesy video of it, as well as download a free demo, on Microsoft’s research site here.

Microsoft Releases Songsmith, Accompaniment Generator is a post from: wax&wires

Apparently, Apple didn’t get the memo about iVideoSongs.com, or perhaps decided to partner with them, as their products are eerily similar. Though stealing it’s name from what has become an Apple trademark, iVideoSongs did beat Apple to the punch with artist video music lessons. They also don’t force you to spend $100 for a software update to Garage Band ’09 first, though their lessons on their own are priced the same as Apple’s at $5 each. As solid as their site might be, iVideoSongs stands little to no chance of emerging the victor for marketshare with regards to video music lessons. Apple has far too big a platform to launch from. The positive in that is exactly that Apple does have such a huge platform. While most might not have ever considered the option of learning a song from a rock legend before, Apple has thrust the concept into the limelight. As people exhaust the videos that Apple has to offer, they may turn to a smaller site like iVideoSongs to acquire new material. So while iVideoSongs may never emerge as the primary video provider for artist-led music lessons, they may still gain more business from Apple having made this move than otherwise.

As music education in schools becomes increasingly scarce, could a product like this gain in popularity, or even replace formal music training? On the flip side, with the lack of music education in public schools, will there then be a lack of interest in music appreciation altogether, foreshadowing a dim future for software music lessons and the like? I would argue against a generic video tutorial ever being able to replace a hands-on, face-to-face music lesson as there’s simply no way to personalize an encounter on a one-way system. Your “teacher”, with as much star power as they might have, can never reach out from your computer screen to correct your finger positionings, or even tell you that you’re playing it wrong for that matter. What a product like this may do however, is peak users’ interests enough to encourage them to seek out professional music lessons. We’ve even seen products like Guitar Hero, a simple video game, inspire kids to go take real guitar lessons. Few things could hinder the rockstar ambitions of kids, and as long as those are going strong, there will be a niche for music lessons, video or otherwise.

Where I could see Apple really blowing this thing open is if they begin making videos of recording tips and techniques with studio legends rather than just lessons on how to play your favorite song. Just don’t tell Apple that I suggested that. I mean, we’re not scared or anything, we know you’d keep coming here for all of your music advice… right?

Garage Band ’09 Announced is a post from: wax&wires