Industrial Strength Records has recently released Vintage Breaks Vol.1, a sample library featuring drum breaks by Evan Pazner.

Even if you think you don’t know any “breaks” you have probably heard many of them in tons of songs. James Brown’s “Funky Drummer”, “Apache” by the Incredible Bongo Band, and the (in)famous Amen Break as heard on the Winston Brothers track “Amen, Brother” are used in countless productions.

The appeal of drum breaks is apparent; you get the sound of a live drummer with that authentic groove that is so incredibly hard to reproduce from scratch.

On Vintage Breaks Vol.1 NYC-based drummer Evan Pazner shows how you don’t necessarily need to sample old vinyl soul recordings to get some quality vintage drum breaks.

Evan’s eclectic taste in music is reflected in the variety of groups he has played with over the years. His playing style ranges from straight ahead jazz, soul, rock, hip hop and funky breaks. While growing up in New York City Evan was exposed to music at an early age and began playing in clubs at age 14 with the funk/rock group Soul Sauce.

Evan attended NYU and the New School University’s Jazz and Contemporary Music Program where he studied with Jon Riley, Billy Hart, Jimmy Cobb and Reggie Workman among others. Evan can be heard on numerous recordings and has toured the U.S. and Europe extensively with a number of projects. Evan also maintains an active private teaching schedule and has been on the faculty of the National Guitar Workshop. Evan’s playing style made him perfect choice to start ISR’s Vintage collection.

Vintage Breaks Vol.1 includes a total of 381 samples:

• 99 original breaks, 28 drum fills and 8 cymbal & hihat loops by Evan Pazner.
• 93 BHK drum and bass breaks, 30 BHK dubstep breaks.
• 123 drum hits.

The drum breaks were recorded in a dead room to minimize reflections. For the recording a late 1960’s Ludwig drum kit was used, as well as some vintage mics, pre-amps etc.

Besides Evan, Industrial Strength’s BHK (Alex Borel), Lenny Dee and Derek Nievergelt each bring in their expertise in the recording, production and editing of this sample pack.

Check out some of the sounds of Vintage Breaks Vol. 1 below.

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So what do I think?

A good break makes my head bob. I just can’t help it, they’re just too funky. Vintage Breaks got me bobbin’ all through this sample pack. Evan’s breaks have that vintage vibe while still sounding quite original (or maybe I just never get tired of these breaks…)

The cymbal & hihat loops are a nice extra, as are the single drum sounds. With the included fills in various tempos you can mix and match loops to create your own variations without too much cutting/editing of the samples. I really like some of the background noise/sound that comes through, giving it more life. There’s even one with a James Brown-ish shout in it, love it.

I was not too impressed with the BHK dubstep loops. Maybe it’s just not my genre but I found the samples to be a little inspiration-less, like it was a quick cut ‘em up exercise. However, I found the drum and bass samples to be most excellent. They are well edited & processed and sound absolutely great for this specific genre.

With tempos ranging from 85 to 175 bpm you get a good variety of breaks suitable for any style of music that needs a good groove. The samples scream to be cut up in your favorite sampler (easy with the provided formats) as you would with any other vintage break you’d sample from vinyl. Same authentic vibe, no copyright issues.

Vintage Breaks Vol.1 is a great sample library for anyone looking for some genuine drum breaks, especially if drum and bass is your thing.

More information: Loopmasters / Vintage Breaks Vol.1

Some interesting things I found recently:

# Phillips SAA-1099 Sample Pack (Copyright-free and License-free)

A new pack of samples by Sebastian Tomczak:

I have made a copyright-free and license-free sample pack of the Phillips SAA-1099 sound generator chip. It is a very straightforward sample pack, consisting of 96 pitched samples and 16 noise samples, across a range of frequencies. These samples have been recorded from hardware. The audio output stage of the sound chip has not been filtered.

Sebastian has also announced a music contest:

It's time to get your chipmusic on! This is your chance to win a SEGA Master System MIDI Interface. Be the coolest musician in your town with this brand new tool that lets you control the sound chip in your SEGA Master System with MIDI data.

More information: SEGA Music Competition: Win A SEGA Master System MIDI Interface!

# Jim Reekes, The Man Behind Mac Sound

From Create Digital Music:

The legend of the early sounds of the Mac remains, apparently, an alluring one. Here, Jim Reekes talks to a Dutch documentary crew (though in English) about his thought process in designing sounds for the Mac, including the famous Mac startup sound.

# New Block Construction

Livid Instruments improves its Block:

Improving on a design and sharing the results with our users is always at the top of our list at Livid. The Block controller has been a great success and we have just made some minor design changes to make it even better. Originally milled from a solid block of wood, the square body with thin bottom has had its challenges, mostly warping and cupping. We have experienced a bit higher reject rate for bodies at the shop before they were built then we would like. Thus, the up and coming stash of rejected bodies in the Livid Graveyard that were never meant to be!

# Waveformless: 5 Ways of Emulating Vintage Samplers

Tom Shear on how to emulate vintage samplers:

When sampling technology finally became accessible to mere mortals and not just uber-rich Fairlight and Synclavier enthusiasts, the race was on to increase fidelity and leave behind the limitations of those first 8-bit samplers. Bit depth and sampling rates increased and memory capacity expanded until the average sampled sound was indistinguishable from the same sound recorded on a CD.

But sure enough, after many years of enjoying the pristine sound quality of the new sampling technology, musicians began to explore and exploit the limitations of the old school samplers. Suddenly the grain of low bit-rate samples and the metallic grit of aliasing is very much in style. So how can you emulate the sonic artifacts of some of the long forgotten vintage samplers? I'm glad you asked…

# Intello – Better Demo of first version (YouTube)

This is the plugin I am currently working on. It's called "Intello". Basically it's a glitch producing plugin and in this first short demo I'm showing you one of the 5 planned glitching modes. The plugin will be controllable by an iPhone application from a listening audience. So the listeners can interact with a performer.

More information: www.zettt.de

WOK has announced the release of daBUMZ, a virtual percussion instrument plug-in for Windows.

Mainly for bass drum or toms, but the sound can be widely ajusted. Goal was to have a minimum of knobs for a maximum of variations (note: each knob has a hint text for the parameter).

daBUMZ does one sound at a time, triggered by MIDI notes or with the mouse on the “eye” in the middle.

daBUMZ is available to purchase as a VST instrument plug-in for Windows PC for 19 EUR.

More information: WOK / daBUMZ

Sony Creative Software has released version 10.0b of Sound Forge Pro, the professional digital audio production suite for Windows.

Sound Forge Pro 10 software efficiently and reliably provides audio editors and producers complete control over all aspects of audio editing and mastering. Whether in the studio or field, it’s the ultimate all-in-one production suite for professional audio recording and mastering, sound design, audio restoration, and Red Book CD creation

Changes in Sound Forge Pro v10.0b

• When applying effects to a selection that includes the beginning or end of a file, automatic crossfades are no longer applied to the beginning or end of the file.
• Fixed a bug that could cause a crash that could occur when rendering to AVI format using templates copied from Vegas 8.
• Fixed an issue that caused the OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394/DV external monitor device to be unavailable in the Japanese version of Sound Forge.
• Fixed a bug that prevented audio from being rendered when using Windows Media Video templates after clearing and reselecting the Include audio check box.
• Fixed a bug that prevented Sound Forge from reading command markers saved in Windows Media files created with earlier versions of Sound Forge.
• Fixed a bug that prevented some VST plug-ins (such as EnergyXT and Delphi VST Project) from being used in Sound Forge.
• Fixed a bug that could cause incorrect previews when mixing a mono source to a multichannel destination.
• Fixed a bug that could occur when attempting to save .wav files in CCITT-ulaw format.
• Fixed a bug that caused real-time preview to stop after 10 seconds when using time-altering plug-ins.
• Fixed a bug that could cause the Paragraphic EQ plug-in to produce distorted audio when using the Remove very low and inaudible frequencies below 20 Hz preset.
• Fixed a bug that could cause incorrect previews when applying effects to events with individual channels selected.

Sound Forge for Windows PC is available to purchase starting at $374.95 USD.

More information: Sony Creative Software / Sound Forge Pro

Tone2 has announced the release of State of Art, an expansion pack for Gladiator 2, designed by professional sound designers: Bastiaan van Noord, Bryan ‘Xenos’ Lee, Alusio de Lima, Dajan Izzo, Massimo Bosco, Marco Scherer, Patchen Preston and Markus Feil.

State of Art includes new add-on features and a collection of 315 ingeniously programmed sounds, suitable for a wide range of genres including Ambient, Experimental, Progressive, Atmosphere, Chillout, EDM and Electronica.

A must have if you’re looking for new sounds, or want to expand Gladiator 2 with more features.

State of Art features

• 315 inspiring, unique presets aimed at miscellaneous genres of electronic music
• Eight additional filter types: LP Dirty1, LP Dirty2, LP Voca1, LP Voca2, BP Moog, EQ Wide, Allpass and Comb-
• Two additional distortion types: Asymmetric and Soft saturation.
• A new waveshaper with formant like characteristics.
• 26 additional OSC5 waves.
• Stereo Trance Gate: featuring 22 patterns for rhythmic gate effects.
• Reverb Ultra: reverb ultra uses a new high-quality reverb algorithm, its soft and diffuse sound make it especially suitable for larger rooms and sculpting the proper ambience.
• Three reflection effects: early reflection, reverse reflection and gated reflection.
• Aliaser: a LoFi retro-effect that works by mirroring the signal’s spectrum at the cutoff frequency.
• Stereo Enhance: a stereo width effect equipped with a High-Shelf filter to expand the stereo field, while keeping the lower frequencies intact.

State of Art is available to purchase for 49 EUR.

More information: Tone2 / State of Art

Jewel Audio has announced the release of Area 52, a sound set for FXpansion’s DCAM Synth Squad.

Discover now…what has long been hidden from us: Smooth basses, biting FM leads, weird&beautiful arpeggios. Majestic strings, stellar club leads, rough electro basses. 70ies synthrock, 90ies electro, 2010 avantgarde: this and more is Area 52, our 128-patchset for Fxpansion Synth Squad. Designed for inspiration and usefulness alike, Area 52 embraces the useful, the strange& and the powerful sides of the mighty FXpansion Synth squad.

Area 52 features

• 128 innovative, useful and fresh presets for Amber (45), Cypher (35), Strobe (30) and Fusor (18), designed for all electronic styles.
• Focus on the useful, beautiful and interesting: Leads, Basses, Pads, Strings, Arpeggios.
• Extremely expressive – all patches can be “morphed” or intensified via the Modhweel.

Area 52 is available to purchase for an introductory price of only 12 EUR/$16 USD (regular 19 EUR/$25 USD).

More information: Jewel Audio / Area 52