Loopmasters has released Octa Pak V2 – Electro, a sample library for the Octatrack by Elektron.
If you are looking for a sound collection inspired by artists including Daft Punk, Mount Kimbie, Mode Selektor, Lazer Sword and Four Tet you are in the right place.
Electro is the second Octa-Pak produced using only the finest cutting edge loops and samples from the ever changing and expanding Electro Scene, featuring Filtered Funk Loops, Twisted Vocoded Sounds, Glitched Percussion and Pumping Bass and Drum Loops which have been handpicked by Loopmasters in-house team for their quality and raw edged sonic character.
Electro V2 weighs in at 250+MB and is comprised of 283 Samples, with 157 Loops between 118 – 132Bpm, and 126 Single One Shot Samples. 1 Octatrack Set is included, with 8 Scenes, 1 Arrangement and 16 Patterns.
Octa Pak V2 – Electro is available to purchase for £24.95 GBP.
Loopmasters has released Octa Pak Vol 1 – Dubstep, a new collection of sample packs and programs which have been put together specifically for the Octatrack by Elektron.
If you are looking for a sound collection inspired by artists including Benga, Skream, Skrillex, Caspa or Burial, then you are in the right place.
Dubstep is the first Octa-Pak produced using only the finest cutting edge loops and samples from the dark world of Dubstep, featuring Growling and Subliminal Basses, Aggressive Drums, Inspirational Music Loops, and Techy Percussive Loops and One Shot Samples which have been handpicked by Loopmasters in-house team for their quality and raw edged sonic character.
Dubstep V1 weighs in at 250+MB and is comprised of 282 Samples, with 176 Loops between 135 – 140 Bpm, and 106 Single One Shot Samples. 1 Octatrack Set is included, with 8 Scenes, 1 Arrangement and 16 Patterns.
Octa Pak Vol 1 – Dubstep is available to purchase for £24.95 GBP.
First session with the Elektron Octatrack. Checking out some of the capabilities of this new machine. No drum loops used in this short jam. Just triggering single shot samples of nord percussion and analogue drum sounds. Using the three stages of LFO's for each track to control effects animation and various other parameters. Making some use of the re-trigger sample functions spanned across 4 patterns.
More info on the Octatrack at Elektron, and Peter Kirn at CDM has some more thoughts + a video by Matthew Dear here.
Dan Weatherall has some presets for the nanoPAD available to download.
I know there are quite a few of you out there that own at least one of the korg Nano range of controllers.
The most popular of the Nano range has to be the NanoPAD. While the NanoPAD is a useful tool for laying down drum beats, I feel that It really shines when using it to come up with cool melodic parts.
This Preset collection contains a few useful scales and chords that I hope will help you in your productions.
Brett Martin aka PCmofo has finished his DIY desktop speaker system project. Nice job!
Finally the speakers are finished! Now for the fun part….. The final pictures!
Assembly went great, I was able to stuff them and the bass sounds much better as do the mids. I am really loving the black coated screws, from some angles and distances they completely disappear, then up close the detail comes out and they look pretty cool.
I plan on using these speakers with Apples 27" cinema display, as they are both the same height. Unfortunately, I dont have mine yet so I borrowed a 26" iMac which is also the same design for a few photos to get an idea of the size of these speakers.
Jeffrey Melton has released two collections of ambient, freeform and microsound compositions.
melton.granular.01 and melton.granular.02 collect my recent work in microsound-scapes, featuring granular and pulsar synthesis, freeform rhythms and tone colors. Tracks can also be streamed on my Soundcloud page.
All sounds were created with Density GS and Pulsaret instruments (both the standalone apps and Max for Live versions). Arrangement, mixing and mastering was done with Ableton Suite. Processing effects were limited to resonant filters, grain delay, reverb and EQ.
For the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl Accident, Ambientaria Records has gathered many Dark Ambient artists, including famous ones like Northaunt or Atomtrakt, for a Compilation project.
The album will be released on April 1st, 2011.
All the benefits shall be reversed to Chernobyl Children International (http://www.chernobyl-international.com/), a non-profit organisation with United Nations NGO status, in order to help people suffering from Radiation Poisoning.
Louis Fleet wrote in to let us know about his blog “fleet music”, a site that focuses on the production of electronic music, using Ableton and its built in synths and effects.
It’s called “Fleet Music”, the strap line is “a blog that takes a critical and instructive look at electronic music production”, what this essentially means is that I will be focusing on current themes within house and techno and investigating the relevant production techniques.
Synthesis is the main focus of the blog but as I said previously there is a ‘critical’ aspect to the blog, this is not be confused with bitchy, but instead the idea is that all the video postings and other content is focused on a ‘theme’. This approach can be evidenced in my most recent post which is all about the ‘stab’ in electronic music.
Since I reviewed the original Driven Machine Drums release a little over a year ago, Nathaniel at Tonebuilder has worked hard to make this excellent drum machine & percussion sample library even better by adding tons of new sounds to it in version 1.5.
Some of the gear used for Driven Machine Drums 1.5 (click image for more)
New samples were created with a number of new sound sources, including various modular gear components: Euro Modular (Cwejman, Wiard, MOTM, MakeNoise+), Serge Modular, Acidlabs Miami, Roland TR-909, Jomox MBrane 11, Drumfire DF500, Simmons SDS-1000, MFB-503, Elektron Monomachine, Avedis E-27, TK-BC1, Valley People Dynamite, Schippman Ebbe und Flut, and all the tubes, pres, compressors and tape devices from the first DMD collection.
The new samples are categorized into the following folders:
Hand Percussion – good variety of percussion type sounds (54).
Hats and Cymbals – sharp (25) and soft (29) hihat and cymbal sounds, both open & closed.
Kicks – Dirty (14), Mid Punch (17), Sharp (23), and Soft kicks (29). Deep, raw, distorted, round, thumpy, punchy, etc. All there.
Other Percussion – Some “offbeats” sounds (20). These are shorter samples including snare, clap, clang type hits etc.
Unknown Electronic – FM Klanks (38), Inharmonic (39), Mod Blue (48), Mod Red (50). Great assortment of original sounds.
It is a shame most computer operating systems are still limited to having files in a single folder as quite a few samples fit in more than one sound category. Some kicks sound like toms, toms sound like snares, and there are snares that make good hihats… Anyway, I am quite happy with the way the DMD library is structured. Even with close to 4,500 audio files it is easy to navigate around and find the type of samples you are after.
I made a few short audio clips to demonstrate the sounds of Driven Machine Drums 1.5. The loops were done with the new samples only, using a tiny amount of reverb and compression.
The version 1.5 update to DMD also includes the complete Hi-Fi 909 and Hi-Fi Miami libraries. These are high quality sample sets of the Roland TR-909 and the TR-808 based Acidlabs Miami drum machine.
There are well over 800 samples in each library, including clean sounds as well as a variety of processed versions (compression, tube, EQ, etc).
Check the audio clips below for some more examples of the DMD 1.5 and Hi-Fi 909.
The new content – adding a total of close to 2,300 new sounds to the original DMD collection (all in 24bit/96kHz format), is included with all new copies of Driven Machine Drums and is available to previous DMD customers as a $27 USD upgrade.
I know some people were a bit disappointed with the upgrade not being free. Nathaniel explains:
I had two options, which was to release a DMD 2 for $77/$87, or reward the early adopters by releasing it as 1.5 instead of V2, and hope to make the investment of time/gear by selling new copies of DMD.
Upgrade pricing, special promo deals, bundle discounts, etc. There are always customers who will be upset with however you deal with the commercial side of things. Personally I think the upgrade price for DMD 1.5 is more than reasonable. The additional content is well worth it (Hi-Fi 909 actually sold separately for $23 USD).
So what do I think?
Product: Tonebuilder Driven Machine Drums Format: 24bit/44kHz and 96kHz samples Price: $77 USD (Guru/Wav/Aif) / $87 USD (Kontakt/EXS24/Wav/Aif) Like: high quality drum machine samples and unique synthetic percussion sounds, much variety and originality Don’t like: – Verdict: 10/10
Driven Machine Drums already was a superb sample library before the v1.5 update, so it should not surprise you that I am giving DMD 1.5 full marks.
The new content increases the library’s versatility by including more mainstream sounds (Hi-Fi 909 & Miami) as well the less conventional glitchy sounds from the modular synths. The quality is of the same high standard as the original release, but now even in 24bit/96kHz.
Comprising more than twice the amount of sounds of the original, Driven Machine Drums is quite the “no brainer” deal, superb value for money.
Note that only less than 250 of the 997 Driven Machine Drums copies available to purchase remain, so check it out and take the DMD 1.5 library for a spin with the 144 free samples included in the demo pack available from the Tonebuilder website.
Analog Processing: Thermionic Culture Vulture, Anamod ATS-1 w/ all cards, Neve 1073 Preamp, Atlas Pro Juggernaut Twin, A-Design EM-Gold, Source Plus Tube Amp w/ 1957 NOS French Mazda Tubes, Empirical Labs Distressor, Moog MF101, Mutronics Mutator, Dynacord VRS-23, Avedis E-27, TK-BC1, Valley People Dynamite, Schippman Ebbe und Flut.
Driven Machine Drums 1.5 is available to purchase at 25% off until 1 January, 2011.
24 Bit Wav/Aif, Guru Kits: $57 USD.
24 Bit Kontakt, EXS-24, Wav/Aif, Guru Kits: $65 USD.
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