Results for MIDI

Toontrack has announced the release of Songwriters Drumpack, a collection of drum MIDI files for songwriting.

Wouldn’t it be convenient having full verses, choruses, bridges, – complete song structures – in an array of styles, tempos and feels, categorized in separate songs with an individual hierarchy of increasing intensity? Pro-played drum MIDI that you could drag, drop and use to construct your full track in literally a few mouse-clicks?

Look no further – Songwriters Drumpack does just that. Played by Swedish in-demand session drummer Ricard “Huxflux” Nettermalm (Infinite Mass, Erik Gadd, Titiyo), this one-of-its-kind collection of drum MIDI comes in Ballad, Mid-tempo, Halftime, Up-tempo and Shuffle styles in full four to eight bar grooves and is sure to be a well of inspiration and your go-to tool for quick and easy songwriting.

With the Songwriters Drumpack you are virtually just a few moments away from a full, pro-played drum track to an entire song!

Songwriters Drumpack features

• More than 450 individually played files.
• Categorized in different songs.
• Full Intro / Verse / Pre-Chorus / Chorus / Bridge / Fill sections & variations in each song.
• 3/4, 4/4, 6/8 variations in Swing and/or Straight feel.
• Works with EZdrummer®, Superior Drummer® (optimized for 1 kick, 1 snare, 2 toms, 1 floor-tom, 2 crash-cymbals, 1 ride-cymbal).

Songwriters Drumpack is available to purchase for 15 EUR / $19 USD.

More information: Toontrack / Songwriters Drumpack

Loopmasters has released Dirty Tech House, a huge loop-based tool by Cluster Sound, designed for Minimal & Tech based House music.

The library consists 1,2 gigabytes of amazing basslines, synths, chords, construction loops, electro breaks & percussions, glitches, fragmented voices and everything you need to build a complete track. Dirty Tech House is based on a new, fresh and useful design concept called “FX layering?: each loop has its special FX version which can be used by itself or mixed with the original source in order to obtain mutant and rich sequences.

Dirty Tech House features

• Content: 1.2 GB: 670 Wav Loops / 670 Rex2 Loops / 670 Live DRacks / 670 Kontakt Instruments.
• Loops: 100 dirty kick loops, 100 dirty snare loops, 100 dirty hhat loops, 100 hifreq loops, 112 sine bass loops, 100 deep bass loops, 140 dirty synth loops, 120 chord synth loops, 104 electro chord loops, 100 dynamic perc loops, 100 defrag beat loops, 100 fat beat loops, 120 splitter voice loops.
• All the included material is based on 24bit native WAV format, is meticulously edited and recorded and filtered with top class analog & digital machines.
• Kontakt Instruments are based on Kontakt 4 KSP engine and thanks to their intuitive and useful user interfaces you can directly control lot of parameters in few clicks and store your own patches.
• The Live Drum Racks come with special built-in effects/parameters and dedicated MIDI clips.

Dirty Tech House is available to purchase for £34.95 GBP.

More information: Loopmasters / Dirty Tech House

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

eaReckon has released BloXpander, a music application originally designed to meet the requirements of musicians and engineers in “live” situations.

BloXpander combines the power of a computer and the efficiency of a dedicated device.

Its interface has been designed to match this basic specification. It is visually attractive and clear, the construction of projects and the access to prepared instruments and effects is very fast. The plugins manipulation is direct (especially when BloXpander is coupled to an external MIDI controller).

BloXpander features

• ASIO Host for VST plugins (Windows only)
  • 24 channels
  • 4 Auxiliary bus + 1 Master bus
  • 6 inserts per channels (theoretical 174 Instrumetns / FX slots)
• Advanced support for external MIDI controllers (lets you control the mixer and plugins)
  • Control up to 8 plugins (8 parameters each) with just 8 potentiometers + 8 buttons
  • Displays the controlled targets names on screen
  • Lightning fast configuration procedure
  • Mackie Control protocol supported
• Advanced routing
  • Global management of MIDI and Audio streams (MIDI VST Fx supported)
  • Assign the same MIDI input port to several channels (MIDI Split)
  • Assign the same Audio inputs to several channels (Audio Split)
  • Assign any available audio and/or MIDI output or the Master bus to any channel
  • Pre/Post fader selector (aux sends)
  • Specific routing solutions for “multi out” and “sidechain capable” plugins
  • Audio inputs monitoring
  • Outputs Solo and Mute functions
  • Inserts Bypass function
• Full screen friendly and fast interface
  • Designed as the panel of a hardware unit
  • Touchscreen friendly (for critical functionalities)
  • No main menu and no massive amount of overlapping windows
  • Auto-created visual representation of your plugins (GUI screenshots)
  • “Drag ‘n Drop” your plugins and their states from insert to insert (copy / move)
  • Supports multi-screens
  • Netbook friendly
• “Libraries” system
  • Store and callback a plugin and its state from one double-click on a large zone
  • Custom management of your favorite plugins and presets
• “Sets” and ”scenes”
  • Store and callback the complete state of BloXpander (“Scene”) from one double-click
  • Organize your scenes as “sets” (easy and fast access to what you need during a show)
• Categorized Plugins library (“The Case”)
• Optimized and secured operations
  • Analyze your plugins compatibility from a stand-alone tool (limits the eventuality of the main application malfunctioning)
  • Fast launching
• And more…
  • Tempo adjustment (« Tap tempo » feature)
  • MIDI panic
  • Plugins transparency
  • “Shell” plugins compliance

BloXpander is available to purchase for Windows PC, priced at 69 EUR.

More information: eaReckon / BloXpander

MidiKarval has released MidiTransposer Plus, a midi utility plug-in for Windows.

With MidiTransposer Plus you can transpose you midi keyboard or a midi track/midi file in your sequencer on the fly, simply pressing a midi button, one or two keys of your midi keyboard or using its knobs/sliders.

MidiTransposer Plus features

• Three modes: CC mode (button + key, button + knob), and Notes mode (key + key).
• The “CC/Notes” switch can be assigned to a midi button through your host’s automation function.
• Using the “Channel Filter” you can exclude a midi channel from the transposition (typically midi channel 10, usually assigned to drums, if you are playing a midi file); the Channel Filter can be set on “Off” so that all midi channels are affected by the transposition.
• You can change the CC messages used by MidiTransposer Plus through the relevant drop lists in its GUI.
• MidiTransposer Plus has a “no hanging notes” function in case one or more notes are sounding while you are transposing.

MidiTransposer Plus is available to purchase as a VST plug-in for Windows PC.

More information: MidiKarval

Producer Loops has announced the release of three sample packs from Pitched Senses.

PITCHED Senses: Minimal Solution gives you all the loops, sounds & samples that you’ll need to get writing your own authentic Minimal tracks instantly. This pack features full WAV loop construction kits as well as a selection of synth & drum loops.

PITCHED Senses: Minimal Solution features

• 7 Full Loop Construction Kits containing 44 loops.
• 20 Additional Synth loops, 14 No kick Loops, 11 Kick Drum Loops, 9 Crash Cymbals.
• 198 Files: 98 WAV Files, 97 REX Files, 12 MIDI Files.
• Tempo: 129 BPM.
• 44.1kHz, 24 bit, Stereo.

PITCHED Senses: Minimal Techno Loops — Do you need Techno loops? Hits? Or single shot drum samples? No problem! PITCHED Senses ‘Minimal Techno Loops’ is a gigantic high quality sample collection of over 1,000 files that provide you with unbelievable possibilities and musical combinations.

PITCHED Senses: Minimal Techno Loops features

• 27 Loops Construction Kits.
• 4 Kick Drum Loops, 4 Melodic Perc Loops, 25 Synth Loops.
• 476 Single Shot Drum Hits.
• 84 Bonus Sounds.
• 25 Synth MIDI files.
• 674 MB content, Wav/REX/MIDI.
• Tempo: 124-129 BPM.

PITCHED Senses: World Drum Loops Vol 1 — Travel around the world to Asia, Africa & India with this ethnic instrument sample pack which includes both WAV & REX files. Over 100 ethnic loops & samples! This download contains percussion loops and single drum hits such as Cymbals, Woods and more…

PITCHED Senses: World Drum Loops Vol 1 features

• 21 African Loops.
• 11 Asian Loops.
• 20 Indian Loops.
• 18 Single Shot Drum Hits.
• 66 MB content, loops in Wav and REX formats.
• Tempo: 124 BPM.

The Pitched Senses sample packs are available to purchase, starting at £6.35 GBP.

More information: Producer Loops / Pitched Senses Sample Packs