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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

Voxengo has announced a promotion on its drum recording service.

February 24th, 2010: During the next 10 days we will be accepting drum recording service orders for only US $15 per song (regular price is US$69.95)!

The drum track will be played by an experienced drummer and recorded in our recording studio. As a result we provide overhead, side and room microphone tracks together with separate snare drum, bass drum and tom drum tracks.

Note that nothing in computer world can replace a real human drummer feel while a realistic drum sound cannot be reproduced by a drum sampler since a drum set “sounds” as a single complex acoustical instrument: this makes it impossible to recreate such sound by means of discrete sampled drum hits.

The Voxengo drum recording service web site includes examples of previously completed works, full 96kHz/24-bit example drum track package, and other information.

More information: Voxengo / Drum Recording Service

MaximalSound has announced the launch of its online premastering service.

Now, most listening no longer passes thru the CD medium, and the file exchange is taking an increasing share. Many musicians and self-productions want to present their tracks in good conditions at the early stage of the demo without having to apologize for the poor perceived quality compared to commercial productions.

This service is dedicated to musicians and self-productions which have neither the desire nor the time to learn to adjust the “threshold of hysteresis in the compressor section of the multi-band processor”. The aggressive pricing allows to finalize a 3 minutes title for only 5 €.

MaximalSound proposes a quality “ready to wear” solution, and purchasing only occurs after try. Cherry on the top, the job is usually available in less than one hour. MaximalSound.com does no traditional mastering -indexing, editing, cleaning or fade in/out- but premastering which is only sound enhancement.

MaximalSound premastering service

• State-of-the-art processing
• Free sample for approval before purchase
• Aggressive pricing policy based on the size of the processed files
• The job is generally available in less than an hour

More information: MaximalSound

FAWM.org has released The Muse, a collection of free online songwriting tools.

This is a collection of small experiments in “computational songwriting inspiration.”

They were originally conceived to assist participants in the FAWM.ORG challenge, for whom writing 14 songs in 28 days sometimes requires a little assistance.

The Muse includes:

• Plot Spline — Framing device for helping you devise plot and setting constraints for your song.
• Struxxure — tool for uncovering possible out-of-the-box song structures.
• LyriCloud — Creates a randomized cloud of semantically-correlated words to spark your creativity.
• Titular — Generates several (potentially awkward) song titles for you to interpret and write about.

More information: FAWM.org / The Muse

(via The Redfaux Transmission)

Some interesting things I found recently:

# The Virtual Piano for Songwriters, Singers, Producers and aspiring musicians

Not Only is The Virtual Piano a Virtual instrument that you can play chords and melodies on, it also shows you how to play all the chords (triads) in all twelve keys.

It's an excellent tool for you to learn to play piano, to transpose songs into any key or for writing songs.

# In-Depth Review of Percussa AudioCubes in Use with Ableton Live

Mark @ Modulate This! reviews Percussa's AudioCubes in Ableton Live:

Back in November I purchased a set of four Percussa AudioCubes. I've spent quite a bit of time working with them as a an interface to Ableton Live.

In this hands-on review I'll explain what they are, how they work, how I'm using them with Live and also offer some tips along the way.

# SIDstick – 100,000 chiptunes in your pocket!

The SIDstick is a pocket-sized chiptunes player featuring:

• Removable Storage supporting microSD cards, 1 card can hold 20,000 songs
• 20+ hour battery life
• Super Hi-Quality hardware-based playback at 31kHz sample rate, >16 bit resolution
• Completely Open, hardware and software are available under the MIT license
• Upgradable with connections on the board

# Nebulophone Kit Pre-Order

Now available to pre-order from Bleep Labs:

The Nebulophone is an Arduino based synth with a Stylophone like keyboard. It has adjustable waveforms, a light controlled analog filter, LFO, and arpeggiator that can be clocked over IR.

This is a beginner kit and does not require an Arduino programmer board.

# Multichord Hybrid Musical Instrument, a single-stringed instrument that plays multiple notes via varied tensioning rather than fretting.

From the project page:

The Multichord musical instrument is an acoustic stringed instrument with a single string, constructed from wood, a hard drive, 20-lb monofilament, and assorted electronic components. It was the culmination of a project to build an acoustic instrument capable of playing multiple notes without fretting or manual, time-consuming retuning. The Multichord achieves this by attaching a hard drive read/write head assembly between the resonant string and a tensioning spring to adjust the tension of the instrument's string. Careful adjustment was made to the tension of both the string and the spring with the hard drive head in a neutral, unpowered position to ensure a bipolar application of voltage within the safety ratings of the hard drive's coil could cause the string to cover a full musical octave. In the end, the Multichord was tuned to a C-major scale (no flats or sharps) running from A at 220Hz through (but not including) A at 440Hz.

The Smalls has launched Street Sounds, a new site created in association with Scion to capture location-based sounds that together reflect our surroundings and define our lives.

Street Sounds is a collaborative and interactive Web site where lovers of art, sound and humanity can document their lives through snippets of sound that are posted on a 3-D map. Filmmakers, musicians and other artists can then search for sounds by keyword and location to use when creating new collaborative works of their own.

Streets Sounds allows users to listen in on everything from such rousing moments as a campus protest in Berkley or subway performers in New York, to funny and intimate vignettes, such as one’s laughter, a patron ordering a beer, or the rain. For contributors and listeners alike, the experience can be enchanting and addictive.

“With The Smalls Street Sounds, we aim to create the largest online collaboration of free, user-generated sounds that will encourage people to listen to the sounds of America and stimulate creative expression,” said Anna Grund, Founder, The Smalls. “Most of our lives are made up of multi-sensory experiences. The Sound Map provides people with the opportunity to focus on one – sound – to present and explore their world, and most importantly to let their imagination wander.”

Every month, the biggest contributors of sounds can win a free iPod.

More information: The Smalls Street Sounds