Results for toys

Loopmasters has released Circuit Bent Sounds Vol. 3, a collection of twisted beats and deformed audio sickness guaranteed to deliver a fresh bout of insanity to any production.

Back once again from the electronic surgery of the Circuitbenders labs, the products of an unholy alliance between soldering iron and sampler return to unleash another unhealthy dose of audio terrorism upon your unsuspecting senses!

From a cut-price drum toy to the mighty Roland SH101, nothing is safe from circuitbenders.co.uk attentions, with every machine being treated with an equally relaxed concern for its basic rights to bring you this unique set of sounds.

Stepping outside of normal methods of synthesis and audio production to unlock the true potential of an otherwise ordinary bit of hardware is the circuitbenders technique, All the machines used on this release have been rewired and abused to operate far beyond their normal design limits, enabling them to produce all those sounds that the original designers either fought to avoid or just never dreamed possible.

Circuit Bent Sounds Vol. 3 features

• Over 650Mb of content, comprising of over 758 samples, 283 Loops and 475 Single Sounds.
• 209 Drum Loops, 74 Sound Loops, and 22 Sounds and FX from a simply huge collection of circuit bent toys, drum machines and instruments of all types:
  • Includes old school drum machines given a new lease of life in the form of the rare Akai XR10, the Yamaha RX7, Korg DDD1, Casio RZ1 sampling drum machine, Boss DR550 and the legendary Roland TR707, along with a host of esoteric electronic devices and toys supplying extra beats.
  • Modified keys and synths include the analogue Roland SH101, the MFOS weird sound generator, Yamaha PSS270, Casio SA5, Rocktek Delay pedal and the favourite of every lofi musician and circuit bender, the Casio SK1 sampler.
  • Rewired kids toys including Early Leaner shapes toy, Letterland toy, Bongon electronic bongos, VTech Talking Alfie teddy bear, Little Tykes guitar, Mix Me DJ toy and the classic Texas Instruments Speak & Read and Speak & Write toys amongst many others.
• 22 ready to play patches for all the most popular software samplers including Reason’s NNXT, Halion, Kontakt, EXS and SFZ.
• Acidised Wav, Rex2 and Apple Loop formats are all available.

Circuit Bent Sounds Vol. 3 is available to purchase for £19.95 GBP.

More information: Loopmasters / Circuit Bent Sounds Vol. 3

Audio Ease has updated released version 2.0.3 of the Mac version of Speakerphone, a speaker emulation effect plug-in for Windows and Mac.

A bad GSM connection on a busy sidewalk, a bullhorn with feedback and a helicopter overhead, or a 1952 rockabilly guitar amp in a recording studio live room: The Speakerphone audio plug-in gives you authentic speakers of any size together with their natural environments.

Changes in Speakerphone v2.0.3 (Mac)

• When “Mute on Stop” is on, the telecom module also mutes.
• Bypass not saved anymore in Automation Presets.
• [AU] MIDI works now.
• [AU] in Logic: Plugin windows sticks to its frame now.
• [Live] Presets window floats on top of the plugin window.
• [VST] offline processing window can access presets window.
• Avid Media Composer compatibility.
• [Cubase 5] sample bay works again.
• [PT] choosing a Pro Tools presets writes automation.
• [PT] Compare works again.
• [PT] adjustments of automation data is correct now.
• [Audiosuite] no remaining of previous preview in rendered audio.

Speakerphone 2.0.3 is now availabe to download for Mac. The Windows update will follow up soon.

More information: Audio Ease / Speakerphone

Mark Batty Publisher has announced Toy Instruments: Design, Nostalgia, Music, a book written by the German author/toy instrument aficionado Eric Schneider.

Toy Instruments comprises an eye-popping collection of musical toys from around the world made between the 1950s and today. Culled from author Eric Schneider’s personal collection, Toy Instruments is the first book to explore this niche of the toy industry doing so with an informative and humorous approach. With an intro from the author and a foreword from world-renown experimental electronic and hip-hop musician Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, the book collects the toy instruments you may remember from your past, and the wacky ones you’ll find hard to believe ever existed.

From the late 70s to the early 80s, the heyday of these bleeping, chirping, thrumming and keening devices, while children were busy driving their parents crazy with battery-powered sounds, adults were incorporating the unique tones into the earliest samples of electronic music and techno. And, just as dazzling as the cacophony of sounds produced by these toys are the designs of the toys, as well as their packaging. Made all over the world, the predominately gender-neutral design applied to the products and packaging is at times more fascinating than the toys.

Toy Instruments: Design, Nostalgia, Music is available to purchase for $19.95 USD.

More information: Mark Batty Publisher

Univers Sons / Ultimate Sound Bank has announced the release of Acoustic Toy Museum, a collection of sampled toy instruments.

For the first time, hundreds of musical toys were used to create a magical and unique sound library that will add innocence and freshness into your productions. Deeply multi-sampled in 24 bits / 96 kHz and meticulously recorded in the very best conditions using world-class microphones and Class-A equiment, each instrument sounds authentic and soulful.

Acoustic Toy Museum features

• Toy Pianos and Keys — By far, this is the most complete selection of Toy Pianos around the word, featuring the famous Michelsonne pianos, rare wood pianos and other keyboards.
• Xylo and Metal — A fair amount of xylophones and metallophones, sanza, and Clavi-Harp.
• Children Bells — Simple bells, key-triggered bells, and chimes.
• Toy Guitars — Two small guitars and two ukuleles. Multisamples, chords and loops expertly played in various tempo and for every key, so you can play riffs in any song.
• Music Boxes — An Aladdin’s cave of music boxes! From old and crispy models, to the most clean with typical tones. Presets with different samples randomly played for every note are included for the classic models.
• Baby Drums — Two different drum sets, a children school one and a very cheap cardboard one, both recorded in a professional studio and played with talent by a monster studio session drummer.
• Baby Percussions — More than a dozen different percussions to cover a wide-range of needs. Loops played by an excellent percussionist also included.
• Melodicas and co — Along with the prominent melodicas, you’ll find other reed instruments like accordions and harmonicas.
• Blow Toys — Recorders, whistles, tiny trumpets… basically anything that can be blown into.
• Musical Gadgets — Everything that couldn’t be sorted: from the giggle stick to the puzzling boom whackers.
• Ancient Automates — Animated plush animals with ancient looks.
• Kindergarten — Warning: you must at most be 36-month old to play with this category. Roly-poly toys, moo boxes, play centers, everything the youngests need.

Acoustic Toy Museum is now available to purchase for $349 USD (includes the full version of UVI Workstation).

More information: Ultimate Sound Bank / Acoustic Toy Museum

Some interesting things I found recently:

# MidiFighter Kit

Ean Golden at djtechtools writes:

I am pleased to announce that in 2 weeks time we will be selling DIY MidiFighter kits in the web-store. This kit will be the first incarnation of our brand new controller line that allows several different levels of customization. Everything from creating original color combos to adding more analog interfaces and customizing the open-source firmware is possible with this exciting new tool.

MidiFighter Kit

MidiFighter kit details

• Release Date: November 30th.
• Price: Aprox $125 for the Kit + Arcade Buttons ($2.50 each) optional wood case- $40.
• Plug and Play-compatible device, compliant MIDI controller.
• USB powered.
• Must be assembled (no expertise required).
• 16 programmable buttons.
• 16 programmable LEDs.
• Expandable to 20 programmable buttons and 4 analog controls.
• Limited-edition 200-piece run in this configuration (black PCB with blue LEDs).

# Audio Geek Zine Free Sound Of The Week 04

Jon at Audio Geek Zine offers some free samples from his circuit bent Speak & Math in his weekly series of free sounds.

This time I’m digging into the archives. What I’ve got this week is sounds from my circuit bent Speak & Math, from a few years ago. These are taken straight from my Toys Breaking library, if you like glitchy weird samples check that out.

There are 89 wave files, mono, 16 bit, 44.1kHz.

# Hardware version of Random7

More from Illuminated Sounds. Miketron's random MIDI note generation software (MAC/PC) goes hardware:

A couple of months I took my MAX/MSP code for Random7 and rewrote so I could embed it into a hardware version. Random7 Hardware Version 1 (R7H) is a very basic version of the Random7 software. The core element of R7H is still the same, the program pick from 7 different midi notes randomly. As of now the key R7H is preset to the key of A Major, and the only control is a potentiometer that controls the speed of R7H. Output for R7H is a midi port, an on/off switch, and there is also a red led the flashes everytime a note is sent. The some of the next additions I plan to the hardware are a midi input to provide midi sync options, a small lcd to provide useful information such as tempo and key, and allow user to pick from any diatonic major key. The microcontroller I am using for this is the arduino built into a d.i. box housing.

# Hands-On with the Tenori-On: First Impressions + Integration with Ableton Live

Mark Mosher shares his first impressions of the Tenori-On.

Now that REBOOT has released, I’m gearing up to perform these songs live. One of my goals it to make the performances more visually interesting, help the audience connect with what I’m doing musically, and not spend an entire set hunched over a laptop.

I just added a Tenori-On White to my rig to help achieve this goal and to use as a controller and sequencer for composition. In this post I’ll offer some first impressions and notes on use.

# Launchpad, No Live: Novation Launchpad Review

John Fisher reviews the Launchpad.

I recently picked up a Novation Launchpad because I wanted the control options of a grid controller, even though I don’t use Ableton live. I plan on using the Launchpad with Reaktor, Audiomulch, and possibly Processing. The price wasn’t hard to swallow either. I’ve seen very little info thus far on people using the Launchpad with anything besides Ableton Live, except for people who are using the “nonome” max/msp patch that allows you to load up other monome applications via the Launchpad. So, I thought I would do a write-up on my thoughts. The way I prefer to work is making my own custom midi mappings with my controllers. Novation’s Automap system might be interesting for others, but I always prefer to have my own configurations because I’m picky about those sorts of things. So I’ll be detailing how I went about that.

Some interesting things I found recently:

# Toy Piano Rescue Project

Ranjit Bhatnager bought a toy piano on eBay, but it got damaged in transport.

For Awesome August I'm trying to make something of this ebay toy piano that got smashed by UPS. The music is Philip Glass's "Modern Love Waltz," inspired by toy pianist Margaret Leng Tan. (I used it previously)

More info: Ranjit Bhatnager / Awesome August

# DOWNLOADMYDRUMS

Dan "Danno" Miller recently posted about my samples on his website. He is running a music production blog that offers free, downloadable, royalty free, high quality, one shot wav file, drum samples with virtually no restrictions of use.

Dan writes:

Whether you’re just dabbling in music production or you’re the hottest mega-producer in the game, you will always need new, crisp, high quality, punch you in the mouth drum samples. Most producers are very secretive with their drum samples. They spend a lot of time and money tweaking their kicks, hats, and snares to try to come up with their signature sounds. While I do feel that developing your sound is important and I would encourage all producers to do so, it’s also important to expand you drum collection so you have a buttload of options. I look at it like this; just because you give two painters the same paints, doesn’t mean they’ll paint the same picture. So I’m sharing my drums, presets, tips, etc. with the hope that someday a producer will come along, be inspired by what i’ve given away for free, think outside the box, and create music that’s completely different.

# ArpShift by Edward Loveall

ArpShift is a melodic, interval based, poly-rhythmic arpeggiator. It’s relatively simplistic in nature with only 3 pages and 7 lanes. However, it is flexible in it’s simplicity, and is able to take stagnant melodies and turn them into flowing, never repeating music.

# Contexture Design: 45 Nano

45 Nano Cases are made from reclaimed cassette tapes, gutted, routered and rebuilt to fit your 4th generation iPod nano.