Free Online Class about Composing/Orchestration with Prizes

Free Online Orchestration Class
Best students will win prizes for electronic orchestration work 30-Nov-06
Music technology leaders EastWest, Tascam, and VI-Control.net are sponsoring Alexander Publishing's new Orchestration Class of the 21st Century with contests, prizes, and virtual classroom space.

At the conclusion of a standard semester of this free online course that starts on December 11, 2006, students will have written and produced more than a dozen original works, giving them a start to a publishing portfolio and possibly their first album.

Read more direct From SonicState

It sounds kind of cool, except that the prizes are a little crappy. I don't think contests are appropriate when learning is involved. Anyways its free.

Guy Emulates Terminator 1 Bassline on JX-3p

The Cheapest Wireless Midi Controller discovered

DSMIDI Wifi!


Yes its the Nintendo DS converted over to a midi controller. I saw this yesterday, but thought I'd repost.

Retarded synthesizer kid with Polysix and C batteries

TB-303 DIY Clone

Comes with all the original parts! Somehow I think this is the coolest and closest to the original Roland that I've seen.
$315. If I knew how to solder better, I'd totally get one.


x0xb0x

EMS Synthi for Kontakt 2

I recently saw one of these on ebay. The 70s suitcase synth! Now you can get a virtual version from Soniccouture

Do these vintage drum machines by Audio Realism compare to the real thing?

Audio Realism contains two different drum machines modeled after roland. The interface looks really nice
Coming out in 2007:



If thats not cool, check this piece out! AudioRealism Bassline PRO! Its like a super-modded TB-303!


Mac Demo or PC Demo

From Audiorealism.Se

Free soft synth: Synthmaster

SynthMaster is semi-modular software synthesizer and multi-effects plug-in that combines many different synthesis methods such as additive synthesis, subtractive synthesis, ring modulation, amplitude modulation, frequency / phase modulation, pulse width modulation, osc sync and waveshaping.
Check out the Downloads Page from Kv331audio.

Guide to making usable samples

Covers basic guidelines, technical & microphone info.

From Reason Freaks Click Here

Alesis offers free M1 Active MkII Studio Monitors

....with a purchase of any Fusion keyboard.
Awesome deal!


Offer available Here

Top Ten Drum Machines of all time

There is no real news of drum machine releases by main manufacturers on the horizon. With advent of computer based recording setup hardware, drum machines have not been in the spotlight as of late. A look on ZZounds and froogle is almost barren and a closer look shows that some of the top sellers are over ten years old. Is this a testament to great drum machine hardware? Or is the drum machine of a dying breed?
With that in mind I give you the Chip Collection - Top Ten Drum Machines of all Time
after the break...

DIY Synthesizer Pages

I love the skull and cross bones warning text of the tube synth section:

Warning: The voltage levels in this circuit are lethal...

via make blog

Link

Guy makes awesome laser-whip sounds on rack synths

Check out this guy's amazing laser sounds!

He's using:

• Plan B VCO's (warning has sound)
• MOTM Triple Resonator
• Doepfer A149

This makes me want to buy more analog gear and get creative by staying off my computer!

Click here for the video

Free discoDSP Highlife VSTi / sampler

This thing looks awesome!


From KVRAudio.com

discoDSP has announced that HighLife is now freeware. It previously retailed for $99.

HighLife is a "VSTi freezer" and Sampler. It loads into your VST Host as a VSTi but it also allows you to load another VSTi into it and then "Freeze" the current preset and save this as its own preset. You can then unload the hosted VSTi to free up resources. It features a sample editor, five built in effects, flexible modulation, parameter morphing and high offline resampling quality using 512 point SINC.

discoDSP

Free Phaser VST

KR Phaser version R.1.1.0

Looks like it does all the normal phaser functions. I always love free plugins, even if its for Windows.

Available at K Research

JX-8p Reason Refill

JX-8P Complete Reason Refill 2.5 GB
Now available in the Chip-Store!

Buy Now

5.1 Channel Surround in Reason

A quick tutorial on how to set up 5.1 audio mixes in Reason.

• Features quadraphonic reverb & pans.

My wish list for Reason 4 would include better surround support, but this tutorial is pretty cool until then.

Also on my wishlist for Reason 4:
Optical Audio plugs on the back, so I don't have to keep wiring stereo channels.

From Reason Freaks Click Here

Anthology 2

I have never used Anthology before, but any release optimized for Intel Macs is a good thing!

Eventide say that this new Mactel upgrade will allow users to take full advantage of Apple's newest computers, including the Mac Pro with quad-core architecture, for faster processing speeds when operating the company's digital plug-ins.

Click to Read Sonic State Article
Check Out EvenTide (what a crummy page!)

Native Instruments Massive and FM8 released!

The successor to the FM synthesis software FM7 is here: FM8!
Also a new "wave scanning" synthesis instrument Massive has been released



Massive For PC Demo
Massive For mac (intel binary!)

and

FM8 for PC Demo
Fm8 for mac (intel binary!)


It should be really interesting to demo Massive. Full review of the demo coming soon.

Outsim Synthmaker - Create your own synth!

Synthmaker 1.0 has been released. It will allow you to create a synthesizer without writing any program code, like SynthEdit. Graphics are vector based, which allows you to resize easily. It also features a way to directly write your own DSP code into the machine. $125 GBP It looks really interesting, I can't wait to try it out and compare it to SynthEdit. Click Here