Make Your Ears Bleed

YouTube via zamisers7k
"Done all on Yamaha RS7000 one obvious small sample with a bit of resampling. Using some dubstep techniques, industrial and just messed up stuff. Enjoy!"

iMatik - Album Made Entirely with Instruments on The iPhone

Tom Freeman wrote in to let me know of his new release iMatik which was created using nothing but an iPhone. The following is the press release followed by a detailed list of the apps he used.

"Music producer Freematik creates an album completely using an iPhone

An entire album has finally been created using only an iPhone! From the mind of Freematik, a Bay Area local rap & hip-hop producer who has produced many projects in a "traditional" music studio, this first of it's kind concept album breaks new creative ground in modern music production.

Tom Freeman, the producer and artist known as Freematik, had this to say about the album:

"iMatik is a fresh DJ mixtape full of phat beats, DJ scratching, live synths and all types of crazy sounds, made using only an iPhone. Everything was made using apps available from the iTunes app store, such as Beatmaker, iDrum, Flare, Jasuto, etc. The parts were programmed over the course of a few months, in places including hotels, motels, the beach, bars, and anywhere else you would bring a phone. While this initially started just as a way to have fun and do some music "on the road", it transformed into an awesome psychedelic hip hop and electronic music experience. Not my normal type of project but I really love it, maybe more than anything I've ever done. Plus it was crazy fun to make."

Check out the album at: www.freematik.com

About Freematik
Freematik is a music producer who works mainly with underground rap artists in the Bay Area. His production skills can be heard on a number of mixtapes, as well as in bars and clubs around the Bay Area. He produces his own albums as well, which are available at www.freematik.com."

The following are notes for three tracks if you want to hear how each app fit in the mix. You can find the download links to each on http://freematik.com/.

"3. Now You Know: Good example of an Intua Beatmaker MPC-style beat, with DJ scratches supplied by Flare, and low synth provided by miniSynth. I also used the "toy" app iSkream on this track for the "Now You Know" vocal sample, which is my girlfriend talking into the iPhone. That app lets you play back samples in real time, and mangle them with a variety of effects.

10. e: This beat was made with iZotope iDrum Club Edition, with synth sounds from NLogFree. There is a vocal sample that is stretched out at the end, and that was done with Sound Warp, which lets you drag the sample playback by moving your finger on the phone's screen.

12. Is This Your Special Bush: This track is a great example of Flare, the best DJ scratching app for iPhone. I overdubbed a bunch of DJ scratching effects over a beat I made in Beatmaker, and it really to me sounds like a "DJ" album ala DJ Shadow, except done on just an iPhone."

I asked Tom how he recorded and mastered the tracks:
"Since the iPhone can't do multiple apps at the same time, and what I wanted to do definitely involved playing one app over another, I ended up tracking everything through a Universal Audio 2108 Stereo Pre, by way of a mini-dual 1/4" cable. Everything was tracked into my Mac Pro running Cubase 5. I used a Summit DCL 200 Stereo Compressor on the mix buss, and used a huge amount of Universal Audio plugins, including the new Manley Massive Passive on individual tracks and in mastering.

My thought about it is if I was doing an "all-saxophone" album, for example, I wouldn't stop at not using a DAW to multi-track, mix, etc. so I think the same applies to an "all iPhone" album. But if running multiple apps was possible I would have kept it all in the phone, just because it sounds fun to try."

Note multi-tasking is coming to the iPhone.

Apps used in iMatik:
Intua Beatmaker []
A-Sync Games Flare[]
iZotope iDrum Club Edition []
iZotope iDrum Hip-Hop Edition []
iZotope iDrum Video Game Edition []
iZotope iDrum Beatboxing Edition []
iZotope iDrum Wu-Tang RZA Edition []
Jasuto & Jasuto Pro []
miniSynth []
NLogFree []
iSkream []
Thereminator []
Argon []

Ugol Ratmanova

via VTOL

"http://urnanocast.rpod.ru/145183.html

A collaboration live performance by Ugol Ratmanova duo and Dmitri Morozov aka ::VTOL:: on 3 DSI Evolver synthesizers only. @ Ruby Attack Fest, Palitra Club, 13 Feb, 2010"

The audio player is right below Аудио in the link above. If the embedded player does not work, try the 69.8 Мб / 32:10 / MP4, 302 kbps link to the right of the description.

PAiA demo

YouTube via theglyph
"This is the 9710 VCA, 9720 VCO and the 9730 VCF of the PAiA 9700 synth under limited KLEE sequencer control. All sound come from the three modules. It's sometimes ugly but is has it's charms:)"

Sherman Rodec Restyler

two pics via Zn'shñ

Silver Thread by Carbon111

pic via Carbon111' blog where you'll find a new track titled Silver Thread featuring the Ensoniq Fizmo, Waldorf Q, Korg Oasys and Digidesign's Boom softsynth.

KORG TRIDENT MKII SN 410115

via this auction

"The Trident is one of the very few SSM filter based polyphonics, along with the revered Prophet 5 rev2. It shares some similarities in sound with it in the synthesizer section. The oscillators are linear and can be reminiscent of the Ms-20 or the older Korg polys. The string section is a best-of from Korg, in my opinion with non paraphonic envelopes and a great Bowing effect, similiar to an Arp Omni. Any section can be assigned to the flanger section, this is one of the best flangers ever made in my opinion. When all three sections are used it create a huge ensemble sound that's unique and very expressive with the keyboard splits, separate outs etc.

This is quite an underrated machine, it was Korg's answer to Yamaha's CS-80 and Roland's Jupiter 8. In fact, when this was released, at at price of around 4700$ in 1982, it was 500$ MORE than a MemoryMoog!"

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Korg Polysix KLM-367A PCB Clone

via Jed Jorgensen
"If your Korg Polysix has failed due to battery corrosion on the KLM-367 PCB this may be your solution.

A group buy for new KLM-367a PCBs is being hosted here.

Final pricing will be dependent on the number of PCBs that are ordered. When I asked for the level of interest earlier, it appeared that approximately 40-50 boards might be needed. Please see the price breakdown and plan accordingly.

The group buy will be open until March 17th (30 days total). At the end, the final price will be assessed and shipping will be added based on the number of boards you are ordering."

Folktek Impressionist Drum Scape IV

via the Folktek blog where you'll find more pics.

"The lateest in an ongoing series of comissioned works by Arius Blaze. This particular piece built into an especially beautiful old case. The drum scape is capable of huge bassy drums, extremely thick drone however you like it and clicky sounds. Semi-infinite repeats up to around 1.5 seconds for live now looping and notated delay on the short side. To watch videos and see other similar works, see all other posts for the drum scapes here"

Folktek on Ebay

OTO Biscuit Now Available

at Big City Music here

Note it is pronounced BisqWEE in French. via the Big City Music blog.

Update: video added below


OTO Biscuit at BCM YouTube via bigcitymusic

"Here's our first noodle with the incredible OTO Biscuit using the Studio Electronics SE-1X Red Eye as our source. The Biscuit, pronounced bis-quee, is a stereo bit crushing effect with an analog multimode filter, true 8-bit pitch shifting, delay with midi sync, wave-shaping, and a filter sequencer. The Biscuit can save 16 presets, receive midi clock sync, cc and program changes. The built in analog filter sounds amazing and has low, high and band-pass modes. There are dedicated dry and wet amount knobs labelled "naked" and "dressed". There's also built in overdrive on the input with adjustable amount. The Biscuit is a great sound shaping tool. The king of bit crushing has arrived!"