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Get the weekend off to a great start with Mysterious Semblance, which includes a focus on Berlin-school ambience as well as some of the best live performances you will hear.

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Orange Tree Samples has released a new version of Evolution Acoustic Guitar - Steel Strings, a sample library for Kontakt. This updated version has a completely new interface and a rewritten scriptin [Read More]

Thanks to all that tuned in! It was a great two hours of music.

Congratulations to Bobbi Tammaro (aka “Funkee Boy”) who is seeing some great Billboard charting success with his new self-produced/mixed full-length album titled “Philosoulphy” which was created entirely in SONAR.  The album is also currently the #1 most selling Smooth Jazz CD in the world on CDBABY.COM.  Bobbi has an interesting SONAR story and is also [...]

Recording and making music on your computer can seem overwhelming when you are just getting started. You have the musical ideas in your head but you need to get them down and into a finished song format. This post will walk you through device setup, recording audio, playing virtual instruments, working with loops, and more.  [...]

To look inside mind we see a landscape of it's face. 

This is an example of an improvisation from a few years ago. Hopefully I'll have some new tracks to share soon! Thanks for listening!

Since Tuesday was Brian's birthday, I thought I'd feature his instrumental work on the show for this week.

Brian Eno is considered the grandfather of ambient music, having had several ground breaking releases in this genre, pieces that you can actively listen to or just have floating along as a backdrop to whatever is happening in your environment, whether working, sleeping, meditating, etc.

Previous to making ambient music, Brian was a member of Roxy music and produced a…

Composing the sounds of an animal’s life cycle and ultimate consumption into a musical portrait, Matthew Herbert’s “One Pig” is in turns grotesque and sentimental, rock and opera. I expected squeamishness and vegetarian conversions when I saw it on tour, but instead, the crowd eagerly devoured the creature at the end. (Make of that what you will.)

One Pig is in Manchester, UK tonight before continuing to Brighton and Portugal.

As my own incurable appetite is for musical instruments, for me a highlight of the show is Scotland-based, American artist Yann Seznec’s Sty Harp. (See also our coverage of his iPad music game development work.) Gut strings in historical instruments already make use of animal parts, so a stringed instruments seems appropriate. But by dissecting obsolete, forgotten technology – a bit of a theme in these parts lately – Yann is able to make an effective, expressive instrument.

Sadly, there’s not much video of the instrument in action, but seeing it is a highlight of the live show. Yann’s performance has its own theatricality, rocking out on these extended strings around the “pig pen” like a boxer swinging against the ropes of a ring. First, Yann shares some notes on the show itself:

The album is an elegy to a life lived for the benefit of humans and raises complex questions about our relationship to these often-maligned and misunderstood creatures.

The album is made entirely out of sounds from the pig and its surroundings – the first squeals, the sound of it being alone for the first time, and the dripping of its blood after being butchered. The result is a delicate, beautiful, and occasionally terrifying musical composition with a profundity rarely heard in electronic music.

The live show debuted at the Royal Opera House, London, in September 2011 and has since toured the world, performing at Berghain Berlin, STRP Eindhoven, Club Silencio Paris, Liquid Room Tokyo, Ancienne Belgique Brussels, and more. Future dates include headlining at Future Everything in Manchester, the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, Palais de Tokyo in Paris.

The show explores and questions the life, death, and consumption of the pig. A chef cooking onstage brings the sound and smell of cooking pig, and the performance features a brand new custom instrument – the “Sty Harp”, built and performed by Edinburgh-based artist Yann Seznec. This representation of the pig’s home is used to trigger and control elements of music, forming an integral part of the 5 piece band. The rest of the band is comprised of Sam Beste on keyboards, Tom Skinner on SPDS, Hugh Jones on samplers, and Matthew on various keyboards and samples and things.

Yann explains how the instrument itself is constructed:

Above: As “One Pig” dissects the life and being of a pig, here, we see inside the mechanical innards of the Sty Harp. Photos courtesy Yann Seznec.

In terms of the Sty Harp, the instrument is built using hacked Gametraks, which were a failed proto-motion controller from around 2003. They were sold only in the UK, and worked by using two joysticks with strings attached that you clipped onto your hands. These could then sense the distance and vague location of your hands …a few terrible games were released on PS2, Xbox, and PC for the Gametrak before they were pulled from the market.

In any case, I took apart a whole load of these (I probably have owned more gametraks than anyone in the world, ever) and used their innards for the string/joystick controllers, which are totally great! I built a whole system with Jon (from Lucky Frame) to hook up twelve of these controllers into my computer at once. I’m using an Arduino with a mux shield to handle the 36 analog inputs (x/y/string for 12 controllers) at once, converting them into MIDI and sending them over to Ableton.

In Ableton the controllers are doing a number of different things, slightly different for each song. In the Max patch I made I can send out 5 individual MIDI notes from each string, one for general movement above a threshold, and one each for a push, pull, up, or down movement. These movements are also sending out CC values, as is the pulling of the string. So each string controller is sending a whole pile of MIDI data at all times, and I pick and choose for each song which gestures to use. So in some cases I’m just triggering individual sounds using the strings, but in others I am using some strings to trigger clips, others to control effects on those clips, and still other effects to do master play/stop/effects/etc.

The climax of the Sty Harp happens about 2/3rds of the way through the show, when the whole band joins me in the sty for the symbolic butchering of the pig. For that song each band member controls different strings, building a huge sound wall.

You can read more about my building of the sty harp here: http://theamazingrolo.net/styharp/

We’re playing in Manchester on Friday the 18th, Brighton on Monday the 21st, then in Lisbon on June 29th and Porto on June 30th.

http://www.matthewherbert.com/
Matthew Herbert – One Pig: exclusive album stream [The Guardian]

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Klanghelm has updated DC8C to version 1.2. Changes: New: VST3 support (OS X/WIN 32and64bit). New: External sidechaining in EASY mode. Removed: zero latency switch - DC8C is now always zero latency. [Read More]

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MathAudio has updated its Auto EQ VST plug-in to version 2.1. This new version allows you to draw the desired frequency response of your speakers, headphones and earphones with the mouse. It impleme [Read More]

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Solcito Musica has released EmulTuition 6.3 for Windows, a free VSTi FM-VA synthesizer for all styles of music. EmulTuition is an FM (to Oscillators and Filters) and Subtractive Synthesizer. It has u [Read More]

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Xen-Arts has released Ivor, a two-oscillator subtractive synthesizer that features real-time, full-controller MIDI Pitch Microtuning, using MTS (MIDI Tuning Standard), where any MIDI Note Number can [Read More]

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Tek'it Audio has launched a new contest for the coming launch of Genobazz Pro. They want you to download Genobazz 2, create your best presets and submit them before May 31st, 2012 (23:59:59 GMT). The [Read More]

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stw-audio has updated Reflex Pro to version 2.2. The update contains some fixes and new features, including the "Preset Update Pack2" with 40 new presets. New: Much requested brighter GUI alternat [Read More]

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Sound Magic has announced the release of version 2.0 of GrandEpiano for Windows, which includes the following changes since Version 1.0: Using a New Neo Hybrid Modeling electric Piano to replace to [Read More]

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IK Multimedia has announced that iRig MIX, the new ultra-compact DJ and audio mixer for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, is now available and shipping worldwide. When used with an iPad, iPhone or iP [Read More]

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Rhythmic Robot has released Loopscape, a tape-loop based synthesiser for Kontakt inspired by experimental musical pioneers of the 60s and 70s like Brian Eno. Eno created ambient music by combining t [Read More]

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Wusik has updated Wusik Station to version 7.0.4. Changes since 7.0: Recoded ModMatix destinations AmpEnv and ModEnv. Added ModMatrix Source Velocity (monophonic). Added ModMatrix All Filters Resona [Read More]

The Dream Machine by X-Ray Pop will soon be re-released by Dark Entries Records.

“La Machine á Rêver is the B-side to the L’Eurasienne 7″ single by X Ray Pop released in May 1984. It will be re-issued on Dark Entries Records in July 2012 on a compilation of early material by this influential French band. This video first appeared on a collection of scopitones by X Ray Pop recorded at Elysee Sound March 1984. X Ray Pop are Doc Pilot: Casio PT20, MR10, Vocals + Zouka Dzaza: Lead vocals.” – darkentriesrecords.com

For more info: darkentriesrecords.com

http://pittsburghmodular.com/foundation/ The Foundation is a fully modular, eurorack, analog synthesizer. A patchable system styled after the great monosynths of the past with no hardwired signal path or fixed voice architecture to restrict creativity. Driven by two wide range analog oscillators the Foundation produces a huge, warm sound that can’t be matched by digital or VST [...]