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People leaving bands, no word from people...

Is everyone moving on to greener pastures, following Jem's lead? (Which, going by his keyboard skills, would be a very fast one...sorry )

I've lost touch and there have been no updates, I heard Jem had a new blog but.... eh, prog...

My latest bit of completely unrelated musical foolishness, I decided to re-dub the latest advert from Volkswagen, taking out the bizarre rap/tango fusion piece they are currently using, and creating something very much contrasting with a little bit of flair.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLPpBnm7FjI

Comments welcome. I know it isn't very proggy, but until I move into my new place, I'm a bit restricted to what gear is within reach, there's boxes everywhere

Got bored, made this :lol:

http://yfrog.com/04n9njj

Click on it to get the full thing. I couldn't find anything close to the official frost font, but I found someone close to one of the other logo's. Enjoy

This definitely isn't like me, but I want to ask something, mainly the board, especially since Jem is busy as a bee right now apparently

Go listen to Hyperventilate on TPE, go to 4:00 exactly and listen to the drums.

I believe this is a mix between the direct mic recordings and the ambient mic's, giving it a very big booming sound, with a bit of reverb, it sounds very good and powerful and fits the performance well.

Now skip to Milliontown and go to 17:30, and listen to the fill over the final "I lose" lyric. It sounds incredibly dry and slightly dampened, and I feel the same treatment might have made it more effective. Especially since at that part on the original record there is a heck of a lot of reverb on the drums on that fill, this feels incredibly flat. There may be a valid reason, ie someone sneezed and broke the mic, who knows! :lol:

Sorry for two things, one if someone has already pointed this out, and two if not, I'm sorry for doing so, but whenever I listen to it, this thought always crosses my mind. Sort of like in the 'Here is the News' Frost* report, I quote: "Shit I wish I'd fixed that!", and although this certainly is not my work, it sort of maybe kind of not really but does a little bit applies.

Really I kinda want to know, am I right, or am I talking out my arse here? :lol:

Come see my Meaty Channel and the rare species only found in the Minimoog Sea, the Analog Bass.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ha33S8_miO8

:lol: :lol:

Dear Web Guy

I checked my preferences and couldn't find an option for this.

Could you change the forum preferences to allow for links to open in a new window?

Cheers.

Hey guys. I should've posted this earlier, but I forgot to!

Well I bagged another commission a while ago. I did the full soundtrack for it, and it has been very well received in reviews and people who bought the game also like it.

There's a free version with ad's you can bag, and it's actually a really fun game, too. Silly, but fun.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/traffic- ... 61744?mt=8

From Appsafari.com:

I was surprised how easy it was to understand this game once you actually play it. The first thing to mention is that the sound track is funky. It has a nice beat to it and the title "Traffic Flow" has some groovy, less serious presentation.

So I'm doing some work for my new client, and the phone rings. "Bugger." I think to myself, that'll be either Scottish Hydro or O2 again. They have been phoning daily, despite my request to stop calling at this time. So I answer and it's this very cheery bloke from O2, who gives me the same lowdown on their services, but this time I manage to get quite far. He tells me I would at this time only be eligible for 20GB a month. I tell him due to the fact I am a musician I do a lot of recording work which gets sent via email and Dropbox and pair that with my movie rentals from iTunes and my online gaming that would disapear in no time. So we talk a little bit more about potential future options, and then he comes completely out of nowhere:

"Okay, so I heard you talk about music, well as well as working for O2 I am also a manager for a singer in the US who has just released a new single. I know that this is all about making new contacts."

I tell him I spend a lot of my time going to networking events looking for work, he takes my contact details and says he'll be in touch.


So the next time you're called by a tele-marketer, don't groan and insist you're not interested, you might get a job.

I was blown away by this site, came across it while reading the Dubstep Producers Bible.

http://www.gersic.com/plugins/index.php

Go nuts!


Also check out this plugin:

http://www.thepiz.org/mralias2/

It's like circuit bending a 56k modem, it's bloody bonkers!

I want a Chapman Stick.

That is all.

Okay so I've had this PDF on my hard drive for god knows how long, but every time I opened it it would tell me OMG You need Adobe 9!!1111 ven though I HAVE preview!

So I sent it to an employee at Adobe, a friend of mine, and he worked his magic, and viola. No Adobe Reader required!

http://files.me.com/serfox/j5sz37

I couldn't get it to upload as an attachment, and I didn't notice. Bleh!

[NOTE]

This thing is quite awesome. It has a lot of audio manipulation algorithms and such, I turned a piano loop into a digital sounding tribal beat with it, then morphed a glockenspiel recording into a crazy, digitallly demonic morphing soundscape.

Best thing is it's totally free from here, it's in beta, but it seems completely stable.

http://yfd.aframasda.com/

Here is a YouTube video of some of what it does, but it's best to just download it and mess with the sliders* to find out what you can do

*NOTE Be very careful. Some of the settings can actually fire this thing up way past what your DAW caps at, beyond 6dB, I really hurt my ears by carelessly flicking a slider up just a quarters way, in the Dynamics section. Small changes make big differences to the sound. Just a warning, you don't want to blow your speakers. (Or your eardrums!)

I found a whole bunch last night, but this is the one I had the most fun with!

http://www.myspace.com/mikefantasticmusic

Just saw these guys performance on Britain's got More Talent. They;re going to get thrown off in the semi's, and then picked up and signed. Easily. The band is there, the songs are catchy and brilliant, its contemporary and appealing, and the production is fantastic. It's an AR's dream.

I'm keeping a close eye on these. I'm convinced with the BGT exposure, their future is set in stone.

Yes. We have talent. lots of it!


If you're not humming the chorus of Lights Off by tomorrow, you must be immune to Auditory Replay Syndrome.. you lucky bar-steward  :lol:

Get it here!

Several months of work towards my final project, I've decided to put this out there. Let me know if you have any feedback on the music.

The whole thing is based around a novel by Neal Stephenson, a science fiction novel written in 1992, with very modern and time-standing themes, which inspired me greatly. This is basically what came of it, as well as it being my final project for university.

Okay I'm very very puzzled.

I have this keyboard, it's not in mint condition, one of the sliders is missing (Although I know exactly where I lost it, it's probably gone under the carpet, I will find it one day) but it has been signed by loads, LOADS of performers, all in permenant marker, which has depreciated this thing immensely. It has also seen rain (Though it was always put in a cover, drops did get in here and there during outdoor performances) and drops, but there is no damage and it works perfect (These things were built to last back in the day).

Besides, I'm keeping it.

What I really want to know is, why is it worth so much?? I just had a poke around about it, and I discovered eBay auctions selling them for close to £200, even when in a worse state than mine! (Missing knobs, broken keys etc)

I got mine for a fiver at a jumble sale, did I luck out? Why is this keyboard so prized?

Tell meee!

[bad]

Those of you who follow my twits will know I went out and bought one of these today

My original intentions were to go out and get a Korg nanokey. I did not know of the existence of the Akai LPK, which stands for Laptop Performance Cakeboard. Er...

So I asked if I could have a go of a nanokey at my local music shoppe, and they got one out, and he began telling me about it's faults. This one was brand new out the box, and it became instantly clear to me that it wasn't for me at all. Not only did it feel like a laptop keyboard, it felt like a bad laptop keyboard. My actual Macbook keys have more travel and response to them than the Korg nanokey does.

I also got to try one which had been played on a bit, an old demo one, and my god. One of the keys kept sticking, another clicked horribly whenever I hit it, and I've been told the keys have a tendency to pop out.

By now I had gone off the idea of the nanokey, not willing to part with my cash for it, but they then showed me a little lonely keyboard called the Akai LPK25. Why was it lonely? It was the last one on the shelf, since they sell so well. And no wonder! This thing is fantastic!

A quick overview of the features then. Its ever so slightly bigger than the nanokey, it has some extra controls on the left so there's extrafor that, but only about a centimeter in width and half a centimeter in height. Width wise, it's about double that of the nanokey, but with good reason: the key's are proper good.

Full two octaves including upper C, no weird B to A action like on some of M-Audio's gear. The keys not only have a decent amount of travel, but theyre velocity sensitive too! The sensitivity cannot be altered as far as I can see, but it's not weird, it feels natural, I can play loud widdly leads on here, or soft piano arpeggios using the Octave switcher with my pinky. Theres enough resistance in the keys so that you can feel confident in your softer notes, though the keys dont have a drop point, they kinda just keep pressing into the spring with no bottom, but I can live with that.

Polyphony isn't a problem wither. If you wanted to press more keys you'd need more fingers!

Now one of the neat little things is that it has a built in arpeggiator! What a bonus! It's fully programmable on the keys itself with just a few selections, i.e. hit C# for a 1/4 time, and F# for an up/down pattern. Tempo is handled by either the tap tempo button, which is great for live performances, or through the included software which looks a little cheap, but it works, so I'm not complaining about that either. You can also sync the arp to your DAW too.

Brief note on the buttons, they're great too. Bright fantom g orange. They look like mini fantom pad buttons, and feel like them too. Don't try and play drums on them though (Although I'm sure you could reprogram the thing with Max MSP to do just that if you *really* wanted!)

Lastly, the price, and this is here because I know some of you might be put off if it were too expensive, and a mini MIDI controller at this build quality and features? I'd've solt it at £80. What do they sell it for? I got mine for £45, which is a £10 less than the nanokey. Cor!


So there you have it. Perfect for train journeys, small desks, or even if you want to compose in the middle of the forest, you can't go wrong with this, it's bloody excellent!

I hate this. I don't want to be a musician anymore.
 :lol:

Hi all

I have here an Oxygen 8 v1 which will basically not work with my aluminium Macbook Pro, some computability issue. I'd need to get a powered USB hub and god knows what else if I wanted even a glimmer of it working. It's basically useless to me now. :/

Can anyone recommend me a decent, small two octave controller? I like to have a small one so I can take my rig to different locations to compose.

And no I don't want a nanokey. Not what I'm after...

http://soaringsynths.blogspot.com/

This is going to be my university blog up until I finish university, and then it will just become a personal thing surrounding my musical career. I thought it would be fun to post things abut how my coursework is going, and I thought I'd share it rather that just write and have no one read it.

Yes, I know it looks identical to TVFTC, that will change soon, but it is 3am and I've been busy doing five things at once all night and I just want to finish off this wine and go to bed.

Let me know what you think. I don't understand all this but you know, all that..stuff.

Okay this is mildly frustrating.

I really want the Waldorf Blofeld, but stocks of it are running low, and although I love how it sounds, is it really worth the £350?

I have my eyes on Absynth at the moment, and with the money I have I could easily also get a Korg nanokey, as I am fed up of using Logic's caps-lock keyboard, and although I have a midi keyboard I don't have the space to use it comfortably in my uni room.

Absynth seems to be bloody powerful, and its more than half the price of a Blofeld, but it's software. And I'm just considering as I am a producer rather than a performer... do I really need a Blofeld?

I suppose it all boils down to what I want to use it for. Truth is I want something very versatile. I compose a lot of electronic music, but in very different styles. I am composing soundscapes, which both the Blofeld and Absynth are well capable of, but I am also composing dance, a lot of dubstep, getting into drum and bass, experimental stuff, and I don't know if the Blofeld cuts it. The bass sounds sound good, but are they full, dynamic and versatile?

There is a review of Absynth in the latest SOS and I'm going to give it a good read through, and I'm going to track down the SOS review of the Blofeld. I have concerns regarding connectivity, clarity of sound, versatility of it's internal MIDI clock (Will it record back precisely, basically) and I have also heard horror stories of people getting nasty shocks off the unit due to cheap untested faulty power units Waldorf are supplying with the unit.

I will most likely end up with both someday, but it just begs the question. Would the Blofeld really expand my sound design potential for my productions, or would the novelty wear off quickly? Is it versatile enough to generate a ton of sounds that can be applied across the board, or would I be better off with Absynth?

Cheers guys