[ Hypnos Forum ]

A special moment in time as the OB-X8 is a collaborative effort between Tom Oberheim and Dave Smith as the video below explains.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ylChorqq1Q


In this demo of what looks like a prototype OB-X8.....any fan of Steve Roach's Structures from Silence can hear a version played at about 1.06 minutes.  The sound is perfect........https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fINfcawRYE0

Dave Smith the creator of the Prophet 5 passed away May 31 2022.  His spirit will live on in his instruments and the music they make.

I have a Sikh Friend who I was discussing the foundation of his beliefs and he suggested I watch this Documentary Series on the spiritual journeys of Guru Nanak, the first Sikh "teacher" from the 15th century .....

https://thegurunanak.com

Right now there are 13 episodes of the 24 available to watch.  It is a wonderful immersion into India culture and beautifully filmed.  It can be watched in many ways.  Thats up to you.  It is rich in philosophy, color, music and sung poetry.

Well obviously the typewriter is not a laptop but for its day it was portable and could be taken anywhere.     

I recently bought this red Sears Courier typewriter made in 1968 and manufactured in Mexico by Olivetti.  It really is a rebranded Olivetti Lettera 22 that Olivetti stopped production in 1964 and started manufacturing the famed and larger Lettera 32.  So the department store Sears probably wanted to add a portable typewriter to their famous Sears Roebuck catalog which was like Amazon and in a way more diversified considering it went back as far 1800's and sold farming machinery, cars and guns as well as typewriters

About 30 years ago I use to write on an Olivetti Lettera 22 and in many ways it was superior to the computers of that time.  I really enjoyed the writing experience and the percussive sounds.

My little 13" MacBook Air is certainly no slouch and Pages is very go word processing software.  Obviously this computer has many more functions and could be the center of my music studio but writing on it is quite different.   I would not dream of writing a large volume - novel, non fiction on a manual typewriter but that may say more about my typing and spelling.  Short stories, poetry and letters are good to create on a typewriter like this one.

Great works have been written on manual typewriters like Cormac McCarthy's last 10 novels that came off an Olivetti Lettera 32.

If you are interested in typewriters it is worth checking "California Typewriter" Documentary.....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgJ3kSOHMiU

Loscil has a new recording on its way with a beautiful video up on Bandcamp......https://loscil.bandcamp.com/album/clara

Im a huge fan of his music for many years but not seen nor paid attention to video work except what Mark Mushet has posted here on the forum. I actually came across a few gems that have me so inspired.....here are the links.

Vespara (new album).....https://vimeo.com/510813904

Bipolar.....https://vimeo.com/485789203

Lux.....https://vimeo.com/510389380

Equivalent 6......https://vimeo.com/329140165

Enjoy!

Not sure how long ago I got the original release but as far as I can recall I thought Apollo referred to the Greek God. ::). Never was a favorite Eno album and did not get played much though there are a few amazing gems on it.  The country & western styled tracks made no sense to me until I saw this video today and it really changed my opinion about the music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTxkLGBkcO0

The music for my videos project has been released on Bandcamp   https://digitalvoices.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-five-videos

Enjoy!

Videos are available for viewing here....https://vimeo.com/user83909563

Discovered this multi media artist today.....here is the link to this "instillation" that has a video showing the sculptures in their underwater environment....https://www.underwaterpavilions.com/#underwaterpavilions

Hello Hypnos Forum,

It has been a while.  Hope this finds everyone well during these difficult times.

I want to stop by the Forum to share my new Video project.  During the initial lockdown in the US back in March from the pandemic I thought I would immerse myself in classic Arthouse movies from Directors such as Antonioni, Tarkovsky,  Bergman and Godard to name a few.  At that point I had not seen much from these directors and I was quite shocked that I had gone through 56 years of my life with never seeing a Tarkovsky film such as Stalker, or Mirror, Antonioni's Trilogy: L'Avventura, La Notte and L'Eciisse or Bergman's Persona.  Actually as a young photographer in my early twenties I did see Antonioni's Blow Up.......anyway something clicked and for the first time it occurred to me that I could marry my music and my photography.  Certainly I have been very aware of Music for Films in the general sense and have always known how well ambient electronic music worked with the moving pictures though there are not that many examples of movies with this types of music.   Probably should start an Ambient Film music thread and see what we can come up with. 

The project to date has 3 short video's which have a working theme, "A study in Isolation".  They are experimental music videos and lean heavily towards video / media art and have nothing to do with the great directors and their films that Ive listed above.  Interestingly enough these Arthouse films are actually quite lacking in music as we know film music today.  Perhaps that's just the point.

I have been thinking of also releasing the music separately.

Here are the links to my Vimeo channel.  Feels good to post here again.  Enjoy.


Life of Roses....https://vimeo.com/459958955

Being there or Not......https://vimeo.com/460672935

A Way though Silence......https://vimeo.com/478568525

Third System posted in the Recent Purchases thread a 6 cd box set of Eno's Installation Music which got me rather curious so I went to listen and came across these 2 videos of a longer talk he gave at the British Library....would love to find the full presentation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQVkW1f4QOc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaheigS9pQo

I have been listening recently to Ultravox and Gary Numan, huge inspirations in my teenage years.  Came across this quite special little backstage interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAA-lgvbO_M.

I thought I would start this thread as I know Guitar, electric and acoustic, are a popular instrument in the creation of ambient music and it is an instrument I am learn to play. Hopefully this will be a place of exchange on all levels of ambient guitar, from gear to music theory, recording techniques and examples of ambient guitar music.

We live in a time that is unique in the evolution of the synthesizer......from soft synths, the revolution of Eurorack modular, analog synths for the likes Dave Smith and now this.....a 21st century Memorymoog and no doubt then some.    Exciting times! 





Memorymoog made in 1982.....you can see where the new synth has got its looks from.  I recall asking a question when I went on the Moog Factory tour last year....."Any chance of polyphonic instrument", "Always a chance" was the reply.  Well chance has become a reality.

Heres another Muse letter from Gregory Scott, AKA UBK of Kush Audio that was emailed to me a few days ago.



HOW TO HEAR EVERYTHING DIFFERENTLY, INSTANTLY...
Every engineer I know and every engineer I've ever spoken with all report experiencing what is, by all accounts, a truly bizarre and completely inexplicable phenomenon disguised as a normal, everyday scenario. It's a familiar situation, and it goes something like this: you've been grinding away on a part, or an arrangement, or a mix, probably for longer than you should. Maybe you think it's the greatest thing you've ever done, maybe there's something vague and elusive that bugs you. Maybe you know it's finished, maybe you think it needs something else but you're not sure what.

So you decide to play what you've got for someone else – usually a friend, a significant other, or a client – and you do it with them in the room. It's the first time anyone other than you has heard it, so you're a little nervous, but you hit play and BAM: everything about the way you hear it changes, and you have instant clarity where before there was only a haze of suspicion.

Somehow, you suddenly and abruptly find yourself hearing the music through the other person's ears.

If you think about that for a second, it's really quite an astounding thing. After hours, possibly even days, of working on a tune and hearing it a very specific way, you are inexplicably and (perhaps most striking of all) effortlessly able to hear everything from a completely different perspective. From the smallest of tiny details to the biggest of the big pictures, your entire outlook is transformed, and there's no going back.

YOU ONLY GET AN IDEA OF WHAT YOU REALLY THINK OF A TRACK WHEN YOU PLAY IT WITH SOMEONE ELSE IN THE ROOM.
I read artist Paul Rose speaking about this very thing in a rundown of his album Claustraphobia: "I remember playing an early version of 'Television' to George FitzGerald, who was staying at my flat at the time, and being pretty embarrassed by how it sounded – sometimes you only get an idea of what you really think of a track when you play it with someone else in the room."

I'm fascinated by this phenomenon, primarily because it seems to me there's a magical quality to it, something we all take for granted but for which nobody has ever offered – or even attempted to offer – any kind of physical, physiological, neurological, or even spiritual explanation. How does this happen? Why are our brains not only able to experience such a sudden shift in perception, why are they compelled to? There's nothing voluntary about it, it happens to you.



Sometimes it doesn't happen until a particular moment in the track, but more often it seems to happen right out of the gate. And you don't just hear technical details, you can also perceive musical and emotional qualities that you couldn't get at before; in essence, you experience a deeply personal thing from an abruptly impersonal perspective. You can hear how your stunning lead beat actually feels flat and anemic, or how your underwhelming verse is actually snappy and tightly balanced. You can hear how the breakdown fails to unleash its fury down into the black hole of the drop, or you get chills as it does exactly that. Maybe you can also hear how the chorus is majestic and soaring, which then highlights the fact that the re-intro which comes afterwards falls so flat.

And if you've ever played a new mix or work-in-progress for a client or a friend – in other words, if you're alive and reading these words – you know that, aside from everything else alluded to above, there is one reality that you can pick up on instantly, completely, and with all the nuance and subtlety of a sledgehammer crashing down on your skull: you know whether or not the other listeners in the room are moved by the music, or whether they are politely waiting for the end of the song so they can either say something courteous and superficial like "that's really nice" (friend), or begin the generally uncomfortable process of saying something like "it's great, BUT..." (client).

HEARING THROUGH SOMEONE ELSE'S EARS IS ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL TOOLS IN OUR SONGWRITING, MIXING, AND PRODUCTION TOOLKIT.
Often, that moment of realisation – the moment your focus shifts and you're able to hear your own work through someone else's ears for the first time – is devastating. At its worst it may mean throwing what you previously thought was a promising song or production onto the creative scrap heap.

But more often it's a positive experience, or at least an extremely helpful one. Indeed, I'd go further: it's an essential and invaluable experience, one you can tap – for free

– whenever you need perspective on a mix (or song or production) where you've lost the ability to clearly hear what's working and what isn't.



I routinely call on my lovely lady Sarah for exactly that. She, like most women, has exquisite ears for the things that matter, and very little interest in the things that don't. Whenever I'm stuck, or unsure, or just needing a little direction for the next step, I tell her I need to use her ears for a minute. She graciously obliges, and usually within 10 seconds of hitting play I have all the information I need. I hit stop, she looks at me with her "You got it?" look, I flash my "I got it" look right back, and she leaves wordlessly. At that point I either delete a part, redo an automation move, or I just keep plowing forward – but this time with a much clearer sense of purpose.

Hearing through someone else's ears is one of the most powerful tools in our songwriting, mixing, and production toolkit. Whenever and wherever you can, I heartily recommend exploiting it for all its worth.

This is from the pen of Gregory Scott aka, UBK.....who sends out muse letters to people like me who uses (no need to own any to receive this)  his company, House of Kush, audio plugins and if your lucky the hardware versions.....its a good read



When you sit down to begin mixing a track, what exactly are you trying to accomplish? What's your job?

My grandmother used to say "If you can't explain what you do in one sentence, using plain English, you don't understand it yourself." So... can you do that? Can you explain your job as a producer or mix engineer to your grandmother in one sentence, using plain English, and make her understand it?

Here's why I think this question is important: if you aren't crystal clear on what the job of mixing actually is, how can you know when you've done your job? If there are no clearly identified goals or objectives, how can you possibly assess whether you've finished the work, let alone gauge how well it turned out?

In a craft like audio engineering, where so much of what we do is mathematical in nature, highly detailed, and deceptively technical, it's easy to lose sight of the bigger picture, the one that doesn't care about any of that. It's actually common for newer engineers to be unaware that there's a bigger picture at all. But I would argue that there most definitely is a bigger picture, or rather, that having a clear sense of the bigger picture can powerfully transform your mixes and your art.

While everyone's journey is unique and deeply personal, I've noticed that in all of my conversations with people who are masters of crafting mixes that 'pop' out of the speakers, creating productions which have those mysterious and elusive qualities that serve to elevate them well above the run-of-the-mill – for people who can mix on that level, the entire point of the exercise boils down to something like this: to sculpt and blend the sounds in a song with such drama, flair, and finesse that the result creates a visceral, gripping, emotionally charged experience in the minds and bodies of the listener.

To be clear, that emotional charge can have any texture or flavor, there are no restrictions on what the particular emotions need to be. They just need to be. All that matters is that the listener be made to feel something.

"THEY MAY LOVE OR HATE THE SONG, BUT THEY WILL LISTEN TO IT AND FEEL SOMETHING."

They may love the sounds coming at them, may feel chills in waves and spill streams of tears, they may dance like a maniac and sing as loud as they can. Or they may hate everything about it, feeling disgust or envy or even anger over the mere idea that something so cheesy, or insipid, or could get made, played, downloaded 120 million times and adored by so many people worldwide.

They may love or they may hate the song, but they will listen to it, and they will feel something very deep, very powerful, and not under their control, because the mix effectively delivered something irresistible from inside the heart of the song straight to the heart of the listener.

Making choices you hope people will love is something everyone can relate to, but making choices you suspect many will hate is counterintuitive for many artists and mixers, who understandably ask, "Why would I want to intentionally do something that will rub people the wrong way?" The answer is the subject of an entirely different Museletter, but it boils down to this: for every person that hates something with all their might, there will likely be at least one person, and probably more, who love it just as powerfully. The more that people hate on something, the more people will rush to its defense, stand loyally by its side, advocate its inherent goodness.

"THE MORE DIVISIVE AN ARTIST OR SONG,
THE MORE IMPACT THEY HAVE ON THE WORLD."

What I'm suggesting is this: be open to the possibility that you want people to hate what you've done, because it's a clear indicator that you've created something powerful, and a sure sign that you're magnetizing fans and followers as well. The more divisive an artist or song, the more impact that art has on the world and its cultures.

In fact, it may surprise many of you to learn that old-fashioned terrestrial radio programmers have known for decades that they don't want 'good' songs, they want 'sticky' songs. Sticky is the term used to describe any song that keeps the listener glued to the transmission, preventing them from grabbing the dial and changing the station. Someone who tunes out won't be around to hear the advertising break, which makes the advertisers very unhappy.

What those radio programmers learned early on was that, much to their astonishment, many of the 'stickiest' songs were those which stirred as much passionate, unrepentant hatred as they did unbridled love. As it turns out, there is a point where a person's dislike for a song is so strong they are unable to turn the music off, and instead they will compulsively listen while hating on it, criticizing it, and enduring a burning pit in their stomach from the first beat to the last note. And long after it's finished, they will talk about it. They will say its name and spread awareness of it. In the world of radio, sticky is good, end of analysis.

Think about that the next time you hear a song whose popularity baffles you, when you're tempted to ask why it's getting so much hype. It may have nothing to do with the fact that people love it, it may actually be quite the opposite.

"THE REAL POWER IN A PIECE OF MUSIC LAYS IN ITS ABILITY TO STIR THE FEELINGS – ANY FEELINGS – OF THE LISTENER."

Mind you, just because those large, exclusively profit-driven corporations don't care whether a song has artistic merit, a killer hook, or timeless appeal doesn't mean you shouldn't either, I'm not here to impose an agenda. I'm only here to point out that the real power in a piece of music lays in its ability to stir the feelings --- any feelings --- of the listener. In the world of art, emotional responses are not measured by their positivity, they're measured by their raw intensity.

If arousing the passions of a slightly jaded world sounds like an enormous task, that's because it is. In order to craft a mix which plays on that level, you have to build and then traverse a labyrinth – one that starts in the logical and rational parts of your brain, follows a circuitous and often maddeningly obtuse path filled with seemingly random twists and turns, and ultimately lands squarely and deeply in those chambers of the mind that are capable of surging with pleasure, aching from the beauty of it all , and craving more and more of the same... or wishing more than anything to never experience anything like it again.

I respectfully submit that that, above all else, is your job as a mixer: to make people feel something. And if you listen to the masters, their advice is fairly uniform: make bold choices, go too far, risk ridicule and utter failure. Safety, in this endeavor, is actually the least safe route to take, the surest path to mediocrity.

To quote again that grandmother of mine: "It's better to be praised than punished, but it's better to be punished than ignored."

The same is true of any art you help to create: make it bold, make it beautiful, make it brash, make it grating... just don't make it ignorable. Anything but that.

ZenPro Audio are having a ridiculous sale on this unit....$1299 when it usually goes for twice that.  This is my main studio pre amp for tracking.  The Eq is really beautiful and the DI is amazing on Bass guitar.

Heads up if anyone might be shopping.......http://www.zenproaudio.com/phoenix-audio-drs-q4-mk2

Came across this tonight from Bandcamp......just getting into it, lots to listen to...a fair amount Im not familiar with.  Interesting to see Bandcamps / blogger's take on ambient.

https://daily.bandcamp.com/2017/03/17/contemporary-ambient-music-list/?utm_source=footer

For quick non genre defined cds I have gone to Amazon and all others such as ambient I go to the label or something like Bandcamp, but as of today Im going to boycott amazon because of some shady return policies that have cost me when I did the right thing.

I have looked around and not much has surfaced that seems to come close to the Amazon beast. Yeah I have Prime and its sweet to get things quickly but for all that speed and convenience someones paying the price.  If you feel like bashing Amazon please do because that may help cool my rathe with them.

So where do you shop for cd's? Is there an alternative?

Went to Asheville, North Carolina in May for some mountains & trees but did not know that Bob Moog had setup shop in Asheville. I have owned my Minimoog Voyager synthesizer for a year or so. The tour was the the highlight of the trip. The tour is free and lasts about an hour.

The Moog factory is right in downtown Asheville which struck my as similar to Greenwich Village, NYC in appearance and vibe.






The Moog Mother 32 (Eurorack) Synthesizer assembly line.....The "Mother" boards arrive already soldered so completing a Mother takes about an hour and a half.

The gentleman in blue is the tour guide who was full of interesting stories such as how the original Minimoog Model D was so powerful and deep that it was capable of inducing labor which is what happened when Geddy Lee's wife was very pregnant and happened to be at a Rush concert sound check when Mr Lee fired off his minimoog. Ambulance was called and their first child was born shortly after......Great story!








The Moog Sub 37 assembly line.....apparently their best sell synth.





The Minimoog Model D assembly line.....The lady at the back installs all the electronics, the man sitting works on just the mod wheel and pitch bend, apparently it is quiet involved to get right and the standing fellow finishes the synth. This is obviously the recreation of the original Model D and is the only minimoog in production as the Moog Voyage is not made anymore.

The Model D is made with about 95% sourced US materials....the birch wood comes from Tennessee, a good deal of the electronics are made locally in Asheville. Bob Moog established an electronics engineering course at a local Asheville college that a large amount of Moog employees have come through.







Minimoog burn in bench......All Minis are turned on for 24 hours and tested to be properly functioning.




The Moog Modular Synthesizer production line.....creation of these are slow. These two guys install and connect all the modules into their cases. The modules are built in another building. One modular was having a spring reverb installed as we came through and what appeared to be an small ordinary guitar amp was turned up......have to say I have never heard anything like it. It was not that the sound was loud it was that the sound penetrated everything and filled the factory with a sonic presence beyond description.







This building is where the Moog Modular Modules are made and custom work. It also houses the Moog Sound Lab Studios......graphic on the window is Keith Emerson's Modular.






Just outside the Sound Lab and the Lab itself. This was the end of the tour and where we could ask questions......I had many like was Moog going to make Eurorack versions of their big Modular but only asked one. "What was the chance of Moog making a polyphonic instrument like the Memorymoog?"
the answer....."There is always a chance."

We did not get to see the R&D departments where sixteen engineers work on the future of Moog instruments.......top secret.







On my way out I saw this little...shrine I guess.......can you recognized the people in the photographs?






It was an emotion experience and just such a cool place......there were many good pictures to be had but I would have missed much.  Their current philosophy seems to be taking the best of Moogs past and bring it into the present.....

Spitfire Audio are one of the premier sample library developers today and are in heavy use in film scoring around the world.  They have come up with this new soft synth in conjunction with trance producer/ film composer BT.

Website......http://www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/a-z/bt-phobos/

Here's a walk through demonstrating the synth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FP83l8U3i9s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_zpYNcXces

Amazing movie that I highly recommend if you have not seen it.  This is a fascinating look at the making of the film score to Arrival

The composer Johann Johannson is score the upcoming Blade Runner movie  8)


I replace the original video with this similar one. 4/23/17

Came across this eArtical....seem to touch on some concerns and possibilities....Discuss

Music rarely exists in a vacuum. From classical concert programs and 12-track albums to DIY mixtapes and personal record shelves, we imbue songs with new meaning by connecting them to each other, by treating them as elements of a wider, self-constructed narrative

We are music collectors by design and by necessity—an identity threatened by the rise of streaming.

In previous decades, physical formats like CDs, vinyl, cassettes and 8-tracks required us to limit our music consumption, if only to keep our wallets in shape. We didn't just throw money and time at music left and right, but rather invested more wisely in a handful of albums and artists, with whom we developed intimate relationships through repeated listens and colorful liner notes. Filling our binders and shelves with these records also facilitated a more positive, aspirational side of our aesthetic identities: we set tangible, attainable goals for our collections, and could show off these works in progress to our friends and family whenever they visited for dinner.

The three recent stages of digital disruption in music — which can be bookmarked by Napster, iTunes and Spotify — have made our collections more public, more granular and more abstract, respectively. Napster is known not only for making recorded music available at no monetary cost, but also for motivating users to share their musical tastes with each other (it's called file-sharing for a reason). iTunes unbundled the standard album into its individual tracks, enabling users to handpick their favorite songs and assemble a wider-reaching collection with a higher concentration of artists over the same amount of [virtual] surface area. Spotify not only has made musical shelf space infinite, but has also made the term "shelf space" irrelevant: its users own nothing. Instead, they pay for access, shelling out the rough cost equivalent of 12 CDs per year ($9.99 a month) to peruse millions of songs at their fingertips.

More significantly, to an extent, streaming services do all of our tedious music collecting work for us. With playlists as our framework, we can think of each streaming service as a unique "collection of collections," using a distinct philosophy of curation to unpack an otherwise noisy music catalog. Spotify, for instance, touts its algorithmic prowess, pushing fresh, tailored and automated collections like Discover Weekly and Release Radar to its users on a weekly basis. Apple Music prefers to market its "human" curational talent, frequently recruiting celebrity guests like Alexander Wang and Clare Waight Keller to fashion [no pun intended] their own playlists for clout-hungry listeners. Tidal takes pride in its limited reach, snagging exclusive distribution deals with masterpieces like Beyoncé's Lemonade and Kanye West's The Life of Pablo.

Any effort on our part to seize control of our music collecting habits away from these streaming services ultimately feels burdensome and futile. Exclusivity clauses à la Tidal make it difficult to consolidate one's entire online music collection into a single platform without paying for multiple streaming accounts (back in 2009, Eliot Van Buskirk suggested that the music industry build a global, universal, public database of songs to ease this friction between services, a vision that has since fallen through the cracks). The constant push for "discovery" — for maximizing the explorative opportunities enabled by data science — leads more and more streaming users to consume music like the average internet user consumes news: as brief sound bites that barely have time to breathe before being engulfed by new content.

All of these factors lead to a new type of digital music fan and collector: one who prioritizes breadth over depth, who sees collecting as performative rather than inquisitive, and who defines their tastes more by the how (the streaming services) than by the what (the songs). This profile presents a challenge for the music business in drawing attention away from music creators, the very lifeblood of the industry. Indeed, while streaming makes it easier for artists to reach potential new fans, it also makes it even more difficult to retain a group of loyal listeners.

After all, it is important to realize that we mourn music not when a song falls off the charts, nor when a streaming service fails to break even, but when we lose an artist. In 2016 alone, we said some of our most painful goodbyes as a collective music community to prominent figures like George Michael, Leonard Cohen, Prince and David Bowie. Unfortunately, deaths are the only opportunity many listeners have to dive deep into an artist's background and life story. In contrast, artist profiles on streaming services remain sparse, providing no context or biographical information aside from their discography and a list of related artists. While music streaming is better for the consumer from the perspective of time- and geography-based access, convenience should not erode connection.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ms4DGZaKYM

Website: http://www.theartoflisteningfilm.com

Christopher Willits Soundtrack for the movie.....http://shop.christopherwillits.com/album/the-art-of-listening-original-score-soundtrack

I have waited a long time for this.....my powercore pci express card is long gone and this was and still is my favorite reverb that has not been available until now unless one has a 4000 unit or their flagship 6000.

Word was the UA was going to port the TC software over and that may still happen but this is exciting to have a Native version :)



http://www.tcelectronic.com/vss3-native/

The Price drop on all of their plugins is crazy.  I once used their Renaissance plugins like 10 years ago but never upgrade because of the hefty $200 fee. 

For example the Renaissance bundle is now $149, my upgrade fee I just payed was $79 for a bundle that lists at $399. 

Really good prices on individual plugins as well......http://www.waves.com

Until November 30th.....www.eventideaudio.com/specials/holiday-sale?utm_source=eblast&utm_campaign=holiday-sale-fb-eblast&utm_medium=email&utm_content=holiday-sale-fb-eblast

Hello fellow gearheadz......for a long while I have said no, software cannot do analog and please understand the most exciting things currently happening are in the digital domain "soft und hard", so this is no analog snobbery :)

I have had my Oberhiem Matrix 12 for for about 8 years and it has been and still is for me the most amazing piece of kit to play on. 

Arturia have done a software version of Matrix 12 synth...perhaps familiar to some. Well, watching this video I have to say the software really shines.

The Matrix 12 is a huge synth in size and yet you only have primarily six knobs to turn, so even though its massive its not in architecture yet it works brilliantly, it actually helps you to focus on one central area......ok, enough, Im drifting here, yet in a way this limited interactivity of the physical synth may makes it software friendly.

Take a look at the video and brush up on your Japanese. ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfi-nZBDOsY

This is so cool and perhaps controversial in that a music icon is given the highest recognition for his words. 

Never a fan so I have not really got into his poetry but at 75 years old he still performs a 100 plus concerts a year.

I said to my self if the day ever came that I made more than a thousand posts and in the interim squandered all those precious hours I would abbreviate my name to....JDB, like APK, JKN or ffcal.  Or do we live in an abbreviated culture so we can compact ourself into symbols :o....Ok I'll shut up :)

Well it looks like Mathew will make landfall in my neck of the woods in Florida around 11pm tonight.

Ive been through 3 hurricane back in 2004/5.  This fella is in a different league , a beast at category 4...140 mph sustained winds for around 3-4 hours. Dame, Ive never ever driven that fast.

Cooking a nice dinner with a good Rioja wine before the power goes out and a smokey single malt whisky malt to see me through the fury of mother nature.

Talk to you all on the other side!