Tonylongmusic.co.uk

Those clever guys at Crysonic have just released the SPECTRA C2 for Mac and Windows which is a Wideband Audio Compressor Plug-In. They are absolutely convinced that this plug-in is going knock you out and provide you with outstanding results. This Non-Transparent Compressor gives you subtle but exactly the analog characteristics that you want on any signal being processed. It is Zero latency and is ideal in all music production.

With so much going on in the background that you don’t notice with its very fast and user-friendly interface giving you the results you demand instantly and suprisingly, it doesn’t drain too much from your CPU.

You can get it for an incredible $55 if you are very quick but it is going up to $159 from 16th May 2012. More info can be found at www.crysonic.com

New Synth App for the iPad desined by Waldorf and Rolf Wöhrmann

This has made my day – Waldorf who have made some great hardware synths like the Blofeld and the new Pulse 2 as well as Software Synths like the Largo and Lector have now joined up with Rolf Wöhrmann to make a fantastic App for Apple’s iPad, iPad 2 and now iPad3 that should be available to you this Summer.

The iPad is an ideal  platform for wavetable synthesis and will more than likely take it up a notch  to a new level. This will  make it possible to go deep into wavetables and show the sound in 3-D and offer completely new ways for sound creation and manipulation.

This new approach to wavetable synthesis allows for the transposition of the spectrum and the balance of periodic and sound spectra entirely independent from a wave’s position extending the wavetable technology  we have now by two new dimensions. It also allows for formant shifts as well as numerous other unheard sounds and as well as this the number and length of waves in a wavetable will no longer be restricted – Wow

Musicians are MIDI mad and this application will cater for many MIDI interfaces from IK Multimedia, iConnectMIDI, MIDI Mobilizer II by Line6, Alesis ioDock or the Camera Connection Kit by Apple and the SynthStation by Akai. App collaboration standards like Sonoma‘s Audio Copy/Paste, Intua‘s Audio Pasteboard and Virtual Core MIDI will also be supported like the upcoming AudioBus standard and KORG’s WIST synchronization technology.

I am really looking forward to trying this out as I am the Pulse 2 – keep an eye on http://www.waldorfmusic.de/for further information.

Steinberg Cubase 6.5

Things do not stand still and that is true of DAWS. We now have a new release of the famous Cubase. No it is not Cubase 7 (yet), but 6.5. It comes with two new Synths – Retrologue which gives you that old school analog synth sound with 300 presets and Padshop which has two independent layers that are based on an individual oscillator source and generate up to eight different grain streams armed with over 400 presets. This YouTube clip should show you what they are about:-

NUKLEAR Plugin Synthesizer

Nuklear, from hamburg-audio, is a new distinctive sounding VST/AU Pulsar synth plug-in. It doesn’t use
waveforms such as sine, saw or square waves played at different pitches, it uses individual pulses of shapes that vary and repeated at slower or faster rates.

Nuklear’s pulsar synthesis alternates the panning of pulses to create a super-wide sound; and omitting certain pulses, which gives some really great sub-harmonics.

There are four oscillators and each of these has a Pulsar knob. If you set them to zero, it makes the pulses stretch so that the results are just like normal synth oscillators. Take a look at http://www.hamburg-audio.com/

For all of your Sample needs go to:-

Audacity Audio Editor Version 2 – Free

Well here is something that you just got to read. If you are like me and have been using an excellent free piece of software called Audacity, then you will be thrilled to find out that it has just been upgraded to Version 2. Did I also mention that it is free? Those guys on the  Audacity Team deserve a very big “Thank You”

You will probably know that you can do many things with Audacity such as :-  Record live audio ,  Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs ,  Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files, Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together,  Change the speed or pitch of a recording and much more.

Some of the major changes in 2.0.0 over 1.2.6 are:

Go on download Version 2 now – you know you want to:-
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Here is something simple but very clever, and my first thought is why hasn’t someone come up with this before? Stochastik Drum Machine by Xitive Inc is a great Apple iPad App Drum Machine with over 1000 sounds. It is not just any old drum machine because it has such a clever difference. This little gem lets you set a possibility or rather a probaility that a drum sound in your rhythm will trigger. What a great idea, I think it is even better than Roland’s idea when they introduced a ‘Human Feel’ – I thought that was ‘Wow’ at the time, but this one makes so much sense and to some extent behaves just like a drummer would. For example let us say you are a drummer playing your basic four to a beat rock pattern, you know after 30 seconds you are going to bored as hell with it and just to impress the band or ensure that the bass player doesn’t fall asleep, you going to slip in an off-beat bass drum beat, double the snare, syncopate with some extra hi-hat hits. Whatever you going to do, you will not do it all the time and you are going to vary it, keep the spark alive and do the unexpected.

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Namm 2012 and Roland Cakewalk have announced the realease of SONAR X1d update to be available in February 2012. All registered SONAR X1 customers can download the free SONAR X1d update at Cakewalk.com.

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Hi, I am proud to announce that I have just released a new soundset for the Access Virus – “Creative Distortion”. This is the third soundset for the Access Virus from Tony Long Music. There are 128 Creative Sounds crafted with cunning distortion to assist songwriting creativity.

This aggressive soundpack is essential for all genres – from Rock to Trance and Ambient to Acid. Feed your Access Virus a treat with these infectious patches. Grinding Acid Bass, Amp – Simulated Guitars, screeching leads, Evolving Arps and Pads, Electro-Machine Drums, Dance and Trance Stabs, Tenori-On and sound effects.

There are now 384 sounds available to you in three sets if you are an Access Virus user. I still think the Access virus is one of the best synths in the World – it has such a great design and great support and stands the test of time.

To hear a demo of the sounds, just click the You Tube demo here:-

For further information and download :- http://www.tonylongmusic.co.uk/access-virus-patches/

Here is something very useful from Scott R. Garrigus (author of the Cakewalk SONAR and Sony Sound Forge Power book series) – SONAR X1 Power! Tips and Techniques PDF. It is a FREE download which you can get here:-

http://www.digifreq.com/digifreq/download.asp?ID=131

SONAR X1 Power! Tips and Techniques PDF provides step-by-step information about performing various music editing tasks with Cakewalk SONAR X1 that all X1 musicians can use.

Techniques in the free PDF include:

• a quick and easy way to export MIDI tracks.
• how to stretch audio with a simple keyboard combination and click/drag of the mouse.
• how to open multiple versions of the same View in SONAR.
• using the Event Inspector for advanced MIDI data editing.
• how to delete multiple measures of a specific selection in a SONAR project.
• how to automate specific data selections using envelopes.
• how to remove vocal “pops” or plosives from your recorded vocal tracks.
• dealing with clip FX tails.
• and more…

The free PDF is brought to you by SONAR X1 Power! – The Comprehensive Guide. Covering SONAR X1 Producer, Studio and Essential, Sonar X1 Power! is the ninth edition of the Sonar Power book series providing detailed training for Cakewalk’s Sonar X1 music recording software. Written for both new users and veteran upgraders alike, Sonar X1 Power! walks you through all of the features of the software with step-by-step instructions and exercises.