This is the first 10 minutes of noodling with my new Studio Electronics Boomstar 3003.
This thing is brutal. F’ing love it.
Video when I can tear myself away.
I’m on holiday at the moment and as usual I have a bunch of little toys with me…
For this trip we have:
All this (apart from the Bose) goes in my hand luggage and Customs give me grief EVERY SINGLE TIME!
Still love it though 
I’m a fairly recent convert to Live, having gone through the convoluted DAW journey of Pro24, Cubase, Reason, Logic and Studio One, landing on Live about 6 months ago.
I upgraded to the latest version (9) shortly after it came out and although it’s not a massive change from 8, I’m hooked, and Reason 7 isn’t getting my cash just yet (especially after the awful awful promo video on their homepage).
The key changes for me are the inclusion of Max4Live (in the suite version), the glue compressor (lovely) and the audio-to-midi features. Max brings with it all sorts of greatness, most usefully for me, the midi modulation effects. The glue compressor is super quick to set-up and audio-to-midi has already paid for itself through super quick recorded kick drum replacement. I wish Ableton had added two screen support though for the mixer at least.
So, I mentioned the wife. Well, she couldn’t give a monkeys about it all really, but I did convince her to sing a little for me on a remix I started months ago.
Little Star is a lovely track by Stina Nordenstam featured in Baz Lurman’s Romeo & Juliet (the one with Leo D’Cap and Clare Danes). I had planned on a stripped back piano and wife version with full lyrics, but a quick mic test captured a few bits I noodled with to create the track below. One day I’ll get round to the more lyrical version but this one features a bass drum inspired by the heartbeat recorded from the soon-to-be-born little one my mrs is cooking, so it has sentimental value. Awwww.
The track is arranged in Live 9 with the addition of a Waldorf Blofeld for bass and bells, and a Nord Stage 2 for the Rhodes and Piano lines. Maschine provides the drums and Live’s Analog and NI’s Absynth bring the pads. I used a trial of Ozone for a quick master (quite impressed with that seeing as I didn’t really know what I was doing).
I’m pleased with the result and I hope you like it too.
Clavia, Teenage Engineering, Propellerheads. If they weren’t reason enough for wanting to move Sweden, this lot should be – Vintergaten (Milky Way for us English folk).
From the looks of this video, they’ve definitely been spending their pocket money on gear.
This one is for @pulsewidthmod…
I’ve haven’t posted for aaaaages. Too busy in the day job, flood took studio out of action and to be honest I’ve been having too much fun just simply playing.
eBay has been my friend/enemy and I’ve been buying and selling various toys over the last few months.
So, seeing as I’ve got a new camera, I thought I’d share some of the fun I’ve been having simply using 4 midi tracks in Ableton, each with a midi arp enabled to slightly different settings with the tracks triggering…
Nord is just being used as a controller and a Faderfox LX2 is selecting the synths I’m using via Ableton.
This take is completely live and improvised as shown by mistakes, blurred video and no post prod whatsoever. Synths are going through UAD Apollo with Lexicon reverb plug in.
I might do more of these with better video, multiple cams and maybe some post recording tweaking soon. Maybe. If you want. Who knows. Just playing is the priority. I’m absolutely loving it.
LT
Matrixsynth popped up a post about the latest iPhone version of Werkbench, the live sampling, looping, sequencer, effecty thing. The UI graphics aren’t the coolest but the fun factor goes to 11.
If you haven’t seen it, here’s the original iPad version in action:
Being the gear junkie that I am, I spend far too much time reorganising the studio, noodling with 4 bar loops and thinking I need just one more bit of kit before being able to conquer the charts. This is of course utter bollocks and it’s the classic lack of talent but love of gear.
When vaguely musical talent does strike however, I have a DAW problem. I just can’t settle on one. I have the tech equivalent of ADHD.
If you’ve ever spent any time looking for synth reviews, you will have hopefully come across the synth review general, the King of unofficial product demo’s, the guvnor of f’ing great programming – WC Olo Garb, aka Jexus, aka, some other unknown names.
This man reviews synths like no other and I managed to track him down for an exclusive nerd-on-nerd interview…
