Music • Sound • Video • Art

Once more unto the breech....Another year cometh!

So 2009 is upon us and I was thinking about the whole ‘resolutions’ thing. Here are some of the music-related ones I’m considering…

1) No new synthesizer plug-ins between January and June 2009. That’s a big one for me because sound generation technology a) fascinates me and b) is ever evolving. But I am spoiled for choice and truly conversant in too few of the plug-ins I own. That’s got to change and the way to do that is to focus on what I have and to use it more. To do that, I need to stop being distracted by shiny new synth baubles. (Fortunately Omnisphere and Alchemy were released already.)

There are TWO THREE exceptions I will make to this resolution:

• Updates/Upgrades.
• The new East West Quantum Leap PLAY-based Symphonic Choir.
• If I am hired for a job that requires a very specific type of sound and I do not have it in my arsenal then I will acquire it.*

2) I will complete the various tutorials and learning projects that I have started for the tools that I own. I will also work through at least one tutorial example from each of the various electronic music magazines to which I subscribe. There’s a wealth of information in those Brit mags every month.

3) I will recommit to my piano practice. My practice regimen this fall has been abysmal. This makes NO SENSE given a) my personal goals, and B) the quality of my teacher, and C) the amount of dosh I’m forking over for lessons. I either drop the lessons or really take them….and I’m not going to drop the lessons!

4) I will complete my music theory workbooks and begin a formal study of counterpoint in 2009.

The sonic painkiller...?

You just gotta love this end-of-year stuff. Image-Line is selling Morphine for $99 instead of $159 until the end of the year.

Morphine is an additive synthesis VI. It’s CPU and user friendly and has some really cool features like four morphable sound generator sources controllable via a built-int mix/morph envelope or external MIDI controller. It also has tools for re-synthesizing a sound.

Anyway, it sounds good – the pads and atmospheres in particular.

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• More on Morphine can be found here.
• For those interested in additive synthesis and re-synthesis, there are two other plug-ins on the market that take a similar approach: CamelAudio’s Cameleon 5000 and VirSyn’s CUBE.
• Also, CamelAudio will release Alchemy very soon. Alchemy features additive, spectral and granular synthesis and resynthesis, sampling, and a virtual analog engine with unison and PWM. (More on this when it’s released I promise.)