Category — Production Software

If you use Reason 4 for your music production, then head over to the Propellerhead website as you can download a free ReFill that was especially made to honor the legacy of Robert Moog. The ReFill giveaway was an idea proposed by Propellerhead in an effort to assist the Bob Moog Foundation, in addition to Propellerhead donating money themselves.

There are 20 patches in total, all of which were created by three leading synthesists who were asked to create a series of Thor patches inspired by Moogs innovations.

Free Moog Foundation ReFill Download

Propellerhead + Moog Foundation

Looks like portable music production will soon get a bit more portable. Digimix is a new audio mixing application from Hobnox that runs completely within your web-browser! While it is still in development, once finished it should be a great resource for traveling producers and remixers.

Try the demo version out here.

via Synthtopia

San Francisco native and hip hop legend DJ Shadow has teamed up with Nokia to launch the “What does your city sound like” experiment; a competition which asks entrants to capture the “sounds that define [their] city; a moving train, a taxi driver” etc. Winners will be picked by Dj Shadow himself, and prizes include limited edition Nokia Recording Kits, and DJ Shadow cellular wallpaper packs. Shadow started it off with his track simply titled “San Francisco”, give it a listen below.

As a side hobby I have dabbled quite a bit in producing remixes as well as original tracks. While it is certainly nothing new for dj’s to begin producing their own music, it has become quite the trend over the last several years. I believe this is mostly on account of the whole process having been made much easier and cheaper with programs like Reason or Logic, which allow virtually anyone with a laptop to make music. To make something that actually sounded good however you still needed a hint of music knowledge. But today is another day, and now with the Kaossilator made by Korg making sweet sweet music has never been easier. All you have to do is pick one of the 100 synth, effect, or drum sounds, and slide your finger over the touch-pad which has a scale function that will give you perfect sounding music “phrases” every time. Check out the video to see what I mean.

I used to work at a recording studio in Boston some years back, and I remember struggling to contain my laughter behind the mixing board as enthusiastic singers would come in acting like the next Whitney, and proceed to lay down the most atrocious, ear-splintering vocals. While most of them were beyond saving, some actually wound up with some decent sounding tracks thanks to the wonders of Auto-Tune, a piece of software (used by many prominent artists) that corrects off-pitch vocal recordings. The software was heavily scrutinized for assisting no-talent artists make good songs, but one could often tell if a singer used it since it would often leave a vocoder style effect on the vocals (ex. listen to any song by T-Pain).

Well fortunately for rock-star wannabe’s around the world, the technology has evolved even further into something truly amazing. Celemonys’ Direct Note Access took the idea behind auto-tune and built upon it to not only allow for non-destructive vocal editing (changing the pitch or timing of a vocal recording without a difference in audio quality), but to extend the function to recordings of instruments as well. So what does that ultimately mean? Watch the video below and be amazed.