BITWIG COMING TO NAMM 2014

Some excellent news from German developers Bitwig in my mail box, who say that they are nearing the end of their Beta testing phase for their software and will be making a big announcement at NAMM 2014 coming up next month. Take a look at the email I received just before Christmas this year for more information.

Touted as a mix of Ableton and Logic with lots of their own ideas and features thrown in, Bitwig has always been an ambitious DAW project and several years later, it's exciting to hear that 1.0 is finally coming.

It's okay guys: I don't mind waiting until January for NAMM and you can bet I'm going to be looking out for all the news and pricing.

http://www.bitwig.com

4 new Android music apps

It's been a while since I last took a look at some of the apps available for music making on the Android platform, so I thought it would be a good idea to take a look at what's new on the play store. One thing that has struck me was that a lot of the older apps have been updated and benefited from user feedback and there is a great deal more on offer. MIDI over USB has also started to creep in and I am sure that this will help legitimise the platform for music making. As before, i have only limited myself to free titles with URLs in an effort to see what's available.

Wunjo Keys Synth Shop

Fun fact: retail is not doing so well at the moment. You only need to take a look at the average high street to see the FOR LET signs, while the demise of brands like Borders and Woolworths are proof that event the bigger fish aren't immune to the whims of the economy. The same is true of music hardware shops, those very unique places that actually allow you to try out products before you buy them or god forbid ask a technical question and get some solutions you can take home instantly.

In writing this, I'm reminded of the demise of Turnkey on the Charing Cross road; a huge shop packed with different bits of gear that catered for professional and amateur guitarist, keyboard player, drummer or DJ. Sadly that place bit the bullet some time ago, their website only a grim reminder of what used to be a fantastic place to look around.

Volca Bass Review

Finally got one!!

After waiting since September for my Volca Bass to arrive from Wunjo, with unknown transport delays from Korg cited as the reasons why, I have finally got my hands on a unit after finding one on Gumtree. Found it on Sunday, picked it up on Monday and hooked it up to the rest of the gear.

Appearance-wise, the Volca Bass is similar in layout and keyboard size to the Volca Beats, featuring just one line of faux-keys. Bright red LEDs adorn the buttons and sequencer, while there are plenty of lovely flashing red filter pots that react as the synth is played, so there is plenty of visual feedback to enjoy. These also serve a useful purpose, as the three oscillator detune knobs indicate which oscillators are playing.

Of course, the silver finish on the knobs and panels is an over the top nod to the venerable TB-303 and putting all three Volcas together shows up the bass clearly from the group. I have found the Electribe style knobs quite fun and smooth to use despite feeling a little cheap, probably the cheapest feel of all three of them, though this is to be expected with the price of the unit.

I have to say that Korg have really outdone themselves with the Bass and there are a ton of neat features worth looking at.

Mopho SE promo video released

Veteran synthesiser guru Dave Smith of Dave Smith Instruments has just posted a lovely two minute expose on his company's new Mopho SE machine. From the looks of it, it seems to have been improved with a more subdued coat of paint to match their Mopho X4 and Prophet 14 machines rather than the yellow zebra effect of before and I would say it really works well. While I wouldn't buy a synth on appearance alone, it's a step in the right direction!

Additionally the SE is improved by including a larger sized keyboard, which is always welcome if you aim for live play, improved knobs and it sounds very much like the original Mopho. This video isn't really a great demonstration of exactly what the Mopho SE does but no doubt this comes with a few new tricks under the hood, but it's always nice to see Dave presenting something new.

I love the little poke at Arturia in particular: "nowadays even software companies are making analogue mono synths" and pointing out that the Mopho build quality is superior to "low cost products that are built overseas". For me, the US is technically overseas, but I understand his point: DSI are probably feeling the squeeze as low-cost options start to eat up their market share, which can only be a good thing. I'm sure if I came across a cheap DSI Mopho box I would snap one up!

Ebay madness

An interesting situation has just occurred that brings into question the idea of rarity. One of my dad's Ebay auctions has just ended, with a seemingly ordinary vinyl album by a British 70s Folk band reaching a final price of £1,377.99. God knows how he's going to get it shipped safely to the stupid lucky winner.

Of course, a fool is someone who doesn't understand the difference between price and value. As someone with a large CD collection I can understand the affection people have with physical records, but paying such a large amount of money for an out of date piece of media is quite unbelievable. This not even considering the huge debate of analogue vs digital media in terms of quality...

What do you think?

Saturday Soundtracks: Chaos Engine

Another Bitmap Shooter gets added to my list of video game gems, this time the seminal classic Chaos Engine. 

1,000th number one album

According to a recent report in the BBC, Lady Gaga's new offering has been given the accolade of the 999th number one album in the UK after her third release. This paves the way for the one thousandth number one album and a massive number of releases. It's also gratifying to see that the Beatles are right up the top with 174 weeks at the top of the album charts since records began.

I'd like to focus not on the act of reaching 999 number one albums or perhaps even 1,000, but the fact that there has been enough variation and interest in the popular music world to get to 1,000 entries. In particular, I'm definitely a fan of Boney M's Nightflight To Venus, which was highlighted in the article as the 200th UK number on album as it features on a number of mix tapes I picked up in the 90s. As for the others, it's a mixed bag but I don't think any of them ever set out to claim a certain place in pop history but to get sold and make money!

Source:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-24989044

Saturday Soundtracks: Mortal Kombat Theme

It's unthinkable that I would have forgotten to mention this came at all in my video game music memories, with the opening title theme and music setting the scene for the excellent Mega Drive console port of the arcade beat 'em up classic. 

RIP: Winamp

Ars Technica is running a lovely story on the rise and subsequent fall of Winamp in the wake of news that AOL (who own Nullsoft) are pulling the plug past 20th December this year. This is truly a sad day given the rich history that Winamp has had and that it is on its last legs.

Hand in hand with Gnutella and other peer to peer sites around the turn of the millennium, Winamp was one of the more widespread .mp3 players that most in the fledgeling music downloading scene would use. East to use, skin-able, built in codecs for loads of audio and video formats, great plugin support, Shoutcast Internet radio, sweet visualisers (Geiss was my favourite), media library functions and more, Winamp was very much a media Swiss army knife for the masses while its competition floundered. Real Player was only truly good for its own streaming formats and DivX had plugins for Winamp that rendered its own program useless. Let's not even mention Windows Media Player, with its clunky interface, dreadful codec support and media licencing setup for anything you played on it.

For me, the one thing that killed Winamp was iTunes. Suddenly, the iPod was everywhere and needed iTunes to run, so people migrated over to it. Sure, you can get third-party support for iPods on Winamp, but people want something that just works without messing around. Nullsoft's purchase by AOL and subsequent firing of its founder Justin Frankel (founder of the Reaper DAW) probably didn't help, but then again, I don't think AOL really knew what they were doing with Winamp either. 

Nowadays, VideoLan Client (VLC) has taken over the role of Winamp, with an emphasis on functionality and compatibility rather than interface tweaks. Foobar2K also deserves a mention if you are looking for a simple and elegant .mp3 player for low-power netbooks. Ultimately I haven't been back to Winamp in years but it still holds a place in my heart as my first .mp3 player in the early days of file sharing.

RIP Winamp

Arstechnica story:
http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/06/winamp-how-greatest-mp3-player-undid-itself/

Saturday Soundtracks: TMNT Tournament Fighters

Part of the problem with doing posts reminiscing about video game music, is that eventually you have trouble remembering all the games and their music that you enjoyed back in the day after doing the really obvious stuff.

Little Bits vs Korg: Part 2

Now that the initial hubbub surrounding the announcement of the Korg Little Bits Synth kit has died down a bit, Little Bits' website has finally recovered from the surge in popularity and managed to post a whole new page dedicated their new kit.

Quick disclaimer to Little Bits: I'm using all your images and linking to your site as they are fantastic.

Source:
http://littlebits.cc/kits/synth-kit

Microbrute Impressions

So having has a chance to get over all the hype and the slightly cheeky party crashing of the announcement, Arturia's new analogue synth the Microbrute is finally upon us. Now after the dust has settled, it's worth taking a quick look at the new bit of kit.

Little Bits vs Korg

Not content to sit on their laurels, no-nonsense synth makers Korg have once again hit on a cheap music making idea by partnering with US toy makers Little Bits for a bespoke kit of synth modules that can interface with each other...by magnets!

According to Synthtopia, the kit will come with enough pieces for a decent Monosynth, packing parts like an envelope generator, oscillator, mini keyboard and MS-20 filter to build with. I'm sure the intention is to build using more than one kit and make a phat little synth monster!

RIP Lou Reed - 71

According to a Rolling Stone article, Velvet Underground front man Lou Reed has died with the cause of death unknown/unreleased as yet. A pioneer in the New York art scene, his work with Velvet Underground and plentiful solo work earned him recognition and fame - his album Transformer being the most accessible and popular.

Saturday Soundtrack: International Karate

A very well produced title back in the days of 1985/86 when the home video game revolution was in full swing and martial arts were experiencing another boom in popularity. From the opening titles and credits, you can tell that a lot of work has been put in to the animation, thought sadly the beat em up game play is still a basic, albeit button-mashingly joyful affair. Music occasionally stutters and its various parts get out of sync with each other to resync later on, but I think this is quite charming of a game that is nearly 30 years old. 

Fists as big as your hand!

Et tu, Microbrute?

It all starred innocently enough; an Arturia newsletter came in around the Sunday night with a link to some kind of teaser page hosted at their site. It wasn't until I had a look at some of the comments, most notably from Portishead's Adrian Udley, that I realised that these quotes were in relation to a new hardware synth to follow up on the Minibrute.

Volca Keys Review

As all signs from Korg seem to be pessimistic, it looks like the Volca Bass synthesiser won't be available to pick up and purchase until around mid to late October. One school of thought says that customer demand is the reason, while others report that a lost container of units aboard a shipping vessel are to blame. 

Either way, to salve my need to get twiddling, I found that despite the hype around the Volcas, plenty of shops in and around London's Denmark street had single units of the Volca Keys in stock. As I had recently received a tenancy deposit back, I was allowed to by the powers that be to buy one to hook up to my existing Volca Beats and get fiddling.

Updates

I haven't been keeping this blog as up to date as I should for a variety of annoying, real-life reasons. Sufficed to say I do have some things to talk about and will be trying to add these on the blog shortly and get updated.

Things to come include a thorough review of my Volca Keys, the return of the Saturday Soundtrack video games nostalgia-fest, new synth hardware and hopefully even some new music as well.

Korg Volca Keys Unboxing