Well, I’ve been busted… I received an E-mail from Eric Persing at Spectrasonics asking me to remove the Archer24Public.RPS file from the web because using a ReCycle’d drum loop from the Retro Funk sample Library is a violation of their licensing policy. I mentioned this might occur in the last newsletter, and it took all of two days to get around. So…if you have the file, please don’t distribute it.

I guess this brings up that age old issue of public distribution of RPS files. If you use samples from a sample library, it’s probably best that you don’t include them as raw files or even ReCycle files. It’s true that you cannot actually extract a sample from a RPS, however, I think it’s fairly obvious that you can solo out the Dr:REX machine and render the output to audio. This feature of RPS files does bother me to a certain extent, but that’s just the way it is.

I will post up a new version of the RPS file sans © loops in the near future.

I was up in SF today, and dropped in to visit the Drum Machine Museum. This loft studio space in the middle of San Francisco is loaded with wide variety of analog devices as well as collectable beat boxes. Mickey T. was kind enough to allow me and my friend in to check out his extensive collection of vintage rhythm boxes and also let me audition the Metasonix line of Vacuum Tube Synthesizers and Processors. Man that sh%t is PHAT - Really PHAT! Unfortunately, i forgot to bring my Camera with me, but sometime in the future, I’ll remember to bring it along and snap a few images of this cool space.

I also had the opportunity to check out the Technosaurus products…These little units are quite impressive. The Microcon II, Effexor, and Cyclodon are versatile little units build into solid boxes. Kinda like a pocket modular system (Dan B.–you will be pleased with your acquisition

Anyhoo, I couldn’t leave without making an aquisition…hehe Oh yeah, i almost forgot. The Drum Machine Museum is a friend of the Propellerhead community and fellow Reason User. They May be making ReFills containing REX loops and one-shot samples from the various Rhythm Machines

Guest Access to Computer Controlled HL Server has been disabled because of a constant barrage of Spam attacks. To login to the server, connect, as usual, to: hotline.computercontrolled.com and use the login: ccguest

For those people with accounts already established on the server, there will be no interruption of access. The FTP access will remain the same. Sorry about the incovenience to anyone.

Techno Box, was my first serious experience with Adobe Photoshop and with computer graphics. I’ve learned quite a few things since that project. This page will feature a notes about techniques I’ve picked up in the past few years.

Working in High Resolution

One way to get finer details in your rebirth mod is to work with graphics at a Higher resolution. After you’ve finished the graphics, then reduce them.

A recommended method in Adobe Photoshop is to open the standard component image then change the “Image Size” Resolution settings from 72 pixels/inch to 720 pixels/inch using the “Nearest Neighbor” setting. This will expand the image so that one pixel is now 10×10 pixels.

Now create your new graphics then save the file as a .PSD keeping your layers intact. “Flatten” the image, then change the “Image Size” back to 72 pixels/inch and save the image as a JPG in your new Mods Component folder.

This works well for getting some fine details in those button and indicator actions as well as creating detailed knobs. Also, this allows you to add text labels clearly without the anti-aliasing over blurring small font sizes.

Luminosity

One Thing I’ve recently had success with is defining a range of working luminosity. Rather than using 100% Black or 100% white, limit the range of brightness from 10% to 90% white. This allows an extra margin of brightness for shadowing and glowing effects. This adds a lot of depth to the Interface Graphics.

Non Standard Image Sizes

One little trick i’ve stubled on was that Graphics do not have to be exactly the same size as the standard components. You can Over Size and Under Size the images. This is a clever trick for making those knobs with numeric displays as well as oversized buttons and indicator lamps/switches. You can increase the size on just about everything to generate some cool effects.

The images are anchored by the top left corner (0,0) so if you increase the size they will overlap to the right and bottom of the image.

For example, If you increase the width of the image 12057.jpg (Top Transport Bar) it will overlap the right side panel - so you can create a continous looking solid piece along the top of the entire window.

Silence at the Start of a Sample

This little trick can alter the feel of the pattern playback. By adding a few ms of silence at the beginning of the kicks will give them a slight delay. This will make the snares feel slightly rushed. You can use this trick on any sample to alter the timing.

TXT:: I’m just testing out something here. Showing my friend Jason how to use an FTP.

MP3:: The first Visions Remix is in from Zapruder Red. He did a fantastic job tweaking out the samples in to a cool Trip-Hop groove. You can take a listen to the track on the Visions Remix Page.

TXT:: I’ve been engrossed in this new track that i’ve been creating in PT5.0 - Having MIDI incorporated into PT is fantastic - It doesn’t quite have the features of Cubase or Logic, but the MIDI sequencer follows the traditional “Simple and Easy to Use” Digidesign philosophy. I had to tweak out the MIDI latency compensation a bit. On my slow system, I set a large buffer size, but I’m able to get more than 8 tracks of simultaneous audio playing through with RTAS plugs working as well. The latency is horrible for realtime recording, but for arrangement and editing, it’s bearable.

MP3:: I set up an MP3.com radio station which plays selections from the various projects I’ve worked on over the past decade. Check out Peff - The Definitive Playlist . It’s strange to look at this list of songs because they vary from one end of the musical spectrum to the other. I’m starting to think that my musical diversity is really odd.

I did the old ‘Car Stereo Test’ on some of the new tracks I’ve put out there, and damn i need to roll off some bass. Actually I mastered some of the tracks and reuploaded them to my sites. On that note, I’m sending in my monitors for a check and scheduling a hearing test soon.

TXT:: Pretty boring week here. I backed up 16 gigs of data, and made redundant copies of vital stuff. I really need to upgrade to a faster CD-R. This old 2x might not last much longer. I made 4 coasters during this last back up session.

Jackplug wanted a bio/link page to go on the RedStripe Promo CD. His project is coming together. Perhaps I just might make it over to London in May for the Red Stripe Party…eh…who knows…

I sent Analoguesamples.com a copy of those Distorted TR-909 Bass Drums

I spoke with an old friend, Skot, from Superfuzz. We did some work together years ago, and he filled me in on the never ending saga of their battle with Warner Japan. We might do some work in the future - possible

TXT:: Fooling around some more with that other mod I’m working on, and I came across a cool new trick on ReBirth. After playing with a real TB-303, I’m using this technique in ReBirth to emulate the sound a little bit better. Read all about it here: Techtips #12 (this tip appeared later in Keyboard Magazine)

RBM:: I finally got around to sampling the TR-909 running through the Sherman Filterbank distortion - The BD is sweet baby! Supah Phat and Supah Nasty! I also grabbed some TR-606 samples from Analogue Samples, Loaded them into the MPC and processed them through the Sherman Filter Distortion. After trimming things down and shaving off all the noisy tails, the results are looking quite promising. Now to plan out a GUI

TXT:: Messed around with Pro Tools 5.0 and MIDI for a bit today. It’s pretty cool having that capability, but i’m still trying to familiarize myself with all the new nifty features.

Thanks to Jackplug who helped me out with the stupid title bar on this page. Why didn’t any of IE users (win users) tell me that it was messed up in the browser! oh well. Better late than never i guess.

RBM:: There’s a small update to the Visions samples mod I added some of the pads into the unused sample slots. The mod has the same internal name so you should trash the old one before installing the new Visions_Drums.rbm. Download it from: Vision ReMix Sample Page

Whoa…yeah a ReBirth Mod! I almost forgot how much fun these things are There is a ReBirth Mod version of the Visions ReMix samples. The mod has NO GUI so you will have to use the Standard Interface to program it. It is also available on the Vision ReMix Sample Page

MP3:: As I mention below, I’m opening up the samples from Visions for remix. I have uploaded the 16bit 44.1KHz .WAV format files in ZIP archives. For you people on smokin fat pipes, there is a single 20meg Stuffit Archive. Everyone is welcome to download the files, but if you use them for a release, please contact me so that I can explain how to word the licensing. This is Especially important if you intend to upload the songs to MP3.com or other copyright conscious sites, or if you intend to release the mix on a label.

My latest track Paradigm Shift is a featured track on MP3.com’s intelligent Techno genre–Hey!

My friend Karen Bentley, an amazing violinist, recently sent me a CD to encode and upload to MP3.com. The latest recordings are from a series of live performances with a percussionist, Ian Dogole. Check out their tracks here. You can hear Karen on several other projects on MP3.com as well. She performs on the track Succubus on my page as well as the entire Succubus series and Konzerto by Stuart Diamond - a project I co-produced and engineered. Other Pages include: Electric Diamond, Ariel View, and Tesseract. Members of Tesseract are Researchers at Stanford University–the guys who developed FM synthesis and Virtual Modeling Synthesis technology for the famous Yamaha DX and VL series of synthesizers.

I also had the opportunity to record her playing the Hrimaly Stradivarius Violin — this was amazing. I’ll upload an MP3 clip of this session sometime later. Actually, I made a little ReBirth Mod with some of these sample, but it’s really bizarre so I’ve never made it public. Needless to say, Karen keeps me pretty busy with stuff

TXT:: I installed Pro Tools 5.0 LE upgrade last night (it’s been sitting in the box since January). It seems pretty nice but it’s really not compatable with the old Audiomedia III card. Maybe I’m missing something, but PT5.0 doesn’t have the “Voice” enable features that PT 4.3.1 has. Importing PT4 documents into PT5 automatically assigns the voice settings and I can’t seem to change them. Oh well. I’ll go bug the guys on the digidesign message board to get the skinny. It almost seems like they are forcing me to upgrade to a Pro Mix or at least a Digi 001. some of the demo RTAS plug ins cause my system to crash, but removing them from the Plug-ins folder fixes that problem. It will be interesting to have the MIDI sequencer in Pro Tools.

To W. Merkle: What’s different in today’s posting? Click on it and find out

=Peff

14 March 2000

TXT:: PC to Mac Conversion project is done! The second Powerprint USB adapter and PrinterSwitch work like a charm. So the office automation set up is working without a hitch. A click of a button in Filemaker Pro automatically selects the appropriate printer and prints out the documents. Technology is a wonderful thing The scanner also arrived today, and everything is running through a cheapo USB hub. I did some experiments scanning the TB-303 manual. There’s some cool stuff in there that people might be interested in seeing. I’ll post up some images soon.

Apparently Wolfgang Merkle, jesuspark’s bro, has a clue!

MP3:: I’ve finished up a new Cardioid Track! Paradigm Shift is now available for a listen on MP3.com. It’s a lengthy piece with lots of crazy sounds and drums. I started this track back in December before the Reason Project came up. I put it on the side to create the track Archer for the NAMM show.

Many of the noise samples are TB-303 sequences driving a Buchla through control voltage/gate modulation. Everything was recorded and arranged in Pro Tools. Other instruments used are a Korg Prophecy, Korg O1R/W, Studio Electronics ATC-1, Cheetah MS-6, Akai MPC-3000 & S3000XL. Effects include the Lex300 (now repaired see my pics) PCM-70, moogerfooger ring modulator and phaser, sherman filterbank, etc. I actually played the bassline by hand and looped it in Pro Tools — it’s not sequenced. There’s something about doing things “live” which gives a nice feel. Okay, so the rest of it is highly sequenced. I’ve been picking up some cool arrangement tricks to get those warp/nothing type of sounds