Vernon Barnes

My brother interviewed her for his Internet radio show. He said she was really down to earth. Off air she said it was one of the few interviews where she was asked about her music and not her Father.

Nick Beggs was Kagagoogoo. He is one of the best bass players around today.

Here is a video of Magenta form last years event at Acapela which gives an idea of the venue and the jazzier side of the concert.

Last weekend it was off to South Wales. Friday night in the Riverfront Newport for Big Big Train. The support act Sweet Billy Pilgrim kicked off and they were excellent. BBT did not disappoint starting with "Alive" from the latest album "The Grand Tour" and finishing with the inevitable encore "East Coast Racer." Nick de Virgiio came out from behind his drum kit to join Dave Longdon on vocals for "The Florentine" and Rachel Hall left the violin aside for an impressive vocal part in "Hedge Row". It was a superb concert. As always the brass section really add to the music and have their own moment with Nick De Virgilo on "Drum 'n' Brass". After the show the band were in the lobby mingling with the audience, signing merchandise and posing for photos. Yes and Asia Keyboard player Geoff Downes was there talking to some of the band as were the less immediately recognizable Rob Reed, Chris Fry and Christina Booth of Magenta, who were on my agenda for Saturday. The weather on Saturday was appaling and the line for BBT's "The Florentine" came to mind. "High winds, hard rain, a deluge comes in monstrous diluvian waves." I headed down the M4 to Cardiff with 40 MPH speed limits on the motorway due to the weather. Acapela Studio is a lovely venue in a village just outside Cardiff, its a converted chapel and apart from hosting great music it serves really good pizza. If you book a table and eat you keep it for the show. I was very close to the front, about ten feet from Chris Fry and had a superb view ho his impressive guitar technique. This autumn semi acoustic show at Acapela has become a regular event. We are treated to mixture of songs for their solo albums, some covers and (mostly)acoustic versions of Magenta songs. The band were supplemented by cello, clarinet and flute and the players were very accomplished. I heard the clarenet player was a local music teacher. Christina has a wonderful voice fitting both the jazzier and the rock arrangements and was genuinely funny in banter with the band and audience. Rod Reed had use of the venues grand piano and made full use of it. I real grand makes a big difference. Two concerts, both quite different and both very enjoyable.

Exactly. They can be great examples or starting points Another thing is it can take far longer to trawl through presets to find a suitable sound than create one from scratch once you know the synth. Presets can provide a lot of inspiration though.

The Nori ones are excellent. Possibly the only downside being they are so close to the sounds they are emulating some may find them too recognisable but in the end it's how you use them.

Think they are nice effects on synths. So far I have only tested them on synth but they can add some intresting things to mono synths in particular. I have not tried them on vocals so I can't comment.

Good luck Ed. You could use the deluge we have been getting here in SW England this week. I wonder if i can send some by Dropbox??

And a bit of nostalgia - The original Karnataka The motherload that split and became Panic Room, The Reasoning, Luna Rossa and of course subsequent incarnations of it's self.

"Revising" for next weekend's concerts. Big Big Train + Sweet Billy Pilgrim in Newport on Friday and Magenta in Cardiff on Saturday.

Got mine working. There were a string of errors initially as my eLicencer manager software was way out of date. I have been using the dongle for years for XILs labs and added Cubase last year but I don't think I ever updated the software. Once I did the update it was straightforward. One possible pitfall if you dont follow the instructions carefully is you have to download the Synchron player separately from the library. It sounds pretty good, huge in fact, its limited of course but its free!

I already had Eventide and iLok accounts and I have been through similar processes before so a reasonably straightforward activation and installation here, except I initially pasted the complete string (SN and Key)in the SN box on the Eventide site causing it to protest, but that's user error. I must say this plug looks a lot of fun at first glance. How this will translate into usefulness remains to be seen but I think it will be a keeper.

Not 8DIO this time but SOUNDIRON ! Its tempting for sure.

I was at a couple of comparatively local gigs this weekend. Friday evening it was Al Stewart in Exeter, backed by the excellent Chicago band The Empty Pockets who were worth the trip in their own right. Al was looking fitter and healthier than me and I am 10 years his junior. His voice is holding up well too. It was a thoroughly entertaining show and Al, unlike some does vary his anecdotes from tour to tour. There were a couple of new songs among the favourites. I enjoyed his cover of Dylan's "Love Minus Zero" for the final encore number. Saturday I ventured west to Tavistock fo see the Hayley Griffiths Band. It 3/5 of the old Karnataka line up with a new guitarist and bass player. It was probably 3/5 Karnataka material too, a little heavier than Karnataka played it live and less (not at all?) reliant on sampled backing vocals and orchestration to pad out the sound. There were a few new songs including the last two singles and a quieter section in the middle where she harked back to her time as the tour singer for Riverdance. The Irish traditional "I Know My Love" was preformed with such exuberance. Hayley dancing around the stage and the band playing solos between the verses and it has been my ear-worm today. She has certainly gained in confidence engaging with the audience since Karnataka, where I guess Ian Jones ruled the roost. Her voice and range is incredible particularly with a heavy rock backing. Its very un-PC to as but she very easy on the eye too. Next weekend its a wedding, but the weekend after I am off to Wales to see Big Big Train in Newport and Magenta in Cardiff. Is shaping up to be an excellent autumn.

I love Euphoniums - Blame Big Big Train and John Storey making it a Prog instrument. So this is interesting me Intro price is $68, I can't see the final price anywhere.

I have updated successfully by Installation centre does not show any updates to the individual instruments alluded to above.

Likewise. A couple of forum members will have heard one of my guide vocals and will never be the same again. 😉 I have to find both Male and Female lead vocals for my current project. Finding the right voice is hard.

I thought some of the more recent soundbanks, particularly the ones for Pigments were getting more expensive. I will probably pick up a couple at this price.

I have finally been using Relivox - The Ladies for Kontakt https://realitone.com/products/realivoxladies I bought it in a fire sale a while back thinking it may be useful for vocal atmospheres on instrumental tracks or simple backing vocals. I have yet to use it for either but It could fill those functions. You get six different singers and it possible to chain syllables together and attach the chain to a key switch. Don't think this will give you intelligible words but la la's and doo bee doo's sound quite effective. I am writing a song that will require a female lead vocal. I have not yet found a vocalist so I have been using The Ladies to mock up a guide melody. I found it very useful, I initially tried a piano and synth voice but using The Ladies has been quite revealing, it has enabled me to refine the melody and working on the backing instrumentation against something with the correct tone. Now all I have to do is find a real lady singer. I may well end up using an on-line session singer which will probably cost more than the software.

Looks like there is no separate installer or license file. Installing MTurbo delay 13.06 with the appropriate license present makes both MTurboDelay and MTurboDelayMB available in your VSTs. The most complex of delays just got more complex. Nice though!

I think I must have 1.1 for the Ostinato instruments already. I considered downloading the instrument files and comparing them but the downloads had expired. I would have to dig out the PO numbers and apply for new downloads, so i will just wait until the project manager tells me i have an update. On the plus side the installation of the NKS versions went smoothly. I moved the original folders to a temp location, downloaded the new ones and placed the folders in the original location, registered the serials in Native Access and "installed" the updates in Native Access. The instruments now appear in the Kontakt libraries tab and in Komplete Kontrol along with their browser preview sounds.

Thanks, I am not seeing that in my product manager, it just says version 1.1, then the NI serial number and an info button that takes you to the product web-page. I an packing up for the evening so will check again tomorrow.

How do you see what version you already have? I notices that the other Ostinato instruments are also on 1.1 And, a big one for me I see a several other instruments have NKS versions and NI serial numbers that I I was unaware of, this includes Alphorn, Gediz and Toccata so its worth checking if you use NKS. If you don't I do not know if there are any other updates involved in the new versions

Latest for Karnataka's main man Ian Jones. Features the "Gathering Light" era vocalist Lisa Fury among others. https://chasingthemonsoon.com/?v=79cba1185463 I bought the WAV and MP3 versions. Looks like he is doing everything "in house" and there were a couple of download glitches which Ian sorted out quickly.

I saw this band recently and very good they were too.