Vernon Barnes

There is a new instrument added to composer cloud. It's a FM synth. I have lost the notification for the moment. I will report back.

I am tempted by the Mimi Page library every time it goes on sale. Does any one have it, any comments?

Ah - it looks like you are correct, I was misreading it. In that case I will give it a go, I don't have an issue with that. Jam points were also accepted and its downloading now.

If you are looking for something reasonable and cheap try Sonovox Orchestral Companion You can get it here for £4 at the moment. Its not going to compete with the big boys toys for Kontakt but its useful and some of the instruments have key switching so you can change articulations without needing to load another instance.

BACK UP YOUR IK SOUNDS DOWNLOADS. If you are buying Syntronic or Sampletank or content make sure you back up the installation files for the sounds. Then backup the backup! I lost the sounds folder for my IK stuff in a disk failure. No problem with the Sampletank 3 content as I had the files backed up. But the Syntronic content backup backups I made are lost due to a mistake configuring Acronis. I don't own the full Syntronic, just 6 of the instruments, most of which I got free/cheap on various offers. If I want to reinstall its going to cost me 71.94 Euros to buy 6 download credits. (Less jam points) . As I seldom use Syntronic I am minded not to bother. 11.99 Euros to download the lot jampoints are accepted. Still important to backup though.

Me too. Quality stuff all round.

Thank. I will try that later.

I am trying to recover disc space on my system drive by moving files to another drive if possible. By far the biggest potential saving is 11.5 GB in "Program Data" associated with the Arturia V Collection. Arturia Software Centre lets one select the location of the VST DLLs but I can't see any options for this additional conten. I have also looked in the settings for various instruments and cannot see any option to chance the location. Has anyone got this content in a different location?

Worth noting that SSG is also available in SFZ format.

That one is good but have you checked out ST Tonewheel. Its filthy, distorted and absolutely magnificent. Blue Grand is a stand out at this price, not your go-to grand but full of a certain character. There are only a couple of things here I don't already have, I might get the BOB brass and Singularis

There is an update for Digital Synsations. It needs to download the whole library and the download seems pretty slow. Also beware that after the portal was updated it changed back to the default location for banks. I was not paying enough attention and was alerted by a "not enough disc space" message. I went into settings and pointed it at my sample drive and it seems to be downloading OK.

Last nigh I attended a concert in a small local venue by Evi Vine. When the support act Soot Sprite were playing a group of 40 something men were talking loudly and generally being obnoxious. A lady close by asked them to be quiet as she was trying to listen to the music. The response to this was shouting at each other to shut up. Then one started inappropriate Pogo dancing. Management had a word with them and they left before the main act. They were clearly not there to listen to the type of music on offer and one wonders why they paid £10 each to get in. I felt sorry for the support act who had to endure such disrespectful behavior. Evi Vine was tremendous, what an incredible voice. Guitarist Steven Hill wove some incredible soundscapes through a very extensive peddle board. Apart from five tossers it was an excellent night.

I am wondering if Bitflipper's review will persuade me buy the IK B3-X. I am afraid to read it.

My position. And I also have a raft of Melotron libraries for Kontakt and don't think the Casio tips the balance. I played around with the VCS3 an while its rather nice I think the XILS labs has it beat on versatility, particularly with version 4 in double configuration. It does not look like the Arturia version, can be used as an effect which is shortsighted as it would excel in this role. I probably use XILS 4 in the effects bin as much as I use it as an instrument. I have a soft spot for this synths as my introduction to synthesizers was on a EMS Synthi A the suitcase version of the VCS3. These virtual emulations add something the original never had - stable tuning. The Volt/ hertz oscillators rather than the normal volt/octave added some weirdness too. I wonder what they will add in version 8.

It wouldn't auto-update again this time. I thought they may have fixed that as the last few updates it worked perfectly. Given that there seem to be a few issues I may hold off on the manual update.

I had forgot you can convert your tokens into virtual cash when I bought Nectar 3, this time i remembered and picked this up for £25.99. It will be interesting to see what sort of upgrade path is available to Ozone 9 but 8 should do me for now,

More listening ahead of a gig at the weekend. This one is relatively local in Totnes in a small club.

I did not see the coupon in my account, not a big deal. I got as far as checking out three packs and the website crashed while entering my payment details. Seems its still down. I am not sure if the payment went through or not. I will check later. EDIT - Back up again now. The purchase did not go through first time. It went faultlessly on the second attempt.

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.