bitflipper

It was a great gig. Hoppin' joint in a beautiful location, and close to home. We've already been asked back and hope it becomes a regular stop on our circuit. But jeez, I have never been so beat at the end of a gig. Played from 8:00 until 1:00. The last set was purely muscle memory because my frontal cortex had checked out around midnight. I've always assumed that a day would come when I'd have to admit that I'm too old for this. But dammit, I refuse to accept that day might have been yesterday.

That Space Echo is tempting. I haven't used the actual hardware since c. 1980, so my recollection may be more nostalgic than objective, but I loved that thing back in the day.

But when was the last time you used it?

The NS3 is actually four synths in one box. One's dedicated to organ, another to piano, another to synths and one plays samples. As a sample player it's not deep, nothing close to what you'd expect after being a Kontakt user. My Korg Kronos is a better sampler. Plus it's a true sampler, in that you can record directly into it. It's actually a sequencer that can record 16 channels of audio and 16 channels of MIDI, but I don't use that feature. It has a drum machine, too. But I don't use that onstage, either. The Nord's Hammond emulation is pretty good but the Leslie sim sucks. Consequently, I physically play organ on the NS3 but the actual sound is coming out of my Kronos. That way I get the benefit of a light-touch organ-feeling keyboard and physical drawbars, but with better tone and a better Leslie simulation. I've used it with a Ventilator, but that's extra gear and it takes me an hour to set up as it is, so the Vent stays home. The big benefit of the NS3 is that it's ergonomically laid out for real-time tweaking. I can, for example, add delay, reverb, distortion, chorus, etc. to any of the modules on the fly. The Korg, otoh, must be tediously programmed via gobs of deep menus and subsystems, so I don't fiddle with it at a gig. But tbh, the main reason I bought the Nord is that it weighs only 22 lbs, compared to the Kronos at 82 lbs in the flight case. I need help lifting the Kronos onto the stand, whereas the NS3 I can sling over my shoulder when I go to jam sessions.

You're making a damn good case for this tool, Mark. You've got me thinking about building an instrument from Omnisphere that I can load into one of my stage synths. Funny how these conversations can go down a rabbit hole quick. I know nothing about sample formats for the Korg Kronos or the Nord Stage, so now I'm thinking I've gotta learn those things too.

I still use TTS-1 regularly and have never had an issue with it. For me, its main limitation is the four audio outputs, which limits audio processing possibilities if you're using more than four voices. However, this is rarely a practical concern because, like the OP, I mainly use the instrument as a placeholder during composition that will later be replaced by more sophisticated synths. Combining multiple voices into a single audio output isn't a problem while you're composing a song. It only becomes a limitation when you start mixing, and you will have already substituted other synths before starting the mix phase. The main advantage of using one instance of any multitimbral synth is CPU efficiency, which may be important to you if you play the synths in real time and thus need low latency. The main disadvantage is that you can't freeze tracks independently. But this won't be an issue until you start mixing and may need to freeze tracks after adding CPU-intensive synths and effects. My advice to the OP is to do whatever feels comfortable, since it doesn't really matter which method you choose.

I was a fan of Myst back in the day, and was disappointed when I found out it was strictly DOS-only and unplayable under Windows. It was a genre unto itself, and a god-level achievement given the technological limitations of the day. I'd buy this title!

It's actually ~120 bpm. That's something AudioSnap sometimes does, guessing a tempo that's double the actual tempo. I still think it's pretty damn impressive, given that in this example it's extracting beats from a full - and in this case very dense - mix. An MP3, at that. It'd be more accurate on a drum track.

I was fortunate enough to sample my favorite patch from my old Yamaha MO8 right before it was stolen. Jeez, I wish I'd had the foresight to get the electric piano and sax patches! But to emphasize Mark's comment, it is going to be more tedious than you think. Though not exactly rocket surgery, it is time-consuming. But also fun. Note that when I did it I had no tools such as SampleRobot to help. Just Kontakt. It has all you really need, but you will have to become familiar with velocity maps and group editing, things that casual Kontakt users never need to explore. The good news is that older synths like your Kurzweil , due to memory constraints, had far fewer velocity layers than most current commercial Kontakt libraries. That means fewer samples to import.

Maybe Melodyne makes this easier, but I still use the same method I've used since SONAR 6. 1. Select the audio track 2. Press ALT-A to bring up the AudioSnap dialog 3. Click the "On" (enable AudioSnap) button 4. Click on "Set Project from Clip" 5. If you don't care about the transient detection, click the "On" button again to hide them You now have a tempo map that follows the audio pretty well.

I've seen plenty of audio-related tutorials that gave me GAS, but this is the first one to ever make me hungry.

Bite your tongue! The sacred memory of Neil Peart will not be besmirched by even suggesting that a song might be nailed down at 4/4 120 bpm from start to finish! You start thinking that way and the next thing you know you're insulting your listeners with a four-on-the-floor 808 accompanied by a looped 1-bar arpeggio and referring to your compositions as "beatz". Yes, your memory is correct. The Tempo window used to be dockable, scalable and floatable. That changed in 2021, to generally favorable reactions among the user base, many of whom had been previously requesting the change. There is definitely a benefit to locking the tempo track visually to the track view timeline and treating it like a track (which it technically is), but imo it feels vertically cramped now, especially when you want to insert large tempo changes. These days I'll often just build large changes into the MIDI sequence itself, e.g. ignoring the grid for a ritardando ending.

Running a dependency check would be a great convenience, but afaik this installer does not do that. And yes, APE definitely predates Kontakt 7 by years. Either way, it's wrong because I do in fact have Kontakt 7 installed. I was able to get the update to complete by running Native Access as Administrator. However, NA is still insisting that there is an update for APE. Screw it, APE still works fine. I'm not going to bother trying to update it. But clearly, NA still has a way to go before it can be trusted.

I totally forgot that I'd tried v2 back when it was first made available, didn't like it and rolled back to v1. Like John, I was confused that there is no "check for updates" feature in v1. Well, now due to fomo I'm at v2/3 and it still fails to update some products, just like v1 did. For example, it tells me Apocalypse Percussion Micro needs an update, but the update fails because it thinks I don't have Kontakt 7 installed:

Just temporarily disable real-time protection during the update. It will turn itself back on later.

Now this is weird and feels like a bug. I went to the Spectrasonics site and it clearly shows I am out of date. It says the current versions of the executable, patch library and sound sources should be version 1.5. My instance of Keyscape reports the following but still insists I am up to date: I was able to update by bypassing the built-in updater and just downloading the install files directly from Spectrasonics.

iirc, the last time this happened - not being able to update - it was with Omnisphere. After several attempts, the update button just suddenly appeared the next day. I have to wonder if they aren't purposefully throttling downloads to avoid the expense of adding hosting capacity to accommodate a big rush of requests.

Spectrasonics has added a new piano to the Keyscape library, one with extra-thick felt on the hammers to give a muted, mellow tone. It's a free update for Keyscape users. To get it, start up Keyscape and click the "Get Update" button on the splash screen. [EDIT] I just tried it but it said I'm already up-to-date and did not display the update button. Didn't this happen the last time there was an update?

Clearly the Brits are not as litigious as us Yanks.

Amadeus has been my go-to since its release. It doesn't have all the articulations of the biggest orchestral libraries, but it's got the essentials. Here are the ones for all the string instruments (violin, viola, cello, bass). There are both ensemble and solo instruments for all the strings, brass and woodwinds. It's pretty complete for the casual composer, and even includes the lazy composer's favorite shortcut, symphony.nki.

Yeh, I read the entire license agreement (so you wouldn't have to). Sure, if you bounce the tracks it's now audio and beyond their reach. But they make it clear that they can pull the plug on you at their discretion. Not saying that would necessarily be a big issue, but it is an argument for buying libraries outright. Now, I'm not faulting them for protecting their partners' IP, which they are obligated to do. But if I just buy the product, protecting developers' intellectual property isn't even a concern. I think general resistance to subscriptions is pretty widespread. Remember when Cakewalk offered to let you buy SONAR in installments? Many users freaked out, mistakenly thinking it was a subscription model. Now we've got Waves going down the subscription path, and I believe they're going to regret it in the end. It's just one more way for Waves plugins to stop working, as if their fragile license scheme wasn't bad enough already.

Musio. I don't quite know what to think of it, but my kneejerk reaction is to not like it. It costs $150 per year, an introductory price that will become either $200 or $240, depending on which page you look at. What you're buying is a licensing scheme where you rent sample libraries on demand and get to use them for as long as your subscription is paid up. Granted, buying all those libraries (~40 at the moment) outright would cost more than the subscription. But most people neither need nor would use that many libraries (and I say this as a compulsive library collector). You'll still need the same disk space as if you were buying the products. The Musio software must always be running in the background, and your DAW must have an internet connection. Once installed, the instruments remain on your computer - but if you cancel your subscription they become unusable. Even though they promote "instant, endless inspiration" you'll still have to wait for the download and installation, which seems like an inspiration killer to me. Once you give them your credit card, your subscription will be automatically renewed unless you explicitly cancel it ("no refunds"). They can cancel you as a result of a DMCA takedown notice, which unfortunately is a common occurrence in YouTube land. I'm trying to come up with positives. Being able to preview libraries before buying, maybe? You could pay for a $20 monthly subscription and spend the month testing various libraries. Automatic updates, that's a positive. Not that big orchestral libraries get a lot of updates. Potentially saving money, that's another plus. For example, you want to create a big orchestral piece and use all those pricey Cinesamples libraries - you could do it for $20 if you work fast. If later you want to make edits, you could buy another month for another $20.

Weird indeed. Certainly not a pin-compatible replacement for the Sonitus Delay, but it has a wonderful quirkiness I really like on vocals and synth leads. Can new users still get the Blue Tubes stuff? I'm thinking no.

Full to spilling out the ears some days. I used to play piano for the residents at the facility where my dad lived in the months leading up to his death. They were a great audience. I haven't seen a roomful of people so into the music since the 60's when it was not unusual for an entire audience to be on LSD. Or to have such an appreciation for pudding.