bitflipper

It's basically a tremolo effect, but it can do weird and fun stuff to the signal, e.g. pitch-shifting, bitcrushing, down-sampling. Use the "Odd" and "Even" knobs to select the tempo unit for syncing. "Door" controls the depth; turn it fully clockwise for a stutter effect.

Oops. Thanks, Larry. Here's the cryptic UI, which the dev describes as "intentionally vague" to encourage serendipitous experimentation. Gotta love a plugin with a "Regret" knob.

Just downloaded this to test. It's free. 32- and 64-bit, VST2 and VST3.

This is a pretty good one. Actually multiple compressor models. Not subtle, though, nor is it a general all-around compressor. It's a brutal rock crusher.

That is pretty cool. I'm surprised Spitfire hasn't done this yet.

To be fair, Mr. Walsh looks like that all the time. It's not an act. I've seen photos of myself in the groove that were not particularly flattering. Head back, eyes closed and a big grin on my face. At least I don't look like someone just shot my dog.

You would be correct. There are several ways MIDI can dictate volume, e.g. CC7, CC11 and note velocity. Potentially, even something obscure like an accidental NRPN that means something different to the synth being used versus the synth originally being programmed, or a bank change. First, eliminate the obvious: compare the note velocities of the imported data to the default velocity when you hand-plant values via the PRV. You may find that the MIDI file's velocities are intentionally more dynamic, especially if you leave your handmade sequences at their default (e.g. 100) velocities. If the volume difference can't be explained by velocity, and you're certain there are no explicit CC7 or CC11 commands in the data, try inserting your own, either with an automation envelope or a hand-planted CC7 event via the Event List. One way to check for undiscovered CC7s is to set the volume slider in the track header to 127 and hit Play. If the slider moves, then there is something in the MIDI data that's overriding your setting.

I'm sure when she's older some established shredder will take her under his wing and teach her the proper constipation face.

All of my kids, grandkids and great-grandkids have been drawn to the piano. Not one of them bothered to learn how to play it, despite my offers to teach them. But as soon as they can climb up on the bench until around age 6 they love to bang on it. Even the cat joins in, to equivalent effect. My last hope is the youngest of the 19 grandchildren, who's in her third year of guitar at her high school. I bought her a decent guitar with the admonition that I expected a return on my investment. Not sure if making her watch videos like this provides inspiration or frustration:

Do you know what part of Ukraine they're in? Hopefully out west, but more likely in Kiev, which seems to be where the tech industry is centered. But it's gotta be hard to conduct business no matter where they are. Hope they did backups before rushing off to Poland or Romania. This is affecting innocent Russians, too. I am concerned for Voxengo. Alexsey is based in Russia, and many banking operations have been interrupted there. Saw a piece on DW that said restaurants are only taking cash because they can't process CC transactions. I don't know if that affects Alexsey or not. He processes payments via 2CheckOut, which is based outside of Russia, so it should still be OK to buy from him. He might not get paid right away, though. I've verified that you can still download updates from voxengo.com. I hate how one a-hole can screw up so many lives on a whim.

This is what happens when they no longer teach cursive in schools.

There are some things we just don't talk about. Like Moroccan smuggling techniques.

When I was 15 my band played our first out-of-town gig. It was only 30 miles away but felt like the start of a world tour. After the gig, a group of hot girls - we're talking cheerleader-grade hot girls - brought a bottle of whiskey and hung out with us. Me, the nerd who actually liked Algebra class and could type 80 words a minute, being approached by girls who wouldn't have given me the time of day at my high school. I decided right then that a) this was the life for me and b) whiskey tastes like diesel oil.

Wow. That looks exactly like my grandmother's piano. I used to love the tone it produced. My grandparents were Dust Bowl refugees in the 30's. Before moving out West to homestead in Montana, they sold or gave away everything they owned, which wasn't much . Everything but that piano. Grandma wouldn't part with it. They travelled on a flatcar, as they couldn't even afford a seat on the train. I wouldn't be surprised if they had jam sessions on that flatbed to pass the time. They did well in Montana, becoming successful cattle ranchers before eventually moving to the Idaho panhandle shortly before I met them. Grandpa played guitar and mandolin. His band played Saturday nights at the Grange hall, a lively event that carried on until daybreak. It's part of the reason I wanted to join a band in my teens. Well, that and to impress girls.

Yeh, some of the stuff I've gotten rid of over the decades would be worth a lot now. Silly me, I actually thought that stuff would completely lose its value if I didn't dump it quickly. At one point I had some young guys come over to buy my Jupiter 6, talked them into taking my Juno 106 for a hundred bucks more. They ended up buying pretty much everything, including my 3-tier keyboard stand, mic stands, a drum machine and my Oberheim SEM. At the time, I thought they were suckers for taking all my old crap off my hands.

Broadly speaking, a bus is where signals are combined together. A project can have any number of busses (e.g. mixing all the drums together via a "drum bus"). A "master bus" is where all tracks and busses come together to make the final output for your mix. Busses are created and manipulated in the bus pane, a separate portion at the bottom of the Track View window. It's there that you'll find the master bus. For sound to happen, you need to a) direct tracks to one or more busses and b) direct the output of the final (master) bus to your sound card. Here's a picture. If you don't see the bus pane, click the circled button at the bottom. Note that in my picture, "Speakers (Saffire Pro Audio) 1/2" has been selected as the bus output. That's just what my audio interface identifies itself to Windows as. Your choices will probably be different. Note that technically you don't actually need any busses at all. You can simply route each track to the computer's audio hardware. But that's not recommended for a number of reasons. Usually, you have at least one bus and its output is routed to the audio interface. Also, it doesn't necessarily have to be named "Master". You can name it anything you like.

Now that you mention it, the whole room is indeed off plumb. However, I'm pretty sure it was the photographer that was listing, because the piano's got wheels and would have ended up in the kitchen.

The real heroes of this series are Mark Johnson and Enzo Buono, who record and mix those productions. It's hard enough keeping everybody in one band in tune, much less people across 30 countries, some playing non-Western instruments and disparate styles. Any of these could be a class in the art of mixing. Note how different parts and voices are brought up in the mix to coincide with their video vignettes that introduce them, after which it's easy to pick them out of the mix. Still one of the best is the very first one they did. Clearly they've made enough in donations to upgrade their gear since this one.

My primary criterion for selecting guitar strings is how much they 're gonna hurt my soft, delicate piano-player fingers. Back in the day when I played guitar on stage, they were Ernie Ball Super Slinkies (08's). In my defense, it was a Rickenbacker 12-string. Double the pain. I also used FingerEase. Remember that stuff? You'd spray it on the strings to make them slippery. Sure, it attracted dirt and oil and assured the strings would only last a week before they suddenly began drawing blood. But on a fresh set of strings it was like fingering a wet, uh, grapefruit.

I have an old VHS tape of me playing this piano, c. 1980. Fingers literally a blur, so frickin' fast! Zero finesse, zero originality, zero emotion. But very, very fast. I know a few folks still stuck in that mode. Mostly guitar players. My bandmates haven't noticed yet, but my secret weapon at gigs is Iced Starbucks Mochas. Without them I run the risk of forgetting what song we're playing, during my solo.

I first realized this back in 1971 when I plugged a guitar into an oscilloscope at electronics school and said "well, whattaya know? I can do that with my Heathkit signal generator." There are many more than two manufacturers, including some boutique operations and of course a bunch of Chinese companies that specialize in those awful strings that come stock with $69 student guitars . Here in the US, many (most?) are made by Dunlop Manufacturing in Los Angeles. Dunlop's chief string designer (yeh, that's a real job) used to be a regular on the old SONAR forum, under the handle Stringmaster. We met in person at the 2008 NAMM show, where I found out that they not only probably made your strings, but your picks as well. They don't advertise it much, but pretty much every brand you've ever seen in any North American music store is made by them. There are several differentiators among strings, but brand name isn't one of them.

Thank you. We don't see enough Phyllis Diller quotes here. I'm thinking about bringing back Erma Bombeck into our collective consciousness. The grass truly is greener over the septic tank.

Full disclosure: according to the datestamp, that photo was taken in 2013, a year before my wife died. She was 100% responsible for the tidiness, the plants, and that crazy-expensive Chinese table that my great-grandkids do their coloring books on today. These days my place very much looks like it's occupied by a single guy who spends way too much time in the garage in front of said computer. That reminds me, I'd better dust that piano before the tuner gets here. Once every 7 years should be frequent enough for dusting, no?

That singer from NZ is Mihirangi Fleming. Here she is looping on New Zealand's Got Talent.

Best version ever, featuring JP Jones, Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi and a bunch of other awesome players. I especially liked the singer from New Zealand. According to the YouTube description, this song dates back to 1929.