I Was a Cub Scout
June 24th, 2007 1 Comment
I saw I Was a Cub Scout earlier this week in Liverpool, thanks to a friend having a spare ticket. Tight performance, good songs and plenty of tech…a winning formula as far as I’m concerned and they sounded pretty good. I guess time will tell if they go on to become a “next big thing” but all the ingredients are there.
Posted in: Music
Akihabara Sounds (part 1)
June 5th, 2007 3 Comments
I was in Tokyo during Golden Week, so took the opportunity to try and capture some of the ambience of Akihabara while I was there.
Below are a few snippets of audio (in 256kbps MP3 format), also you can click the images for larger versions.
Posted in: Field Recording
Random Field Recording
April 18th, 2007 No Comments
I recently acquired an Edirol R-09 for field recording purposes. I’ve not used it much yet, but here’s a little test recording I made using the built-in mics whilst walking along so you can get an idea of how it sounds:
Download: r09_roadside.mp3 (1.4 MB)
Although it’s not in use in this recording, there’s a “low cut” switch on the back of the R-09 which would probably have mitigated the wind noise somewhat.
Posted in: Field Recording
Yamaha PSS-80 Rhythm Loops
March 31st, 2007 9 Comments
I picked up a PortaSound PSS-80 off Ebay, figuring it would be a good candidate for some circuit-bending experimentation (Click here for a YouTube video of a circuit-bent PSS-80 in action).
I sampled its built in percussion loops - there’s no headphone socket or line output (yet) so I recorded them using an Edirol R-09 pointed at the device’s speaker, then cleaned them up a bit. Unlike some of the keyboards in the PortaSound range, the percussion sounds aren’t PCM samples so they sound quite synthetic. The samples are 48kHz/16bit, tempo is roughly 124 BPM.
Download: pss-80_rhythm_loops.zip (630 KB)
Posted in: Samples
Flange Mayhem
March 29th, 2007 3 Comments
It’s a random stereo flanging VST effect. The randomization is tempo-synced: delay and feedback parameters are selected independently for the left and right channels at intervals ranging from 1/64 of a beat to four bars.
It started life as a subtle meandering chorus effect, mainly for making mono tracks a bit more interesting. Here’s an example using a rhodes sample, first dry then effected:
I added a limiter because it can get fairly loud with high feedback settings. Here’s a little arpeggio pushing the limiter pretty hard:
Here’s an example of Flange Mayhem doing weird things to a drum loop:
Download it here: flange_mayhem.zip
Posted in: VST Effects