salamaundra

Greg sent me an edit of AngkorWat…from his album Future Dust…
without his permission I started to play with it…slowed it down to 101…

this take is recorded live while playing with dummy clips…the launchpad and more knobs assigned to different fx…
the only sound not coming from the original edit is the new (wicked) Tattoo drum machine by AudioDamage

a great post on I Downloader about the Death of Music :

Music is not dying. Music is thriving.

- There are more people playing more kinds of music now than there have ever been in the history of the planet.

- More new musical instruments have been created in the last 50 years than in the last 5 centuries.

-  More money is being spent on music – on concert tickets, ring tones, music lessons, instruments, performing rights, MP3 players, soundtracks, recordings, band merchandise, etc – than ever before.

- More people are listening to more music more often than ever before- in their cars, on their MP3 players, on their computers, in the supermarket, restaurants, gyms, on elevators and in hotel lobbies as well as live
performances, CDs and yes, even vinyl.

- There are more ways to make money from music now than ever before, and more possibilities for unprecedented access to existing and potential audiences.

read the full post here : http://i-downloader.blogspot.com/2009/10/death-of-death-of-music.html

i am not into the “best of the year” pools.
but this is the best website of 2010, for sure.

web 2.0 suicide machine…kill all your social networks with just one click…ooohhh…

http://suicidemachine.org/

i don’t do videogames…unless I am very depressed (not very often)
but few months ago I actually bought Osmos (10$) because I was curious…and finally during this holydays i had time to play with it…and i really enjoyed it (even if i wasn’t depressed).
i think it is wicked, and more than anything else the idea behind it is really clever.
the soundtrack of the game is a beautiful (but a bit too classic sometime) ambient album including Biosphere and Gas between the others,
every level has different tracks
Osmos by Hemisphere Games got very good reviews all around and won few prizes…and i reckon are all well deserved…

i wish to work on a similar project in the future

it’s time to start my new year resolutions:

software to dig more :
Ableton Live is a great tool, and Max4Live is very sexy…spanky….but expensive…(and the marketing of it starts to be a bit annoying).

instead I am very intrigued by a couple of softwares that are very cheap…real bargains considered the quality…I can buy both of them
and still I am saving some dosh to go out on NYE (instead of buying the spanky max4live).

Renoise
a mod tracker…works like the old digital sequencers of 25 years ago…no timeline, no clips, NUMBERS.
great for obscure techno…but actually you can do anything with it… only 49 euros !
watch what you can do with Renoise and a Launchpad

Reaper
a “normal” DAW (like Cubase, Logic)…but slimmer and smarter than those bloated whales…I love the GUI and more than anything I love their anti marketing campaign..

you can read on the website:

Honest Business Model
We offer a good product at a fair price.
We don’t spend money and effort on marketing, complicated piracy protection, or other things that do not directly improve REAPER and the user experience.
We think the good will generated by playing fair and being responsive to users is more valuable to our business than short-term profits.

No Intrusive Copy Protection
We believe that technological enforcement of copy protection is not in the best interest of our customers.

a full license cost 225$….BUT…if you are just playing with it and not macking any money…or even if your income from music is less than 20.000$ a year
(and I def make less than 20 grand a year from music), you can get the discounted license for 60$ !
(and anyway if you are a pirate you don’t need to crack it…but only deal with your karma).

on the top of that it works really well, has many plug ins included, and does internet streaming with Ninjam…and aldo distribute the cpu over your network…guck yeah
…it was about time… I am sold…actually…I am buying it.

Robert Henke is the man…I have been following his music from the beginning…
I am still in love with Cinemascope and Interstate…and his liveset is probably the ultimate electronic liveset…period.

he is one of the minds behind Ableton…and he does many workshops around the planet sharing his knowledge….and many other good things can be said about him…he is humble !

I met him at the Sonica festival 3 years ago where I had the honor to share the same stage (Deadbeat, Rhythm and Sound and Greg Hunter were there too)..that time he played in front of 30 ppl (maybe less)…while thousands where lobotomized on the main stage by some rubbish trance…but he delivered an amazing set…and he didn’t behave like a rockstar…even if many of the bloated rockstars (who were playing on the lobotomy (trance) stage) were actually using a software that he created…period again.

he just released Silence, a new album…(dunno where he finds the time to do music)…

I haven’t got it yet…and I am very curious.
I am very pleased to read that he also joined the movement to stop the Loudness War…and he didn’t use any compressors for this album…and no limiters during the mastering.
This is a link to a very interesting conversation about mastering between Robert and Rashad Becker, the guy who mastered it:
http://www.monolake.de/interviews/mastering.html
and it confirms what I wrote in the post “Mastering is killing music” more than 3 months ago…cheers.

the ambient mini album by Moreno is out…you can download it, buy it, donate for it…@ Bakshish Music website :

http://bakshish.me/wp/download/ambient-manifold

I mastered it and produced the first track “moded”…I think is good.