http://www.sequenced-notes.com A weblog for the digital musician Sat, 13 May 2006 04:04:33 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Happy New Year! I haven't posted too much here, but I expect to do better in 2006. I often attempt to enter various remix and music contests, but I rarely have time to finish something. Peter Kirn at Create Digital Music came up with a contest I actually have the attention ... http://www.sequenced-notes.com/2006/01/01/happy-new-year-and-leap-second/ Wired News has an interesting [article][0] about [Pump Audio][1], a company I hadn't heard of before. They're a clearinghouse for licensing music to TV shows, commercials, and so on. Musicians send them CDs (they'll take any genre) and they send out hard drives full of music to producers. The producer ... http://www.sequenced-notes.com/2005/10/22/pump-audio-for-music-licensing/ Akai has a huge collection of free samples from various drum machines: * [Akai Kit of the Week samples][1] They're mostly vintage drum machine samples, ranging from the Linn Drum to the ubiquitous 808 and 909 to some truly weird ones like the Rhythm Ace and Mattel Synsonic. There are also some ... http://www.sequenced-notes.com/2005/08/10/lots-of-great-samples/ I used to dream of having a portable DAT recorder so I could record audio in the field---the ambience of a peaceful lake, or even better, industrial noises---and use them as samples. Technology marches on, and now DAT recorders are nearly obsolete. Fortunately their solid-state equivalent is becoming affordable: The ... http://www.sequenced-notes.com/2005/08/09/m-audio-multitrack/ The summer version of the [NAMM][2] (National Association of Music Makers) tradeshow is this weekend in Indianapolis. Peter Kirn at [create digital music][1] is going to be covering new product announcements and writing five-word capsule reviews of them, which should be entertaining. Maybe I'll write a five-word review of his ... http://www.sequenced-notes.com/2005/07/22/summer-namm-this-week/ I always enjoy reading interviews with musicians I enjoy, especially when they talk about gear. Native Instruments, the makers of my favorite soft synth package, [Reaktor][r], have just posted an [interview with Trent Reznor][1] that talks about his infatuation with their products. Not surprisingly, it comes across as an advertisement ... http://www.sequenced-notes.com/2005/07/06/native-instruments-interviews-trent-reznor/ When I work on music, I like to test a mix by taking it out to the car and playing it on the car stereo... so I thought this review was appropriate here. I just bought the [JVC KD-LH910 receiver][1] for my car, and after living with the stock VW ... http://www.sequenced-notes.com/2005/06/22/review-jvc-kd-lh910-cdsd-receiver/ Version 5.0 of my favorite music software, [Native Instruments Reaktor][1], is now shipping, and I just received my upgrade package. Reaktor is an amazing virtual synthesizer engine that lets you create just about any synth, sound generator, or effect. Reaktor's greatest strength is its incredible depth and complexity---ensembles can contain one ... http://www.sequenced-notes.com/2005/06/15/reaktor-5-first-look/ If you're too young to have heard of a "player piano", it was a piano that could play a sequence of notes encoded on [paper rolls][3] punched with holes. They were popular from the late 1800's into the 1930s. [Terry Smythe][1] has been using [a home-built scanner][2] and software to convert ... http://www.sequenced-notes.com/2005/06/06/the-player-piano-reborn/ I used to work with dot-matrix printers, and anyone who has heard them print can't help but think they sound rhythmic, perhaps even musical. Paul Slocum certainly thinks so. He's modified some Epson LQ-500 printers with reverse-engineered firmware to turn them into [dot matrix synths][1]. The music comes from the vibration ... http://www.sequenced-notes.com/2005/06/01/dot-matrix-synth/