Weekly Music Chart: Dec 10th – Dec 14th

This week the music was hard to come by. Not a lot of new stuff. I’m guessing it is because of the holiday schedule. There are some really good tracks on here this week though.

Also I did a guest article on @PhrasorOffical‘s blog. You should head over to alpha-phase.com and check it out! It’s about song writing.

Black Sun Empire ft. Bless – Salvador

Bluescreens – Bring The Sauce!

Wolfgang Gartner and Tom Staar – Evil Lurks

Feint ft. Coma – Snake Eyes

Muzzy – Let’s Rock

Cyantific – Infinity Plus 1

Ayah Marar – Raver (South Central Remix)

Seba ft. Jinder – Too Much Too Soon

Subformat ft. Charli Brix – More

Dabin ft. Bijou – Awakening

Loopmasters Has New Stuffs!!!

As a huge fan of Loopmasters and their sister site Plugin Boutique, it is always huge news when they drop something new on us. Earlier in the week Plugin Boutique announced iZotope‘s Stutter Edit had become available. Now Loopmasters has, “Patchworx.” It’s a line of patches and presets specifically for the soft-synths we have come to cherish almost as much as their hardware ancestors. Here is their link for some free presets!

Link to Loopmasters Patchworx

And if you’re like me, you can’t get enough free VST plugins! Here is Plugin Boutique’s latest press release.

Pluginboutique.com Launch new Free Plugins Area!

Pluginboutique.com, Loopmasters sister website dedicated to selling music software and plugins online has just released a brand new custom area dedicated to sourcing the best free plugins for producers worldwide!

Featuring all types of plugins including Bit Crushers, Chorus, Delay, Filters, Distortion, EQ, Drum Machines, Flangers, Gates, Limiters, Phasers, Modulators, Synths, Mastering plugins and much more including charts to show you the most downloaded and top rated.

Once you are signed up at the site you simply select the plugins you want and they are added to your account to download, and whats more you will also be notified when any of them are updated so you always have the most current versions of them on your computer. If you have the time you can also rate the plugins on a variety of merits in order to help fellow producers choose the best plugins for themselves.

Currently the new free area has plugins from companies including Inear Display, 7air Media, Vladgsound, Distorque, Sinevibes, Melda, Variety of Sound, Softrave, Blue Cat Audio, Minimal System Instruments, GTG Synths and many more.

http://www.pluginboutique.com/free is your new url for free plugins online – check out the new site today!

New Production Tutorials Page!

So I’ve started doing a few audio production tutorials here and there. If people seem to like it, or if it seems like my tutorials are helpful to people then I will keep making them too! I want to try to give back to the community that has given me so much recently. There aren’t any other people on the internet quite like audio producers!

Speaking of producers; my friend Fraser Murray has his own blog over at http://alpha-phase.com/ where he’s got some great bits. Oh AND he will soon be adding my tutorials to his page! Go over there and encourage him to get his Podcast started, of which I am on the list to be a guest. So we need all the help we can get. Like the pages, share the posts, comment on the vids! You help this content get to the people who need to see it. I scoured the internet looking for answers about sidechaining with 3rd party VSTs in Ableton. Most places were people on forums saying it wasn’t possible and that you were stuck using Ableton’s native compressor. (Which is a great compressor too!) I knew this couldn’t be the case and so I pressed on. Eventually I found it… buried comfortable amidst a list of search results for “Multiband Compression”, a different subject entirely. I will provide a link to the original tutorial on my tutorial page for Sidechaining 3rd Party VSTs. I want it to be easier for people like you and me to find this kind of information presented in a way that makes it easy to understand if you’re following along. At any rate, I did find the information and it’s to those people that I want to say, “Big Ups!” and give back some of their awesomeness!

Production Tutorials Page!

Moar Sample Packs!

So after being so happy with the Complex Electro Synths pack, I decided to grab a couple more sample packs. For these I went straight to Prime Loops. I went with the Electro Shoxx and Electro Shoxx 2 packs. So far both of these packs have been greatly satisfying! They are a great way to start a song by grabbing one of the really solid drum loops, or if you need some synths to round out your big drops, or if you just need a top loop or two to make your drums really pop! These packs are going to seriously increase my workflow.

Sweet Electro sickness!

The downside is; Now I’m addicted to Prime Loops! I could drop so much cash there it’s not even funny. They have packs for everything and as I mentioned before, the allure of increased workflow makes me want them a lot. I’ve heard several of the samples in the demos that have been used in major productions, namely Skrillex’.

Of course, at the moment, nothing can supersede my need for Reason 6.5. Right now I work with Reason/Record 5. I am a huge Thor fanatic and DrRex is probably the coolest thing since loop players existed. Speaking of DrRex, ReCycle is another of the products that stands above the sample packs. With ReCycle, I can take my own samples, vocals, etc… and prepare them for DrRex. DrRex can alter the pitch of a loop without altering the tempo, along with a host of other benefits like Groove Capturing. Just grab a groove that you like throw it in DrRex and toss it on your own drums, then viola, you have your sick groove.

Oh I mentioned Thor, which happens to have quite a few refill packs out there, one of which has been #1 on Prime Loops in Electro for about a week now! Here it is

At any rate, I might do a proper review of the sample packs if I have the time this week!

Great Friday

Here’s Michelle enjoying the Axiom 25. 🙂

Oh and Cougar has to be in the middle of it too…