2009 February : Progressive, Ambient, Film Score, Soundscapes::sPaces

Archive for February, 2009

Vantage Point

February 21, 2009 | Category: Recommended Listening | Leave a Comment

One of my favourite soundtracks from last year

[[Vantage Point]] was composed by Atli Örvarsson, an Icelandic film score composer and a member of Hans Zimmer’s production company Remote Control Productions.

My recommended tracks are ‘President and Decoy’ and ‘Motorcade’ but i’d probably download the whole thing because there’s lots of interesting parts in it that once placed into DJ software you can do anything with.

Verdict: Lots of nice elements throughout with cinematic textures and interesting design.

ABLETON ANNOUNCES LIVE 8, SUITE 8 AND NEW INITIATIVES

February 21, 2009 | Category: Recommended Listening | Leave a Comment

My music composition software of choice is [[Ableton Live]] and soon to come [[Ableton Live 8]], very excited. Here’s a snippet of the press release from their website.

To read the whole thing click here

Software ships second Quarter 2009

Berlin, Germany (January 15, 2009) – Ableton is excited to announce the agenda for 2009: Ableton Live 8, Ableton Suite 8, new instruments and three completely new product initiatives.

Live 8 and Suite 8 enhance the Ableton vision of creative, real-time digital music with a wealth of new techniques, effects and most-wanted workflow improvements. These include a new groove engine, revamped warping techniques, live looping, five new effects (including the Ableton Vocoder), crossfades in the Arrangement View, group tracks and a reworked MIDI editor. Ableton Suite 8 includes all that plus a massive, inspired sound library and all the instruments a musician could hope for, including a wide range of synths, a sampler, electric and acoustic drums (new: Latin percussion), mallets (new: Collision), numerous sampled instruments and a new, even-mightier Operator.

New in Ableton Live 8:

New groove engine: new groove library, extract grooves from audio or MIDI, real time groove quantize
New warping engine: warp audio events by adjusting the events on the timeline, updated Beats Warp Mode, new Complex Warp Mode, slice audio files to MIDI tracks based on transients
Looper: classic sound-on-sound looping without the limitations of a hardware device. Record, overdub, undo and more without touching the computer. “First loop sync,” simple loop management
New effects: Vocoder, Multiband Dynamics, Overdrive, Limiter and Frequency Shifter
Workflow enhancements: including real-time crossfades in the Arrangement View, enhanced MIDI editing, group tracks, multiple track selection, a screen magnifier and more

New in Ableton Suite 8:

World-class sound library: completely new sound library with real-world “Sound Objects,” presets, grooves, templates and, above all, over 1600 beautiful sounds
Collision and Corpus: a unique physical-modeling instrument for authentic mallet sounds and creative percussion. Includes Corpus, a separate effect that reproduces Collision’s resonator section
Latin Percussion: a collection of acoustic percussion instruments from the worlds of Brazilian, Afro-Cuban and African music plus a wide selection of clips and grooves for authentic usage
Operator, Ableton’s renowned do-it-all synthesizer, has been given a major overhaul. New filter types, more modulation routing options and additive wavetable synthesis with drawable partials make Operator more powerful and flexible than ever.

Plus these existing Ableton instruments: Sampler, Electric, Tension, Analog, Drum Machines, Session Drums* and the Essential Instrument Collection 2*.

sPaces20 – Vocal Drum ‘n’ Breaks

February 10, 2009 | Category: sPaces Mixes | Leave a Comment

We often avoid facing the dark side of ourselves. Softening the pain of past regrets and hurts and avoiding the pain of things we are ashamed of.

Sometimes we need to sit with the hurts and embarrassment of the past, sit and face the rawness and allow ourselves to face the dark side of our soul. Only then can we really move onto new hope.