Tag: Digital vs. Analog
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The Core is Getting Soft.16: Quick Shelving
I’ve been spending more time than I really wanted to figuring out how to translate incidental sounds from loops and samples on my forthcoming record to a live setting this week. I haven’t played live in more years than I can shake a stick at, and the last time I did this with Folk Implosion…
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The Core is Getting Soft.14: Bang a Slate
One of the digital tools I threw in the mix of my new record is SSD4, the drum sampler made by Slate Digital. It was the first time I used something other than an electronic drum machine to program drums. The closest I’d come to fake “real” drums was the time we sampled a drum…
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The Core is Getting Soft.13: Trackball Runs Over Mouse
People who are interested in gear like to thing big. Big things, big bucks, big sounds, big….balls, implicitly. But sometimes it’s the little things that get used the most. While working towards completing my new record with producer Scott Solter, a frequent theme of our conversations has been poking fun at gear hounds who elevate…
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The Core is Getting Soft.12: Goldbaby for Less Silver
Goldbaby is the stage name of a dude named Hugo down in New Zealand who makes fantastic sample libraries of drum machines, sound fx and synthesizers processed through choice outboard analog gear and tape machines. Denziens of online forums like Gearslutz revere him, and his friendly responses in those nether regions suggests he’s a nice…
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The Core is Getting Soft.12: Valhalla Freq Echo
“The best things in life are free.” “You get what you pay for.” If cliches are cliches because they’re true, which one of the above applies to free audio plug ins? Well, ca depend. When it comes to the Valhalla Freq Echo delay plug in, the answer is definitively the latter. This gem of…
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The Core is Getting Soft.11: TouchOsc
I’ve always been a latecomer to technology. When I got a fax machine in 1997, someone I worked with said, “Welcome to the ’80’s!” I didn’t get a cell phone until late 2008, and I didn’t get a smartphone until a few months ago. Continuing this trend, I got myself an iPad last week. The…
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The Core is Getting Soft.10: Madrona Labs
There are some soft synths or plug-ins I’ve bought where I could have conceivably sprung for the hardware version instead. But there’s no way I could have ever afforded a Buchla synthesizer – until Madrona labs came out with their Aalto software synthesizer, which is inspired by the designs of Don Buchla, who invented the…
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The Core is Getting Soft.9: Ring my Bell
For many years now, I have been using software in my meditation practice. In Buddhist meditation, we traditionally open and close each sitting by ringing a bell three times. One is instructed to follow the sound waves until they subside, providing a gradual transition in and out of the silent state of awareness. In today’s…
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