NEW MUSIC AND VIDEO KLIP 2011

WOK unveils Skalenmeister, a MIDI effect for Windows.

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"Skalenmeister is the successor of Tonmeister. It forces incoming MIDI notes to the given scale and key, and can generate chords from single notes (3 types of chords, 8 scales)" WOKFrom Making Music. Try Readle Gadgets, Clipotech or follow me on Svartling Network, Friendfeed, Twitter.

Featuring over 840 24-bit samples of rare ethnic instruments from around the world, that includes hundreds of live performance samples of 10 rare ethnic instruments including hooks, riffs, and licks specially designed for modern urban and pop music production.


The Sample Library was recorded at 4 tempos (87 BPM, 92 BPM, 97 BPM, & 102 BPM) and in 4 key signatures (A minor, C minor, E minor, & G minor). A total of 40 software sampler presets are included that auto-load all ethnic samples into your software sampler of choice: Reason NN-XT (.SXT), EXS24 (.EXS), Kontakt (.NKI), Battery (.KIT), Halion (.FXP), Soundfont (.SF2), and WAV (.WAV).


Ethnic instruments included:

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ModernBeats

From Making Music. Try Readle Gadgets, Clipotech or follow me on Svartling Network, Friendfeed, Twitter.

CPO's interesting new disc presents two unknown Danish composers. Georg Gerson was a contemporary of Schubert, and his music similarly occupies that transitional era between classicism and romanticism. In Gerson's case it does so somewhat uncomfortably, as in the E-flat symphony where the composer endeavors to fit new sounds into old models. His novel writing for winds (flutes in particular) points toward the future, but he should have held on to the classicists' sense of forward momentum (usually provided by persistent string rhythms) that would have mitgated the stop-start quality of his phrases. Gerson's melodies are sometimes prosaic, a quality underlined by his tendency to literal repetition. Still, the finale is quite invigorating, and the vibrant Overture in D, with its dramatic minor opening, is impressive. Under Lars Ulrik Mortensen's direction Concerto Copenhagen plays with exceptional clarity and finesse, though I cannot help but wonder if Gerson's music would make more impact if played on modern instruments.

Friedrich Ludwig Aemilius Kunzen was active at the time of Mozart (he even presented some of the latter's music at Frankfurt). The influence is unmistakable, and Kunzen strives for that same refined, finished quality in his own music--something he largely achieves in his G minor symphony. The work's scoring excludes brass and timpani--as does Mozart's--but is effective nonetheless, especially the Andante (with its beautifully lyrical oboe solo) and the sternly dramatic finale. Mortensen leads a taut and bracing rendition, well captured by CPO's spacious recording. Connoisseurs of 18th and 19th century music will find much to enjoy here.

V-Plugs launches Echo Trip, a tape-echo effect for Windows.

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"Whether you are after the perfect emulation of vintage tape-echo machines, or you need new exciting audio spices- take a ride with Echo Trip and you just might fall in love!" V-Plugs Echo TripFrom Making Music. Try Readle Gadgets, Clipotech or follow me on Svartling Network, Friendfeed, Twitter.

SONiVOX Announces Playa Hip Hop Strings – A Hip Hop Virtual Instrument for both OS X and Windows.
It's designed to provide hip hop, r’n’b, & pop producers a fast and easy way to add professional, top quality strings to their productions.
Hip Hop Strings’ distinctive user interface affords effortless integration of midi keyboards and MPC pad controllers, bridging the gap between MPC style music creation and the computer-based virtual instrument environment.

Playa Hip Hop Strings is packed with eight gigabytes of instruments forged from the distinguished SONiVOX Symphonic String Collection, a library featuring top players from the world-renowned Boston Pops & Boston Ballet Orchestras, recorded and programmed by SONiVOX’s sound design team.

Features:

• 8 Gigabytes of Premium String Content - Featuring Some of Boston's Most Accomplished Orchestral Musicians
• Over 200 String Instrument Patches and Pad Layouts
• Large Selection of Loops With Combined Legato, Staccato, and Pizzicato In All Major and Minor Keys; Each in 3 Tempos
• 16 User Programmable and Assignable Pads – For quick and easy MPC style beat construction.
• Over 50 Pad layouts – Hip Hop Strings is designed to get the producer going rite away with its construction kit layouts, diatonic chord layouts, and user programmable layouts.
• MIDI Learn & Save Function – Hip Hop Strings is instantly compatible with any MIDI controller.
• Independent Zone Tempo-Synced Variable Resolution Roll/Retrigger Mode.
• Onboard FX and Graphic Equalizer.
• Keys Mode – For standard keyboard play/performance.
• User Editable Envelope & Filter Controls.
• PC Standalone, VST and RTAS Compatibility.
• MAC Standalone, AU, VST, and RTAS Compatibility.



Playa - Hip Hop Strings is available now with a MSRP of $149 and an introductory street price of $99.
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From Making Music. Try Readle Gadgets, Clipotech or follow me on Svartling Network, Friendfeed, Twitter.

Changes in this version:

The inspector rack and the mixer strips can now show embedded plugin editors. The Zynewave plugins are shown with their custom editor and other plugins are shown with the Podium generic editor.

The parameters shown in the embedded generic editors can be configured separately for the rack and the mixer. Selecting the embedded parameters can be done either by right-clicking the plugin selector and using the "embedded editor parameters" submenu, or by ticking the checkboxes in the parameter list panel. The plugin selector menu also has shortcut commands for selecting and clearing all embedded parameters. The parameter selection applies globally to all instances of the plugin.

Added an "Editors" option button to the track inspector toolbar. When enabled, a show/hide button will appear next to each plugin selector in the rack.

A scrollbar will appear in the inspector rack panel if the rack is too large to fit in the panel. The panel can be resized by dragging the bottom of the panel.




Made several changes to the appearance and mouse actions of the zPEQ editor: The embedded rack and mixer editors will not show the parameter fields, but will instead show a popup with info for the band closest to the mouse cursor. The curve is drawn centered around 0dB. Moving the mouse in the display will highlight the nearest band handle. Double-click the background to enable the next unused band. Double-click a band handle to disable the band. Right-click to show a band type menu for the nearest band. Click to drag frequency and gain of the nearest band. Alt+Click to drag the Q value of the nearest band.
Modified the speaker configuration texts that are appended to the name of imported plugins.

Changed the layout in the Colors setup dialog and added new settings for button and slider knob colors.

The color picker in the track inspector can now be used to adjust Podium UI colors. Use the color picker right-click menu to select the UI color. The available options matches the colors found in the Colors setup dialog.

Fix: Dragging a plugin .dll file onto Podium will now place the device objects in the correct devices folder.

Fix: The "replace effect chain" clipboard command would not always set the correct fader position.

Fix: Fixed a crash bug with the "copy track timeline events to the template" option in the save track template dialog.

Fix: The background color in the timeline navigator would not update when the timeline fill color was changed in the color setup.

Fix: Fixed a problem with the mixer "expand all groups" option.

Fix: Dragging a multiple point selection in the curve editor did not work properly when all the points were aligned to the bottom.

Fix: Dragging in the project browser with the drag-reordering option enabled would not remove the list insert highlighting when dragging outside the browser.

Fix: Using the beat slice function on 8-bit samples would cause a crash.

Fix: The audio input auto-assign option would not work if the focus track was not gain enabled.

Price: 50 US$

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"Podium is a modern production host that integrates audio recording, VST plugins and external MIDI and audio gear. An object based project structure allows for advanced media and device management" Zynewave

Tomaso Albinoni
Sinfonie a Cinque op. 2
Ensemble 415, Chiara Banchini

Zig Zag Territoires ZZT090202 colleague Vivaldi, so it makes an interesting change for Chiara Banchini's Ensemble 415 to home in on the relatively conservative five-part sinfonie from his Op 2 of 1700, a publication that interleaved those six works with half a dozen in the newer concerto style (not recorded here). But while the sinfonie are in the four-movement da chiesa mould of Corelli, with more than a few hints of the Roman's coolly classical language about them as well, they yet have character of their own, more melodically angular in places and with a greater sense of freedom. There is also considerable personal skill in the writing, not least in some finely wrought fugues and merrily lilting gigue-finales; Bach very probably knew these pieces, and it is hard not to smile and think of the Third Brandenburg Concerto, composed a few years later, when listening to the last movement of Albinoni's Sinfonia No 5.

Gramophone Magazine, July 2009

Free Music Software: Virtual Creations launches UltraPhazer v1.3, a free multi oscillated phaser effect for Mac OS X Windows.
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" It sounds very cool on guitar tracks and on raw saw sound. But also a very subtile phazer effect can be generated with this plugin" Virtual CreationsFrom Making Music. Try Readle Gadgets, Clipotech or follow me on Svartling Network, Friendfeed, Twitter.

C.E.F. Weyse
Symphonies 1 & 7
Concerto Copenhagen, Lars Ulrik Mortensen
Classico CLASSCD 399

I listen to serious music of all periods, buy lots of it, read reviews and books about composers and traditions. I have no formal training to be a critic, but I know what I like. Of course I like the famous composers, essentially all of them. But I also sample (on Amazon listings) other composers and buy some that I had not heard of before. This is one of those. The composer is rather obscure. Even in Wikipedia there is not much about him. But these symphonies are awfully good. They are pleasant listening, very well put together with great skill. The performances seem flawless, and the recording is right up there with the best. I play mental games trying to figure out how some composers become famous and others sink into obscurity. I cannot find the answer easily especially when I listen to works such as these that deserve hearing. Maybe it is the lack of some immediately memorable theme? But other famous compositions are similar in this regard. Maybe it is just accident, politics, popularity, or whatever. In any case, I will listen to these symphonies and share them with others. They are different, fresh to my hearing, and I highly recommend this album.

SKnote unveils Verbera, an algorithmic reverb effect for Windows. Looks useful.

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Price: 229 euro

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