Key Of Grey

March 1st, 2010 - It's March 1st, and I don't have an album done for the RPM Challenge. As for the main task of writing an album's worth of material in 28 days, I failed completely. My main problem was that almost every song I wrote was for a different genre, probably a remnant from my days working in a song factory. Not only did this mean that there were never enough songs to complete a cohesive album, but most of the ... Read More

February 27th, 2010 - There are a lot of different types of jobs in the audio industry outside of music. One of the sectors that's rising in profile is sound design. Sound designers can work on movies and television, or on video games. They work with sounds they've recorded, or vast libraries that they maintain and apply effects to. It's their job to accurately aurally portray the speed of that Porsche, or the sub-woofer rattling roar of a gigantic octopus-faced sea monster. I've ... Read More

Photo courtesy of Brocco Lee February 26th, 2010 - With the strong growth in the population of DIY electronic wizards, it seems like almost everyday there's a new robot that can play music. Such roboticized musicians have served as more of a curiosity than anything; musicians haven't been threatened by robots taking their jobs just yet. So why is it that when Dave Cope unveiled Emmy, there were plenty of angry detractors, and even supporters were disturbed by the implications. Emmy (or EMI as ... Read More

Photo courtesy of davetron5000 February 25th, 2010 - Sam Greene over at AudioPropellor suggested I missed some points when writing the original "Minimum Gear, Maximum Impact" post almost 2 years ago, and he's definitely right. That article deserves a little refresh so I thought I'd post a few more ideas on the subject. Of course, the biggest improvement to any set up is you. This does not necessarily mean that you need to go to school and get a fancy engineering degree (although that ... Read More

February 24th, 2010 - A couple months ago, I reviewed the Vestax Spin which is paired with Algoriddim's djay softare. As I got used to using the Spin and djay, I got a little more bold and started diving into the more advanced techniques I could get out of both. Because the Spin has a limited amount of buttons, I mapped an additional Korg NanoPad. This allows me to use all of the common features of djay that previously needed to be ... Read More

Photo courtesy of Livid Instruments February 23rd, 2010 - Livid Instruments, maker of the Block, has teased us with the MIDI DIY for a while now. Well, it's finally here, but is now encompassed in the Builder series. Livid's Builder starts with the Brain (which replaces the MIDI DIY), and you add modular pieces to complete whatever controller you'd like from there. You can purchase specialized boards for push buttons, one for rotary knobs, and one for linear faders, as well as the associated ... Read More

February 22nd, 2010 - The digital recorder market is pretty saturated right now. From super high-end down to the lower end of the spectrum, it's hard to stand out. So how did Sanyo attempt to break from the tried and true stereo microphone pair? They added 4 more mics bringing the total to 6. The Xacti feature the traditional X-Y pair, an omnidirectional pair, and two other directional mics that are meant to capture sound above 20 kHz. Odd that they're made for ... Read More

February 21st, 2010 - I've been tooling around with Logic for almost 10 years now, and one of the additions in version 8 that I never really used was MainStage. MainStage is an application meant for performing live. You can use instruments and effects from Logic combined with live looping and MIDI triggering, to pull off Ableton-esque performances. With version 9 of Logic, MainStage was beefed up with better amp modeling, and better looping features making it more enticing for musicians. Since I ... Read More

February 20th, 2010 - CodeOrgan takes any URL you type in, and converts it to music. By analyzing the body of your content, it can apply keys, chords, and rhythm. Of course, as the content of your site changes over time, so will the music. When I tried it with this site, it started to glitch out. I'm not sure if that was intentional, or if this site was too awesome to render. Probably the latter. CodeOrgan via Geekologie Read More

Photo courtesy of Das Labor February 19th, 2010 - I'm sure that tuning a guitar by using a strobing light isn't a new concept, but the Stimmmopped is a cool DIY project nonetheless. Basically, by flashing an LED at exact frequencies and plucking the string with the device, will allow you to see if the string is out of tune or not. If the string is sharp or flat, the LED will still look like it's flashing, but when the frequency is right, ... Read More