Beat Lab

International Music Production School

nOb- TheOnly Knob You’ll Need

nOb- TheOnly Knob You’ll Need   Sleek, solid, and effective: the nOb should make its way onto your messy, hardware filled desk. Look through Kickstarter and you’re bound to find a wide range of ideas, and inventions, that serve to ease the subtle restrictions with all aspects of life.   The nOb is a singular, extremely precise knob control, which is made to be vastly encompassing with its capabilities. Packed into a vintage looking, wood casing, nOb provides highly capable functions, that will expand your work flow tenfold. “nOb is able to control virtually any parameter you would normally adjust with your mouse, delivering out-of-the-box compatibility with any operating system and software package. You simply have to point your mouse cursor to the parameter you want to control and use nOb’s big knob to fine-tune it to taste.”   su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK94pop46xA” showinfo=”no” rel=”no” modestbranding=”yes”   With 2400 ticks per revolution, the nOb gives …

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Protoverb- Free Experimental Reverb

Protoverb- Free Experimental Reverb   The biggest struggle digital reverb faces is to emulate a ‘real life’ reverb sound. Reverb affects could easily sit your sound farther back with competing noises, or add a tail of sound to make it ‘reverberate,’ but the attempt to replicate real life reverb is a bit more difficult. With that said, the sound of many reverb effects are generally accepted, and experimental reverb can prove to be stiff. U-He Protoverb is a free experimental reverb plug-in, that lets you randomize and get into tweaking your reverb sound. Results can be a real hit or miss, resulting in either warm organic sounding reverbs, to gritty unnatural digital sounding reverbs. Protoverb is laid out as if it is a reverb pedal, looking like something you’d find in the back of a used gear section, at a music shop in Echo Park. The idea behind the Protoverb is to randomize between two …

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Fractal Harp- Mind Bending Midi Mutant Instrument

Fractal Harp- Mind Bending Midi Mutant Instrument   As electronic music grows more a part of our music standard, we see more efforts to integrate our classic idea of instruments with the future. Check out this mind melting performance by Jay Wasco using a fractal harp. Part slide-harp, part 5-string bass, part midi controller!   su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMXN40KA7GU” showinfo=”no” rel=”no” modestbranding=”yes”   The Fractal Harp

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Sound Recipes #1: Layered Future Synths (Free Download)

Sound Recipes #1: Layered Future Synths (Free Download) Bright super saw synths can be heard in some variation in almost all styles of music that involve electronic sounds. Many popular virtual synths are capable of making this type of sound, synths like Sylenth1, Massive, Spire, Serum, Dune etc. If you don’t have any of these plugins, or simply want to explore the potential of Live’s built-in synths, we got a step-by-step guide to take you through building this very useful sound. For this sound we will use 3 layers inside an Instrument Rack: Stereo Saws/Squares Heavy Detuned Super Saws Noise Layer divider style=”clear” Stereo Saw/Square with Analog   For the first sound we’ll use Analog. Go to Analog’s Global Section by clicking next to the master volume in the grey area. Here we will change the Quick Routing to the first option. This will set up Analog to send each Oscillator to it’s …

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Looking Back on the Loop Festival by Ableton

Looking Back on the Loop Festival by Ableton   With high prospects and grand visions, Ableton’s much anticipated Loop Summit proved itself to be an incredibly inspiring event. Artists from around the globe got together to, not only about the future of music, hardware, and software, but to talk about what it means to be a modern musician. (Young Guru- Ableton Loop Summit) Featuring artists like Young Guru and Matthew Herbert, the Loop Summit proved to be an enlightening experience for all its attendees and hosts. Take a look at Ableton’s look back, featuring some very sound advice drawn from the series of forums. Hopefully in the future Ableton’s Loop will expand its horizons to open admission around the world.    

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Polyphylla – Additive Max for Live Synth

Polyphylla – Additive Max for Live Synth   Ableton just released a new Max for Live plugin. Polyphylla is a new additive synthesizer which emphasizes its simple nature with its highly complex, “under the hood,” processes. Additive synths can be complicated and can scare some, who aren’t as familiar with synths, away from ever diving into them. Polyphylla is made to be accessible for novices while providing the necessary power and potential for experts.   Polyphylla can be used to make a full punchy bass, along with bright leads, but separates itself with its ability to make tripped out ambient noises and textured pad sounds. “At the heart of the synth is a flexible 120-partial additive oscillator coupled to an analogue-style noise generator, each with its own multimode filter. The oscillator offers three methods by which to generate and edit a base harmonic spectrum: simple analogue waveform emulation, knob-driven stochastic microtuning, and …

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