Sampling the Macbeth M5

Boxed Ear Mighty M5 Demos by Boxed Ear

I have been busy, super busy.. :)

Boxed Ear is a project I’ve been working on for some time. It’s a sample company and our first product is the Mighty M5, a Kontakt sample pack made entirely with the mighty Macbeth M5 synthesizer. The M5 is a huge synth, both physically and sonically. Sampling it has been no small feat, but I’m immensely proud of the results.

The M5′s sound is characterised by its full, rich bass, crystal high end and distinctly analog tone. Even the raw waveforms sound gorgeous with no filtering or modulation. Huge basses and leads, luscious pads, electric pianos, drums, one-shot effects, and crazy modular bleep and bloops are all included in the pack.

In short, this is an amazing sounding sample pack from an amazing sounding synth. Mr Ken Macbeth himself has endorsed the pack, something I’m immensely proud of.

Do please check it out and let me know what you think.

Hardcore you know the score!

Toungue firmly in cheek…

I’ve been listening to a lot of old rave tunes lately, and for a long time I’ve been thinking it might be fun to write one. To make it more interesting, I used only one bit of software, FXpansion’s Geist. No host, no other plugins, no hardware.

Geist is the perfect sampler for this. It’s not unlike using an MPC in terms of features and workflow and a fair few rave tunes were written with them back in the day, along with trackers and Atari STs, neither of which I have access to or any desire to meddle with ever again.

Because I’m feeling the old skool love, here is the Geist preset for this tune. It will even load in the demo version. Now, I’m off to find my white gloves and whistle…

Kurzweil K26xx Cinematic & Ambient Sounds

The K2661 is taking me a long time to get into. Don’t get me wrong, I love it, but it’s deep beast and the learning curve is high.

That said, I’ve had some fun programming it, and here are some of the results. 20 patches, all with a very ambient and filmic edge. I haven’t delved too deep into the VAST algorithms yet, but there are a few nice tricks I’ve discovered (check out the ‘Symphonique’ and ‘Sunset Fade’ patches for some nice random elements). The KDFX is the key to all of these patches, providing some lush long reverbs, so make sure you have the appropriate settings so you can hear the intended KDFX studio.

None of these patches use samples, just the stock K26xx ROMs.

One more thing to mension is that most of the Pad sounds use the Data Slider to alter the Amplitude Envelope times. A good place to start is to put the Data Slider somewhere near the middle.

So prepare to hold some long chords…

Download my K26xx Cinematic & Ambient Bank Here

Or have a listen (all patches recorded straight from the Kurz outputs with no additional effects)…

p.s. check out the new VAST PROGRAMMING forums over at cunka.com. There are some very knowledgable and friendly folks there.

Evolver Sound Bank

I’ve spent about the last year putting this bank together. Not full time of course, I do have the other things to do occasionally, but this bank represents many late nights nonetheless.

127 brand new sounds for your Evolver (I left a default patch at the end). They mostly fall into the ‘dance’ category (electro, house, drum and bass, etc etc). Lots of big basses, leads, crazy fx and sequences. There are NO ‘sequencer’ patches (like some of the factory patches that just play sequenced loops regardless of any keyboard input) mainly because I find those kind of patches of limited use, so ALL of my patches are fully playable on the keyboard. Also make sure you try the mod wheel and aftertouch as I try and program something interesting for these 2 controllers in most patches.

It should go without saying that I think the Evolver is an amazing synth. Everyone should own at least the desktop model. The bang-for-the-buck factor is off the scale!

Anyway… without further ado, here it is. I hope you enjoy it.

Download my Evolver sound bank

AudioRealism BassLine Pro – 25 Sequence Patches

Here’s a set of sequences that I programmed for AudioRealism’s BassLine Pro. You can actually hear most of them at work in the mp3 demo over at the product page, but they never made it into the installer, so i’m throwing them up here instead.

This is a damn fine plugin. I recommend it to anyone looking for a raw analog sound. My one complaint though, is that the sequencer is AWFUL to program. It’s modelled fairly precisely on the TB303 seqeuncer. Fair enough, you might think, but why recreate the inflexibilities of old hardware? The TB303 wasn’t exactly a joy to program in the first place. I can only imagine how much more fun a plug like this would be to program if it had a piano-roll type interface for the sequencer.

Download the sequence patches here

Vaz Modular – Physical Modelling Patches

So I’ve been meaning to try out some physical modelling, and I thought Vaz might be a good place to start.

The first patch is a bowed string model, based around the methods discussed in this article on Sound on Sound.

The second patch is a plucked string (sounds very much like an accoustic guitar). Its vaguely based on the Karpus Strong theory of a small amount of noise going through a tuned delay (a comb filter in this case). Its a really simple patch but sounds remarkably good!

I’m pretty new to this stuff, and there doesn’t seem to be alot of info on physical modelling with modular synths on the net, so if anyone has any good tips or links, I’d love to hear them.

Download the two patches here