Cubase 5 comes with fully integrated new tools for working with loops, beats and vocals, such as LoopMash and VariAudio, combining with new composition features and the first VST3 convolution reverb to take musical creativity to new heights. With stunning innovations and additional enhancements that boost productivity and performance, Cubase 5 represents the absolute cutting edge in digital audio workstations.
Beat Creation and Loop Mangling
Cubase 5 features outstanding new tools for creating beats, generating exciting new rhythms and working with loops.
AmpliTube Fender®
The World’s Most Influential Guitar and Bass Tones
Right On Your Desktop AmpliTube® Fender® is the first and only official guitar/bass Amp and FX software suite made by IK Multimedia in cooperation with legendary music icon Fender® Musical Instruments Corporation.
With a collection of 45 pieces of gear collected from the most sought after classic and modern Fender® amps (including the ’65 Twin Reverb®, ’57 Deluxe™, ’59 Bassman® LTD, ’64 Vibroverb® Custom, Super-Sonic™, Metalhead™ and many more), cabinets, stomp boxes and rack effects, AmpliTube Fender® sets a new standard for software amplifiers.
From guitar to bass, from Country to Blues and Rock, Punk to Metal, whatever style you play, AmpliTube Fender® is the only amp suite that gives you the world’s most influential guitar and bass tones right on your desktop.
* Standalone and plug-in software for all platforms
* 12 of the most influential guitar amps of all time
* 12 original matching cabinets and 9 microphones
* 6 signature classic stomp effects and 6 rack effects
* Incredible tonal flexibility: mix and match amps, cabinets, mics and more
* Sound-certified and approved by the tone gurus at Fender®
* 5 separate modules: Tuner, configurable Stomp pedal board, Amp head, Cabinet+Mic and Rack Effects
* 2 fully configurable rigs with up to 32 simultaneous effects
* Digital Tuner
* Standalone and VST/AU/RTAS plug-in
* Includes SpeedTrainer™ and RiffWorks™ T4 Recording Software
* Can be expanded with any “Powered by AmpliTube” models using AmpliTube X-GEAR
* Can be controlled live with StompIO™, StealthPedal™ and any traditional MIDI controller
* Hundreds of presets included with more that can be downloaded online
* Powered by AmpliTube® with exclusive DSM™ (Dynamic Saturation Modeling) and VRM™ (Volumetric Response Modeling)
6 Stomp Effects
Fender® Blender™
Fender® Phaser
Fender® Fuzz Wah
Fender® ’63 Reverb
Fender® Tape Echo
Fender® Volume
Fender® Blender™
A unique germanium fuzz/distortion pedal. With a tone unlike any distortion pedal on the market, the Blender™ is capable of a harsh fuzz effect, great as a tool for Psychedelic and Alternative Rock. Perfect for those who want to create instead of copying, with a bit of experimentation, this pedal can deliver a huge range of unique tones.
Fender® Phaser
A Classic analog Phase shift effect as heard on countless recordings since the 1970s. The rate control knob alternately illuminates blue and red at the same rate as the phase shifting.
Fender® Fuzz Wah
A combination of a Fuzz-style distortion effect and a Wah pedal, this is two pedals in one. Due to this combination, and its Fuzz>Wah / Wah>Fuzz selector switch, the Fender Fuzz Wah is capable of effects not easily achieved by traditional units.
Fender® ’63 Reverb
First introduced in the early 1960s, this classic all-tube spring reverb unit is a must have accessory for all Surf players. Blues and experimental players love it, too. It’s presented here in stomp-box form instead of its original head-style unit. The Fender Reverb is capable of producing an incredibly lush or intense crashing Reverb effect due to its post-guitar, pre-amplifier signal path and unique tube driven output.
Fender® Tape Echo
A classic tape echo simulation, as seen in the Fender® Cyber-Twin®. The warmth and wobble of magnetic tape lent a wonderful ambience to the echo effects used on recordings of the last 50 years, and those sounds can be recreated easily with Amplitube® Fender®. The Tape Echo’s controls can also be manipulated for experimental lo-fi echo effects, bringing extra creativity to your playing.
Volume
A classic volume control. Use to control the volume of your guitar signal, or in conjunction with an overdrive/distortion pedal for dynamic control of your signal boost.
In the development of AmpliTube Fender®, IK Multimedia has taken an unprecedented approach to raise the bar of modeling accuracy in order to nail every sonic nuance of the included legendary Fender® gear. Every step in the development process has been constantly supervised and sound-certified, step-by-step, by the tone gurus at Fender® to ensure that the same quality process of real gear tone-testing has been strictly followed in the realization of AmpliTube Fender®.
Never before have you been able to get this close to the real thing on your desktop.
PC software makes learning drums easy for HD-1 owners
Roland Corporation is proud to introduce new drum lesson software for owners of the HD-1 electronic drum kit. The DT-HD1 teaches introductory drum patterns and techniques in ways that are fun and easy for any entry-level drummer.
This new software integrates seamlessly with the Roland HD-1 V-Drums Lite electronic drum kit, which is made with the same revolutionary V-Drums technology used by professional musicians. Incredibly quiet, conveniently compact and affordable, the HD-1 brings quality sounds and ease-of-use to anyone who wants to learn to play drums. The DT-HD1 drum tutorial software bundle includes a USB-MIDI interface and an audio cable, allowing drummers to learn while practising with the HD-1. Players can learn how to perform basic drum patterns from different genres of music, all the way up to playing full songs with a backing track. Users can even load their own favourite song data (SMF) and jam along.
In the Notation Screen, a bouncing ball guides players through the patterns and demonstrates which pads to play and which hands to use when playing a fill. The software also allows drummers to slow or speed up tempos, repeat sections, and select specific pads for playback to help them learn more difficult patterns.
The DT-HD1 software makes learning drum technique fun, with features like the Game Screen. Drummers play along with co-ordinated falling blocks to obtain a high score, while learning precision, timing, and technique.
The DT-HD1 drum tutorial software is compatible with Microsoft Windows XP and Vista, and is scheduled to be available in February, 2009.
At this years NAMM show MOTU unveiled the latest addition to their range of Virtual Instruments: BPM – Beat Production Machine.
MOTU’s BPM is an advanced urban rhythm instrument that unites state-of-the-art virtual instrument technology with beat programming inspired by the classic drum machines of the 80’s and 90’s. BPM provides complete creative control, from recording and programming individual samples to building and arranging entire songs. Included is a comprehensive,
expertly produced urban sound and loop library for urban, R, pop,rock and other music styles.
BPM ships with a vast 15GB library of expertly recorded and mastered 24-bit 96 kHz rhythmic material for urban, R, hip hop, techno, electro, house, pop, rock and other music styles.
BPM also includes a comprehensive grap hic mixer, unlimited effects processing and dozens of world-class effects, including multi-band EQ, filter, delay, drive, distortion and convolution reverb to turn your computer into a rhythm production powerhouse.
BPM will run as a Plug-In in MAS, AU, RTAS or VST formats. It will also run as a standalone application.
BPM will run under Mac OS X – 10.4 or higher or Windows – XP or Vista, 32 or 64 bit.
Pitch correction software has applications from restoration and mix-rescue to outright distortion of a voice or instrument. most vocals we hear recorded these days, particulary in the charts have some, to lots of vocal correction prcessing.
I’ll discuss some of the more tasteful uses of these auto-tune tools below. But first I thought I’d highlight their misuse to illustrate the effects we usually try to avoid.
So, listen here to 10 of pop music’s most blatant auto-tune abuses:
If you’re unfamiliar with Auto-tune, and especially if you listen to much pop and rock, you might not hear it initially. When overdone, the effect yields an unnatural yodel or warble in a singer’s voice. But the sound is so commonplace in modern mainstream music that your ears may have tuned out the auto-tune!
The songs in this clip, in order, and the phrases most affected by auto-tuning to help you spot them:
Dixie Chicks – The Long Way Around – Noticeable on “parents” and “but I.”
T-Pain – I’m Sprung – Especially obvious on “homies” and “lady.”
Avril Lavigne – Complicated – Listen to “way,” “when,” “driving,” “you’re.”
Uncle Kracker – Follow Me
The whole vocal sounds strained, but especially the word “goodbye.”
Maroon 5 – She Will Be Loved – Listen for “rain” and “smile.”
Natasha Bedingfield – Love Like This – “Apart” and “life.”
Sean Kingston – Beautiful girls – “OoooOver” doesn’t sound human.
JoJo – Too Little Too Late – Appropriately, “problem” stands out.
Rascal Flatts – Life is a Highway
Every vocal, foreground and background, is treated, but “drive” in particular.
New Found Glory – Hit or Miss – “Thriller”, and every time Jordan sings “I.”
The Cher Effect
When used noticeably, an auto-tuner produces what most call “The Cher Effect“, named for her trademark sound in the song Believe*. (In essence, we named the effect like scientists naming a new disease after its first victim.) Treated this heavily, a vocal track sounds synthetic, and obviously processed.
But not all auto-tuning is so blatant. In the sample above, it’s harder to hear the pitch correction on Uncle Kracker and Avril than on T-Pain and Bedingfield.
Tasteful Uses
As with any tool, a little care can yield great results. Some simple things to keep in mind about pitch correction tools:
Performance: Most importantly, an auto-tuner isn’t a shortcut to a perfect performance. If you can’t sing the song properly, no amount of post-processing will make it sound like you did. So when your pitch matters, and you don’t want to correct it with an effect, you’ll need to work on your performance until it’s right.
Less is more: The fewer notes you correct, the less obvious your use of an auto tuner will be. Consider automating the plugin so it acts only when most needed.
Graphical mode: If your pitch correction software offers a graphical mode (like Antares Auto-Tune and Melodyne,) learn how to work with it. The default “auto” modes are OK for basic corrections, but often produce noticeable yodeling.
Backing vocals: In general, you can get away with more pitch correction on backing vocals than lead vocals.
Outdated: Obvious vocoder-style autotuning is dated, and borders on kitschy. The synthetic warbling vocal sound marks songs as having come from a specific era, the same way gated-reverb on drums instantly places a song in the 1980′s. Remember: If you make the auto tuner obvious, people will say your song uses “the Cher effect.” Let this be a guideline.
Let us not forget that ver sson we will have Melodyne DNA which can analyse CHORDS and seperate the note indiviulally allowing complete control of volumes dynamics and pitch. This will surly lead to to some nasty uses alngside some inovative ones. I can not wait!
Ableton Live is a professional loop-based software music sequencer for Mac OS and Windows by Ableton. The latest major release of Live is Version 7.
Unlike other software sequencers, Live is designed around the notion of being as much an instrument for live performances as a tool for composing and arranging. It is also often used for precision mixing of tracks by DJs.
If you have never used Ableton before, it can dratically change your music creation technique nevermind your outlook!.
Using Ableton Live, you can integrate audio recording, loops and samples with your Reason projects. This is done by ReWiring Reason with Live.
This gives you acces to some of the best control AND the best sounds!
Install Live on your computer.
Launch Live so that it can install its ReWire engine in your system.
Go to Live’s In/Out View and select Reason as the “In Type.”
Enable Live’s Monitoring switch.
Launch Reason.
Select the desired ReWire Channels in Live’s In Channel menu if you have devices in Reason routed to channels other than the Mix L & R Channels.
Sending MIDI from Live to Reason:
In a MIDI Track in Live, select Reason as the output type in the in/out chooser.
In the output channel chooser of the same Track, select the desired Reason device.
Notes:
Reason is now in ReWire Slave mode; Live is the ReWire Master.
Reason will lock to the Live tempo and transport with sample-accurate synchronization. If you change the tempo in Live, Reason will follow.
You can record the Reason ReWire input in Live as you would with any other input in Live. (Please see the recording section of the Live manual).
To disconnect the ReWire connection you must always quit Reason first.
Introducing Auto-Tune EvoThe Next Generation of the Worldwide Standard in Professional Pitch Correction The Fastest, Easiest-To-Use, Highest-Quality Tool for Correcting Pitch
Hailed as a “holy grail of recording,” by Recording magazine (and adopted worldwide as the largest-selling audio plug-in of all time), Auto-Tune corrects intonation problems in vocals or solo instruments, in real time, without distortion or artifacts, while preserving all of the expressive nuance of the original performance – with audio quality so pristine that the only difference between what goes in and what comes out is the intonation. All with a user-interface that is a model of clarity, speed and ease-of-use.
For most common pitch problems, Auto-Tune Evo’s Automatic Mode instantaneously detects the pitch of the input, identifies the closest pitch in a user-specified scale (including minor, major, chromatic and 26 historical and microtonal scales), and corrects the input pitch to match the scale pitch. A Retune Speed control lets you match the retune rate to virtually any performance style.
For meticulous tweaking, the Graphical Mode displays the performance’s detected pitch envelope and allows you to specify the desired pitch using a variety of graphics tools. This mode gives complete control over the correction or modification of the most elaborate expressive gestures.
Auto-Tune is used daily by thousands of audio professionals around the world. Whether to save studio and editing time, ease the frustration of endless retakes, to save that otherwise once-in-a-lifetime performance, or to create striking special effects, Auto-Tune Evo is the tool of choice.
While Auto Tune’s patented technology has always provided unmatched speed, accuracy, and audio quality, for Auto-Tune Evo, Dr. Andy’s gone back to the proverbial drawing board to create a seriously evolved voice processing technology that takes advantage of the hugely more powerful computers that are now the norm for digital audio recording.
The result is Evo™ Voice Processing Technology, offering powerful new features and capabilities along with pitch detection and correction that is substantially more accurate and reliable over a much wider range of audio input quality.
General Features
Dramatically enhanced core technology: Evo™ Voice Processing Technology takes advantage of the power of today’s computers to provide powerful new features and enhanced tracking and correction capabilities.
Redesigned user interface: Continuing the process begun with Auto-Tune 5, we have again refined the Auto-Tune user interface to allow for smoother, more intuitive workflow.
Reorganized common controls: With the addition of the new pitch shifting, formant correction, and throat modeling capability
Software upgrade delivers innovative new creative tools and workflow enhancements for digital DJs.
M-Audio is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Torq® 1.5 DJ software for Mac OS X and Windows. Torq 1.5 brings even more creative options to the only digital DJ workstation designed to merge live DJ performance and advanced music production. New features in Torq 1.5 software include Tempo Anchors, Tempo Master, zplane élastique time stretching, send/receive MIDI Clock, a new toolbar and a variety of workflow enhancements.
The full list of New Features in Torq 1.5:
Improved Tempo/Pitch Alteration
Tempo Anchors allow marking tracks with varying tempos—Torq’s effects and samples follow the tempo changes in the song
Tempo Master assigns a playing track to serve as the master tempo source for all tempo-related functions
zPlane Elastique time-stretching/compression technology for sophisticated beat matching and pitch alteration
Advanced MIDI Control
transmit/receive MIDI beat clock for sync with other hardware/software and easy switching between DJs
MIDI soft takeover prevents parameter jumps when using external controllers
New User Interface Features
Hide Mixer option conserves screen space
preview songs in headphones before loading to deck
new databse categories for bit rate, file type, year and label
select multiple files to add to playlists
Musical Style Preferences improve results when analyzing tracks
drag and drop songs into decks while in browser max view
warning message if loading a new song onto a Deck that is playing
warning message when attempting to exit Torq
optimized control locations
intuitive toolbar buttons and MIDI/tempo indicators
Global Tempo metronome can be monitored in headphones
Auto Gain feature matches the gain levels between decks
Enhanced Effects Processing
internal effects can be grouped into effects chains
VST effect tempo synchronizes with tempo of playing deck
effects can be used in a post-fader configuration
Rock-Solid Integration with Traditional DJ Hardware
Skip Protection keeps the music playing even if the Control Vinyl or CD skips
True Key Lock keeps the pitch constant when adjusting external turntable speed
New Looping Functionality
Loop points can be set after a section plays
new QuickLoop option for CDJ-style loop division
Quantize function for start/stop accuracy
Regardless of what instrument you play or what software you use to record and compose, it’s never been easier to access massive libraries of synth and sample sounds, guitar and bass amp emulations, vintage-derived effects and so on. While all of this power and flexibility has been a boon for the home recordist, bringing these same software-derived sounds to the stage continues to vex many. The good news is that today’s multicore laptops have more than enough horsepower to handle the needs of most keyboardists, guitarists and experimental-leaning vocalists, as well as multi-instrumentalists who may need to jump between several instruments during a set. By choosing the correct software and hardware, as well as doing some critical housekeeping and asset-management chores, you can easily bring your best software instruments and effects to that stage and consolidate your hardware needs down to a few roadworthy essentials.
The host with the most
First and foremost, all of your software instruments and effects need to live somewhere. While it’s completely feasible for a keyboardist or guitarist to work solely within a workstation-style product such as Propellerhead Reason or Native Instruments GuitarRig, if you really want to take advantage of your plug-in collection or jump between instruments, you need to employ a more open-ended option. Two products that are built expressly for this purpose are Apple MainStage — part of the Apple Logic Studio bundle (; www.apple.com/logicstudio) — and Native Instruments Kore 2, which is now available in a software-only edition , as well as the software/hardware package (www.native-instruments.com). Both programs do many of the same things: 1. They allow you to access, organize, edit, combine and recall the majority of the third-party plug-ins on your machine. 2. Both allow you to play software instruments and process live audio sources (guitar, bass, vocals and even feedback loops). 3. By largely removing the traditional elements of a DAW, both of these apps allow more CPU resources to be used for instruments and effects, thus keeping latency in check.
Choosing a host performance application will depend largely on what software you already own. Logic Studio users have a clear advantage in this department because all channel strips and saved plug-in settings are immediately available in MainStage; in other words, what you did in the studio shows up in MainStage. Kore, however, requires a little more prep work in the beginning (users will need to batch-convert their third-party plug-in sounds over to the KoreSound format), but it offers support for a wider range of plug-in formats as well as Windows PCs.
Time to organise..
The second major task in prepping your sounds for performance is figuring out exactly what you need and exactly what you don’t. If your goal is to replicate the sounds you used in your recordings, a recent demo or what have you, then that is the obvious place to start. Open up the original sessions, isolate the plug-ins that you need to use live and give each preset a specific name before saving them to a new folder. Of course, you can skip that step if you want to dive in and start playing. Either way, once you start to have a firmer grasp on what you’re going to need in a live show or rehearsal situation, that’s the time to start creating a performance library.
MainStage and Kore have different ways of creating that library. With MainStage, you’ll need to create a new Concert. A Concert can comprise any number of live audio and instrument channels, and the Performance pane can be customized to include a wide array of assignable controllers (which you can then easily map to your hardware), meters and patch selectors. You can load instruments and live signal processors in a row and select them interchangeably like presets on a piece of hardware. A single preset can comprise both audio and instrument plug-ins, and a Concert can include any number of presets. When you load a new Concert, all the associated instruments and samples are loaded in the background, and nothing really nails the CPU until a preset is selected. The load time between presets is generally very minimal.
The no hassle, buy nothing keyboard workstation
If you’re a budget-conscious keyboardist and you want a simple and reliant way to access an array of keyboard sounds that requires practically zero mousing around and almost no MIDI assignment editing, here it is.
Load up an empty 16-track session in your DAW of choice. Starting with the first track in the session, load up your first instrument sound and set this track to receive only MIDI channel 1. Repeat the process as needed (track 2 to MIDI channel 2, etc.) until you’ve loaded up all of the sounds you need or you’re out of MIDI channels. Changing MIDI channels on most portable MIDI keyboards (M-Audio Oxygen 8 V2, Axiom 49, etc.) is a simple one- or two-button process. With this setup, you only have to load one session into your DAW, and switching between sounds is as simple as changing the MIDI channel on your controller.
M-Audio has announced the release of Pro Tools M-Powered 8 software, billed as the most advanced audio creation and production software ever. It is available now through authorised dealers as well as from the Digidesign website
Pro Tools M-Powered 8 is the latest version of the industry-leading digital audio workstation. An enhanced feature set is complemented by a completely updated user interface, more than 70 bundled plug-ins and virtual instruments, fully-integrated MIDI and score editors and an expanded array of editing tools for both music and post production applications.
This is exactly the same version as Pro Tools LE but works with compatible M-Audio interfaces instead, such as ProFire 2626, Fast Track Pro, Fast Track Ultra and most recently added, the ProFire 610.
The M-Powered route is a handy way for existing M-Audio interface owning music producers to get into Pro Tools without having to buy a new interface.
Further product information on Pro Tools M-Powered 8 is available on request.
Music Tools 