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Arturia Minimoog V2 – the best keeps getting better

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

OK, I’m starting to have just a bit *too* much fun in the studio. I’m not sure if I feel like a kid in a candy shop, a bull in a china shop – or somewhere in between. The latest update to Arturia’s Minimoog V is a pretty major step forward. I love the vocal formant filter and the sound map – being able to dial in a sound that’s a parameter morph of four separate presets is amazing. And the modulation matrix is a vast improvement over version one – makes it almost Oberheim-like. I’m still getting my head wrapped around all it can do. It’s going to fun knocking out some demos with this virtual instrument – even though I spend more time with the Origin these days this plug-in can do some acoustic gymnastics that are pretty compelling. Stay tuned for demos coming soon!

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Tags: Arturia, Music, synthesizer

Arturia Origin v1.1 – a roadmap worth following

Saturday, April 25th, 2009

I’m really excited about the roadmap for Arturia’s Origin. I’ve had this beast in the studio for a few months and absolutely love it. This thing is deep, wide, powerful, sounds great, is easy to use and extremely gratifying to play. I’m not alone in my assessment – there are a slew of reviews in trade magazines that echo my sentiments. This is the first hardware synthesizer I’ve owned in more than 10 years, after I thought I’d *never* own another hardware synth.

Arturia started with a long list of bold plans for the Origin, including templates of all of their software plugin recreations of classic synthesizers. Because they were delayed in the release of the instrument – and likewise, the intial release didn’t initially deliver on all of Arturia’s ambitions, I think the reception for the Origin has been somewhat chilly in certain circles. (The list price of the machine has also raised a few eyebrows) And of course I believe that the negative chatter has been undeserved – and amounts to little more than a vitriolic combination of F.U.D, commercial disparagement and just plain old sour grapes.

Be that as it may, there are some really interesting things planned for the Origin mid-year. I’m particularly excited about using the Origin as a generic MIDI controller, not only to use it in a sequencing environment to control the Origin’s synth engine and edit/play back with the simplicity of a VSTi plugin – but also for the prospect of being able to map those knobs and controls to other synth plugins in my setup. Also, there are some modules planned that don’t have any correlation to one of Arrturia vaunted plugins – the Hammond module and Leslie effect are two prime examples.

Aside from the Origin being greater than the sum of its parts today, these new developments are particularly exciting. In most cases I use a freeware Hammond Organ plugin and Steinberg’s internal Leslie simulator for any organ part that’s required in a cue I compose. However, this is going to be a particularly interesting addition to the kit, not only to check out Arturia’s take on these classic tones – but also to see how they work in a larger modular synthesis environment – to mix and match these modules with the others lying under the Origin’s “hood”. This is going to be an interesting summer for new music and tunes from Titan Line Audio.

Posted in Hardware | No Responses »
Tags: Arturia, synthesizer

Greetings from Anaheim – winter NAMM 2009

Friday, January 16th, 2009

houston_demoing_at_namm2009

Here I am – partly brain-fried from the seemingly endless series of demos at the NAMM show. Still, it’s been a lot of fun to meet people and show off my rig. When it dawned on me that I’d be breaking down this entire studio and taking back to Studio City in less than 48 hours, I wasn’t smiling so much any more.

Posted in Miscellaneous | No Responses »
Tags: Anaheim, Arturia, console, demonstrations, extension bay, Hilton, meetings, NAMM, Origin, SmartAV, studio, Tango

How my “new” Origin synthesizer made it home

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

This is how I brought my “new” synthesizer home today – strapped to the back of my Burgman.

Origin on Burgman under Bungie

I wanted to have it on hand for a video shoot in the studio, so instead of waiting for a friend with a car or truck to bail me out, I took matters into my own hands – or should I say – into my cargo net. I refer to “new” in quotes because this is actually a prototype machine, and has be in service for sound design for a while now. I’m stoked to have it in my studio and ready to put it to work.

Posted in Hardware | No Responses »
Tags: analog, Arturia, DSP, modular, Music, Origin, Sound, synthesizer

The well tempered sketchpad

Friday, December 26th, 2008

Since I’m spending the week between Christmas and New Year away from the main studio, I decided to put together a road-worthy kit to take with me for sonic sketching on the road. Of course there’s the obligatory laptop, along with Cubase, 32-key USB MIDI keyboard, and Korg nanoPAD, and an external hard drive for audio. I decided to use the built-in audio chip set on the laptop, mainly because of space considerations – but also, with the ASIO4ALL driver, I’m getting some really respectable latencies – certainly good enough for idea generation. I’m sticking with set of quality cans – Sony’s venerable MDR-V600 headphones – again to make packing easier, but also to keep from annoying other people in the house while I’m riffing and tracking. I also brought along an external keyboard with the Cubase commands overlaid on the keys. I’ve become so accustomed to the SmartAV Tango that I’ve practically forgotten the Cubase QWERTY command layout.

TLA's portable sketchpad

I’ve had the Arturia Analog Factory Experience keyboard for a while, but only brought it out occasionally. This kind of situation is precisely what it’s made for, and I definitely appreciate being able to plug in a USB cable right into the laptop and wail away, albeit on a 32-note keyboard. The nanoPAD is the latest addition, and I enjoy the touch pads for tapping out percussion parts, and the gray touch pad to the left is a great X-Y controller (with after touch). It will be fun using that for imparting some wild expression passages on all kinds of parts. I just downloaded the editor to remap the keys, so that will be something to try out.

This will also be a chance to gain some familiarity with the built-in instruments in the latest version of Cubase. I just didn’t have time to install more than the Native Instruments Kore Player libraries before I left, so this will be a chance to explore some new sonic territory. I find the Spector and Mystic synths to be very interesting, but I haven’t had a chance to dig into them all that much – this week may be my chance to do that. And then there’s all of the garden variety stuff from HALionOne, which I’ll use for the basic tracks before migrating the project back into the main studio and re-mixing with the larger/more detailed libraries on the main DAWs there.

The last and most important piece of this puzzle was the latest addition – the M-Audio Studio Pack backpack – which fits *all* of this gear into it – and is small enough to be used as carry-on baggage for flights. It’s really great to have everything compartmentalized, so it makes for easy unpacking/re-packing when going through security. I think there are a few TSA security people that are running out to the local music store to pick up a nanoPAD today…

Posted in Hardware | No Responses »
Tags: Analog Factory Experience, Arturia, backpack, composition, Cubase 5, laptop, Music, PC, portable, sequencing, studio, USB, Vista, Windows

Titan Line Music

Houston H. Haynes – Composition for Film, Television & New Media