Creating organic melodies in Ableton live

Here's this weeks video from Point Blank Online. It looks at creating some organic melodies in Ableton live.

Don't forget to check out the courses that they offer on their site and check out some of their other videos on their YouTube Channel.

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More info on the U-He Reason Rack Extensions

There's a video posted on Music Radar showing a closer look at the upcoming U-He Rack Extensions that will be available to buy in Reason 6.5 and Reason Essentials 1.5.

It's mentioned that they're hoping to sell the Rack Extensions for about £13 a piece which is a VERY generous price. I seriously can't wait for this Reason update now.

Click here to view the video on Music Radar.

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First look at the BitSpeak Rack Extension for Reason

Here's a video from Sonic Charge showing of their BitSpeak Rack Extension that will be available in Reason 6.5 and Reason Essentials 1.5.

This looks really cool, I've used the VST version of BitSpeak before but I have to say the CV controls make it look awesome and open up lots of new possibilities. I've got to say this is going to be one of the first extensions that I'm going to be getting when the update gets here.

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Ableton Live Tutorial - Miami Pool Party Deep House Vibe

Point Blank offer some amazing music production tutorials on their YouTube page. Check them out and remember to subscribe to their channel for their latest updates.

Check out their site to find out about some of the online music courses that they offer as well.

I'm going to be featuring one of their videos each week here on Voltage-Controlled so keep checking back for more awesome videos.



"With WMC 2012 coming up and the prospect of scantily clad revellers raving it up at various pool parties around Miami, this week Danny J Lewis decided to demonstrate how to create that summertime deep house pool party vibe.

As part of the sound he shows you how to twist up a vocal sample using Ableton Live and Native Instruments Maschine as a control device."

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Huge news from Propellerhead Software – Rack Extensions & Figure iOS app

I’m a huge fan of propellerhead software and how they go about creating and designing their products. I’ve been a user of Reason for years and It’s helped me create some of my best music to date.

Yesterday the guys over at Propellerhead held a press conference and announced Rack Extensions (Re) for their Reason software and a brand new iOS app called Figure.

Rack Extensions simply looks awesome. For years people have wanted the option to use their favourite VST plugins in the Reason rack, but to be honest there wasn’t really a practical method to incorporate these plugins in such a way that works well in the Reason interface.

Rack Extensions provides a pretty cool way of getting around this problem. Reason is inviting companies to design (or re-design) their plugins in a way that will work seamlessly with the Reason platform both in look and functionality.

Propellerhead are making these Rack Extensions available to download from a dedicated store. This makes Reason the first music creation application that allows its users to actually buy and download instruments, tools and effects straight from the application (much like the Apple AppStore).

Propellerhead already have a quite a few big name developers on board and developing with the Rack Extensions platform. Companies that are building for the Reason rack include: SoftTube, GForce, Sonic Charge, Korg, U-He, Peff and Sugar Bytes. These are just the tip of the iceberg as there are also other developers working on extensions that have yet to be revealed.

This is very exciting news from Propellerhead software and I can’t wait to try out some of the Rack Extensions in my music. The Reason rack is expanding and opening up to cool new features, the possibilities could be endless.

Rack Extensions will be available in Q2 and will be a free update for current Reason 6 and Reason essentials users.

Figure was Also revealed at the press conference yesterday. Figure is a brand new iOS app from Propellerheads.

Figure isn’t really that mobile version Reason that people wanted but it’s still pretty cool. It’s based on the Reason engine after all.

Imagine having a Thor and Kong on your phone. Figure was designed with practicality in mind, it’s not a complete studio for you to work with but it does provide you with a quick and easy way for you to get some ideas down and have a little fun in your down time.

Figure will be available soon in the AppStore for 69p ($1).

Here's the full video from the Propellerhead press conference.

I’ll be doing a more in depth review of Figure when it hits the AppStore. I’ll also be writing a bit more about Rack Extensions when I get my hands on the update.

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Here's a collection of tunes that I made using just my iPad.

I've had Garageband on my iPad for quite a while now, so naturally I've made some tunes using nothing but the iPad. Naturally the tunes don't sound as professional as they would if I created them using a full DAW like Ableton or Cubase. The process of making music on the iPad is fun, it's great as a musical sketchpad and a great way to create and develop ideas on the fly.

I've uploaded an album of five tracks to my Bandcamp page. All of the music on the album was created using nothing but my iPad 2; I even did the artwork in Photoshop for iOS.

Overall the tracks are pretty short and mixed pretty rough. I used Garageband to do the main arrangement and some of the instrumentation but I also used quite a few other apps that have the audio copy feature.

You can buy the album for £0.99 (or more if you want to give a donation to Voltage-Controlled).But if you like, I've embedded a player below so you can also listen online for free.

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Happy 10th Birthday MicroKorg

This year marks the ten year anniversary of Korg's iconic MicroKorg synthesiser. The MicroKorg is by far my favorite hardware synth in my collection and I've used it on tonnes of tracks and samples over the years.

Korg have uploaded a video of various artists and producers wishing the MicroKorg a happy birthday, Check it out.



& here's a video that I did a while back of me having a bit of a jam with the MicroKorg.

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Miselu Neiro: The first Android device that's actually grabbed my interest

As you all probably know by now I'm very much a fan of iOS, I have an iPhone 4 and an iPad 2 that I use for pretty much everything (I probably use them too much really).

I've featured and reviewed tonnes of iOS based music apps on Voltage-Controlled for the simple fact that iOS is by far the most superior (mobile) operating system for music apps.

Disagree? Click that little iOS button on the right sidebar and take a look at all the cool apps that you can get for the iPad & iPhone.

Is that about to change any time soon? The obvious answer is no, but as I was checking my various news feeds today I stumbled across an article on Music Radar about a device called Miselu Neiro. This device is powered by Android which officially makes it the first Android device that's actually grabbed my interest.

Miselu Neiro is being described as "the worlds first net-enabled social musical instrument with wide touch display". Now to me that just sounds like a bunch of buzz words that have been randomly thrown together to make something seem more appealing than it actually is.

The device is the result of a partnership between Retronyms (creators of the TableTop iOS app) and Miselu. From the pictures it looks like the Miselu Neiro will have 2 USB ports, a HDMI port, a card slot of some kind, Midi I/O, audio input and headphone output. Yamaha is also providing it with the Yamaha AudioEngine (TM) sound chip NSX-1.

But the best thing of all? It reminds me of an old V-Tech spelling computer I had when I was a kid.

Let's be realistic though, I have no need for an Android tablet that has a little midi keyboard stuck to it. I Wouldn't use it, it just doesn't seem practical in the slightest. I have no idea how much this is going to cost but I bet I could buy an Alesis IO dock for my iPad for a similar (or less) amount of money. And to be honest the IO dock would have a place in my studio where as the Miselu Neiro wouldn't.

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The Fundamentals of Synthesiser Programming (Moog Music Inc.)

I’ve just stumbled across a this series of tutorials that was uploaded to YouTube by Moog Music inc. The tutorials are presented by Dr. Joseph Akin and they cover the basics of analog synthesis. I’m not saying these videos are terribly exiting but if you’re new to synthesis then it might help you get to grips with basic sound design.

Anyway, I’ve embedded all 6 YouTube videos in this post (cue cheesy synth tutorial music).

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