Supercharge Your Beats - another Native Instruments teaser video

Native Instruments have uploaded yet another teaser video to their YouTube page.



Unlike the first teaser that we got last week this video seems to be more focused towards beat programming. Rumours are suggesting that this could be an updated version of their popular drum sampler instrument, Battery.

Could this mean that Native Instruments have two new products coming our way?

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London Elektricity - Drum Processing Tutorial - Hospital Records

Here's a cool little tutorial from Drum n Bass legend London Elektricity showing you how he beefs up his drum breaks. Anyone that's producing Drum n Bass will benefit from an insight on how the pros work. I'm hoping to see some more future tutorials from London Elektricity and maybe even some of the other guys over at Hospital Records.

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First Thoughts: Maschine Mikro

Ive had my eye on Native instruments Maschine controllers for a while now, and it's been quite some time since I've treated myself to a new piece of hardware gear. The only thing that was stopping me from getting my hands on the Maschine before now was the fairly hefty price tag. When Native Instruments announced the updated Maschine MK2 I saw that various online retailers were selling off the original Maschine and Maschine Mikro at an unbeatable price.

The Machine Mikro was the one that I ended up buying, at only £150 it was a no brainier. It would have been nice to get the bigger Maschine controller but I was on a budget so I went for the cheaper option. Even though I went for the older Maschine hardware controller, it included a free upgrade to the 1.8 version of the software. This gave me access to all of the brand new features including; time-stretching, new effects and a free copy of their awesome Massive synthesiser (which I will probably talk more about in a future post).

The main reason that I brought the Maschine Mikro was because I've been thinking of putting together a live set. I wanted a small (ish) midi controller that would be robust enough to carry around in a laptop bag as well as fitting in nicely with my home studio set-up. And that's exactly what I've got, the Maschine controller is a solid piece of kit that looks like it can take a fair amount of punishment. The pads are tough but extremely playable and it's small enough to sit nicely by the side of my computer in my studio.

I've had the Mikro for a few weeks now and I can safely say it lives up to all the hype. It's quickly become a vital part of my main studio set-up as well injecting a little more creative flair into my production workflow. Using pads to program drums and percussion parts just feels a hell of a lot better than using a standard midi keyboard.

The Maschine software has also opened a lot more doors for me. Since I mostly use Propellerhead's Reason as my main DAW I've been missing out on using VST instruments and effects in my productions. Now that Maschine has provided me with a suitable VST host I can once again take advantage of the vast amount of VST instruments and effects that are available.

Of course this new addition to the studio has greatly influenced how I go about creating music. Before I introduced Maschine into my set-up I would work almost completely within the boundaries of Reason, with the exception of creating a few sounds and loops using hardware gear and iPad instruments. Now I find my self starting out in Maschine, creating a few loops and getting the general feel of the track down before I even load up Reason.

The Maschine Mikro controller has definitely been one of the best purchases I've made in a long while. I've not really had the chance to test it out in a live situation yet, but once I've built up a performance worthy set I'll be sure to put it though it's paces. But as a studio tool the Maschine really holds its own and it has very quickly become one of the most important aspects of my creative workflow.

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DM-1 Drum Machine now available for iPhone

The DM-1 from Fingerlab has got to be one of my favourite drum machines for the iPad, it's simple to use and it just looks great. So I was happy to hear that it's now available on the iPhone and it's priced very generously  at 69p (GBP).

Check out the video of the iPhone version below.

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Robot Drums emulating Propellerhead Figure - Point Blank

This is a pretty cool idea; the folks over at Point Blank have put together a video showing you how to create a rack in Ableton Live that gives you a Propellerhead Figure style of drum sequencing. This is a cool way of finding some inspiration and creativity when coming up with drum patterns. Check out the video below.



"http://www.pointblankonline.net/courses/ableton-live-courses.php to check out our range of online Ableton Course where you can learn more techniques like this. Please get in touch with a course advisor at advice@pointblankonline.net if you want to find out more.

In this tutorial Danny J Lewis shows you how to create a rack that emulates the mechanics behind the way the drum patterns switch in the recently released 'Figure' app. 

Please subscribe to our channel to make sure you don't miss future exclusive tutorials from Point Blank Online school."

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Roland TR-505 Drum machine for sale

Roland TR-505 drum machine for sale on eBay. I'd love to buy this myself but I currently don't have the funds to buy new gear at the moment so I said that I'd post a link up here on Voltage-Controlled.

Description from the eBay auction:

"It has been stored for a few years now, so I am looking to sell. When I first acquired it, some of the pads were sticky, and the battery contacts were fairly corroded. I therefore set about dismantling, cleaning, and getting it back into full working order. The result is a fully-working machine, with a few cosmetic scratches (which can be expected from a 25 year old Roland) and it will work from batteries (contacts cleaned up well) as well as from the optional power supply socket. It has been a pleasure to own this machine of the classic Roland TR series, but I'm saving up for my current photographic hobby hence the sale. This will also be sold with the original manual, although the manual is available for free download from Roland."

If you're interested in buying the 505 please head over to the eBay auction via this link.

The machine will be up for auction until March 2nd, 2012 (15:57 GMT)

If you have any further questions then please get in contact with @JohndMcCormick on Twitter or Via the eBay seller page.

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Stochastik Drum Machine for iPad

Stochastik Drum Machine for iPad is now available in the iOS AppStore. The app lets you use a probability engine to program your beats, allowing you to create dynamic rhythm patterns and endless variation to to your drum loops.

Say goodbye to boring, repetitive drum loops and welcome a little randomness into your life.

The best thing about this app is obviously the probability engine. You can program a simple straight forward drum pattern into this thing and then use the probability engine to add a subtle variation to a drum part (say the hi-hats). This helps to give the beat that evolving feeling without making it sound completely random. That's not saying that it can't do random, if you set all of the steps to a low probability then this awesome little drum app will spit out a constantly evolving drum pattern (perfect for genres such as IDM).

I love how useful this thing is for fills and subtle changes. Say you're programming the drums for your new track but don't want to use that same loop all the way through the track. You want subtle variations to a snare fill or maybe that odd bit of percussion randomly coming in and out to keep your listeners on their toes. To program all of these little surprises by hand can take hours but if you program your beats on your iPad with Stochastik you could get this same effect in minutes, seconds even.

Of course the probability engine isn't the only thing that this app does well. It's packed with over a thousand high quality drum samples that can make an awesome addition to almost any genre of music that you can think of. Programming drum parts in Stochastik is really simple too, so even if you're not too familiar with programming drums then it should be pretty easy to learn how to use this thing. The app also has background audio, audio copy and WIST support meaning that you can wirelessly sync it with other iOS devices.

If you're taking your music seriously then you might want to use your own drum sounds or maybe even a hardware drum machine. At the moment Stochastik doesn't yet support MIDI in and out. But fear not, this will be included in the first major update to the app. Also that update will include other features such as multi channel exporting of drum sounds and mute/solo for each drum part.

All in all this is a solid drum machine app that not only offers you high quality sounds and simple programming but it also offers a truly inspirational way of programming beats and coming up with ideas. In fact I'll go as far to say that it's one of the best iOS music apps that I've seen in ages.

Here I've uploaded a video of my playing around with Stochastik, showing of a quick D&B pattern and an over the top mad glitch sequence.


Get Stochastik from the AppStore here.

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Rhythm Studio updated with WIST & a brand new synth

Rhythm Studio has just been updated to version 1.06 which includes a few cool updates including a brand new synth for us to play around with. Rhythm Studio is a pretty cool little app, it's sort of like a toolbox of synths, drum machines and effects for the iPad.

The latest addition to the line up of synths is Phoenix. Phoenix replicates that classic supersaw sound from the legendary Roland JP-8000.

Rhythm Studio also included support for Korg's WIST technology in this update. This allows you to wirelessly sync Rhythm Studio with other iOS devices running compatible apps. WIST seems to be becoming the standard in wireless syncing on the iPad so there's no sjuppurise that this was included.

Background audio has been included in this update and also song sharing over Bluetooth.

Pulse Code have been quite regular with their updates to Rhythm Studio, to be honest it's good to see an app that gets updated this regularly with so many new features. Lets hope they continue to add more devices and keep making this better.

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Free Kong drum kit samples

For this free sample pack I've been messing around with the analog modules from Reason's Kong drum machine. As I said in my last post, I use Kong for all of my drums when producing music.

This free sample pack contains:

• 4 one shot kicks samples
• 4 one shot snares samples
• 4 one shot hi-hats samples
• 4 one shot percussion samples
• 6 bonus loops

All the samples were made using the Kong drum machine and further processed with various VSTs in Ableton live.

Get the samples here (.rar)

All the samples that are available here on Voltage-Controlled are available completely free of charge. They are also royalty free, which means that you can use them in any creative protect (commercial or non-commercial) without having to clear them.

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Creating drum sounds using the noise and tone generator in Kong

Mattias Häggström Gerdt from Propellerheads software shows you how to create some cool drum sounds using the tone and noise generators in Kong. I use Kong for most of my drums when producing both music and samples. It's a great tool for beat creation and coming up with some original sounds to use in your projects.

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Creating a beat with Korg iElectribe + free iElectribe samples

The Korg iElectribe is a beast of a drum machine. It was the first app that I brought for my iPad but for some reason I've never really got around to uploading anything about it on Voltage-Controlled.

Anyway, here's a short video of me constructing a simple drum beat using the iElectribe, I love the sound of this app.

I've also uploaded some iElectribe samples for you lot. It's only a small pack, it contains 8 one shot drum hits from the custom drum kit I used in the video.

You can get your hands on the samples here (.zip)

Hopefully I'll get around to posting a bit more about the iElectribe on Voltage-Controlled soon.

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FutureMusic sampling special 'making of' videos

FutureMusic magazine have uploaded two 'Making Of' videos to go along with their Sampling special edition. Part one is hosted by Cyclick and part two by Groove Criminals (Both regularly supply the free samples that can be found on the free CD that comes along with FutureMusic Magazine).

Part one focuses more in foundsound (eg, recording every day objects) where as part two talks about creative ways of getting cool sounds out of your synthesizers and drum machines. To be honest I preferred part two as I'm a huge synth nerd.

They're about 20 mins long each but you might find something interesting/useful. Watch part two if you just want to look at lots of cool synths.

Click here if you're interested in lots of free samples from Voltage-Controlled

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What is ReCycle?

I love using .rex files in my music, it's an easy way to take your loops and create something completely different. ReCycle is a stand alone program by Propellerheads that lets you take your audio loops (say a basic drum loop) and chop them up into different segments that allow you to craft them into something unique that you can use in your productions.

Heres a short video by the folks at Propellerheads; it talks you through ReCycle, Rex loops and how you can use them to add something special to your music. I'd recommend using ReCycle to help make your audio loops a little more manageable and inspirational.

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iPad display recorder & DM1 drum machine demo

iPad demo videos have become a pretty big part of Voltage-Controlled over the last few months. I've uploaded quite a few videos that I've taken using the camera on the back on my iPhone. That's all well and good but the quality of the videos have obviously suffered, so I got thinking about how I could go about making my videos a bit better.

At first I thought about investing in a decent camera but Voltage-Controlled rakes in little to no money from ads and donations so I couldn't really afford it. I remembered someone telling me a while back that if I jailbreak my device I can use third party software to take screen captures directly on the iPad. I looked into it but found out that the iPad 2 that I was using couldn't be jailbroken on iOS5.

However, I heard a week or so ago that it's changed and I can now hack my device and install the screen capture software. So I did it, I jailbroke the iPad and brought a tweak called display recorder.

It's a pretty basic app but it doesn't record audio which is a shame. That's not too much hassle though as I can record the audio into my laptop using my Saffire 6 interface and then sync it later.

Anyways, I thought I'd try it out and upload a video to YouTube. Here's me messing around with Fingerlab's DM-1 drum machine, one of my favourite drum machines on the iPad. DM-1's available in the appstore for £3.99 but I think I picked it up a few months ago when the price dropped to 69p.

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Punished 909 kit (MC-303) - Free samples

OK, so they're not actual 909 samples. The samples here are taken from the 909 kit on my MC-303 groovebox (Which are recorded from an original 909).

The MC303 has a really nice gritty sound to it (especially when you turn up the low boost), to add to that gritty flavour I ran the sounds through some plugins (Drive, EQ and Compressor).

There are 17 one-shot samples in this kit in .wav format. As always the Voltage-Controlled samples are completely royalty free so you can use them in any project you want without having to clear them.

>>>Download the samples now (.zip)<<<

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If anyone wants to know what to get me for Christmas...

...I'll have one of these little beauties ;). The DSI Tempest has to be one of the coolest drum machines I've ever seen.

"Tempest is a professional drum machine that generates its sounds using six powerful analog synthesis voices, and uses an innovative, performance-oriented operating system that permits an extraordinary level of control to create, edit, arrange, and manipulate beats in real time without ever stopping."

Tempest - Beat Exercise from Richard Devine on Vimeo.

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Fingerlab DM-1 drum on sale for £0.69

DM-1 is a vintage style drum machine emulator by Fingerlab. The app is currently available in the app store for a limited time at just £0.69. I already have some great drum machine apps on my iPad (iElectribe, Funkbox, Molten, etc.) but when I saw DM-1 on sale I thought that I'd try it out.

The drum machine is built up of 5 main parts; a step sequencer, drum pads, mixer, X/Y effects trackpads and the main song sequencer. All these different sections are spread out over different pages which makes navigation around the app really simple.

The step sequencer is easy to use and works just like any other drum sequencer, it's really fast to build a beat and get your ideas down. The included drum sounds are superb, they are professionally recorded and ready to use. There's the classic drum machine sounds (which are the standard 808, 909, etc.) along with some acoustic drum kits and exclusive DM-1 kits for you to play with.

There's two things that caught my attention with this app which have quickly made this one of my favourite drum machines for the iPad. The first one is the GUI, it's beautiful and really gives off a slick retro vibe. I'm loving the leather background to this app.

The second one is the X/Y track pads. I know, every music app on the iPad seems to have an X/Y controller of some sort but it's very rare that you see them on drum apps. The pads really give you a whole new way to sculpt your sound, they're really fun too.

For £0.69 you can't go wrong with this, I'm glad I brought it and it will be a nice addition to my line up of iOS music creation apps. Get it now while it's still on sale.

DM1 - The Drum Machine for iPad - By Fingerlab from Fingerlab on Vimeo.

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Lately Bass and drum beats.

The Lately bass sound is a preset found on Yamahas line of FM synths, the sound has been used on many recordings over the years.

In this sample pack you will find:

-6 bass loops using the Lately bass sound.

-the same 6 loops but with a little grit and distortion added

-A Lately bass Mutisample pack

-8 Drum loops

Download the sample pack here (.RAR)

All the samples are of high quality and completely royalty free. The musical loops are in the key of Am and the tempo for all the loops is 120bpm.

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New Sample Pack 'Toys'

When you’ve downloaded the pack the samples will be in a .RAR file. Just unzip and load them into your favourite DAW or sampler and get making music.

The sounds in this sample pack are made to replicate the sound of old broken children’s toys.

Download the Samples HERE

This sample pack contains:

-5 Arpeggios

-10 Percussion Loops

-6 Noise/FX loops

-12 LoFi words

All the samples in this pack are completely royalty free so you’re free to use them in whatever project you want.

All samples are in high quality .WAV files.

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Free hand played percussion loops

This pack contains 10 hand played percussion loops in .Wav format.
I'm not saying I'm the best percussionist in the world but I played these percussion loops myself.
These loops are an ideal way to give your track a little bit of human feeling.

All loops are played at 120 bpm.

Download the loops here (.RAR)

Happy music making and be sure to check back for future updates and more free samples. =]

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