A revolution is coming - Native Instruments teases new synth

Native instruments has uploaded a new video teasing a brand new synthesiser. Native Instruments are well known for their synthesisers, with Massive and FM8 being a huge hit with many producers, I'm sure that they won't be holding back with this one.

There's no further details about this mystery synth yet apart from the video on their YouTube page (that I've embedded below).

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Creating a Tech House Track in Ableton Live with Radio Slave Loops - Point Blank

In this weeks video from Point Blank we are shown a few tips and tricks while creating a tech house track using samples and loops. They also have a pretty cool competition running where you can win the sample pack used in this video, a copy of Ableton Live 8 and a place on a Point blank Pro Producer course.





"Win this Radioslave pack, Live 8, and a Point Blank Pro Producer course here: http://ow.ly/c0BAS

In Ableton Live we have a fantastic tool to manipulate, chop and twist loops into your own interpretations all in real-time. This gives you the ability to create limitless unique tracks with the same loops and samples. In this tutorial Danny J Lewis shows some simple but very effective techniques to do this such as adjusting the clip start position and transposing the key up and down.

The pack he is using is one of Ableton's latest partner instruments, put together by Radioslave and Sample Magic. As well as a collection of drum, percussion, and musical hits and loops, the pack contains some great custom instrument and effects racks which, if hooked up to a midi control, can give a really tactile method of experimenting with the sounds. 

Check it out here: http://www.ableton.com/library/radio-slave-live

Racks such as the Kit Creator use macro controls to scroll through the various samples and adjust parameters like attack, decay and low cut to mould the sounds into something new. It is a great example of the type of racks that we teach you to build from scratch on Point Blank's Ableton Live Sound Design courses.

Check out the sound design course here:http://www.pointblankonline.net/ableton-live-sound-design.php

Watch more free tutorials on our sample course page:http://www.pointblankonline.net/sample-a-course/

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

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Logic Tutorial - Turn the Korg Monotron into a Polysynth - Point Blank

My Korg Monotron has been sitting on the shelf for a few months now, not really seeing any action in the studio. This video from Point Blank made me pick it up and have a little mess around with it.

Turning the Monotron into a poly synth using pitch shifters and tuning effects seems like a pretty cool idea. This tutorial shows you how to get this effect using the built in effects in Logic but the techniques shown can be easily recreated using other DAWs. I managed to get a pretty close sound using Ableton live and a few 3rd party plugins.

"http://www.pointblankonline.net/courses/logic-courses.php This week Paul Yarrow shows you how to open up a new world of performance capabilities for Korg's Monotron by turning it into a polysynth enabling it to play chords.

Learn more techniques like this on our wide range of Logic courses: http://www.pointblankonline.net/courses/logic-courses.php

Check out even more free tutorials at http://www.logic-cafe.com/

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

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Propellerhead Figure first impressions from Point Blank

This weeks video from Point Blank looks at the new Propellerhead Figure iOS app. You may have seen that I wrote an in depth review of figure a few days ago. Figure is an awesome app and I've already lost hours of my life playing about with it. It's just 69p from the Apple AppStore so there's no excuse not to have this beauty on your iPhone.



"Danny J Lewis checks out the new iOS app from Propellerheads. This gives you intuitive control of three main elements: Drums, Bass and Lead and allows for complex modulation without any technical expertise."

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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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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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