Some new special effects arrived today: The Strymon VOLANTE Magnetic Echo Machine for weird delays and the Strymon NIGHTSKY time-wrapped reverberator for shimmering reverbs. Just the perfect tools for the analog synths with no effects inside.
mibo is Michel Bontemps – composer, arranger, recording and mixing artist.
To finish the new Syntheziax album the SSL Bus+ just came in time. Summing the busses to the SSL Big Six and inserting the SSL Bus+ compressor and the UAD Apllo for some Neve and Manley tools seems to be perfect fit.
The Eich BC112PRO is a little beast! With 250 Watt on the internal 12″ speaker and 500 Watt when connected to an additional external speaker cabinet, it is as loud as the big amps in my setup. Easy to transport, tilt back possibility and a very nice EQ and Taste knob.
The new Genzler 4 On The Floor just added to my board brings colour to my normally clean sound! There are 4 flavours of sweet overdrive available, Ampeg B15, Vox AC30B, Ampeg SVT and last but not least the Acoustic 360.
As they say – these are wild times…
It is a bit early for a complete switch to the new Silicon Macs, at least for Pro Audio production, but I just had to find out how these little wonders are handling my plethora of virtual synths. And I must say: it works… not like it will in about half a year! I mean, most plugins are Big Sur ready, but not Silicon. And although they work as fast as on the MBPro there is a huge difference when using Logic X with only native plugins.
The picture below shows 32 Tracks with 32 Fabfilter Twin2 synths, 32 Pro Q3 equalisers and 32 Pro L2 Limiters.
Being a power user of virtual instruments, having all available synthesizer plugins in my collection, I must say that these two new additions are first in a real new generation of synthesis tools. Noisy by Expressive E and Generate by Newfangled Audio are such a great source of fresh sounds coming to my ears…
Stream Deck by Elgato is a great programmable key action controller. It is multi-level so you can layer all your favourite key shortcuts or even macros on the 15 keys with colour display.
This is a shot of my little universe, where I live most of my days. Now it is only 220 degrees of it, as the whole setup is all around me, and even more is floating in the next dimension… There are hundreds of knobs to twist buttons to push and sliders to slide here, and the magical moment comes at night when the lights are dimmed and all those led’s funkle like stars!
I am fitting new batteries into my old beasts, the D-50 and TX-802 as they are back in my studio setup. I think it is the first time after over 30 years… I even got me an editor for both on the iPad called Patch Base. Now I need to find back my Sysex libraries for the sounds! (maybe they are on floppy disks)
Black and Blue…
And who knows which is which and who is who.
Now this is a nice combination, Akai MPC Live in Standalone on the left and Native Instruments Maschine MKIII on the right, each one has it’s advantages, if you get to know them. Huge soundlibraries complete the perfect drum machine setup.
Back in 1980 I was turning the knobs and pushing the buttons on his mother and now the little Jupiter XM is home again. I must say there are some good sounds in it, but way to many! I think I need a lot of precious time to dive deep into sound editing here…
Slave to the rhythm, that’s what we are…! Native Instruments Maschine MK3 is the latest addition to the groove section. Beside the imperial MPC, the inevitable TR-8S and the soft Superior Drummer, this drum controller is very different, very fast to work with, and with the Komplete 12 Ultimate Collectors Edition expansion packs there are thousands of great sounds available.
A touch of madness, that’s how they call this new little digital analogue synth MicroFreak by Arturia. Indeed, it is rather crazy what you can do with such a small beautiful toy… Big basses, sharp leads and moving sequences are on the menu!
For more information check out this link: https://www.arturia.com/products/hardware-synths/microfreak/overview
The birdie from UVI just updated to version 2.0, adding lots of nice features (like an Additive oscillator). My library for this fantastic sounding multi-part synth is now reaching 40 packages, and about 160 GB of space on the disk!
The time for plugin promotions has started, so there are three new plugins in my system, and all of them are great! Firstly the Omnipressor compressor, completing the already large list of my compressors, and then the two modulation extraclass plugins, the Instant Phaser II and the Instant Flanger II.
Now this makes FUN to use…
The Sonsig REV-A is the latest addition to my never ending list of reverbs. This one is very special, three emulations in one plugin, the Lexicon 224, the Quantec QRS and the REV-A, combined with some great modulation… excellent for my electronic ambient music.
You will hear it soon on the new album!
As you know I love reverbs and delaydelaydelays and I have a rather impressive collection of these boxes in the box. You don’t need much more to make music!
There is one new addition in the picture, the great Twangström from my friends at U-he. This old fashioned spring reverb has such a deep character no other reverb I know has. Even more, the modulation possibilities and tweaks are gorgeous, they even added a SHAKE parameter like on real spring.
These are the machines that make the beat, always on time.
In the good old days they had names, Roger, Paul, Tom and Luc… 😎
I started this project on April 26 2018 with the song (Can’t Stop) Thinking About You and finished the last song Body To Body on June 23 2018. Most of them were done in one day, maybe even only several hours. I selected these songs from several hundreds of ideas I recorded during the last years, realizing that it would be sad to leave them hidden on some harddisk.
UPDATE: The songs are finally in the finishing stage, reviewed and adapted for our SYNTHEZIAX project.
