SonicPress

Ableton & SONiVOX – Orchestral Instruments for Live

sonicpress — Thu, 15 May 2008 08:12:32 +0000

Ableton just made the next huge leap in digital music production, releasing their Orchestral Instruments suite in partnership with SONiVOX exclusively for Live. Not just their demos sound terrific but the multisampling technology hidden behind the suite promises to be just the right thing to keep and develop Live’s concepts – to make a long story short – you can play and produce your orchestra live with high quality and without extra latency.

The instruments include violin, viola, cello, double bass, French horn, trombone, trumpet, tuba, flute, clarinet, bassoon, oboe, English horn, vibraphone, marimba, xylophone, crotales, glockenspiel, tubular bells, cymbals and timpani. Many instruments are provided in solo and ensemble variants and multiple articulations. Each instrument is available in a high-fidelity version for studio production and a lower-fidelity configuration for decreased overhead and instant performance.

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SmartPriming
Using large sampled instrument libraries can quickly eat valuable computer resources and slow down the creative process. Ableton Live 7 introduces SmartPriming, a new resource-saving sample playback technology allowing users of large sample libraries, such as Ableton’s Orchestral Instrument Collection, to use many instruments in their compositions. Due to Simpler and Sampler’s tight integration with Ableton Live, SmartPriming automatically reallocates resources in real time from where they are no longer needed to where they are, without interrupting workflow. Once a sampled instrument is sequenced, Live knows the amount of resources required to play that instrument back and unloads all unused samples to open resources for the next instrument the composer decides to play. Essentially, SmartPriming is an under-the-hood technology that allows Live users to get the most from their computer’s resources and take advantage of the realism and expressiveness provided by professional multisampled instruments.
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The Orchestral Instruments are available from the Ableton webshop as of May 5, 2008 and requires Ableton Live 7.0.5 or higher, so don’t forget to update your version of Live!

Orchestral Instruments Collection – EUR 499/USD 599
Orchestral Strings – EUR 159/USD 189
Orchestral Brass – EUR 159/USD 189
Orchestral Woodwinds – EUR 159/USD 189
Orchestral Percussion – EUR 129/USD 159

www.Ableton.com

OHM Force started making tutorials

sonicpress — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 07:18:08 +0000

If you’re tired of using all those boring and skippy conventional audio software, why not give some freshness (or extra harshness) to your tunes? Well, of course, if you’ve ever been to that state before you’re probably familiar with OHM Force. This is a weird and very talented team that produces incredibly good and cheap plug-ins.

I discovered them some 3 years ago and fell in love with their astonishing delay – OHMBoyz. All the plugs those guys do is, I might say, are worth taking a bite of. Above all the great functionality, thir interface design is just adorable – featuring a classic vintage-feeling and a ‘funky’ skin, both very intuitive and comfortable.

This year they started their social web activity and their attitude is just so energizing. Check their blog, check the products and don’t forget to sneak over their tutorials, 2 by now – for OHMBoyz and PredatOHM.

Did I mention that OHMicide is one of the best multiband distortions I’ve ever seen?

Oblique Strategies

sonicpress — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 20:36:52 +0000

Brian Eno, who needs no presentation, had developed some time ago (1975) with Peter Schmidt the ‘Oblique Strategies‘ cards. I was very happy when I discovered this, because shortly before that I became familiar with such intuition-improving techniques.

Basically, the Oblique Strategies are about a hundred cards with printed dilemmas and abstract concepts, quite personalized for musicians. I guess most people involved in (self and) creativity developement have already met similar methods to use in brainstorming for example. I personally really enjoy making music and pick up one when I get stuck somewhere, usually it helps, or at least enjoys me with a different point of view. Oblique Strategies are really worth having, so, check out this copy of I guess the last, 5th edition I found somewhere on the net. If you like the concept, I encourage you to have a packet of your own – check out the Brian Eno Store.