That’s just music

The Who vocalist Roger Daltrey had confessed that he is planning to create a super group of musicians together with Jimmy Page of Led Zepplin. Also, it’s not just going to be within the frames of performance schemes, but he plans to make a record as well. Pretty good idea, especially if taking into consideration the fact that both musicians are absolute geniuses. As Daltrey said in his recent interview to BBC News, Page is currently in need of a good blues singer, and the guy is obviously one of them.  “I’d love to do something, I’d love to do an album with Jimmy Page. He needs a singer to drive him. I’m a great blues singer.” At the same time he has noted that he is not singing blues with The Who, but used to sing it before until Pete Townshend (The Who vocalist) began to write music. Was Daltrey a good blues singer before Townshend had started something is not very clear, but Roger should definitely try something out together with Page. So far Mr. Page did not make any comments about Daltrey’s ideas, but it’s known that he is planning to release a solo album and  start touring with it sometime during this year. Notably, both musicians have co-operated way back in the past. In 1973 Led Zeppelin guitarist had participated in creation of “There Is Love”, Daltrey’s first solo album.

Recently, Aerosmith is giving all sorts of contradictory information regarding their vocalist Steven Tyler. It seems that they are seriously thinking about wheather he is in the game or not; possibly both sides are contemplating on his presence in the band. On last Friday they’ve given another news, which says that during the summer of 2010 Aerosmith will start touring Europe with Steven. As the Billboard said, Aerosmith had already confirmed a lot of venues that include Swedish town of Solvesborg (June 10) and the presence at the Download festival in the British county of Leicestershire. Also, the band had received some invitations to perform in South America.  Aerosmith’s decision to start another tour with Tyler may show that they’ve finally settled their disputes and things are doing well so far. The last year was not so good for the band, especially after Steven Tyler’s traumatic experience during Aerosmith’s concert in South Dakota. Soon after that incident he became extremely unsatisfied with a group and wished to restart his solo career. Things were getting so bad that it seemed they will never come together; it was almost getting to the court when Tyler was staying at the rehabilitation clinic. However, now some light at the end of the tunnel is beginning to shine on.

EMI records company had decided not to sell it’s infamous studio on Abbey Road in London, said AFP. This information was first told by the company’s representatives after the British public became worried if the country’s cultural heritage is about to get lost. Guys from EMI have received an offer sometime in the midst of 2009 to sell the studio for thirty million pounds, but luckily came to a conclusion that selling it will not be good at all. Seriously, why thirty million pounds should be more expensive than the legendary studio? Thus, they will not sell it and everything is going to be the same as before. Rumours about this selling project began to create the huge wave of dissatisfaction among British people. At the same time not only ordinary people were saying their big “no”, but also such guys as Paul McCartney. While commenting on the EMI’s plans Sir Paul had noted that a lot of musicians (including him) are ready to give money in order to save the studio for the future generations. On February 21, one of the richest representatives of the British music industry Andrew Lloyd Weber had told the press that he is planning to finance or even purchase the studio, so it stays untouched. Such bands as The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Blur and Radiohead have recorded at the Abbey Road studio. ‘The Liverpool four’ had even recored the album, which is called “Abbey Road”. Therefore, most likely the studio is going to be saved, hence musicians and music fans are now standing in it’s defence.

De La Mancha has unleased bassbomb, a monophonic bass synthesizer focused on creating a wide range of bass sounds.

It features custom waveforms, a composite filter and non-linear envelopes to give that “old school synth sound”, with 2 LFOs and 3 envelopes.

It retails for $24. If you’ve used BassBomb, leave a comment with your thoughts!

Features:
Monophonic bass synthesizer for bass lines and drum sounds
2 oscillators with 7 custom waveforms each (sine, square, pulse, ramp, saw, triangle, noise)
Adjustable Pulse width and detune, modulated by envelope and LFO (per osc)
Adjustable Unison with spread control per oscillator
Oscillator sync and ring modulation between oscillators
Octave selector and level per osc
Sub-osc with math-generated pure sine wave for sub bass layering
Independent sub-osc detune modulation from envelope and LFO
Octave selector and level control
Resonant Low Pass filter, 24 dB / octave slope
Composite design, non-linear behaviour across frequency range
Adjustable Cut off and Resonance, both modulated by envelope and LFO
Cut off can also track velocity and note, positive or negative modulation
3 non-linear ADSR envelopes, for amp, filter and multi-parameter modulation
All envelopes have pickup mode as alternative to starting attack from zero
Multi-parameter envelope covers cut off, res, pwm, detune and dirt
Pulse width modulation and detune are selectable per oscillator
Detune modulation allows pitch envelopes for kick drum and bass drops
2 tempo-sync LFOs with 20 waveforms, note-sync and adjustable phase
LFOs can be tempo-sync to host (32 beats to 1/32 beats) or free (0-100 Hz)
LFOs both modulate cut off, res, pwm, detune and dirt
Pulse width modulation and detune are selectable per oscillator
LFO 2 also modulates the depth and frequency of LFO 1
Tempo-sync arpeggiator with 6 patterns
Arp can cover 1 to 4 octaves, synced to host (1/32 beats to 4 beats)
Adjustable note length (0-100%)
Dirt control adds harmonics and saturation for extra oomph
2 monophonic modes, classic and drop (only plays last note)
Portamento with adjustable time control
Master volume and pitch contro
200 presets covering many styles and function

Rain Computers today announced their LiveBook series of Mobile Audio Workstations are now available at over 200 Best Buy locations as part of the Best Buy’s new “DJ experience”.

Rain’s LiveBook is installed in hundreds of Best Buy locations to demonstrate “the ideal Digital DJ system”, including software like Native Instruments’ Traktor and Serato by Rane. Also connected to LiveBook is the new generation of digital DJ mixers and turntables by Serato and Numark.

Saturday Gear Porn: One of the perks of being a superstar DJ is stuff like this – a one-off special edition of the Xone:4D mixer controller that Allen & Heath made for DJ Paul van Dyk.

“The 4D is the centrepiece of my set up and is based on the way I DJ. I have two computers on stage that are synced to each other: one has the synths, keyboards and controllers hooked up to it and the other is full of the audio material,” explains van Dyk.

Van Dyk’s modified version includes VCA rotary faders rather than the standard linear faders. There is also custom-designed silk screening for the faceplate with Paul’s name in UV paint.

“One of the great things about the 4D is the great sound and the fact that everything on the mixer can be fully programmed so I can set it up to give me control to do some crazy shit!” adds Van Dyk.

Togeo Studios has the Simple Synth Live Pack Bundle – a bundle of TS products from 2008-2009 cleaned up and repacked as a single Live pack that will install automatically into your Ableton library.

It includes:

SST BASS – 500 bass instruments.
SST LEADS- 350 Lead instruments
SST KEYS – 375 Keys , organs and electric pianos.
SST GENS V2 – 1085 Atmospheric pads, drones textures and soundscapes.
The Simple Synths bundle Live pack contains a total of 2269 instrument presets, 480 samples and weighs in at just 247 Mb unpacked. The library includes a large assortment of drums, basses, synths, keys, leads, pads and atmospheric soundscapes.

SKnote has introduced Rough, a filterbank/vocoder effect plug-in for Windows.

Features:

Vocoder: a classic 16 band vocoder.
Fade: crossfades between vocoded band and pass-through.
Negative: each band is attenuated by its frequencies.
MIDI: each band is controlled by MIDI notes and velocities.
Rough is a Windows and is priced at 29 EUR.

French indie-rock band Phoenix, which had received the Grammy award in 2010 in ‘The Best Alternative’ nomination is now recording the soundtrack for Sofia Coppola’s new move “Somewhere”, said The Independent. This movie is supposedly going to be produced in drama/comedy style and will be released sometime in 2010. Major roles are played by such actors as Stephen Dorff and Elle Fanning; the whole action is taking place at the Chateau Marmont hotel in Hollywood. As the Phoenix leader Thomas Mars said, the recording of the soundtrack had reminded him the work of an engineer instead of a composer. “It wasn’t like writing songs, it was more about trying to make a sound that fits with a Ferrari and the city of Los Angeles’s theme. It was more of an engineer work than a composer”. Particularly for Phoenix it’s not the first time when they’ve attempted to co-operate with Francis Coppola’s daughter; basically, the band was working on another soundtrack for her “Lost in Translation”. Besides that, Thomas Mars and Sofia Coppola are dating for a long time and currently getting ready to give birth to their first child. Absolutely stunning joint work between these two talented people is very common among artists and hopefully if not saying surely this time their co-operation will end up in a great success.

For the first time in thirty years of MTV’s existance the channel’s directorate had decided to make one of the biggest rebrandings in it’s history. Practically, MTV is not just the music television anymore or actually not the one at all. As The Wrap said, this channel had stopped to consider itself to be music oriented and since now will get rid of the sign ‘Music Television’ in it’s logo. In many ways this fact is pretty sad, after all MTV is music anyway and not the Discovery channel, but contemporary times and business are dictating their own rules. Company’s top office had explained such moves by the lack of interest in videos or particularly music oriented programs among MTV viewers. Thus, stories about show business, reality shows, cartoons and things about luxury life have more followers these days. Surely, it’s MTV’s fault because they’ve systematically used to change their programme and slowly, but definitely just made their viewers get hooked on what the channel is proposing today. Rolling Stone magazine notes that a few years ago MTV’s designers and managers were already planning to remove ‘Music Television’ sign from their logo, but back then they did not want any turmoil from the viewer’s side. However, right now the new generation of MTV fans is fully satisfied with what it looks at and there is no danger of making changes. Well, at least managers think this way.