XSynth Reason products discontinued

Building and associating the XSynth name with quality products have had a side effect which i didnt see coming. For some odd reason people in the pirate business have started to use the name XSynth as a kinda stamp for quality products.

I guess it all started with a person made a pirated version of XSynth Library and included another sample library with it and kept the XSynth name for the bundle. This has turned into a trend and now you can find tons of various XSynth bundles on torrents and pirate sites. None of these bundles have the full version of XSynth Library or at least i have not found any version 1.11 out there yet.

Take a look at this picture which includes the latest 100 versions out there:

http://www.xsynth.com/xsynth_lastest_100.png

What i'm going to do is put XSynth on ice for awhile and surface again when things have settled down and meanwhile i will continue my work over at www.synthtronic.com which will function as a hub for things i work with.

For now my work on the Zebra platform is finished and i'm recharging for a new project. I have no idea of where or what the next project will be until i'm buried deep into something.

So until then.... :o)

/Michael

Zebra Oldskool Vol 1 + 2 Released

Dont care about details then jump over to Urs at www.u-he.com

My 6 months exploration of Zebra2 Softsynth ends today with the release of Zebra Oldskool Soundset Volume 1+2. The Volume 1 which was released in July has merged with Volume 2 into one single entity called Zebra Oldskool Volume 1+2.

Let me put it this way, if was to be stranded on an island with 1 instrument, it would be Zebra2 from Urs Heckmann. I have managed to make this softsynth come up with just about anything worth using for music and sound production. Pads, Leads, Bass, Keys, Synths, Drums & Percussion, FX, SFX and pretty good emulations of acoustic instruments.

My first encounter with Urs and his ideas was 4-5 years ago when i learned about Zoyd. I thought, damn this guy is on to something but Zoyd was not for my platform. Then a bit later i learned that Urs had begun a new project named Zebra. When Zebra was announced for Windows PC i was glued to the news from Urs for a long time. Time went by and i forgot about Zebra and moved on to other things. Then about 2 years later the Zebra popped on the scene. At that time i was commited elsewhere so i didnt pay much attention to it but i bought it, played a bit with it and then put it away because i had other stuff to do.

My work on another platform ended and i started to look for a new project. Then out of the blue Howard Scarr dumps in on the Zebra and shows some controlled versions of Zebra, by control i mean classical sound synthesis. He showed he could tame the Zebra into an instrument you can actually play. So i gave it a go, my first goal was to see if Zebra could sound nice and warm and thus this little famous MP3 " Zebra Jazzy " showed its way to the public.

Well after the creation of Zebra Jazzy i thought i better go deeper and see what this synth is really about. After creating 17-18 patches i realized that the synth engine was ideal for just about any kind of sound design. 2 Months (July 2007) later the Zebra Oldskool Volume 1 was released. I had made a promise to put out the soundset just before summer, well i delivered but i wasnt finished. There was still much to be explored so during the summer i decided to make a follow up to Volume 1. This particular summer was VERY wet so i had no problems with staying indoors commited to sound design. The purpose with Volume 2 was to turn Zebra into a workstation with all needed instruments for putting down a basic track. The first challenge was to come up with drums, after a few weeks i had the basic recipe for making drums on Zebra and thus this MP3 " Zebra Drums " hit the public. This was later refined into " Zebra Drums & Percussion ".

Once drums & percussion passed the exam it was time for some fun like in this example " Zebra Boogie Down " and this " Zebra Kool " , now while these demos are more like oldschool disco there is tons of other demos ranging from ambient to rock and new age to minimalism over at " KVR Zebra Oldskool thread " .

I could go on and on with praise about Zebra, if its not in your arsenal of VSTs you are going to miss the train. The train i talk about is the train that reclaim its throne at sound making, synthesis and NOT some 50 GB synth sample library where you never get full control anyway.

I dont think i been this excited since i got my first real synth Yamaha CS-30 in year Gods knows when.

Take the full step, learn synthesis and you will be rewarded with the ultimative sound, the sound of you!

Thats it, over and out!

/Michael

Spirit World Finished

The idea of having this track run for 20 mins is a bit too much so i ended up with 12 mins. The mix is a bit dirty in some places and i could have used some EQ on various stuff but i need to let it go now before i get bored with it. Then hopefully i feel like mixing it another day when i have recharged my batteries ;o)

Hope you enjoy this full 12 mins track (MySpace Version is 10 mins)

http://www.michaelkastrup.com/MK_Spirit_World.mp3

/Michael

Spirit World Part 3

Ok i think i need to sleep on it now and will give the new stuff a fresh listen in the morning. I kept the beat parts, made a theme and a ending. Dont think there is much more in this piece of music besides mixing so i'll let put it away for some time.

http://www.michaelkastrup.com/synthdemos/MK_SpiritWorld_Part3.mp3

/Michael

Spirit World Part 2

I think i got the descend into Spirit World covered but i'm not sure if the next part should be with any beats but i have come up with something as a base for diving into part 2. My basic idea for part 2 is something melodic and perhaps minimal beat like but also with unusual sounds here and there. As it is now the drums which pops up seems natural to me and not disturbing the mood. The trick now will be to keep the mood and add more rhythmic stuff without creating stress.

http://www.michaelkastrup.com/synthdemos/MK_SpiritWorld_Part2.mp3

/Michael

Spirit World Part 1

Today i felt like making something very different, my initial plan is to make a 15-20 mins piece of music which is a blend of sound fx and chill/relax. I want it to be something that place the listener in another (world) so lets call it spirit world. It starts of a bit spookey but that is just to sharpen your attention. This first part i would like to think of as a descend into that world. Once there new stuff will happen (part 2 i suppose).

http://www.michaelkastrup.com/synthdemos/MK_SpiritWorld_Part1.mp3

/Michael

Inspirational Mega Patches

Last night i tried build a mega patch with the following ingredients:

Zebra = Low end string, Violins, Flute
Sampler = Cellos ensemble
Sampler = 7 Sweet Ann vowel samples controlled by crossfade velocity.

The harder i played the brighter vowels and more strings and flute would come in.

It turned out to be something i jammed with all night and couldnt stop, so today i decided to post one of the examples i came up with last night:

http://www.michaelkastrup.com/synthdemos/v2_sweetann_05.mp3

/Michael

Fourth encounter with Sweet Ann

After some hours i managed to put together some samples of various vowels. Now we are begining to see the possibility for choir stuff and i left out the initial backing choir which was not Sweet Ann. So this time its all Sweet Ann but sampled versions of her which is kinda cheat but its the only way to get the job done in my eyes. The drawback now is that voices come out like samples but i'd rather go with that than take the fight using Vocaloid2 and Cubase in Rewire mode.

Damn b#3?+ cant say You or Who, she says Yu and Hy and happely forgets about the bleeding O.

http://www.michaelkastrup.com/synthdemos/v2_sweetann_04.mp3

EDIT: By watching a tutorial i could see a method to get the "You" done, seems like i only need a very tiny part of the actual You word placed 2 semitones below a longer U word so the first You word kinda bends up to form a U.

/Michael

Third encounter with Sweet Ann

Ok, the pitch thing is due to several things in the way she is ment to sing and this makes it VERY difficult. The main problem is i cant compensate for the pitch when i have nothing to hold it up against like a rewire track (we tried that and it didnt work). So what happens is i find a phrase i like but when i have exported the singing to a wave file and want to try it out in my host it turns out that some part of the phrase is out of pitch, yikes. So now i'm trying to see if i can create a choir with various vowels by sampling each damn note and then fine correct for pitch on each note.

Then a new problem came up, it turns out that what you hear when you audition a phrase it might not come out the exact same way when rendered it to a wav file. For some odd reason Vocaloid2 decides to pick another of the singers basic samplings as a starting point for a word. A typical setup for a vowel is that its made up of 2 samples of the original singer. So you have a bright sample for the natural registers and another sample for the low registers.

In the following music piece Sweet Ann do the ae--ee--uu and another choir sample set do the intro choir. Infact Sweet Ann was supposed to sing ae--ee--uu--ahh--oh but the ahh and the oh came out dead wrong in pitch so i only kept the first parts.

http://www.michaelkastrup.com/synthdemos/v2_sweetann_03.mp3

/Michael

Second encounter with Sweet Ann

Ok i managed to find a pitch which had an overall good feel by using pitch bend in Vocaloid2. There is no overall pitch control in Vocaloid2 so using pitch bend was my only choice.

Now that the pitch problem is (solved) i can lessen the harmonizer effect to bring out the voice more clearly. I tried to put in some nonsense word just to get a feel of other things coming from her voice. I think the real hard work is making her sign the words in a correct manner and avoiding the weird articulations which is bound to happen on some words.

Here is a snippet of step 2 with Sweet Ann:

http://www.michaelkastrup.com/synthdemos/v2_sweetann_02.mp3

/Michael

First encounter with Vocaloid2 Sweet Ann

A while ago i picked up Vocaloid2 Sweet Ann and yesterday i decided to give it a spin.

One cool features is supposed to be the Vocaloid2 Realtime module which is quite handy but what ever you do with the realtime module cannot be rendered to audio. What a bummer, i thought i was on to something and wanted a snippet of the mix in Cubase with the Vocaloid2 Realtime thing. It turns out that the realtime module dosnt output anything when rendering even if you use realtime rendering.

Ohh well perhaps the rewire mode can be used to something then, and oops what a bummer. Having Cubase and Vocaloid2 setup for rewire mode made it impossible to record anything following a beat. I looks like the Vocaloid part is trying to compensate for voice intro and other stuff i dont know about yet.

Ok, how about i just used vocaloid2 and put in some hum and ohhs and THEN rendered that to a wav file. Ooops what a bummer, it turns out Sweet Ann comes out flat and out of pitch. Only way to get something useful of that was to have the rendered wav track run thru a harmonizer with lots of detuned voices as backup.

So is Vocaloid2 Sweet Ann worth it ? Are you kidding lol nopes unless you have way to much money on your hands. I do hope they will correct these bugs or what ever it is because as it is right now i could have more fun sampling a speaking doll.

IF i get something useful out of Sweet Ann i'll post it but that chance is pretty slim atm.

Ohh well, in all fairness here is a snippet where i'm making heavy use of harmonizer and delay effect because of the out of pitch voice:

http://www.michaelkastrup.com/synthdemos/v2_sweetann_01.mp3

/Michael

Chill track with a message

I hate using my own voice in tracks because all my focus goes into that voice instead of the arrangement. So i tend to use synthesized voices, that way i can stay objective and not get carried away by my own lousy voice. In this cases i have written down some words that made sense to me and had a synthesized female voice read it. I pitched the voice up a few notch to get a little girls voice. Childrens voices have a greater impact on the actual words than using an adult voice maybe it has something to do with we see children as the innocence and non corrupted part of our civilization.

The message of the track is quite clear and is one of those things that cant be said enough times.

http://www.michaelkastrup.com/synthdemos/MK_a_message.mp3

Instruments used: Zebra, Truepiano and Stylus RMX

EDIT: Ok i've been listening to this some hours later and its difficult to understand the voice without it being edited with pauses and stuff. Nice try thou heh heh, back to the drawing board.

/Michael

Zebra Brass Creation Part 2

Today i gave the Zebrass a shot again and this time i dared to put them a bit more infront without the cover up of delay and reverb. All instruments,drums etc.. are played by Zebra

Its still pretty static sax you will hear but these demos give me a hint on what to focus on.

http://www.michaelkastrup.com/synthdemos/Z2_Zebrass_Part_02.mp3

/Michael

Song for Doru 2007 Version

Some might know who Doru was and some might not, i knew him because he was the one who inspired me to pick up music making again. In november 2005 i decided to pay my dues by sending Doru a song dedicated to him and the reply i got back was heartbreaking knowing that Doru had very little time left because of cancer (He died on Feb. 10 2006). Doru was one of those people who believed in the best of man and acted unselfish in everything he did. Knowing that he was sick some people started to speculate in his death by overtaking his original domain because of the high traffic he generated. So those of you who wonders why the domain is named http://www.dorumalaia2.com/ and not simply http://www.dorumalaia.com/ is because some low life spotted profit.

Ohh well, the world is what we make of it and Doru was one of the good guys. Not all the gold in the world can stop the fact that we are all going the same way, what we do in between is what matters. Some choose to spend their life taking while others spend their life giving.

To put this into some perspective try visit http://www.breathingearth.net/

Here is the 2007 Version of Song for Doru:

http://www.michaelkastrup.com/synthdemos/Song_for_Doru_v2007.mp3

EDIT: Speaking of taking and giving, watch out for www.domainrenewalonline.com its a domain SCAM asking you to pay for domain renewal while they have absolutely nothing to do with yours, mine or any others domains.

/Michael