Thursday, December 30, 2010

Platinum Samples Steve Ferrone Midi Groove Library review!

With over 660 Midi files (over 3200 un-quantized bars of grooves), of which 17 songs and 9 additional groove variations, The Steve Ferrone midi groove library is one big library!



Who is Steve Ferrone you ask? Well, with gigs alone as a resume, how is a client list containing such groups as Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Eric Clapton, Average White Band, Johny Cash, the B-52's, and a whole host of others? Yea, I thought that would speak for itself.

Here is what the Platinum Samples website had to say about the The Steve Ferrone midi groove library …...


This multi-format collection includes grooves formatted for BFD2®, BFD Eco®, EZDrummer®, Superior Drummer®, Addictive Drums®, Cakewalk® Session Drummer™ as well as General MIDI Standard MIDI Files which can be used with any GM compatible drum software or hardware --- this includes drum machines and synthesizers which have drum sounds.


Platinum Samples are one of the foremost producers of drum samples in the world, with over 50 years of experience in the professional music industry. The Steve Ferrone MIDI Groove Library was recorded over a two-day session by Steve Ferrone on a Yamaha DTXtremeIII Special electronic drum set.


Optimized for 1 Kick, 1 Snare, 2 Rack Toms, 2 Floor Toms, 1 Hihat, 3 Crash Cymbals & 1 Ride Cymbal”


For the demo video, here, I opted to open up Toontrack Superior Drummer 2.0 in Pro Tools LE 9 and loaded the Joe Barresi Evil Drums SDX sample pack from Platinum Samples. Let me add that a post covering the Joe Barresi Evil Drums SDX sample pack from Platinum Samples is in the works, so please don't forget to keep returning here to see that post. Next, I opened up The Steve Ferrone midi groove library and then “went through” the midi files.


Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Home Grown Premium Sound and the LO-Fi Maniacs Refill Pack.

So, Who is Home Grown Premium Sound , and what do they do? Glad you asked me that, as there is so much to tell.




To begin, Home Grown Premium Sound makes (and sells) Refills for Reason and Record. The software Refills that they make certainly makes our looping a lot more fun, and a lot more sonically pleasurable.


Here is a common problem that we all come across. Way too often, I have written some music that I like using Reason and/or Record. The loops that I write are cool enough, but they can seem too digital, or perhaps not phat enough to jump out at the listener. The music is catchy to me, but it just does not “bounce”, or hit me like it should.


One way to address this common problem is by adding EQ's. Adding EQ's to bring up the lows, the mids, and the highs, although time consuming, works, but be careful! This solution also adds gain to these frequencies, thus taking away a big chunk of the much needed overall headroom. Using EQ's to boost frequencies will make your tracks dip into the red. Now distortion is introduced into the mix and that ruins this whole attempt of making better sounding music.


There must be a way to bring our loops, and/or entire tracks more “up front in a mix”, but without making them too hot, too distorted, or without taking up most of the much needed headroom. Well, Home Grown Premium Sound is on this, and they have a brilliant solution for this very problem!

Home Grown Premium Sound is a very freakin' exciting company because helping fix this sort of problem is their specialty! Obtaining warm, hot, and up front mixes is now a snap if you are using the LO-Fi Maniacs Refill Pack.



The LO-Fi Maniacs Refill Pack contains seven effects in all, which all help to bring your (perhaps) stale, flat loops and/or (perhaps) complete tracks to life. Once more, these tools help us by adding that certain sonic bliss to our material, but without adding to the overall gain of these tracks, leaving us a lot of headroom! Impossible? Nope, in fact, here, check it out.....





Using the great sounding filters found inside the LO-Fi Maniacs Refill Pack is easy. Hey, what could be easier than opening up and then tweaking a Combinator patch?


Note: A “Combinator patch” is simply a way to create and then save a whole assembly of Reason audio devices, like instruments and effects. Combinator patches help to make life easier because our device racks and cable routing for each instrument or instrument effect can become very confusing days after you have created it. So, one can open up all types of devices, work at routing all of the cables, tweak the knobs till it is just right, and when they are all done they can simply save it as a “Combinator patch”.


The cool part about Home Grown Premium Sound and their LO-Fi Maniacs Refill Pack is that all of the work that goes into sketching out and designing these awesome Combinator patches (and everything else from cable routing to face plate design) is all done for you, and all you need to do to obtain great sounding tracks is open any one of these great sounding products and “tweak away”.


Here is a list of just what comes with the LO-Fi Maniacs Refill Pack


Isolators: Isolate 3, and Isolate 4


Filter Maniacs: AF900, and Dusty Nine-Fitty


Vinyl Temptation: 3 vinyl emulation effects


As taken from the Home Grown Premium Sound LO-Fi Maniacs Refill Pack website:


There are total of seven effects, in three different types, packed as one refill for your convenience.


The refill comes with 2 types of isolators, 2 types of lo-fi filter module emulations, and 3 types of turntable emulations.”

Stomp Box Refill Pack Available now!

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Win one of eight autographed signature Crybaby wah pedals from Dunlop!

Have you entered this awesome giveaway?


Autographed Crybaby Wah pedals include the Eddie Van Halen signature Crybaby, Dimebag Darrell signature Crybaby, Buddy Guy signature Crybaby, Jerry Cantrell signature Crybaby, Kirk Hammett signature Crybaby, Slash signature Crybaby, Zakk Wylde signature Crybaby, and a Classic signature Crybaby autographed by Jim Dunlop himself!

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Four tracks of mobile recording for under 10 bucks?

TASCAM has introduced its Portastudio™ application for the Apple iPad™, bringing 30 years of easy-to-use home recording to the popular device.



Portastudio is based on – and nearly the same dimensions as – the TASCAM Porta One four-track cassette recorder that revolutionized recording in 1984. The Portastudio app records four tracks, one at a time, with VU meters and a cassette transport contributing a vintage vibe. When a production is complete, the app can mix your recording to a stereo track that appears in iTunes.

A four-position selector switch assigns which track Portastudio records to, and input trim and limiting are applied to the input before recording. Audio can be recorded form the iPad's built-in microphone or a microphone plugged into the headset jack. The iPad will record from the built-in microphone if standard headphones are plugged into the jack. Pan, level, high and low EQ are available for mixing, and mixes are saved as CD-quality WAV files inside iTunes.

Portastudio by TASCAM is available now on the iTunes App Store for $9.99: