Industrial Music Blog

Reverb in Industrial Music

2011-12-23T14:07:00.000-08:00

Reverberation is a key effect in Industrial Music, it has the double purpose of both clean or dirty up the sounds.

Research in Industrial Music is often performed through deep distortion and heavy processing of sounds which sometimes lead to inconsistency, lack of harmonics and general dullness: characteristics that make the sound itself easily masked in the mix by other, more powerful, instruments. Here a good reverb can help the sound be perceived again.

The other employment is quite the reverse process, by reverberating some sound and adding distortion afterwards it's possible to dirty up material otherwise too clean for the Industrial freaks.

Personally I am using both analog and VST reverb units because for an effect of such importance I need a choice as wide as possible.

As outboard I got an oldschool ALT Multiverb LTX:

which has the harsh sound I am looking for. It works with just presets but once found the good ones it's ready to rock. Indeed it's connected right after a Spring Reverb, developing a nice metallic sound.

On the ITB side I've tried thousand different VST but at the moment in my opinion two are the best: the Omniverb 2.0.2

and the reverberation section from the Space Echo VST

They both work great as a pre-distortion processing technique but the Tape Echo works a bit better than Omniverb for post-distortion.

Utterly distorted Japanese vocal samples

2011-07-13T03:53:00.000-07:00

Obviously my PSX emulator needs some fixes on the sound driver configuration. Obviously I’m not going to fix it, because it creates some stunning distortions!

I realized this when I tried to run an old Japanese videogame, the music was ok but the voices were all gritty. The misconfigured audio driver had a “save to disk” option so it was easy to obtain a .WAV file with all the sounds recorded. A DC-Offset removal was definitely needed to be able to normalize the samples.

So I compiled this collection of utterly distorted Japanese vocals that will sound perfect in any Industrial composition.

DEMO

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AZ-ROTATOR FX samples pack FREE

2011-05-07T00:00:00.000-07:00

A nice collection of sampled sounds FX from AZ-Rotator, quite useful for Industrial music making.

I found very effective the "VOCALS" folder with lot of vocoded and deeply resonating voices.

I've always dreamed with to put some sounds over some film or animation. Past year I was recording different sounds and processing them. I imagined some images on my mind and tried to put sounds on it.

MORE INFO AND DOWNLOAD

Delfy Creations hand-made electronic musical contraptions

2011-05-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

These guys from the UK develop some really nice hand-made synthesizers and effects.

We have a range of 'Delfy Originals' which we sell all the time, and we also sell one-off items, ranging from original circuits to circuit bent toys and instruments!

The boxes look great with those industrial-like cases and they're quite cheap, altought the SSVC-1 v2, my favorite, costs a little more than the others.

The SSVC-1 v2 consists of two parts, one being a circuit bent voice changer, and the other a squarewave oscillator circuit, using the same circuitry as the Delfy SS-1 with added features like a photoresistor you can use like a theremin!

The SS-1 is also worth checking, being the cheaper and most straightforward in use.

The SS-1 is the most popular of all our creations. It's very hands-on and easy to use, while also capable of a huge variety of squeals and squelches.

I'm sure these little tools are great for Industrial sounds! The guys should really send me one over for a review :)

http://www.delfycreations.com/

Alesis SR-16 through BOSS OVERDRIVE samples

2011-04-28T15:23:00.001-07:00

As promised in this post this is the first Industrial samplekit made with the Alesis SR-16 thru a BOSS Turbo Overdrive OD-2r pedal (a classic!)

The noise "problem" of my unit sounds great when distorted and this can be heard clearly on every single hit. The best sounds came out of Toms and Snares.

I sampled the whole instruments list using this great editor:

Enjoy!

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Rhythmus rhythm machine VST

2011-04-13T13:57:00.001-07:00

This is a nice rhythm machine VST but beyond its normal use I have found the sounds blend lovely after a few layers of distortion.

Rhythmus is inspired by an old rhythm machine. There are ten buttons available, each button can play two different rhythm sections so essentially there are about 20 different rhythmic loops offered, such as samba, mambo, tango, waltz, rumba etc.

Even if Mamba, Rumba or Tango have not much to do with industrial music the mixture of the sounds in the kits have a coherence which is the reason of the nice blending.

At the end this plug-in is good for adding a bit of groove to some heavy kickdrums.

Surprisingly, it's been developed with Synthedit!

DOWNLOAD AND MORE INFO (Link fixed)

Interesting blog with industrial and noise samples

2011-03-20T05:54:00.000-07:00

This blog from russian techno producer Dmitry Vasilyev is full of free sample packs.

Of course my attention has focused on the following tags:

www.rhythm-lab.com/tags/lo-fi

www.rhythm-lab.com/tags/glitch

www.rhythm-lab.com/tags/noise

www.rhythm-lab.com/tags/distorted

But the blog has more samples to offer as well as free VSTs plugins and resources. Worth checking!

VSTron VST for laser sounds

2011-01-31T15:52:00.000-08:00

Being in the need of a VST to produce some laser sounds today I googled "vst for laser sounds" and found this:

VSTron is an effective and fun VST unit that is capable of producing different kinds of effects such as Laser sounds , Fast LFO's , Ascending/Descending Sweeps , Filtered madness , Bubbling Bleeps or attacking Ramps.
Initially inspired by the Korg Monotron the VSTron includes 1 Osc ( Saw , Sine , Triangle , Ramp , Pulse , White Noise and Pink Noise ) and 1 VCF Osc with 4 modes ( Low Pass , High Pass , Band Pass , Band Reject ) as well as 1 Main Envelope.

The sound generated is thick and fat and will not fear the deepest degrees of distrortion!

MORE INFO
DOWNLOAD

Alesis SR-16 Drummachine

2011-01-01T16:49:00.000-08:00

I got an Alesis SR-16, cheaply, from E-bay. Something that makes me totally happy is that hitting the pads outputs distorted sounds. Lucky me, I got a self-circuit bending unit for the price of a faulty one!! This reminds me of a TR-909 I owned back in the nineties which had the hi-tom section broken and would output just a white noise, obeying to MIDI note-ons and offs... inspiring!

During my early years of music making I started to collaborate with an industrial/noise band called "Gennaio". They were four guitarists and an Alesis SR-16 as a drummer and my role should have been to replace the drummachine playing live with my Amiga computer.

The project never went too far but I had the chance to hear the SR-16 cold and reverberated sound in action and it sounded deeply industrial. This sentence from vintagesynth.com just confirms it:

No doubt the SR-16 is a powerful drum machine, but ultimately it also sounds like a drum machine. [...] But all those bumper stickers about drum machines having no soul just might be directed at the SR-16.

After a full day of use I compiled a list of useful instruments:

"Rock 1" Good toms
"Rock 2" Dirty kick
"Rock 3" Mid tom very good
"Rock 4" Low tom very good
"Rock 5" Nice reverb kick
"Rock 6" Good toms
"Rock 7" Cool crash
"Hard Rock 1" Nothing interesting
"Hard Rock 2" Kick and crash
"Hard Rock 3" Great snare!
"R&B 1" Forget it :)
"R&B 2" YAhn!
"R&B 3" Nice kick and snare!
"Funk 1" Crash ok
"Funk 2" Kick and rimshot
"Blues 1" All nice sounds
"Blues 2" Sparkling crash
"Rap 1" 808esque kick, tom 1 and 2 are some good noises
"Rap 2" Kick and snare
"Rap 3" kick ok, metallic snare, tom 3 very deep and dirty
"Techno 1" Besides the name, only a good snare here
"Techno 2" Good kick and great metallic snare!
"Techno 3" Tom 3 sounds powerful
"Reggae 1" ehm...
"Reggae 2" uhm...
"Jazz Rock 1" Snare ok but claps are better
"Jazz Rock 2" Tom and crash but like other banks basically
"Fusion 1" Good dry kick
"Fusion 2" Good toms
"New Age 1" Cutting open hat and good snare
"New Age 2" Kick and snare but like others
"Country 1" Leave it
"Country 2" Leave it
"Country 3" Leave...
"Country Rock" The sounds tends to repeat...
"Rockabilly" Good snare with reverb
"Jazz 1" Quiet stuff
"Jazz 2" You won't buy a unit for this
"Dixie" Dirty kick
"Polka" Quite useless
"Latin 1" Dry kick
"Latin 2" Repeated sounds
"Latin 3" Good Tom 1
"Latin 4" Nahh
"Latin 5" Claps have a strange snare, not bad
"Ballad 1" Snare with long reverb!
"Ballad 2" Again Claps have a disorted percussion
"Ballad 3" Another long snare
"Ballad 4" More long snare
"Ballad 5" Even longer snare and reverb on toms

With this unit I am definitely going to make some sample kits like:

Alesis sampled into Amiga @ 8-BIT

Alesis sampled thru BOSS Overdrive

Alesis sampled thru Black Audio Destructor

Anyone interested in some fresh Industrial percussions should stay tuned...

Laptop Hell v. 01.1 for Reaktor

2010-11-07T04:05:00.000-08:00

Here's a great new ensemble for Reaktor, the Laptop Hell!

As the graphics let figure out it develops some lovely noisy timbres, not too harsh but more towards the metallic.

The graphics are hard to see - but you really don't need to worry about such trivial matters. Just click on buttons, move knobs and sliders, and have fun!

While the GUI is quite straightforward inside the hood there is a cool mess just waiting to be further tweaked by users.

If you're into Industrial Music and still don't have NI Reaktor get it because you can't miss this instrument!

MORE INFO
DOWNLOAD

Barber Pole Flanger VST

2010-10-22T06:30:00.001-07:00

Here's another child of the "simple GUI but great sound" family of plug-ins:

The sweep of the flanged sound seems to move in only one direction (“up” or “down”) infinitely, instead of sweeping back-and-forth.

It features a simple implementation of the Barber Pole Flanging but it's best feature is when used with all the knobs set to maximum levels. With such a configuration it acts as a "re-synthesizer" giving a typical metallic Vocoder timbre to any sound filtered.

4 different algorithms.

Up to 8 stages for smooth and blurry flanging.

Independent control of depth and modulation speed.

Manual included.

Open Source.

Highly recommended!

DOWNLOAD AND MORE INFO

Metallic noises with AKAI S900

2010-10-10T00:00:00.000-07:00

Hot nights have become cold and now are slowly fading to freezing. I'm not used to the new season yet so it's too early to compose music. Sampling safaris are the right activity. Like an ant at the beginning of the autumn I am storing new samples to be used during the winter...

Today I spent a nice evening in front of my AKAI S900, a sampler widely known and appreciated for its metallic timbre, dumping via MIDI a few metallic sounds.

Playing them back at different pitches with weird looping points creates some new raw materials.

A good denoising stage was required to remove the sampler background noise and to obtain some usable audio textures that I am going to share.

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Thrummaschine distortion VST

2010-10-04T03:38:00.000-07:00

Finally a good distortion plug-in, capable of band separated modulations:

The signal is splitted in 3 adjustable bands and can be distorted quite strongly. Indeed, every band filter can be modulated with an LFO. Band can be panned freely so to transform any MONO sound in STEREO.

- 3 user-defined bands for bass, mid and high freqencies, with overlap if required
- 3 filters with tempo-sync LFO, for each freq band
- overdrive, distortion and bitcrush effects
- send level for each band to each effect
- pan and volume for each band

I got some very nice results by layering two or more instances of the plug-in in the same channel, that way the amount of controls and automation is widened.

More informations and DOWNLOAD

Building an Analog drum module

2010-08-09T02:38:00.000-07:00

I just received everything I need to build my own Analog Drum Module:

Someone managed to convince me that by doing this I will be a even cooler musician, so here I am...digging on resistors, diodes, wires and meaningless boards!

The module is a DS7 Drum Synce (DC860)and the smaller one is a simple Gate To Trigger Converter.

The DS7 Drum Synce (DC860) is a little analog percussion synthesizer from the 80's made by CORON. This drumsynth was dedicaced to drummers : the DS7 was fixed on the border of a drum to be played/triggered by hitting the drum.

The DS7 contain a VCO +VCA chain. The VCO is modulated by a cheesy LFO and a simple decay envelope trigged by the piezzo cell pulse. The cell work as a pressure/hit sensor. It can be replaced by a jack to be used with any kind of trigg pulses or even gates. In this case the "decay" pot become a "Release" pot ... The VCA is directly controled by the envelope. The LFO can drive the VCO from slow modulation to hi-speed to produce FM like sounds.

I needed some new analog raw meat for the distortion chain... let's see how long it takes to build it :)

FerricTDS - Tape Dynamics Simulator VST

2010-08-08T08:35:00.000-07:00

I had this FerricTDS VST .DLL sleeping in my plugins folder for a few months now. I did think it was good for whole mixes and never thought it could have any employment in industrial music.

Inspired by the smooth dynamic shaping capabilities of some high-end reel-to-reel tape recorders, this plug-in simulates three of the most distinctive and much appreciated sonic effects generated by these devices:

DYNAMICS
- gently shaping the overall dynamic response
SATURATION
- adding extra harmonic-related content
LIMITING
- controlling peak performance

But a few days ago I accidently watched a presentation video on YouTube and realized it was sounding incredibly good on snare drums:

So I spent the last weekend testing it on them and I was right: the correct sampled snare (mostly from '80 drum machines) processed with the right reverb and fed into this plug-in will produce the classic industrial snare, also the loudest ones from modern EBM.

I am going to test the plug-in on whole mix anyway, as it is said to work very well on enhancing loudness.

DOWNLOAD

Radio Effect VSTi

2010-07-31T07:15:00.000-07:00

More VSTi noisy craziness from the Japanese website. I'm not stunned about that knowing how a strong noise culture Japan has, since it gave birth to a band like The GeroGeriGeGeGe...

This plug-in emulates the tuning of a radio set. You can load samples that will be your "stations" and tune the radio to them with the usual knob. Sounds simple, but the implementation in industrial music are wide.

~~DOWNLOAD~~ DEAD LINK
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Nipponic Noise Generator VSTi

2010-07-23T03:56:00.000-07:00

I am being totally wasted by this VSTi plug-in:

It comes from this Japanese website with no information except for a Youtube video:

Anyway any information wouldn't be very useful...as the rest of the website is written in the language of rising sun!

Good enough the author added some very detailed information on the GUI itself in the amount of... none! All we know is that there are five stages of... something with cutoffs and volumes. Four additional unnamed slider have shown to be an ADSR envelope and a "FILE" button will ask us for a .WAV to load. Our choice here is not very important as it will serve only as seed for some noise generation.

As long as a note is played the instrument sounds continuously, generating powerful metallic drones.

There are more VSTs there which look interesting. Will be posting about them also!

~~DOWNLOAD~~ DEAD LINK
DOWNLOAD

Some Kickdrum samples with PAiA modules

2010-07-16T00:13:00.000-07:00

The blog has been dormant for a while due to personal music production priorities. However I am collecting stuff from people sending me suggestions so I plan to post a little more from now on.

My friend Furio loves analog modular systems. He builds his own modules from kits often modding them to suit his needs. We've been talking about the employ of such machinery into modern industrial music and the end was that he should have done a few samples for the blog, so here we are with some Modular Kickdrums.

This is how the chain has been set up:

PAiA 9720 Dual VCO / MODULATION

Dark Side SSM2044 VCF/VCO

A-132-3 Dual linear/exponential VCA

The results are some clean and punchy kicks, ready to be slaughtered with the most inhuman distortion techniques!

Il modulatore è praticamente un inviluppo AR con attenuatore, settabile via switch in modalità LFO che modula in continuo un VCO. L'Attacco corto, da l'effetto dell'impatto e il Relese più lungo, la sensazione di coda della vibrazione di membrana e corpo della cassa.

L'onda modulata è filtrata in un VCF SSM2044 per aggiungere carattere, dinamica e risonanza. Dal VCF ho passato il suono in un VCA in tecnologia CEM usato per aggiungere ulteriore carattere e regolare la preamplificazione, prima di entrare nei Pre e Convertitori ADC AKM standard/onboard della scheda audio (ultra low jitter) RME HDSP2496.

I suoni son stati prima Campionati in un unico file e poi frammentati i campionamenti in questi file distribuiti, su SO GNU/Linux e Editor Audio FOSS, via server audio JACK@ALSA che permette controllare e sapere di non aver avuto perdite di dati nel flusso audio.

The sounds have been sampled in pristine quality with a high resolution audio server and here they are provided in both 32/96 and 24/44.1 formats.

DOWNLOAD

Beat Burner VST

2010-05-21T07:51:00.000-07:00

More interesting chopping solution are coming out finally, this one from Lee Stacey is the most interesting after Dblue Glitch came out six years ago.

It acts as a sample based synth but centrifuges the waveforms as if in a blender. Something that IDM and Industrial freaks out there will love.

BeatBurner VSTi is a synthesizer plugin which generates its output by processing wav files. These files can be anything from percussive loops to vocals. This output is produced by passing the sound through a number of modules including a synthesis module, a number of variable filters, a waveshaper and some effects.

All of the processing is synchorinzed to the wav file which is looped. This can in turn be synchronized to the host.

The degree of sound degradation is sometimes embarrassing and what is outputted is often quite uncontrollable, so it is advisable to use it by bouncing out audio and cutting only the most interesting bits.

Any kind of sound can be loaded but I found it more effective with metallic ones as they make it act like a "metallic synth"...

DOWNLOAD

Weird Noise Machine VST Plugin WNM-1

2010-05-20T13:28:00.000-07:00

I am recently spending many nights and afternoons exploring WNM-1 plugin:

Six osc's on each module, first five are modulators and can be routed to other osc's. * Sine, Saw, Ramp, Triangle, Pulse, w-noise and p-noise waveforms to choose from.

The best feature, beyond being totally insane in the concept, is the fact that every OCS has a different stereo output. So it's possible to further process the separated material with any other effects chain.

Every Oscillator can be set to "Track" the pitch of your music keyboard, this allow you to either make every note to have the same timbre but diff pitch or just add more weirdness.

The resulting sound is a bit thin, reminds me NI Reaktor's output, but the differences in sound nuance and its modulation capabilities are amazing enough to make it a good ally to generate some Industrial landscapes.

INFO + DOWNLOAD

HASK Sampled feedbacks

2010-05-06T00:00:00.000-07:00

My friend Hask Haskore is into Techno and Schranz since ages. His small studio is crammed with cool analog stuff and one day I asked him to make a few industrial samples for my blog.

There are many industrial things that can be done with his hardware:

Jomox X-Base 09
Akai XE8
Yamaha TX81-Z
Spectral Audio Neptune
Elka EM-44
Aria AR-525
Zoom 9150
Zoom 2100
Alesis 3630 Compressor
Boss OD-2r Turbo Overdrive
Boss Flanger BF-3

...so more posts are planned...

But what best to begin with than a bounce of crazy feedbacks?

All the samples came with a exaustive explaination on how they were obtained:

Feedbacks 1,2,3,4: Alesis 3630 Dual Channel Compressor/Limiter with gate with manipulation of Threshold and Ratio and filtered on the Neptune Spectral Audio Analog Synthesizer.

Feedback 5: Boss Turbo Overdrive OD-2r thorough Neptune and reverberated with Aria AR-525 Stereo Spring Reverb Unit.

Feedbacks 6,7,10: Zoom 9150 Valve DSP thorough Neptune plus additional feedback from Boss Turbo Overdrive OD-2r and reverberated with Aria AR-525 Stereo Spring Reverb Unit

Feedback 8,9: Same as 6-7-10 with no reverb but compression.

Something worth mentioning here is that since all sweeps are live performed he ran our of...hands... and had to borrow one from his father to tweak three knobs simultaneously. I like when doing music becomes a family affair :)

DOWNLOAD

TLR D15 Analog Drum Machine VST

2010-04-25T07:04:00.000-07:00

When doing music not tonally one focuses more and more on drums and percussions. Kickdrums, when it comes to me, but generally speaking not only them. This is why I always try to test the wider range of drum machines possible.

This VST plug-in from TLR, the same authors of Blister, sounds weird enough to satisfy the said need of Industrial stomps and hits.

Fully customizable, analog modeling drum machine (no samples!). Each sound is tunable, opening the doors for drastically different drum kit presets. The amplifier stage contains a tube simulator with pre and post gain as well as a clean output.

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HESED Industrial sample-kit

2010-04-21T00:00:00.000-07:00

Claudio Hesed is a true analog freak, maybe even more than me! He's into tekno and electro since ages and composes his music using the Atari ST. An Italian citizen but moved to Germany years ago: a choice I should have done too...

Live pa and Producer of Electro,Experimental,Hip-hop,Tekno,Hardcore and much more.
Start to make and study music with 8 years old playing guitar in 1997 first contact with electronic music (ambient,electro), in 1998 start djing and producing with hardware. 2000 start to collect all atari machine possible ;-).
2004 start to work for Magix (music&video software) and learnt about mastering. Also making Sound Design for video, spot, theather and more.
Founder of Analog Tecne Model records label.

He makes some weird and unusual sample kits for Prokits.co.uk mainly from circuitsbend machine.

I asked him to send me some Industrial sounds and what I finally got is a beautiful set of DRM syncussion (HDB/Vermona) sampled through Metasonix R53 Vacuum-Tube Waveshaper which he agreed to publish on my blog!

DRM Filtered Kit

70 Samples recorded from analog devices.

45 Drum - 12 Snares - 8 Claps - 4 Hihat - 1 Special

The samples are coming out of a DRM syncussion (HDB/Vermona)
and filtered with Metasonix R53 Vacuum-Tube Waveshaper modul.

So download the kit and say THANX to Claudio!

DOWNLOAD

More sample kits from HESED

KORG MS-20 VS BLACK AUDIO DESTRUCTOR Samples

2010-04-13T14:01:00.000-07:00

"Me next! Me next!!"... this is what the KORG MS-20 seemed to shout after seeing me sampling the JoMoX thorough the Black Audio Destructor! The big old toy is on the list of the borrowed things, so anytime I can get a phone call that will take it away from me. Since I know that I will be committing suicide when this happens, I decided to exploit it a bit more.

So I spent a nice evening filtering the KORG MS-20 thorough the BAD, trying some unusual (actually ranging from weird to completely insane) patches including the outputs of the White and Pink noises.

In this collection of industrial sounds all samples are in MONO but I advise to couple similar sounds together into a STEREO file for some nice spatial effects.

DOWNLOAD

BLISTER Distortion VST

2010-04-12T14:07:00.000-07:00

I stumbled upon this VST plug-in from TLR while doing a techno track a few days ago. Itself it's a nice piece of software but the characteristic that has cached my attention is its SERIABILITY.

Usually distortion plug-ins, after putting two or three of the same in the same track, sound nothing more that a big squared waveform. This plug-in starts to make interesting sounds after three or more instances are loaded in the same track. This is probably because of the oscillator there's inside:

Something important to mention here is the utilization of a Synthedit module called NewWave (by Ralph Gonzalez). Basically it detects an input frequency and then uses that information to spit out a synthy waveform based upon it. This technology works
much better when used along with a very simple input signal.

I arrived at five instances on a single track and actually getting some fun artifacts.

DOWNLOAD

MP3 encoding artefacts as a creative effect

2010-04-02T00:00:00.000-07:00

Lossy encoding creates unwanted and weird effects. The MP3 codec tries to recreate the full frequency spectrum regardless of the encoding frequency, so at very low values it develops weird artifacts that I always found interesting in a creative way.

I've been looking for a VST plugin that encodes and decodes audio in MP3 format but it seems like it doesn't exists. Also normal codecs like LAME or Fraunhofer don't create enough artifacts to satisty my needs except the one that comes with Macromedia/Adobe Flash.

Also older version work as far as they can import WAVS.

Here is how it can be done:
Load up the .WAV into the library and put it into timeline. Edit the properties and start playing a little. Basically very low frequency work well for this. It is possible to load single tracks or entire mixes, but more variegated material will create more fractalization after the encoding.

Export the .SWF and use something to convert it back to .WAV. This appears to work well but there are surely alternatives to test out also on other platforms.

Put the result together with the original track on your preferred audio sequencer and start mixing them. You really don't need to be an EQ wizard to be able to enhance the artifacts frequencies.

This is the .SWF version of my latest song (just as an example). The resulting file is less that 300kb, so it is clear that the codec is "inventing" back most of the audio!

The AKAIZER Project

2010-03-21T00:00:00.000-07:00

Akaizer v1.7
+--------------------------------------------------+
|    _____   __            __                      |
|   /  _  \ |  | _______  |__|_______ ___________  |
|  /  /_\  \|  |/ /\__  \ |  \___   // __ \_  __ \ |
| /    |    \    <  / __ \|  |/    /\  ___/|  | \/ |
| \____|__  /__|_ \(____  /__/_____ \\___  >__|    |
|         \/     \/     \/         \/    \/        |
|                                                  |
+--------------------------------------------------+
Copyright (c) 2005-2010 Ben Burchett

I discovered this little piece of software thanks to the author, Ben Burchett, who posted about it on a comment on my other blog about AKAI S900

Its aim is quite simple: emulate the time stretch function of old AKAI samplers.

Akaizer is a freeware audio processing tool which can 'time stretch' any 8/16/24/32-bit WAV sound file in the style of the 'cyclic mode' time stretch, which featured on old Akai sound samplers, like the S950 / S1000 / S2000 / S3000 series.
This is ideal for computer-based dance music producers who want that classic metallic-sounding time stretch effect, as used in many old school Jungle / Drum and Bass / Speed Garage tunes from the 1990's, without the need for an actual Akai sampler.

Since it claims to make " that classic metallic-sounding time stretch effect " I immediately tested it by slaughtering some samples out of my JoMoX X-Base 09 kit.
The results are convincing: percussive material gains lot of craziness and I haven't tried with voices yet! Anyone serious in Industrial sound research should give it a try.

Find it for Windows and other platforms here: http://akaizer.blogspot.com/

DOWNLOAD MY SAMPLES

JoMoX percussions through Black Audio Destructor samples

2010-03-13T00:00:00.000-08:00

The Black Audio Destructor (BAD!) does exactly what its name suggests: destroys audio! Anything fed is reduced to shreds.

The mode switch selects between Crunch mode, Saturated mode and Tone mode. In every mode the audio is distorted and ground up at a frequency selected by the frequency knob, Selecting Crunch mode with the switch in the upwards position gives a spluttering crunchy distorted sound that can sound like anything from an old fuzz pedal with a nearly dead battery, to a mixing desk with every light running in the red. In Saturated mode with the switch in the central position you get a much more intense effect, where the input signal and the effect signal start to blend into one mighty noise. In this mode you can get brutally saturated and distorted synth like tones running at the frequency of the input signal. The final mode is the Tone mode with the switch in the downward position. In this mode the box starts playing a constant tone at certain settings, with the input signal interacting with the tone in bizarre ways. With an input signal as a sweeping synth waveform we have managed to get pseudo ring modulator tones in this mode.

To test its full potential I needed something with a fierce output, something analog that can withstand this degree of audio degradation. A JoMoX X-Base 09 would be perfect!

So I borrowed the one from my friend Hask and started to experiment with snares, kickdrums and different layerings of them together, to see where how far the boundaries of harshness were.

The result is a unique and huge collection of Industrial hits, suitable for Powernoise, Techno, and maybe some hard EBM.

DOWNLOAD

Ferox tape saturation modeller VST plugin

2010-03-05T13:38:00.000-08:00

I mentally divide distortion effects into two breeds: simple audio "inflaters" and "spicers". "Spicers" are the ones that can add "spice", usually with a knob that sums some kind of harsh noise.

This VST plug-in from the same author of Timemachine is definitely of the second, more rare, breed. It doesn't produce raw sounds only by exploding the existing waveforms but can add something of its own with the usual "noise" knob.

I found it effective on both long synths and short percussive material.

Ferox is a free tape saturation modeller VST plugin. It has separate controls for saturation and hysteresis effects. Feedback with variable tape speed is provided to simulate vintage tape echos.

Nice to see that it also does its original job flawlessly: an analog tape emulator.

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Vanguard VST Industrial Presets

2010-02-22T11:46:00.001-08:00

Many readers of this blog showed interest on the post about Vanguard VST. In particular they're asking me where to find some Industrial presets.

As far as I know there are any of them around the Internet, commercial or free, except a few one on my harddisk!

In short, here's my collection of Industrial presets for Vanguard Volume One!

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Some noises from TASSMAN Modular system

2010-02-22T02:09:00.000-08:00

The TASSMAN modular system it's been around since a long time now. I made these samples back in 2001/2 when I got my first PC after being loyal to the Amiga for ages.

During past years I always thought it was the best VST modular synth around and now, in 2010, I'm a bit surprised to see it's still unknown to the most, while other software like NI Reaktor or MAX/MSP are definitely much more popular..

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Vermona DRM-1 MKII through AKAI S900 samples

2010-02-14T02:00:00.000-08:00

All my musician friends, sooner or later, end up by borrowing me some gear. I still don't have understood why this happen but for sure it makes me happy! This time I had a Vermona for about one week from my friend Fede of System Reboot.

As usual my explorations were in the industrial direction. I found the Vermona very interesting for heavy percussions, besides kickdrums, so I decided to sample it through my beloved AKAI S900 to further enhance this attitude.

The brand Vermona also produces other cool stuff, like analog filters and even springs reverb! I'd like that some friend of mine get some of them so that, sooner or later, they end up by borrowing them to me :)

And again, the very best selection from my sampling safaris is shared:

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My BLACK AUDIO DESTRUCTOR is on its way!

2010-02-08T13:55:00.000-08:00

This nice piece of hardware from Circuitsbenders should be at my door in a day or two! I expect to spend all my weekend using it to process harsh percussions out of a JoMoX X-Base09!

Essentially this small black box eats audio alive, then chews it up and spits it out in what can only be described as a deeply offensive manner. Basically its a wrong'un! The box can create a wide range of bitcrushing style, gating, distortion and synthlike frequency effects with an intensity that can be anything from a gentle thin crunch to a terrifying wall of unstoppable noise.

"...a terrifying wall of unstoppable noise." ...YESS!!

Sampled feedbacks and larsens pt.1

2010-02-04T14:31:00.000-08:00

Feedback is a creative key widely used in industrial music. I always find exciting to real-time feedback signals from and to various analog devices!

Its beauty remains intact also in the digital domain where further processing is possible. My friend Giulius spoke me about his hobby of sampling larsens and timestretching them until a total disturbing resonance is achieved. In a few days a DVD with four gigabytes of sampled stuff was spinning in my drive.

It's taking a while to select the worst out of it but I really think it's worth doing because the resulting material is really nice and will be useful.

Here is part 1 (11mb):

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TriDirt filter VST

2010-02-04T14:00:00.000-08:00

The TriDirt is sold as a filter. It is actually a filter, but its true strength is in the gain sections. What I'm saying is that it's a very powerful distortion plug-in, and we love distortion, don't we?

My friend Dredd revealed me the secret of this plug-in when we made together an industrial-hardtechno tune that is due to be released soon.

It's really sad that the developer's site, Noizeware, is unreachable since a lot of time, this will probably mean the TriDirt is not getting anymore development. What a pity!

More info about the TriDirt can be found on it's KVR audio page while a download is available here.

Real-time Graphical Synthesis

2010-01-23T08:19:00.001-08:00

RGS (Real-time Graphical Synthesis) is a sonic spectrum editor that runs on Classic Amiga computers.

I's very old (1991), but the concept behind it has never been developed much further during the past twenty years so I consider it still interesting.

It allows you to paint a sonogram using specialized 'brushes' and then synthesize the corresponding audio waveform. [...] The main added features in RGS are that there are now 256 levels of amplitude to choose from and the ability to synthesize while you are drawing in nearly real time.

When I was composing and experimenting merely with an Amiga this program was a big discover for industrial sounds as it produces strange noises and drones. Spectral analysis is a powerful method for discovering underlying structures in sounds and being able to draw your own is truly stimulating. However, even writing your own name or randomly draw harmonics can result in very interesting sounds.

RGS can be run on a real or emulated Amiga and can be found here and documentation here.

As usual, I made a collection of .WAVs samples of me exploring the program:
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My Thoughts about pedal FXs

2010-01-10T09:01:00.000-08:00

Since a very long time I own the pictured pedals and now plan to get a few more to eventually circuit-bend them.

Back in the nineties, during my livesets, I used them to pimp a bit the audio output of my Amiga computer and they worked great, apart from a unbelievable background noise!

I see now a lot of interest about these old-school distortion pedals, BOSS or any other brand. This is maybe for these very strong points:

They are cheap and sometimes even free, as lot of people get rid of them easily

They are modular

They can be Circuit-bent

They are analog

There are many of them, of many brands and many different effects

They sound harsh, very good for industrial music

Plus there are many already circuit-bent units for sell on the net or E-bay.

So my opinion is that this machines will have a new life since they can be described as the analog plug-ins for the future!

Microtonic kickdrum sampled through BOSS pedal

2010-01-10T02:18:00.000-08:00

Ok, I admit that after writing the post about pedal FXs I got a bit over-excited! So I decided to put my ones at work...

In 1998 I bought this BOSS PQ-4 Parametric Equalizer from a small shop in Denmark Street, in London. It was already quite rare and definitely expensive.

Back in the days of liveset I used it to process my Roland TR-909.

Today that the mighty drum machine is gone in favor of an analog console I mainly use Microtonic VST to make my kickdrums, so it came quite obvious to me that I had to make a sample kit of those two together!

I've tweaked the stuff @ 100 BPM for 5 minutes, so the kit is quite huge, actually 500 .WAV files.

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Making sampled noises using strange files

2010-01-09T12:50:00.000-08:00

This is a simple technique I've been using several times when I began to make music. I first discovered it when using the Octamed Sound Studio tracker for the Commodore Amiga and later used it on modern DAWS. Actually with Wavelab it is possible to recreate it and experiment with it.

During the years I heard many other artist employing it in their music so I realized its creative potential were being a bit abused. Anyway here is how to proceed:

Choose one file from your HD bearing in mind that the size in bytes will be the final size of the sample. Better go for something between 100Kb for percussive material to 600Kb for longer synths.

Let's say we've chosen a file called aaclient.dll from the System32/ directory.

Let's rename it to aaclient.raw so we can drag it into Wavelab.

We'll be prompted to insert some sample details as RAW format don't have any. Set as follows:

Of course experiments are possible, like with less bits or changing big endian settings etc.

A sample like this should appear:

The crazy noise is served!

It will be wise to eliminate the DC Offset as it can be very shifted sometimes.

Another process could be to load big files and the chop out the most interesting parts. It is important to load variegated samples with different data inside (for example any .ZIP file will result as a continuos noise...not very useful!)

Further manipulation like time stretching or pitch bending will make the sample sounds better.

Here are a few .WAV samples I made as example.

KORG MS-20 Industrial Sounds

2010-01-03T16:14:00.000-08:00

I'm borrowing a KORG MS-20 from my friends Armageddon Project. They're focusing more and more on just digital music so they felt like I would really employ it more than them so since two years the unit is in my studio.

This machine really needs no introduction as it is one of the most wanted analog vintage synthesizers of all times!

Even if I own a full MIDI2CV interface from Kenton the main use in my studio is as a filter, wired to a send of the mixer.

Another good use for it is for sound research and sampling safaris: here is a collection of Industrial Sounds in .WAV format done with it and with further analog processing.

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Timemachine - Vintage sampler Emulator

2009-12-18T16:06:00.000-08:00

I'm not new on using an old sampler as a distortion unit so this plugin got my attention when I discovered it.

The sound obviously is totally different as a real old-school sampler really shakes the speakers but if taken as simple distortion unit it can be useful.

At very high gain values it's quite raw convincing, especially on percussive material.

TimeMachine is a VST plugin that provides accurate reproduction of the characteristic sound of vintage samplers, such as the Commodore 64, or older Akai samplers. The (virtual) sampling rate can be varied, as well as the number of bits used for digital representation. furthermore, aliasing distortion can be generated individually for AD and DA conversion.

Find it here

Commodore 64 background noise synth

2009-12-13T12:29:00.000-08:00

This kit is obtained by mapping on a Kontakt program a sampled background noise of a SID 6581, the sound chip of the mighty Commodore 64.

The result, quite surprising, is a harmonic sound that resembles a synthesizer.

Must be said that the pre-amp circuitry of the Commodore 64 is responsible for the fat sound but it's nice to obtain instruments from signals that weren't meant to produce useful sounds.

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AKAI S900 as a Granular Synthesizer

2009-12-12T11:48:00.000-08:00

The AKAI S900 is a wonderful machine for Industrial Music due to its harsh and powerful sounding 12bit AD-DA converters, so good I even run a BLOG about it!

During the last years I've been using it deeply in my productions and I've being experimenting the weirdest ways to employ it: from a distortion effect unit to a drum module.

Recently I've done an experiment with granular synthesis, small sampled waveforms looped to obtain a continuos sound.

I chopped some waveforms from my Roland SH-09 samplekit and MIDI dumped them into the AKAI S900. Usually I care about samples dimension as the S900 has only 720kB of unexpandable memory but sample waveforms, or "grains", are so small in size there's really no worry.

The waveforms sound quite close to the real SH-09, even when layering together the squarewave + SUBOSC the result is similar. What starts to go crazy is when I hit two different keys, blending two sounds at different pitches: the AKAI poliphony starts to show its limits so the harshness is guaranteed.

Being the SH-09 a typical techno machine the resulting sounds are quite oldschoolish but the screaming effects are of course totally different: here it's the AKAI S900 character showing off.

Of course this kind of experiment can be done with any waveform or with any sampler.

Here's a downloadable archive with the floppy .IMG for the lucky friends that own an AKAI S900 and the waveforms in .WAV format for anyone who wants to experiment with SH-09 waveforms with Kontakt or whatever.

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DtBlkFx VST plug-in

2009-12-04T14:35:00.000-08:00

Ok, now this IS weird!

I had this DtBlkFx plug-in since quite a long time but never used it properly. In a recent dig in my VST folder I found it and realize it was worth exploring a bit more its capabilities in the field of Industrial Music Production.

It's quite difficult to say what kind of effect it is...actually its a set of different effects (up to 8), combined to some unpredictable results. There are two FFT display for input and output and the sound is processed by these transforms, can't really understand in which way, anyway...

The output is a bit "empty" and doesn't really fulfill the mix, but for a noisy production it can be very interesting.

The signal can be set completely different from Left to Right, so it can be processed as two different tracks which are related one to each other. This is a feature I'm liking because with analog mixer I get two instruments out of one source.

Precision parametric equalizing with sharp-roll off, adjust individual harmonics of a sound.

Harmonic based (or comb) filtering, including active harmonic tracking.

Various types of noise control, change contrast between loud and soft frequencies, clip frequencies or apply sound smearing.

Frequency shifting, harmonic and non-harmonic shifting, including active harmonic repitch.

Various methods of mixing left and right channels, standard and harmonic vocoding, convolution like mixing and more.

Frequency masking, set harmonic or threshold masks for any effect.

Up to 8 effects in series.

GUI graphics can be customized.

Link to website with download (free)

Bassdrum Murda Bit crusher / Distortion VST

2009-12-01T08:02:00.000-08:00

This VST plug-in from hardcore producer Bula reaches the boundaries of insanity as it completely disintegrate any signal fed into it! The degree of distortion is something even hilarious to explain and if you don't get enough harshness yet there are two fader to add crackness and noise.

Needless to say that it can be infinitely handy while carving industrial sounds...

Features:
- gain
- distortion
- crackness ( zeros samples under a given threshold value)
- add noise ( adds white-noise)
- low level quantization ( special quantization [for Bassdrums] between 1 Bit and 5 Bits)
- pre-/post Inversion (the old good FastTracker FX!)
- 24 dB LowPass: Cutoff and Resonance
- additional pre-quantisation (between 1 Bit and 7 Bits)

Quote from the author: "Please be careful - this Plug is fucking !Loud!"

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Two good reasons to use Vanguard VST in industrial music

2009-11-27T02:30:00.000-08:00

Looking for some Vanguard Industrial presets?

When talking about "industrial sounds" it's very easy to talk about distorting effects and noisy samples while sound generators are much more rare topics so time to find out some of them.

We all well know Vanguard from ReFX, one of the best VST synthesizers around. But Vanguard is not only an instant Trance generator as it might be seen by most of its users.

There are two good reasons one can use Vanguard in an industrial production.
First it develops some oldschool electro leads, a-la Front 242, that makes it suitable for classic Industrial/EBM tunes.
Second reason is it sounds thick and warm, a perfect signal to be heavily processed with the worst distortion chain!

This plug-in features an incredible amount of good presets to start with as well as more free and commercial banks. Its arpeggiator can be configured in a large variety of ways, from melodic leads to mechanical and monotonic noises.

The trance gate is another nice feature and its name shouldn't fool because if well configured it can give more spice to our beloved raw waveforms.

Drumatic 3 sampled into AKAI S900

2009-11-26T15:05:00.001-08:00

Courious to know what happens when you feed this Drumatic 3 VST

into THIS AKAI S900 sampler

??

You get THIS crazy Kontakt Samplekit!

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HARD LINE - Industrial Distortion VST

2009-11-26T14:28:00.000-08:00

I like the idea of an "industrial" distorion plug-in, and I also like the reslults it gives: plain sound contortion.

Custom noise based distortion effect (windows/vst) will take your sound from a clean 'natural' gain to extreme levels of distortion that simulates a white noise waveform at it's most extreme setting.

I advise to use it in via a send channel because at half distortion it completely remove any bottom end material (but adds nice distorted harmonics in the high end).

Link to webpage with download and more nice free VST plug-ins.

MAM WARP 9 Midi Analog Filter

2009-11-22T09:10:00.001-08:00

An analog filter is a Swiss knife in the studio. It's useful for anything beyond filtering. The best use for me, however, is as distortion and saturation unit.

I've chased the WARP 9 for quite a long time, with the Sherman Filterbank being not exactly affordable I needed a valid alternative, fully MIDI capable.

The Warp 9 is completely 110% MIDI driven. Every single knob and function has its own Continuous Controller assigned and it's also possible to send information with note pitch and velocity. This it's possible to copy the score from a track and have the cutoff or other parameter dancing in sync with it. Not easy to explain, but the results are really interesting!

A Cubase MIDI panel for MAM WARP 9 is also available for free, letting the user manage the device nearly as if it was a VST plugin!

I'm quite loving this piece of hardware, it took a while before I was able to understand it fully but the results I'm getting now are satisfactory. The only disappointment is that it doesn't self-oscillate, so it cannot be used to produce percussions.

Two Delay units used to make stereo a Spring Reverb

2009-11-19T05:38:00.000-08:00

I'm the lucky owner of a vintage Eagle Products Spring Reverb. It must be quite a rare device as Google knows nothing about it. Its sound is very typical but the possible settings are nearly zero.

Another weakness is that it's mono and since reverbs are used to widen the stereo image this makes it unusable to mix a song.

In my rack two Digital Delays that I had for free from friends were collecting dust: a Roland SDE-1000 and a Roland GP-8. Same brand, so they should sound similar...this is perfect for what I had in mind...

Phasers, Flangers, Reverbs, Echoes are always delays with different settings. In fact with about 20ms of delay and a bit of feedback a delay becomes a sort of reverb. With this in mind I ran a splitted cable out of the spring reverb so to feed the same mono signal into the two delay units configured as reverbs but with slightly different delay times. The resulting signals going back to the mixer were pan-potted to about 90%. Here I should have worried a little about phase correlation problems when processing low frequency material but I just didn't mind since I always center anything below 150hz when finalizing for vinyl.

Finally, I shaped the L+R return with a little EQ and the result is a lovely stereo effect!

Ingredients:

Eagle Products Vintage Analog Spring Reverb

Roland SDE-1000 Digital Delay

Roland GP-8 Guitar Effect Processor

Sample kit made from a fedback Chorus

2009-11-19T01:50:00.000-08:00

I like to force effects to output sound by themselves. Basically it's the principle of auto-oscillation, which applied to a filter lead to one of the most important instruments: the kickdrum.

One of the best way to obtain a sort of auto-oscillation is the feedback. A fedback effect would scream following given patterns that are dictated by its internal structure. By its soul, from a mystical side of view.

I owned this Viscount Gammaverb multieffect since years using it in my mixes as a reverberation unit but since when I build my Stereo Spring Reverb I started to think at some different ways to employ it. Feeding its signal back was the revelation as it produces some nice sound textures.

Sadly this is an effect and not an instrument so no MIDI, no CV/GATE, no control, no nothing... so I decided to sample a long clip out of it and organize it in a weird Kontakt program. This way it's possible to actually play it within a musical production.

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Distortion ensemble for Reaktor

2009-11-18T05:09:00.000-08:00

Here's a Reaktor Ensemble I made sometimes ago to test its possibilities.

It consists in a crazy, fully automated distortion unit with a quite simple internal structure, however the sounds fed in it become insanely disrupted and raw. Industrial, in short!

Make sure you browse all the presets as some are really nice.

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Space Echo VST

2009-11-17T15:15:00.001-08:00

I always loved Tape Delays, from the time one has been used in the recording of my first record I was fascinated by the concept behind them and by the sound they produced.

I say "produced", because a thirty-years-old magnetic tape is not and effect anymore: it's a sound generator - triggered by an external signal.

Recently I had the chance to try this nice VST plug-in that emulates the mighty Roland RE-201:

I must admit the sound is very convincing for a plug-in. The reverberation is smooth and the delay flows. Good. The point is, I can't see any option to dirty up the sound. As usual, modern plugins emulate the machine as it was engineered originally but (of course) they can't simulate ALL the applications that the analog version may have, never ever the most crazy and unpredictable. They simulate the original but don't stimulate as the original.

I owned a real Space Echo for a while and I never used it as a delay or reverb. It's a crazy effect, it makes anything fed sound fatter and fedback. And yes...it sounds Industrial!

And again the score is: Digital 1 - Analog 2

I'm not saying you should get a real Space Echo...well...yes I'm saying that! And make sure the tape is not new :)

KORG Nano Key

2009-11-17T13:23:00.000-08:00

I never thought I would have bought a MIDI keyboard: the total absence of melody in my music simply made me think it was totally unnecessary.

But when I first saw this small and sweet keyboard from KORG I started to desire one! Now I realize it's very useful even if I don't compose tonally, just to quickly trigger what's loaded in the sequencer track, without having to open the score editor and dumbly click on the piano-roll. Not to mention how easy it is to play notes inside the sampler, nearly forgetting to use the mice.

Also, with its dark colors and extra slim shape it fits perfectly in the most messy studio environment.

KORG Nano Kontrollers

Muhmood "6200 miles of silence"

2009-11-17T11:19:00.000-08:00

A full CD packed with eternal noise textures, recorded from the coldets places on earth! That can come useful as an intro/outro of a song, so I thougt to report it.

From the website:

6200 miles of silence is totally
based on field recordings.
Recorded in the Western
Siberia area which is crossed
by a few huge power lines going
from East to West and from South
to North. The idea was to render in
sound the trip of electric currency
flowing in huge masses across the
vast empty spaces of Russia.
The sound of the album follows
the topography.

01. wind in the cords
02. electrification of udmurtia
03. 8300 pillars of altai
04. 1000 kVolt line
http://www.noechorecords.com/