Welcome back to your childhood home. It's a dilapidated, disgraceful ruin of a shanty, but oh, you can remember when it housed your whole family. Kept you warm as you beamed at the stars, always a lively conversation at the dinner table…
The white picket fences have been strewn apart, cascaded across what once was a lawn, the individual spikes now resting as yellow-grey in the low sun. You brush the creaky door wide, step inside, and instinctively pull the switch — but of course, the lights fail to illuminate.
So you come deeper. And there it is, unmoved after all these years of what they call growing up. Your worn, used upright piano. And you can close your eyes for a moment and tune out the street traffic, be brought back to your youth, when you first took lessons, those very beginning melodies that streamed from your fingertips. They were naive, and in that freshness was an honesty you'll never recapture. At least you don't believe you will. But if you have enough faith, anything's possible.
Just about. Then you begin to play.
It's not too late to make my dreams happen, you think to yourself, smiling at the chipped ivories.
VideoLAN Client (VLC) media player has a nifty feature built in: it can play movies (and still pictures!) as color ASCII. This means visuals appear reminiscent of old BBS and terminal art. Since it's automated, it's not the most precise conversion, but I put some concert footage through it and was all grins. Here's how you do it, at least on the Mac side (since VLC is multi-platform):
Go to VLC menu > Preferences.
Click Video tab.
Change Output module to Color ASCII art video output.
BEFORE
AFTER
Play a movie and get out the bitcrushed popcorn. To screengrab a still shot like this with Skitch, I had to drag it into the VLC playlist, play it for a sec, then quickly pause it.
A brief google shows me not many know about this, so spread the lofi word! Previously related is my "8 Inspiring Stories of ASCII Art" for Smashing Magazine.
Some of us are attracted to each other. We can then become a solar system unto our own, but don't ask me who's the sun.
Some of us aren't yet ready to make first contact — because that civilization yonder there, as promising as it may seem, is still riddled with civil war. They need to sort out their problems first. And send some explorers over to meet you. Maybe then, an intergalactic treaty can be formed.
Some planets are fertile and ripe with resources!
Others have been strip-mined, said F-U you to the environment, or… are barren.
And when we can take the consciousness & soul of a person and put it in another body, well, that'll be like extraterrestrial colonization.
I'm continuing to build my flock of excellent audio tools I know intimately, and Audio Ease Speakerphone is my latest PRICE and JOY. Typically priced at US$450 (I got a better deal via eBay, remember what I said about making offers?), Speakerphone does multiple effects within one cohesive package — not just thrown in without care, but because such an elaborate sequence is necessary to achieve the vast variety of ambient spaces and both analogue and digital flavors of grit which it offers. The official blurb goes:
A bad GSM connection on a busy sidewalk, a bullhorn with feedback and a helicopter overhead, or a 1952 rockabilly guitar amp in a recording studio live room: The Speakerphone audio plug-in gives you authentic speakers of any size together with their natural environments.
Yeh, pretty versatile. That's somewhat justification for the "pro price", but I did think carefully before plunking my bucks down, and strove to understand all I could! Now, here's my "out-of-the-virtual-box" firsthand impressions as spread across 6 videos; YES, this thang does a super-warm "Giallo" sound too! And check out my heavy piano distorto amping. Schweet.
(Click and drag the position circle to track ahead after it's buffered, I wish it worked with a single click like YouTube's native control.)
In my mind, I voyage to places, travel to both realistic and unrealistic worlds (and many in-between). Since actual human teleportation hasn't happened yet and it's costly to add rooms with various acoustic characteristics to my hizzouse, here's the proverbial "next best thing": just pump the sounds through a Speakerphone preset, tweak-as-needed, and close your eyes. Feels like you're there!
Clearly, Speakerphone has many timesaving uses to place noises within contexts.
And even tho CPU usage ramps up noticeably as you stack on the effects, it still appears reasonable. It's really convenient to have all these effects in a single, well-designed plug — I was using the free iZotope Vinyl for ol' turntable simulation, but Speakerphone goes beyond having a "Gramophone" module and it allows you to sound like a gearluster's list of turntables throughout the ages:
Plus, its pitch-detuned wow sounds more characteristic. Which means one of my lateral goals is to come up with a nostalgic VHS preset.
But I've naive on Day One and need to gain experience. I can already say Speakerphone's usability makes it very rewarding to use. I first heard about it from Ugress, who's a fantastic purveyor of tracks which possess character from ages begone. And ProToolerBlog has a more blow-by-blow review. Apparently, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails uses Speakerphone too, which is why creator Arjen included Trent's voice on the site tour. Arjen has some pretty nifty video tutorials showing his face on webcam too, so check them out if you want to learn more.
Imagine the possibilities!
And then do them. There are plenty of opportunities here for spicing up stock ambiences and foleys — while I haven't heard of Speakerphone being used a lot in machinima, that looks like a likely consequence for those who can afford it with their dedication to the craft. If you've got multitracks of sounds that need cohesive gelling to sound like they all happened in close proximity, this is a much more convincing approach than a generic reverb wash.
As a tool, Speakerphone flows with creativity: you don't have to think "band-pass EQ" to get a phone-like sound, as a cabinet full of models are already labeled for consumption. Those who know better can buck the names and explore stranger domains, but the point is: plenty of solid starting points have already made me happy in targeting the kinds of sounds I'm going for.
What could be awesomer?
I'm having occasional crash problems using Speakerphone with Ableton Live 8 and there appear to be preset saving issues too — I've sent bug reports to Arjen, and he was already quick today to help me get the app authorized.
Dontcha just hate it when the right ear has no idea what the left hallux is doing? I've heard plenty of gripes about stupid and incorrect YouTube takedowns. Well, I'd love to see an explanation for this one: post-drum 'n' bass band (they're just that awesome) Pendulum uploaded a video of themselves playing live on their own, official channel. I might even add that it included a mighty fine cover of Calvin Harris' "I'm Not Alone". I shared the link on Twitter, but when I checked later today, it said:
This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by British Broadcasting Corporation.
WUT? You'd think there'd be some communication here, like whoever at the BBC was responsible for footage getting in touch with Pendulum's reps. But since that wasn't the case, people like me get to blog about it. What compounds the absurdity further is audio-only versions of the same Glastonbury '09 performance are still up, like:
Hope the whole recording will be back on YouTube, since apparently, it's only available to UK viewers on the BBC site (I've never liked region-specific lockdowns, confusing as heck) — such an exciting live show.
CoMu228rbsb . Which makes the end price $150. I found this via the limited version bundled with Computer Music magazine, which claims it expires on 2008-12-31. But I put it in and it still appears to work — let me know if it doesn't!
that they run for every few months, on their honkin' huge sample packs (which they have no end of pro user testimonials for). After saying it was going to end on June 30th, they extended it to July 31. I've had my eye on Symphonic Orchestra Gold Complete + Stormdrum 2, it might be a nice way to get a orchestra in a box + epic movie percussion at a reasonable price.
Arturia CS80V,
their virtual reproduction of the famed Yamaha CS-80 whose analogue lushness melted all over Vangelis' Blade Runner soundtrack (among others), has dropped to $80 at audioMIDI.com. "Offer only valid until 7/15/09 or while supplies last." I thought this was $100 in days previous (which is special pricing itself for Arturia's 10th anniversary), it's still being listed for $100 at other places, and it seems like the only synth from their collection at that price.
as shared previously. This is getting BIG BUZZ! Heck, as Peter Kirn points out (I adore his prolific multimedia extravaganzas), that's been the normal price for Reaktor 5 alone, AND you get 10 more virtual instruments for the same price.
One more tip: look for pro audio stores on eBay which accept your best offer.
They should obviously have sterling reputations, too. Two examples to allow best offer on many items are ks123 and dutchmuzik. While cashback currently stands at 8%, offer a lower-than-your-intended-target offer, go through a few rounds of bargaining, and you may come out much better.
KOMPLETE 5 is the high-end collection of 11 ground-breaking synthesizers, samplers, emulations, and a virtual guitar studio. Perfect for both studio and stage - this is the industry-standard bundle for serious musicians, producers and sound designers. KOMPLETE 5's instruments can be heard on platinum-selling records and in underground clubs alike, all over the world.
Among many in the collection, I'm a big fan of the Akoustik piano samples, as demonstrated in this video I did awhile ago:
You can spend ages on one of the instruments, like the Pro-53 soft synth which is one of the oldest in the batch:
At first I only saw the price drop at Guitar Center, but other stores like audioMIDI and zZounds have followed suit, so it looks like this deal is spreading. I haven't ordered from most of these places but consider this: Komplete 5's non-marked-up price is something like $1,000, and I got the Kore 2 + Komplete 5 bundle last year for about $650 from Nova Musik with eBay-Live (now Bing) cashback. Worth looking on eBay if anyone's offering this for $399 with free shipping.
(Yeah, Komplete 5's box is heavy because it consists of 12 DVDs and comes with lots of heavy reading. Dandy to curl up with while you dream of oscillators.)
So if you don't care about Kore, which makes it really easy to browse through those 1,000s of sounds but has some instability (odd crashing with my Ableton Live when the Kore controller is turned on it seems… needs more diagnosin') problems, and have been looking to save big on over a decade's worth of leading software instruments, this may be your ticket. Especially if you were looking to get a couple of NI software instruments in the first place, heck, this is likely the same price. And makes me wish there was a pro audio equivalent to Slickdeals.net!
I wonder if this price plunge comes in time for Komplete 6 — I took a survey on May 12 on that very topic.
Preemptive: I'm not officially sponsored by Native Instruments, all the above is because I love sharing great deals and love making music. However, support is a notion I wouldn't be opposed to.
