Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Mellow and Lo Fi

These are the sounds I love to make... turn things choppy & 'dirty'-- toss in a mellotron string-orchestra to make the tune retro...

Following are two of my favorite VST programs-- one, an effect called 'Lo Fi Plus' by Subtek, the other a sample based mellotron emulator by Batsounds called the "Mellowsound"...

The Subtek "Lofi PLUS"
The Batsounds "Mellowsound"


These are VST programs & will require some kind of VST host to be used.


Both of these, being such simple programs, were freeware-- free for the taking on various websites. Neither of them is available any more-- the subtek website & the batsounds website both appear to be gone... I assume they've gone out of business.

If I am wrong, please let me know.. if you are the creator of either of these programs, and you don't wish me to be sharing them. Please let me know, and I'll remove the link.

BUT-- these were given away free for years on the KVRaudio site, as well as on the sites of the guys who created them.... so I really don't think they should mind these VST's still being available free. At least, I hope not.

The lofi PLUS has some amazing qualities to it-- Not sure how to describe it; except that it adds noise and reverb, but mixes them in a very unusual way... it can take a really clean tone, and make it sound distorted or old, or-- my favorite thing---create a very weird ringing 'harmonic' effect. It does some cool nastiness to a crappy-sounding 8 bit mono drum-machine sample! Makes it sound even crappier... but in a GOOD way!

The "mellowsound" is just a sample based synthesizer, utilizing (I think) genuine samples to recreate the sound of that great instrument of the psychedelic 1960' s-- the MELLOTRON! (Which was just a sampler, itself, really...) -- Sadly, it doesn't have the FLUTE, that great Strawberry-fields mellow flutey intro, sob....

Anyway... Got sick of not having these plug-ins on my new PC, so I scoured the web until I found them-- and I never want to do without them again, so here they are on my blog, hopefully to be freeware forever. Get 'em while you can.

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Sunday, April 20, 2008

This is disappointing...

47%

Saturday, April 05, 2008

Re-Entry Of The Sonik

Are You STILL One Of The Frightened?

I cannot tell ya the joy I felt, some years ago... when I was listening to an out of print album,... a share I'd gotten hold of, of the album 'Electronic Music' by the Elektrosonics, and realized why it sounded so familiar.

It was none other than the backing music for Tales Of The Frightened; narrated by Boris Karloff

In fact, I don't have to tell ya... here's the original blog entry where I previously mentioned it! I just noticed, my own share of the re-edited 'Tales Of The Frightened' soundtrack is still available at the old 'R-share', grab it while ya can.

So why am I bringing this up now?

Simple. I've just happened upon this blog entry at a blog called "Mutant Sounds"; guess what? Has the follow-up album by Tom Dissevelt-- original Elektrosonic founder, I suppose... called "Fantasy In Orbit".

..and let me tell ya, a lot of these songs are very similar in style, and very reminiscent of the 'second Moon' -- so much so I don't hesitate to recommend it. Thanks to Mutant Sounds for finding this for us all!