Saturday, June 30, 2012

Greetings, peoples!

After a VERY long time of no activity here we are back again!

so recently Vendetta V has been up doing some soundtrack stuff.

When I asked him what was his favorite plugin he said 'Symphobia 2' at once without even trembling.

Check out the short thingy he threw up together the other day here: EPIC CONTENT


for more info check out the prices on Symphobia 2 in Amazon:


Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Gravity Picks

So the other day I was talking to Chris from Gravity Picks (that's a company based in California that makes hand made picks) and he kindly agreed to send me few samples. Yesterday I got my mail with the picks and I received two picks which are a fat Classic (I guess 2mm) and a, I guess, 1mm Classic XL.

Ok I'll start from the 2mm one. It's a bit smaller from what I'm used and have been using for years, by the way I use .80mm acetal picks, I also sharpen them with a file and so I'll be having some reference to this later on to form my opinion. Asides from size it's also fatter than what I'm used to. I've tried few Dunlop stubbies and while they had some sharp edge what I lacked was comfort. Now with this pick I don't have to care about comfort cause it goes between my fingers like butter: just feels great! It also plays quite smoothly however I found few things I didn't like about it: first of it's the edge, it's quite round and doesn't give me that sharp attack for speed picking and chugging and everything else, it's also quite fat and inflexible thus giving me some limitations with my dynamics, may be that's because I'm used to thinner picks with which I can get all sorts of dynamics I want. The pick is still great and I bet it'll be great for bass players or those who play with fat picks. I personally love it but it won't become my main pick replacement. 

Now the Classic XL is so far my favorite. It is standard-sized and is closer to the gauge I use. Again holding it is just a pleasure, the edges are also great and smooth. It's again hard to bend but has better dynamic response to me. Speed picking is quite good and smooth with this one. Hmm one thing it leaves me wishing for is the sharp tip which would make it to my top 1 pick. And at last but not at least, tonally I'll be comparing these two to my acetal picks. The difference is really vivid, The fat one gives you the most bassiest tone the XL one gives a nice balance of treble and bass and my acetal picks are the brightest picks from these three, they're also thinner and give a bit of a heavier chug and a nice click which makes it mmm chuggier haha. I've also noticed that XL pick has inspired me to play again (not that I'm not playing in general but I'm having a bit of a rest not stressing me at practices and whatnot for soon hitting the studio again for a newer album and now every other free second I want to go play with it). I also founds that cleans with this XL one sound somewhat better and more 'full' than my acetals. I'd say it's really Strat-friendly. Gives me that nice fat tone and spank at the same time!

I say go get one for yourself or better get two!
Here is their website! Hurry up!

 Vendetta V

Thursday, July 28, 2011

God Box

So we got these two things into my Factory! God Box Inferno and God complex Tesla edition!
First off, they were well packaged and got out of the box from this LONG trip (of thousands of miles literally) without any dents or scratches. They both look solid. well the God Complex does. The inferno one has been in fire literally so it doesn't look that solid really. looks like it's been dragged up thru the hell... well it should, cause it's smokey! ok prepared my power supply and started plugging the cables on, one of the pedals did lit up and caught me at the 'No' (in a good way). Carl had batteries included. that thing was really nice and attentive since all that power (supply) issues could totally be a bummer. of course the second one also had batteries! one thing also to say is that the legs for the pedals came on a little piece of paper not on the pedals which was a cool idea. I guess it's an idea towards those who want their pedals on a pedalboard and have to remove those legs and stick a velcro. Well, with God Box you decide if you want them for a pedalboard or no. So the inferno: this thing doesnt just look smokey but also sounds smokey! Just plug it in, put the volume to your liking and start fiddling with the Spark or Flame knobs (both are drive knobs)! it's really straight forward, choose the amount of drive you want! with my custom Fender Strat. it can sound from very bluesy to very hot kind of overdrive. With my phase cancelling positions it sounded like a tube amp even tho I plugged them to a Solid-State amp. Nothing to add, a burnt block of hi gain overdrive, simply can't wish for more. Well may be just a bit of more treble to my liking but that's easily EQable. It cleans up very well with the roll of your volume knob (only not when it's at it max ;) ), has tons of clean boost. The drive knobs do crackle when you turn them around as GOD BOX says but that's a no problem, you turn them, you set them and you're ready to take off. As i said a solid block of win. I also opened it up to take a look inside and so nice, Leah and Carl both signed on the backplate and also had the day of birth of the pedal and the number of the pedal that's been made. Mine is #3. God's number. Coincidence or...?

Now the God Complex Tesla edition. This one is a special pedal, it's the #1 Tesla edition that's been made. The very first model. The pedal has got 4 knobs out of which one is a rotary switch labeled Tone. Then there's Input Output Drive and a NPD switch. What can I say, bunch of possibilities in just one pedal, The Tone knob makes it from very low gain sounding to very woofy fuzz. tweak it a bit and you get a nasal sounding fuzz, a bit more and you get something very close to octave up. I myself liked keeping the drive and input all cranked up and going thru the tone switch. Just tweak the thing till it sounds great. I didnt get enough of it however and turned the Inferno as well which was before the Tesla one. Got some octave ups and higher gain fuzz, just to my liking!

Well this is it, 2 awesome pedals, well balanced, well built with solid knobs and switches, 9v negative center polarity to the modern standard, true bypass and really tough cases. Certainly looking for their new products!

Friday, May 13, 2011

Addictive Drums Review

so I've been messing around with AD and after awhile of fiddling i thought i'll drop a little review here. first off, i'm a DFH user, not the best sounding plugin but after the whole fiddle-session it got me doubting that statement at some point. I use DFH with some triggers. basically what i'm not quite happy with is the bass kick and the snare. may be the toms as well.  anyways i got the thing started and noticed how fast it loaded. at laest thrice faster than DFH. The first thing you see is the drumset parts and the mixer below. you got tabs: main (the drumset parts); EDIT (where you edit separate parts of the drumkit); FX (the fx tab) and Beats (midi stuff goes here). I don't really remember the names of the tabs exactly but you got the hang of it.   So one disadvantage i noticed at once was the MIDI mapping. Ouch! that thing was far from the standards like 42 - closed hihat, 46 - open hi hat, and the toms and whatnot. with DFH i could import drums from various software like GP6 and other sheet music programs and it'd play the basic stuff. then i could add the crashes, spock and whatnot. with AD you gotta spend time re arranging the beats.  after that i started tweaking with the thing and started editing the separate pieces. Snare. you can do a lot of crazy stuff, add reverb, compression, distortion, etc. stuff that is not available in DFH. so after awhile i finally got the sound i wanted. the drumkit sounded nice and quite real. wasn't satisfied with the kick. no problem, changed the kick and got something tighter. Of course i could fine tune it further with an EQ. that's great! i love the ability of editing separate pieces!  it was all going fine until i decided to put it into a mix. i loaded one of my projects and started adapting the drum's midi to AD's map. hmm well not bad but something's missing. I can't tell quite what it was but it seemed like it lost some balls. One thing that totally KILLED me was the 3 or 4 cymbals. sure you can choose from the huge list but if you cant use all (or at least more than 4) at a time then what the heck? you can't have a China with a tiny crash at the same time. no wait you can! but then you'll have to say goodbye to one of your Crashes. hmm... I originally wanted a new drumset VSTi for the ability to tweak it further and create a custom Monster kit with all the rides and crashes and cymbals i wanted. This thing gives you the ability of choosing from a BIG list but limits you with 4 (iirc) toms, a snare, bass, Hi hat, ride, crash, china/crash, one additional crash and a cowbell. a COWBELL!!?? are you kidding me? i put a metal kit, i have to decide whether i want to have a Crash, a 18" china or a 20" china not being able to choose all three at the same time and you're shoving a COWBELL which can't be changed? well it could. a black beauty.... another cowbell! mrrragh!! Didn't like it. anyways finally decided on the china vs chrash thing and hit the play button only to find that it sounded extremely dull in the mix, tried a lot of EQing and tweaking with FX and compression. sounded kind a close to nice but again something was missing. Bass wasn't bad. not as thick as i have and pretty clicky, i guess Mr. "the dude from dream theater" would be satisfied. may be me as well. snare sounded pretty well too. hi hat missed something but not a big thing. now cymbals were the problem. sounded weak and... i dont know. stuttered or something while blast beating on the kick. chinas weren't strong at all! sounded weak and dark, didn't cut the the mix at all. finally after awhile i decided to turn of the cymbals and put the DFH in there to play the cymbals only! the result was nice! Cymbals!! Finally alive! chinas! 2 chinas, a spock! crashes! I'm loving it! but then interference with AD's mapping. sure i could put two tracks: one for each. and for less complexity work on one midi track and send individual notes to the other track but this way i can't hear what note im putting unless i hit the play button. nope. not my thing!  Anyways, sooon i gotta go and thus i'll sum it all up.  Conclusion:   AD is a nice drumset, sounds quite real, has all the abilities to tweak the thing as far as one can go, gives a nice versatility... however is limited in the amount of cymbals and pieces, stock cymbals sound weak, and takes ages to get a good sound/get it sitting in a mix well. it sounded nice with DFH's cymbals but dammit you're paying that much money to keep wishing for more and use it with DFH?  DFH on the other hand is less versatile, does give you the ability to tweak the piece individually outside the VSTi, is good with mapping. snare, bass and probably toms sound "not so good"  hope i didn't leave much out, sorry if my english is bad, and i got no time left, gotta run  V

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Slate Digital FG-X

Today, I am trying out the demo for Slate Digital FG-X Virtual Mastering Processor I have downloaded from their website.
I have the plugin installed and I'm gonna use Reaper with it of course. While the reaper is loading my other plugins, I'll say that I read thru their Instructions Manual and it already sounds like it's a serious tool for audio engineers. Knowing the price, which is 299$, makes it sound like it's a very serious tool.

Hmm Reaper doesn't show up any new plugins. Also when it was turning on, I got an error message saying that I have to install an iLok system. Why? This is the demo version!!!
Oh Creep! Checked my E drive and it's full of files.. these weren't there! C++ 2008. Yeah FG-X did install it. But I still can't get it to work! Hmmm





http://www.slatedigital.com/fgx.php

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Kontakt 4 and Synthetic Drums 2

So lately I was given a new challenge: writing some electronic/techno beats. The first brand that came to my mind was Native Instruments so rushed to their website. After lurking around for an hour or so I finally found the best plugin for me. I originally wanted to go with Maschine but that's a lot of place on HDD and the price is also high compared to Synthetic Drums.

Anyways Synthetic Drums was already installed and ready to use as well as Kontakt 4. So I begun setting up my Synthetic Drums samples in Kontakt. As always I am using Reaper as a VSTi host. The Kontakt's window is qutie big for Reapers plug-in window but reaper gives you sliders. Not that comfortable but better compared to Massive which doesn't give you sliders and makes some knobs and buttons unreachable in Reaper. The documentation says that Kontakt is a powerful sampler and can host up to 64 instruments. So I started with one drumset or whatever they call in the techno world. The sounds are quite good, i doubt it'd be bad since these are actually Synthetic. It's always easier to get a good quality on virtual instruments (not VSTi) than getting a nice Piano or a real drumset VSTi .They have a lot of drumsets to offer each having bunch of clicks, bumps, crashes, fades and every other sort of noise. The drums aren't really mapped to the usual drum mapping as like 36-kick drum, 38-snare drum. 49-57-cymbals... The drumsets actually are signature drumsets and thus I think every artist wanted their own mapping. Though I also had this impression that neither of them really knew anything about real drums and drum mapping standards so they only wanted the "keys" to be more comfortable on their keyboards. So after fiddling around for another hour or so I decided my track was getting boring already (with this sort of beats you can't really put a lot of variation as with real drums which is a totally different kettle of fish. This is when you realize that real drums can be considered and actually have to be considered as musical instruments) I decided to add another drumset. The adding bit is quite easy and it game me no huge CPU load. That's quite good. What's bad is that I wanted the 1st drumset on channel 1 and the 2nd one on channel 2. So I did: found that little midi button and clicked on it. chose Group A and then channel 2. I also changed the new beat's notes to Channel two. The 2nd drumset was playing alone. I then went back to the previous bar to see how the transition goes from the first drumset to the second one and I was surprised to hear both at the same time. I changed the channel of these notes to 1 again just in case and still got the same result. Changing it to channel 3 or 4 didn't help either! So after a half an hour of anger with the "stupid VSTi" as i called it then I decided to read the documentation. Read it and it says "the little midi button." Just what I've been doing for half an hour. anyways I didn't really get to use two drumsets on one track with one plugin. What I am going to do is try and download Kore 2 from NI's website and check SD with that one. Elseway I could export the track for the first drumset as an independent wav file and then import it back on another track taking away my ability of changing notes further way thru the song.

As for the drumset sounds, I believe these are quite good. As I said, you get  a LOT of sounds and if you can get the midi thing working than you can even mix and match your favorite sounds from several drumsets! The library also comes with all the snares, cymbals, kicks, etc. organized in separate folders. Kontakt say's it allows you to make a new instrument but that, I have a feeling, is gonna be super complicated for some reason. I am looking forward for trying Kore and hopefully making my own drumset there if it has the ability.
For anybody looking for this sort of beats I'll highly recommend Synthetic Drums libraries 9of course if you can use your Kontakt)

Vendetta V

Samples coming soon

Monday, February 21, 2011

EZX Drumkit From Hell and Metalheads comparison (by V)

So the other day I found out about metalheads expansion. I'ts a signature EZX of Meshuggah's drummer Tomas Haake. It gives you 2 drumsets mixed by Daniel Bergstrand . Looked at the pictures and it looked quite promising. As a all-time EZ user [DFH being my ultimate plugin] I decided to give it a try. The first difference I noticed [other than the whole drumset] was the very quite hi-hat. "Sure, it's Meshuggah" I thought at once. The sound samples are quite good. I liked some of the cymbals but didn't really like the Hi Hat sound: didn't have that sound for hi hat work with the hi-hat pedal; the Snare drum: was too compressed and sounded unnatural to me; may be toms: same as the snare. A very cool feature that I liked and would love to have in DFH was the additional tracks in mixer. These were a click for snare and a click for bass drum. Quite the thing, specially the latter, if you are into metal drums. However one thing that Metalheads lacks at is versatility. I couldn't see it doing some groovy stuff... pretty much anything other than metal and even at metal... it wouldn't quite cover too many genres. At this point i'll try to elaborate my statement: first, you don't really get any midi banks other than 12 songs of Meshuggah, quite cool you might say but it gets boring soon enough and you don't have anything other than Meshuggah fills and riffs, this is even worse if you don't have any other banks at all; second the sound is mixed already in a very metal way and very personalized I'd say, I could feel the thing was made for the drummer first of all and then for any other users. It'd quite match a metal band with screams and stuff but I couldn't get it along with my instrumental music. Just not the thing.

Anyways this is quite a personal-preference kind of thing: what you like in a drumset might not be the same for others. I really do like the 2 chinas that DFH offers along with the spock china. 3 little splashes and the sound of the hi-hat which is really versatile. I can record a very mellow song with DFH as well as metal songs. Both might need some tweaking but to let you know how the stock settings sound like I have a video with samples in the bottom of the page. 2 things I don't like that much about DFH is that sometimes I want a better snare drum sound like in EZdrummer and the kick drum sound: it's really hard to get that rough dry clicky sound for blast beats and double pedal work. In the end I ended up recording the click from Meshuggah's drumset and putting it along with the stock kick drum of DFH getting that nice clicky sound.

Overall I still prefer DFH over Metalheads because, as I said, it is quite more versatile than Metalheads which is really limiting in the ways it can sound. In the end, the both cost 69 euros as advertised on their site but I believe you get more from DFH.
One thing that would be terrific would be the ability to mix sounds from different EZX. This is one thing that EZ lacks in order to be a great plugin. There is the Superior Drummer but I am sure I don't want the drums to take that much of space in my hard-drive. And I don't really that many drumsets, I need one and for all: you can't just record songs for one album with different drums each time, that'd get you quite far from the "album" idea.

Sound samples are recorded with very stock configuration.


http://www.toontrack.com/

Vendetta V, VMS inc.