What it is, maninja
In accordance with the elders of the dojo, I have been instructed to inform you that the virtual instrument suite from Native Instruments, Kore Player, is available for download from their site. I stumbled across this fact only after experiencing the Rhythmic Oscillations from the other day, rejoicing in its ability to fucks with VSTs.
Anyway, turns out that Kore player can be used as a kind of meta-suite, allowing you to use mutliple NI instruments within a single, epic virtual instrument. The download comes with 300mb of sounds, including some pretty decent drum samples. Of course, the r0b0tninja normally chooses to telekinetically manifest his own samples, the implications of which I will leave for you to work out. Or see for yourself on the sample jam.
The Robotninja, master of magic skills and illusions
enemies crumble in fear and confusion
For all my ninjammy-jams,
Apple’s got an interesting little app called Oscillating Rhythms for you, available for free from their site. This little jam caught my attention, not so much for the four track midi sequencer, or the simple eq and filter effects. No, what interests the robotninja about this, is that you can use any number of different Audio Units and VSTs within its form. We robotninjas tend to rely heavily on plug-ins, and for such as small program to play host for them brings up a number of interesting possibilities.
We also like to sample randomness, here at robotninja hq. And, when I’m not deep within the heart of a black-hole, retrieving some ancient artifact that when gazed upon would result in the instantaneous face-melting of a lesser being, I enjoy stringing together randomly generated midi data and adding the resulting sound file to my collection of skulls and spines, to use at my leisure and purposes beyond.
One thing to watch out for, is that the default file format is m4a. Kind of weak, if you ask me, but nothing that can’t be fixed with the proper techniques.
Life is hard, but the robotninja is much harder.
In a landmark event for all robot-kind, the Detroit symphony orchestra will be conducted by a soulless, artificial man-bot, powered in part by the dreams of various foppish, 17th century classical composers. Â This will be the first time in history that a robot will tell people what to do, as opposed to the other way around (although technically, it’s also programmed by people). Â Kind of an empty gesture to me, but to the Japanese, probably one so full of metaphorical weight and majesty that I refuse to get into right now.
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The Robotninja weeps acid tears
Oh my robot jesus,
The madmen at Celemony have brought the state of digital audio manipulation to a new frontier–pitch correction within complex harmonic instruments like guitars and pianos. For the last few years, lesser vocal ninja-musicians have been able to supplement their lack of skill and grace with digital manipulation. These effects can be heard in anything by robot singer T-pain or Cher’s “life after love”. Now the recordings of the amateur can be re-tooled towards perfect correctitude, the notes refined by some monstrous computational beast.
The Robotninja cringes at the music of tommorrow.
From the Ninjas over at Ueberschall
Cometh the fundamental dub library for all to enjoy and destroy. I have no doubts that while this sample library offers “authentic” dub sounds, motifs and effects, it will inevitably be twisted in the scurvy ridden hands of the pirate-elite, the controllers of the world bank and the svengali of the Illuminati. From the site:
Reggae Fundamentals is a specialized sample compilation which includes 33 construction kits and 12 Drumkits sheltered in 2 GB of ready to work content offering authoritative most current Reggae environments. The kits are jam packed with everything you need to give your production the finishing touch: bass-, synth-, drum- and padlines also vocals, FX and atmospheres.
I dunno–I feel like dub is such a sample-reliant form that any ninja with a dub collection (which is to say, any ninja) could produce similar results in his modest, ninja laboratory (or ninjatory, if you will).
Robotninja dubulations soothe the savage beast
My ninjams and ninjammys
Little did you know that Yamaha came to NYC this past week, showing off their fantastic product Tenori on. For the uninitiated, Tenori on is a visual midi sequencer, with built in drum sounds and synth hits, allowing the user to manipulate music in a logical, visual touch interface. I salivate with the knowledge of its hidden potentials…
As it was foretold in the book of life, whence the Robotninja dual-wields next-gen midi interfaces, the seventh seal of heaven shalt be broken, crumbling the kingdoms of man before him.
Ebay is the true R0b0tninja’s secret weapon. For 10 dorra, I procured a stack of 7 inch reels of random classical musics. The akai reel-to-reel deck that I gots makes the sound real warm. Peep the new shit by the good people over at R0b0tr0n and the sample page for some of its ancient goodness.
the R0b0tninja constructs magnetic tape bombs for that ass.
as cosmic decks like silver surfer. We ride them over solar storms and crest over magnetic waves. We dive into depths of 8-bit acceleration and distorted reality, deriving spirits from space-time functions. Higher mathematics overlap the creative will, as even the lowliest, cheapest sound can be forged into ass-blasting awesomeness. Recognize the realness.
For those times and places, myninjas, in which a synth could potentially save or destroy lives, now you can just bust this badboy out. If it’s as intuitive as it seems, this could turn the tide of any major conflict or ninja-police action you find yourself engaged in.
As always, the Robotninja chooses to dual-wield.
Most highest of all Ninja,First of all, let me start by saying that ninjas have to stay sharp—refining awareness through substance abuse is a sacred part of our cultural heritage, behavior that should never be emulated by lesser beings.
That having been said, abusing Absynth 4 grants the “user” various mystical powers, including but not limited to propagating new vibrations into the physical universe. Allow me to explain.
One new feature of this program is the Wave Morphing capability, which allows users to fuse two distinct waveforms together. This provides greater variety in initial sounds generated and provides more depth for the process of sound wave shaping.
The Sync Granular Mode modulator also adds a new dimension to your audio shaping, allowing you to use algorithms that mimic strumming or blowing through tubes to your sounds. Personally, I find its delivery a little too robotic to be considered life-like, but in terms of pure sound creation, this brings yet another palette of organic flavor to your attack and decay possibilities. Another new feature is the Audio Mod oscillator, which allows the use of outside audio signals as the modulation source, letting you use Absynth’s other sound shaping abilities as a brolic effects processor.
Underneath Absynth’s straightforward (if stylized) interface, lies an ocean of possible constructions. Even after getting past the initial, additive synth layer (where the user builds the raw sound wave), effects available on the back-end add yet another level of sonic manipulation to you. The pipe delay, which basically mimics the echo effects you experience in a tunnel, allows you to change the virtual source’s distance, decay, and spatial attributes with ease.
Absynth has true surround sound capability, allowing you to not only alter the position and number of your sound sources (8), but also have them rotate around your auditory self. Your R0b0tninja is tempted to buy some surround sound headphones, just to better enjoy what is already a dizzying experience.
But lets get down to basics, so you get a better understanding of this drug once before you get to drinking. The boxes you see in the picture above each correspond to an oscillator, a modulator, or a filter (top three rows). As you can see, the lines only converge when they reach the last row, which houses another modulator, filter, ending with an independent effects processor (I say independent, because the surround sound, pipe, and other effects come later on in the chain).
Unless you are well-versed with the synthesizer universe, let me suggest that you start by simply going to the instrument browser. The encyclopedic library of patches is effortlessly accessible, broken down into instrument type and sound quality. Take a minute and compare how the different sounds are constructed. Available to you is a vibrant and powerful sonic generator, complete with wave and envelope drawing capabilities. Even the R0b0tninja’s mightiest words can only describe absynth’s effects—until you can see the glowing green ninja-goblins yourself, they will remain encased in your subconscious, leaving you incapable of fully appreciating how vivid this synth’s sounds can become.
yours.truly
R0b0tninja
