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I’ve been using the free Kore Player since it was introduced in the spring of 2008. I have started a few projects over that time by just flipping through the sounds looking for inspiration, and Native Instruments has been pretty decent about releasing free soundpacks, so now I have a few hundred to choose from. Sound quality and variety are good, and you can’t really beat the price. The latest release, Holiday Selection 2009, has some very interesting rich, textural and ambient sounds. Not all the sounds are great; the Hammond stands out to me in a “not sure why they included it” way; it doesn’t have a Leslie simulator, which makes it kind of pointless. Likewise I’m not sure I see the point of a couple of heavily processed sounds from the Sax & Brass package. Realistic sounding sax and brass with articulations are hard to come by, but neither of the sounds included in this set fall into that category.

Having said that, there’s a lot of interesting and thoughtful sound design in this compilation. This is definitely not a GM soundset. There are plenty of unique evolving sounds, and a decent complement of vintage-style reproductions. Even the Urban Arsenal shows remarkable depth and grit – and I tend to avoid self-styled “hip-hop” collections as they are often derivative and predictable.

Obviously Kore Player is a sales tool, but as bait it’s mighty tasty. You get a free instrument with a bunch of cool sounds and the expected number of throwaways – and that’s all fair enough, sound choice is subjective. Then you will bump your head against the instrument’s built-in limitations, which may frustrate you enough to convince you to buy at the full Kore 2 software package or one of the softsynths whose sound engines are represented therein.

The main limitation is that you can only tweak those parameters that the sound designers have made available. If you want to mess with the filter and that doesn’t happen to be assigned to one of the knobs you’re SOL – this as I understand it is the nature of Kore. Likewise if you want to hear it arpeggiated but the Kore arp isn’t activated for that particular patch, you are (literally) left to your own devices. The eight variations that most of the sounds have are based on tweaks of these parameters, so some variations provide less variety than you might want.

I also have some complaints about the interface, due in part to the fact that it doesn’t play nice with my controller (Motif ES 7). Load time for patches is unreasonably long on my MacBook Pro dual 2.4 Intel. You have to double-click (or cursor then hit enter) to load a sound and then wait, which makes auditioning sounds a bit of a chore. You can rate sounds, which is handy, but you can’t edit the list or create your own user patch library.

So to sum up, it’s a great deal and a useful instrument for people with zero budget, or anyone who could use a few hundred more quality sounds at their disposal (and who couldn’t); ultimately unsatisfying for tweakers and sound designers (I am a Reaktor user with a lot of vintage hardware in my past), but a good way to test-drive the sound of the synths on which the patches were originally created. Personally I’m not sure who the market is for Kore; maybe the same sort of people who bought ROMplers back in hardware days. But I wish that something like the very interesting “Sonic Fiction” soundset was available for Kontakt or Absynth rather than just Kore, because I’ve got the Komplete 6 upgrade on order and I’d love to get under the hood of some of those sounds and mess around with them.

dear shoppers drug mart down the street: paypal me ten dollars and i will rewrite your sign for you

I haven’t uploaded any original music in a while so I thought I’d just toss this one up here for you to listen to and comment on. Recent developments in OS X and Logic Studio necessitated my upgrading my hardware to an Intel system, and to make a long and somewhat geeky story short I’m now running Logic Studio (Logic 8 for the moment), Reason 4, and a complement of Universal Audio plugins off of a MacBook Pro with a UAD-2 Solo/Laptop card jammed into it.

This is the sound of me putting the new system through its paces, and pounding away at the Wurlitzer, which is a great way to relieve stress if you haven’t tried it.

The Reacquaintance

I reserve the right to remix and re-upload this recording tomorrow, and probably several times on the weekend.

Heist (2001) is a daunting subject for analysis, as is its writer and director David Mamet. It is an example of what I call “semantic screenwriting,” in that it demonstrates that you can put pretty much any nonsensical line into Gene Hackman’s mouth and tell him to spit it back out as if it is the cleverest thing anyone in the room has heard all day, and people will likely assume that it is in fact a juicy bon mot that they just didn’t get.

This kind of writing makes for very pithy quotes, but take it from someone whose favourite pastime is coming up with his own pithy things to say and then saying them to real live people. My experience in this regard, in particular my familiarity with l’esprit de l’escalier, means that the disbelief I must suspend while watching Mamet is doubly heavy. Firstly, no one talks like that, at least not in real time. Secondly, if people did talk like that, the people they were talking to wouldn’t just nod appreciatively. They’d say, “What are you talking about? That makes no sense.”

That the movie works on this semantic level says a lot about Hackman’s talent (and to a lesser degree that of his co-stars Delroy Lindo, Danny DeVito and perennial Mamet favourite and sometime magician Ricky Jay) and Mamet’s audacity, but little else. And it has been a while since I saw the movie, but I recall Mamet also devotes a lot of screen time to characters discussing how hot the Hackman character’s wife is, and if you know as I think most of us do that the actor playing that part is Mamet’s wife Rebecca Pidgeon, those frequent departures tend to grate on the ear after a while. The fact that Pidgeon’s wooden acting makes your average cigar store Indian look like Alan Arkin doesn’t help matters either.

There is however one real gem in there among the head-scratching non sequiturs – e.g. “Everyone wants money… that’s why they call it money” and “My man is so cool, sheep count him” – and I think it must give fiction writers pause, wondering whether Mamet is offering us a glimpse into his own thought processes. Hackman’s character, Joe, is refuting the D.A.’s assessment of him as a “pretty smart fella.”

JOE: Ah, not that smart.
D.A.: If you’re not that smart, how’d you figure it out?
JOE: I tried to imagine a fella smarter than myself. Then I tried to think, “what would he do?”*

My only support for this argument is that I never gave it so much thought as when I began writing fiction myself, and had to come up with the name of a character whose parents are wildly intelligent and creative people (I have yet to come up with one). The problem will worsen when it comes time to put words in all their mouths. I’ll be in Joe’s position, trying to think of what people who are smarter than I would do.

While I’m at it, I’ll try to think of what kind of things people with really interesting lives might get up to, and what kind of things happen to people who experience awe-inspiring, life-altering events.

Wish me luck.

*This is very reminiscent of another famous Mamet tautology. I have yet to track down an interview in which this exchange actually occurs, but in his book Writing in Restaurants he claims, “People always ask me where I get my ideas. I always tell them that I think of them.”

Yesterday I created “A fairly difficult synth quiz” on Facebook and a number of folks have already been brave enough to test their knowledge of synth geekery with it. To be fair, the quiz is actually quite tough. I had some questions in mind when I wrote it, and upon researching to verify my memory I found that in two cases I didn’t know the correct answer myself. So I thought I would post the answers with some additional info, because I think some of the stories behind the questions are pretty interesting. Also, if you looked at any of the questions and thought “That’s ridiculous, no one would know that,” I will also come clean on why some of the questions are as difficult as they are, and point out at least one question that really isn’t fair at all.

If you’ve done the quiz, read on after the break. If you haven’t, and you have a Facebook account, you can take the quiz here.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Steve of the Web Podcast is back! Subscribe on iTunes or download the latest episode at steveoftheweb.com/podcast. Leave your comments on Episode 03 here. And as promised, further information on vermouth here, and you can learn more about Metasonix stuff here.

I was recently asked to lift Deee-Lite(sic)’s ‘90 dance club hit Groove is in the Heart (long story) and shortly thereafter to swallow the factoid that the “I” sample under the line “I couldn’t ask for another” was from the Green Acres theme song. Unable to substantiate this through text-based searches, I discounted this claim as a barge of lard. But then, through a toxic combination of curiosity and abject boredom, I decided to try and dig up the original music, and to my mild surprise (as good as it gets, sorry) I discovered that this was, in fact, the case – the sample is pitched down a little (full tone? can’t be arsed to check). So, for the benefit of the internet, I hereby declare as FACT: Eva Gabor is a backup singer on Groove is in the Heart. So, that just goes to show… something. Who cares, really. Sample below. Feel free to go and start your own dance-funk cover band. In another city.

eva-i.wav

I have no sympathy for Money Mart and their ilk, so I quite enjoyed this recent Star article and the Google Ad Fail that followed (click for full size image).

5. National holidays marred by injuries resulting from celebratory gunfire

4. Police academy successfully besieged by terrorists

3. The druglords who convinced your police force to leave town are routed by your army, whose troops also sell drugs

2. Your president appears at public events with a parrot on his shoulder

1. Your flag has an automatic weapon on it

If offered, do not accept a position writing for Google.

During a subsequent presentation, [Marissa Mayer, VP  of Search Product and User Experience at Google]  is unimpressed by  possible language for a Google Health page that would allow users to share medical information.

“I don’t like the words ‘invite’ and ‘view,’” she says. “Those two words are recreational. It feels too informal and lighthearted.”

“We used the word ‘invite’ because it’s an action word, so users know they have to do something,” a young product manager responds.

Ms. Mayer rolls her eyes. “It’s not a party,” she says.

Putting a Bolder Face on Google, New York Times, February 28 2009