MONDAY PLUGIN

Thanks for the suggestions for this week's feature. After reviewing and a lot of research on our part, we decided to focus on a small little distortion plugin that we've had a lot of fun with. If you haven't already, KVR Audio is a great source for info on vsts, all sorts of fx and community feedback for homegrown audio products. Definitely check it out when you have time to get lost...



Groovyboy DRIVE packs quite a punch compared to a lot of the disto/drive fx out there right now. Its flexibility is amazing, as though it had twice the knobs. Reminiscent of REASON's Scream Destruction module, this is a great, cheap (it's free!) way to achieve those dirty, gritty sounds needed to spicen things up every now and then. Here is a little audio sample we made showing the dynamic changes to a simple drum beat written in Maschine.

Groovyboy DRIVE preview


As you can see in the pic and perhaps through the sample, is that it has two powerful filters available with the normal settings (Highpass, Lowpass, Notch, Band, etc). This really adds to the diverse sounds you can produce. Check back next week for some more cool shit.

What's your favorite DAW?

Just watched a half-hour clip of Dubstep's A-lister Benga, going through his process of making a beat.

He uses FL Studio (formerly known as Fruity Loops) and Logic to produce his tracks, two of today's most commonly used DAW's. But while Logic is found in most professional production studios (frequently substituted according to preference by Pro Tools and Cubase), FL Studio is often bashed by producers as a "beginner's software" that produces a complementary sound. These people are usually surprised to hear successful artists of all genres (like Boy 8-Bit, Beastie Boys, Timbaland or Benga) working with it and creating crisp results. Yes, it is a simple program and anyone who uses its on-board samples will always recognize them in other songs. But combined with a controller, synthesizer, external plugins, own samples or other DAW's, FL Studio provides limitless capabilities. It remains the most user-friendly DAW on the market, which was always FL's key to success. Anyone who has an idea, can just sit down and realize it quickly. And you don't have to be Timbaland to do it.

Personally, I love Fruity Loops and the concept behind it. But since I came across Ableton Live a while back and Native Instruments' Maschine more recently (which has a very similar software setup to FL Studio), I've just been losing touch.

What's your favorite DAW? Any tweakers out there, let us know what you think!

Watch Benga working on a beat here.

Benga - Pleasure

Everyone needs a little Maschine in their lives

This is an awesome video from the MATRIXSYNTH blog of a remix of 16bit's Chainsaw Calligraphy on Native Instruments' new Maschine controller. This thing is ILL. The guy is definitely just messing around, certainly not following any choreographed button-pushing, but it works. According to his blog post at MATRIXSYNTH, "FX on the pads and twisters, bar progress on the top 8 buttons, track section on the 8 buttons to the left of the pads."