Yo, yall know I’m a huge fan of Maschine…but you also know I’ve recently become a huge fan of BPM as well.

I love them both for different reasons.

The hands on workflow of Maschine is un-matched.

And I love how it handles sampling, editing samples, chopping, etc.

But I also love the BPM sound engine, fx, and expandability with Motu/UVI sounds.

Luckily there are ways to use the best of both in a quick and efficient workflow.

I will be using Maschine for what it does best, namely sampling, sample editing, and holding the hundreds of kits I already made in it!

And I will continue to use BPM as a workstation with the various expansions and instruments available from UVI and Motu.

These two products don’t have to be against each other, and in fact, they work very well together.

I have the Maschine controller mapped to BPM so it can be more hands on (though still not as fluid as Maschine with it’s own controller)

In this video I had started a drumloop in Maschine, but couldn’t find the sound I wanted to lay over it, this prompted me to explore dragging audio into BPM, since I knew the sound I wanted was available in one of it’s many expansions.

While so many people are trying to figure out which one is better, I’m busy figuring out how to use them together!

Let me know what you think

Back with another soundhound, today we checking out some orchestra samples.

This is the first pack I’ve reviewed from Diginoiz, but I’m not new to them, they are a spinn-off label of fatloud, run by one of the producers for fatloud.

So though this is the first official Diginoiz review, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard form this producer.

I decided to check out Urban Avenue…..

So what is Urban Avenue?

It’s basically a collection of diverse orchestra loops geared specifically towards raw/urban music.

Not just strings, it includes horns, flutes, strings, etc…

all are played in various keys, tempos, and melodies..

very useful in urban music production.

These aren’t construction kits ( you know I like that!)

It’s just a big’ole folder of urban styled orchestra riffs and loops.

Quick Specs

• content: 100 24 bit loops
• format: wav, acid, aiff, apple, rex2, refill
• price: $30

How do they sound?

The first thing I noticed about these loops is that most of them have a dark, street vibe to them.

This is in line with the title as well as the description on the website.

What you may not realize from the title, is that it’s a pretty diverse collection, not just strings.  There’s horns, xylophones, flutes, and I even thought I heard some piano in there.

Basically it covers various instruments you would find in an orchestra, and gives you a urban slant to it.

The production itself is on point, and it doesn’t get repetitive. That is one thing I’ve always like about Fatloud, and I’m glad to see they continued it in the Diginoiz label.

Where most companies will give you thousands of loops that sound pretty identical, this collection gives you 100 very diverse loops, the styles, the sounds, the processing, everything about them keeps it diverse and thus fresh to use in your music.

Some stuff is slow and melodic, others are big and powerful, while some yet remain small and simple.

Overall you can really tell they take their time to make the most unique collections possible, by giving you as many styles of playing and production they can in one collection.

What’s the bottom line?

The bottom line is that I expect to see great things from the Diginoiz brand, since it is from the same production house as fatloud.

This is a nice, small collection of urban orchestra loops that don’t have the cliche orchestra loop sound.

Not just strings, but including various instruments gives you a well rounded collection, and since all they do is urban/pop music, it has the styles you’d like to incorporate into your music.

Sure if you want realistic orchestra loops, that sound like an orchestral arrangement, there are other options.

But if you want some unique riffs and loops, with a dark and edgy sound, then this is something to consider.

I give it a 4 out of 5 subs, I liked it, it’s useful, so much so that I wish there were more than 100 loops

But I do see the work put into each loop, so, I’ll give them a pass.

Definitely check them out over at fatloud, and don’t forget about the summer sale going on

let me know what ya think, leave a comment below

You all know I’ve been using Maschine for a while, and one question I get quite a bit is how to lay out a song using scenes.

It’s a little different than traditional song mode in a beat machine…

where you just put a pattern in a list and tell it how many times to loop.

But once you understand it…

you’ll be making songs very quickly.

Here are some things to remember about scenes, patterns, and tracks in Maschine:

• a scene is pretty much a “snapshot” that holds the state of the current pattern for each group
• There are 8 groups, each can have 64 different patterns
• Each scene can only hold up to 8 patterns, 1 for each group
• Each pattern in a group can hold 16 tracks or “sounds”
• a scene will play as long as the longest pattern in the scene, smaller patterns will repeat to match the lenght of the longest pattern
• patterns are linked across scenes, if you change a pattern in one scene, it changes in others, it’s best to use different patterns to make changes
• renaming the scenes can help you keep track and have a nice overview of your song

I hope this helps you out, if you have any questions feel free to ask as usual. Maschine is very powerful and capable of full productions, sometimes it just takes a little help to understand the best workflow for doing so.

This is by no means the only way to use Maschine, I’ve just found that this way works for a lot of folks used to building songs with patterns, and working on sections.

With all the scenes and patterns it’s definitely very flexible for live use and performance, but that’s not something I do so I wouldn’t be the best person to show you how to set that up lol.

I get a lot of folks askin me about how to use ableton live like an mpc.

Specifically how to play your chops so they cut each other off.

I also cover how to make your own custom presets for when chopping samples.

If you want to chop and automatically add fx and such, you can do it.

Ableton is dope!

lemme know what you think, and share this!

leave me a comment.

Yep, another one, I gotta keep em coming cuz we all like new sounds right?

This one is for those that like to travel on the more laid back side of the drum beat, jazzy, chill, downtempo, ambient, smokey, lounge…whatever you wanna call it.

Let’s get into this smooth sample collection.

Is there really magic in those samples?

I took notice of SampleMagic via twitter, and their sample distribution site soundstosample.  One of my favorite types of music to make is chilled-out, smoke filled, lounge room sweetness.  When I saw their sunrise/sunset sessions series, I had to get my paws on it.

The last dope chill/downtempo cd I bought was “smoker’s delight” from equipped music, that was back in 03/04!! And yes I still use it.

So I was excited to see another sample collection with a similar direction. Even more excited when they decided to send it over for review.

What’s in the collection?

This is like a “sequel” so to speak, of their very popular “sunset sessions”, I figured I’d do a review on the newest one first, but I love things in sets so I had to get the first one and I’ll review that one at a later date

Hazy hooks, lo-fi loops and sultry sunrise sounds. The sequel to our best-selling chillout release Sunset Sessions, featuring 950+MB of: Dusty beats, lo-fi grooves and vinyl-infused breaks and fills; cinematic Rhodes, sultry-smooth piano and lazy Wurlitzer licks; sparkling guitars, driving live bass, rustic violins, shady sax and jazzy trumpet; spurious synths, re-wired percussion and misty background elecphonica; ready-mixed melodies, soundbeds and orchestral one-shots; drum one-shot library and more….

Yeah man, but what does it sound like?

FREAKIN INSANE!!!

No joke, as soon as I popped this joint open, I was inspired. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING is usable… even the drumloops, and I pretty much stay away from drumloops like the plauge. But I’d definitely use these.

The keys are smooth and silky, the bass is low and round, the guitars hit just the right spot.

Heck man, there are some dang violins in this joint and they are amazing too lol.

Sax and trumpets are here also, as well as individual drum hits, piano loops, and original music loops.

All well produced, all inspiring, all ready to go in your next laid back pot of musical gumbo.

The variety is amazing and they even include kontakt instruments for some of the sounds, so you can just load and go…I’m really starting to appreciate companies that do this more and more each day.

Bottom line man? Are these dope or what?

Uhhh yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah man! These joints are crazy insane. Now, like I said, I LOVE downtempo style samples, but all are not created equal and some just plain suck! That’s why I’ve been using one particular collection for almost 6 years!

But uhhhh, these are crazy man and I can’t wait to checkout more from them.

They get 5 out of 5 subs for this release, and I would even throw in a head unit as well as a 1200w rockford fosgate amp and maybe even an infinity component system!

They blew me away with this and it took longer to do this review than normal for the simple fact that I kept getting inspired to just play with the dang samples!

just go over to samplemagic or soundstosample and check it out.

Oh yeah and because they are soooooooooo awesome, they have a page full of free teaser samples. So you can step your game up with a nice buffet of sound goodness. http://www.soundstosample.com/freeSamples

so let me know what ya think, leave me a comment below….

Once again we are back with some more samples for ya.

This time, I’m checking out a company that I’ve been a customer of for a while. I was a customer when they first started selling samples on eBay and now they’ve turned into one of the premiere sample providers online today.

Motion Samples provides high quality drums, loops, riffs, and loops for urban, hip hop, pop, trance, electro and even tv/film.

I have stuff in my collection I constantly go to from them, stuff you can’t even get anymore lol…the classics.

But today, we are checking out one of their top selling libraries…. they sent over Big Boss Sounds for me to checkout.

You wanna sound like a Boss…

Big Boss sounds is a collection of various different instruments and riffs layered, full production style, and sliced up ready to be put together.

“Make way for Big Boss Sounds comin’ at you with over 250 colossal multi-samples of stab chords, horns, orchestra hits, retro synth hooks, piano licks, dirty organs and tons more. Just arrange these sounds in your favorite sampler then trigger away to make massive dirty south melodies on the fly!”

What’s in there? I’m not a dirty south producer…

I’m not a big dirty south style of producer, but I’ve been known to throw something together that could be classified in that genre.  I was a little worried that these samples would force me to make music that isn’t really my style.

To my surprise it wasn’t full of lil john melodies and solja boy blips….this is MUSIC man.

This is definitely NOT only for dirty south, there are strings, brass, synths, organs, pianos, electric pianos, and more…and the styles that are played are ready to be chopped, sliced, and re-purposed into everything from dirty south, to club bangers, and even your next sexy rnb joint.

They are versatile…I was pleasantly surprised.

What about the sound quality?

One thing I’ve always loved about motion samples is their sound quality, bottom line, I have NEVER heard anything from them that isn’t production ready.

I’ve purchased everything from drums, to keys, to guitars, and they all sound superb.

The sound quality is where you want it to be, you KNOW I don’t play when it comes to quality

So what is the bottom line on Big Boss Sounds?

Bottom line for me is, I was expecting to have to deduct a few points for being forced to sound like lil john or solja boy…

Instead, these sounds can be used for any type of style or music, and I love not being boxed in.

I have to give this collection a 4.5 out of 5 subs…it’s that good, that versatile, and that BANGIN.

I am definitely looking forward to sharing a bit more about motion and their library with you, I’m always one that looks for

diversity, so having choices in samples, and being able to KNOW you’ll get quality for the money you spend is crazy.

Speaking of money you’ll spend

Another thing I like about motion samples is the price. This super ill collection of Big Boss Sounds is only like 20 bucks…

I don’t care who you are, 20 bucks is 20 bucks and being able to improve your sound collection for such a small amount is lovely.

Go ahead….click the banner below to go on over and get some motion samples in ya life yo

Make sure you tell me what you think, these companies read the reviews so keep the opinions coming.

If you buy something from them, let me know what you get….I can definitely recommend Big Boss Sounds… great way to spend a 20.

What you think?

So you ready for another set of samples to be reviewed?

This time I’m on some Arab music….I love ethnic samples.

Problem is, I don’t like clearing samples from records, and I don’t feel right not clearing them.

So I stay on the lookout for royalty free sample food.

Arabian Breaks, inspiration all day and all night

When I looked on the platinumloops website, I saw TONS of content.

But the new arabian breaks product looked very interesting.

The demo on the site proved they sounded pretty good, so I had to review them on the site. They kindly sent it over for review.

So what’s in the collection?

You get some loops, fully produced loops too. Not just single sitar loops, or single arabian drumloops.

These loops are full and authentic sounding, just like all those middle eastern records in your crates…only they don’t have the dust.

We can fix that with fx though

They also put various one shot samples in here.

Hits, stabs, short riffs, and single notes…so you can get your own creation even more unique.

How do they sound?

They are very good.

I really like how well produced they are, even down to the smallest detail, it’s like they came straight from the source.

The strings, the drums, the voices, all mix together perfectly to give you an authentic middle eastern flavor.

They are not distorted in any way, not overly effected, they are just right.

What’s the bottom line?

The bottom line is this is one of my favorite sample packs this year!

The variety of the various produced loops gives you tons of music to samples.

The fact they are fully produced and not just single instruments also gives you a more authentic sound.

I’m giving this collection 5/5 subs because it’s just a must have for anyone that likes to have some world sounds in their music.

Go over to platinumloops.com and checkout arabian breaks….

tell em Joe sent ya, maybe they’ll gimme some samples or something

So what do you think about these arabian sounds?

Let me know below by leaving me a comment, I want to hear your opinion.

So, I’ve been learning and playing with Maschine from Native Instruments…I must say it’s awesome.

I’m currently using the beta update so as soon as the full update is released I’ll give you my review.

But I’m still going to show you little tips, tricks, and some of the workflow.

In this video I just want to show you how easy it is to import your samples for use in maschine.

When you do it this way, you can browse through your own sounds right from the hardware controller, just like internal native instrument sounds.

This is important for me, as I use maschine without having the monitor on or the software is minimized. I do EVERYTHING from the controller.

Maschine is dope, straight up, probably my favorite released product so far this year. Serious.

What do you think?