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.

Not a lot to say on this one, some free drums from trauhmadrums.com and I like them

Peep this quick video and go download them, he’s cool peeps and didn’t know I was doin this video but I love to show love to the smaller developers and he has some create drums.

check it out

download at http://www.traumahdrums.com./

lemme know what you think.

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….

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?

I’m a hardware guy at heart…

It took me many years to move over to software.

Reason being, most of it just didn’t “flow” like I wanted.

The instruments and plugins have been high quality for a while, but I hadn’t found a sequencer good enuff to replace my mpc.

An environment to bring all my production together in a way that works for me.

My boy Pierre had been using ableton for years, and kept telling me about it, but I never got down.

Until I actually tried it, and he showed me the layout…then it made sense.

This video shows how I understand ableton as a user raised on and comfortable with hardware.

I truly feel that when you see this, if you’re a hardware dude…you’ll be like me and feel ableton is the only daw that works how you think.

let me know what you think, and let me know if you have any questions.

No this isn’t the only way to use ableton, it’s the way that makes the most sense to me…and when I share it with others like me, the hardware dudes…they finally “get it”.

So let me know what you think.