With over 660 Midi files (over 3200 un-quantized bars of grooves), of which 17 songs and 9 additional groove variations, The Steve Ferrone midi groove library is one big library!
Who is Steve Ferrone you ask? Well, with gigs alone as a resume, how is a client list containing such groups as Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Eric Clapton, Average White Band, Johny Cash, the B-52's, and a whole host of others? Yea, I thought that would speak for itself.
“This multi-format collection includes grooves formatted for BFD2®, BFD Eco®, EZDrummer®, Superior Drummer®, Addictive Drums®, Cakewalk® Session Drummer™ as well as General MIDI Standard MIDI Files which can be used with any GM compatible drum software or hardware --- this includes drum machines and synthesizers which have drum sounds.
Platinum Samples are one of the foremost producers of drum samples in the world, with over 50 years of experience in the professional music industry. The Steve Ferrone MIDI Groove Library was recorded over a two-day session by Steve Ferrone on a Yamaha DTXtremeIII Special electronic drum set.
So, Who is Home Grown Premium Sound, and what do they do? Glad you asked me that, as there is so much to tell.
To begin, Home Grown Premium Sound makes (and sells) Refills for Reason and Record. The software Refills that they make certainly makes our looping a lot more fun, and a lot more sonically pleasurable.
Here is a common problem that we all come across. Way too often, I have written some music that I like using Reason and/or Record. The loops that I write are cool enough, but they can seem too digital, or perhaps not phat enough to jump out at the listener. The music is catchy to me, but it just does not “bounce”, or hit me like it should.
One way to address this common problem is by adding EQ's. Adding EQ's to bring up the lows, the mids, and the highs, although time consuming, works, but be careful! This solution also adds gain to these frequencies, thus taking away a big chunk of the much needed overall headroom. Using EQ's to boost frequencies will make your tracks dip into the red. Now distortion is introduced into the mix and that ruins this whole attempt of making better sounding music.
There must be a way to bring our loops, and/or entire tracks more “up front in a mix”, but without making them too hot, too distorted, or without taking up most of the much needed headroom. Well, Home Grown Premium Sound is on this, and they have a brilliant solution for this very problem!
Home Grown Premium Sound is a very freakin' exciting company because helping fix this sort of problem is their specialty! Obtaining warm, hot, and up front mixes is now a snap if you are using the LO-Fi Maniacs Refill Pack.
The LO-Fi Maniacs Refill Pack contains seven effects in all, which all help to bring your (perhaps) stale, flat loops and/or (perhaps) complete tracks to life. Once more, these tools help us by adding that certain sonic bliss to our material, but without adding to the overall gain of these tracks, leaving us a lot of headroom! Impossible? Nope, in fact, here, check it out.....
Using the great sounding filters found inside the LO-Fi Maniacs Refill Pack is easy. Hey, what could be easier than opening up and then tweaking a Combinator patch?
Note: A “Combinator patch” is simply a way to create and then save a whole assembly of Reason audio devices, like instruments and effects. Combinator patches help to make life easier because our device racks and cable routing for each instrument or instrument effect can become very confusing days after you have created it. So, one can open up all types of devices, work at routing all of the cables, tweak the knobs till it is just right, and when they are all done they can simply save it as a “Combinator patch”.
The cool part about Home Grown Premium Sound and their LO-Fi Maniacs Refill Pack is that all of the work that goes into sketching out and designing these awesome Combinator patches (and everything else from cable routing to face plate design) is all done for you, and all you need to do to obtain great sounding tracks is open any one of these great sounding products and “tweak away”.
Autographed Crybaby Wah pedals include the Eddie Van Halen signature Crybaby, Dimebag Darrell signature Crybaby, Buddy Guy signature Crybaby, Jerry Cantrell signature Crybaby, Kirk Hammett signature Crybaby, Slash signature Crybaby, Zakk Wylde signature Crybaby, and a Classic signature Crybaby autographed by Jim Dunlop himself!
Portastudio is based on – and nearly the same dimensions as – the TASCAM Porta One four-track cassette recorder that revolutionized recording in 1984. The Portastudio app records four tracks, one at a time, with VU meters and a cassette transport contributing a vintage vibe. When a production is complete, the app can mix your recording to a stereo track that appears in iTunes.
A four-position selector switch assigns which track Portastudio records to, and input trim and limiting are applied to the input before recording. Audio can be recorded form the iPad's built-in microphone or a microphone plugged into the headset jack. The iPad will record from the built-in microphone if standard headphones are plugged into the jack. Pan, level, high and low EQ are available for mixing, and mixes are saved as CD-quality WAV files inside iTunes.
Portastudio by TASCAM is available now on the iTunes App Store for $9.99:
“Guitar World Lick of the Day is a must-have app for guitar players who want to continuously improve their guitar playing skills and broaden their repertoire in a fun and engaging way. Developed by Agile Partners and Guitar World, the world’s best-selling guitar magazine, Guitar World Lick of the Day is a universal app that provides a ground-breaking approach to guitar instruction on iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. The app delivers a new and challenging lick to subscribers every day, with a one-of-a-kind feature set that enables guitar players of all skill levels to learn licks in a variety of styles.
Guitar World Lick of the Day is a free app that comes with five licks (including a lick by Zakk Wylde) so you can check out the app’s instructional content and amazing features on iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. One-, three- and six-month subscriptions can be easily purchased from within the app to receive a new and challenging lick every day, seven days a week.
If it does not, then perhaps it is time for an upgrade. Those few choice words certainly help to describe what I have recently hooked up to my computers' speaker outputs, but there are so many other words that also help to describe the KRK VXT4 Active Studio Monitor , so many in fact that I am struggling on where to even start.
Since we recording nuts opt for recording file formats and/or sample bit rates as large and as fast as our machines can accept, and it is such an important part of our music recording/tracking/mixing work flow to make sure that our creations are just perfect, shouldn't our main computer speakers be able to match these highly selected specks? We spend so much time at our computers watching movies, gaming, and listening to the beloved MP3's, why not get all that you can from the computer itself? After all, the sound is there if you only have the right speakers to push it out to our ears.
Before I even had a chance to un-box the KRK VXT4 Active Studio Monitor , I couldn't help but notice a few things about these quality speakers. Just like any other KRK product, the KRK VXT4 Active Studio Monitor w's are very, very well made! The KRK VXT4 Active Studio Monitor are rather hefty too, weighing in at about a solid 17 pounds each (in the boxes) and the KRK website weighs them in at 14 pounds (out of the box). The KRK VXT4 Active Studio Monitor white enclosures stand out against the common sea of black computer parts and computer screens, and the yellow cone of the KRK VXT4 Active Studio Monitor is striking, if not a form of modern art; to the musicians eye anyway. All of you Apple computer owners will be one step closer to an all white recording environment too. In the KRK VXT4 Active Studio Monitor box you will find a power chord, the manuals, an 1'8th inch male stereo plug “into” a pair of ¼ inch mono jacks, some screws and an Allen wrench tool. The screws and the Allen wrench tool are for a more “complete look” if you decide to remove the protective grills, or screens. Now that they are un-packed, lets hook the KRK VXT4 Active Studio Monitor up and see what happens!
But wait, what is this? Within seconds of setting the KRK VXT4 w's up, another sweet surprise “came into light” as I turned them on for the first time! That surprise is the fact that the KRK logo lights up. This is a rather nice touch, just so that we can tell (at a glance) if the KRK VXT4 w's are left on or not.
I decided to play some reference CD's through the KRK VXT4 Active Studio Monitor first, just so that I would know where they stood. The list included Supertramps' “Breakfast in America”, and right up to Rage Against the Machines' “The Battle of Los Angeles”. Not only was every nuance of the recordings illuminated, but new things were heard for the first time. I was actually hearing amp and guitar combinations that I had missed before! I found myself un able to get out of my chair, because I was wrapped in a warm blanket of amazing quality audio.
Next up, I decided to listen to some of my favorite television shows, (off of the web) through the KRK VXT4 Active Studio Monitor . This proved even more interesting, as once again some new things were brought to my ears attention for the very first time. I could here the “dead people laughing” in between the jokes, and with more clarity than I had ever known before. I could here character voices better, and with an uncanny clarity that I had not known prior. The KRK VXT4 Active Studio Monitor are (without any hesitation from me) a very worthy investment. If you spend a lot of time in front of your computer; ie watching “Last night on T.V., HULU, or YouTube videos, than you owe it to yourself, and to your ears, to get a pair of these KRK VXT4 w's speakers.
First up, on the back, the KRK VXT4 Active Studio Monitor has a “System Level Adjust” knob for evening out the two gain levels of a pair. A trio of multi position micro switches is next. The first switch is for a ground lift, the next 3 position switch manages the “clip indicator/limiter”, and the last of the three switches turns the “Auto mute” on or off.
The “Auto Mute” feature reduces power use when no signal is detected. Inputs are supplied via an XLR ¼ inch trs combo inputs. Last of all a simple on/off switch rounds out the features on the back of the KRK VXT4 Active Studio Monitor .
Overall, each KRK VXT4 Active Studio Monitor stands 10 inches tall, by 7.37 inches deep, by 7 inches wide. Each KRK VXT4 Active Studio Monitor sports a 4 inch woven Kevlar woofer and a silk dome neo tweeter. Each speaker is bi-amplified with a 30 watt (woofers) amp and a 15 watt (tweeters) amp built into the KRK VXT4 Active Studio Monitor . They sit perfectly on any desktop, and are just what the sound doctor ordered for your listening pleasure! Either go find a store that has them on display for auditioning, or else just trust me and go out and get a pair of the KRK VXT4 Active Studio Monitor today!
