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BBC news published an article with some more details on the plans of the GGF with The Pirate Bay. “We are going to set up a system where the file-sharer actually makes money,” stated Hans Pandeya, the chief executive in Global Gaming Factory X, in his exclusive interview with BBC. “One of the biggest hurdles in overcoming illegal file-sharing was that there was zero cost to the users, while legitimate sites required users to pay for content. The only way to make something more attractive than free was to pay users to share files.”

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The Pirate Bay recently announced a possible sale to Swedish company Global Gaming Factory X AB, for $7.8M (half in cash and other half in GGF stocks). The actual details behind this move are confusing to say for the least: The press releases by both parties are rather vague. I collected some information based on the press releases and inteviews together with opinions and speculations from diffent sources.

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Great news arrived about a week ago when Renoise finished it’s another development cycle. This time the release bears the version number of 2.1 and as most important feature, brings rewire support. Those who are not interested in rewire, including linux users where rewire is not available anyway, won’t be left dissapointed either: amongst other things Renoise 2.1 brings cool new live performance features, which are also extremely useful for arrangement development and idea testing. Real creativity booster in my case. Linuxers are also given JACK transport support, which replaces some (before missing) features from the Rewire support on other platforms.

So I thought to look into the software for a bit and give my opinion about it.

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Renoise 2.1 Final has just been released. For this version we have made it easier to integrate Renoise with your studio. We also made live performing a lot more interesting.

The idea behind 2.1 is that until Renoise has features like a piano-roll, an arranger and audio file streaming, you should at least be able to use them through external means. That is why we have added routing features to connect Renoise to other audio applications. With ReWire on Windows and MacOSX, and the Jack Transport protocol on Linux, you can finally combine the best things about trackers and sequencers.

Performing live with Renoise is more flexible than ever. First of all, you can keep editing a pattern while the song continues to play. That makes it possible to do some last minute changes before playback actually reaches that pattern. Secondly, you will be able to queue patterns. When playback reaches the end of the pattern, it will ignore your pre-baked sequence and go to the blinking pattern instead. It’s like going off-road: if your audience likes it, why not take the scenic route?

To top it off we threw in a couple of new devices. The ominously named Hydra Device multiplexes movements from one slider to a maximum of 9 outputs. Mythological experts know why 9 of them. The Key-Tracking Device modulates any parameter according to an incoming note pitch. Real nice for frequency dependent effects. And finally, the MIDI-Control Device is a pimped up replacement for the MIDI CC Device. You can now send and automate several non-CC parameters to MIDI Instruments, such as Pitchbend, Channel Pressure and Program Change.

More details about this release: What’s new in Renoise 2.1

Maybe you have a different DAW of choice, but you are interested in creating music from a different point of view? With ReWire and Jack Transport, Renoise excels along your other audio applications. Download a demo from our website and give it a try: Renoise Demos for Windows, MacOSX and Linux

I am going to start off with guitar practice tutorials for beginners. As experienced guitar player as I am, I can tell you lots of inside secrets in many different genres of guitar play. Let’s start off with the king of the guitar music, the Black Metal.

This guide is a step by step tutorial into the world of Black Metal guitar play and will definitely be a big eye-opener for many black metal beginners.

First step: Corpsepaint

Before you start your regular practice routine, the most important thing is to apply corpsepaint. First, start off with covering your whole face with white paint. Let it try a bit, and then draw sad face with black paint. Add some finishing touches like random lines over your face and maybe pentagram, 666 and few reversed crosses. If your corpsepaint doesn’t look like shown on figure 1.1, then smear the paint all over your face and say that you like Primitive Pagan Metal better anyway.

Fig 1.1: Correctly applied corpsepaint

Step two: Set up the sound

Pick up your guitar and connect it to amp. Turn the gain all the way up. Turn bass all the way down, treble up. Make sure it’s loud and screetching enough.

Step three: Play guitar

Strum one (or two if you are more advanced) string as fast as you can while looking grim and necro. You can change chords if you want to, as long as you don’t do them too often. For beginners, playing open string will do just fine and gives specially primitive, grim and evil sound to your music.

Additional tricks

To add more evilness into the music, scream as loud as you can with high pitched voice. This technique is known in black metal circles as “Vocals”.  If your guitar playing doesn’t sound too good, then scream louder! If your hands get tired of constant picking, take a sip of beer, scream: “SATAN, GWAARRRRRR, SATAN!” or something in that direction, then stare at the wall for few seconds with grim face, say “GWARRHH” and continue playing.

That’s it. By following these directions, you should be up on the stage in no time, and let’s not forget the crazy parties at the backstage with chicks and booze! Although, black metal people don’t get too many chicks… But they are too grim anyway to want any, there will be lots of booze though!

Hunz’s new album “thoughts that move” has just been released. Besides that it’s totally awesome, there are some notable facts to be mentioned about it.

Hey, but before continuing, why don’t you start playback on the music player on the Renoise frontpage to listen to 3 songs from the album?

Fact 1) The album was written for the RPM Challenge. Each participant gets only 28 days to write and record a full length album. Hunz managed to finish it before the deadline, which is notable in itself. But to actually deliver an album of such quality, that’s truly remarkable.Would you have been able to tell it was made in such a short period?

Fact 2) Whereas most artists tuck away their project files, Hunz decided to release them for all to see to keep the demoscene spirit alive. You can open the XRNS files with Renoise to learn ninja tracking tricks, create remixes or inspect them for inspiration.

Download “Thoughts that Move” in XRNS format:
Hunz – Thoughts that Move (XRNS files)

Official announcement with MP3 and CD:
New Album is out now, it’s free! – hunz.com.au

I have developed a word called “sub-noise” which is what I call some my creations. The ideology behind this is pretty simple, and unfortunately nothing to do with subwoofers. Basically… Take some form of harmonic noise, not pure white noise, but for example, distorted string pad synth, make it cover some stereo spectrum for coolness. Now, add another layer of bit different kind of noise, finetune it until it starts playing with the main noise. Simplest example is the phaser effect when you play same sample twice with one of them slightly detuned. But this is relatively boring, with more complex samples, stereo mangling and all other kinds of fancy stuff, you can create pretty interesting end results which build impressive soundscapes. Continue reading

Pianoteq recently announced the release of Pianoteq v.3, their cutting edge modelling piano synthesizer. Together with the new release came a Linux version. For now as a standalone application with ability to connect to JACK and ALSA midi, but VST version is also planned and probably will be released in future version.

I decided to check out the software and give my opinion about it. Continue reading

And again, I have created new blog for myself. Let’s see if that one lives longer than the other ones I have made. I guess nowadays I have more stuff to talk about aswell.

Haven’t had time to make any remixta podcasts for a while. This needs to be fixed, next podcast will be up next week, I have to find some time. Although both work and personal life are taking their toll of my time.

In other news, I am still working on a new software synthesizer VST. The soundcore is finished, filter implementation needs to be reworked, the GUI needs to be designed, and then we have the first release, expected somehwere in next month.

Hot off the press! Computer Music 138 contains an awesome review of Renoise 2.0.

The reviewer begins the article by asking, ”has v2 been worth the wait?”. As the author digs through the new features,his initial rhetorical question is put to work, concluding with the presentation of the Computer Music magazine’s coveted ‘Value’ and ‘Performance’ awards. Great!

The May 2009 issue of Computer Music is available through newsstands or by subscription.