# Tooth decay open thread...

- Site: Analog Industries
- Author: Chris Randall
- Date: 2008-03-27
- URL: https://analogindustries.com/2008/03/tooth-decay-open-thread/

I spent a fair portion of the day at the dentist, and am in no mood to go traipsing about the Interwebs looking for something to amuse us all, having had my head drilled upon for quite some time.

As such, this is a topic-free open thread. What's on your mind? New music you like? Want to talk about some piece of gear I haven't mentioned? Anything goes. Anything that isn't completely and utterly retarded, anyways.

## Comments (10)

**quantize** (2008-03-27):

damnit, us utterly retarded people can never catch a break

:-(

**dm** (2008-03-27):

I just picked up a Boss RT-20, it sounds surprisingly good (weird gaudy lights aside.) I can't wait to run my Hammond through it.

I hate my teeth too, if it wern't for a root canal this year I probably could have had that Eclipse....

**stevo83** (2008-03-27):

At least you guys in the US go to a dentist...

The piece of gear that im most excited about is Kombinat. Looks like it will hopefully replace my excessive use of the Scream unit in Reason which i dont use as much anymore (due to not using Reason as much anymore). I love that effect so i imagine ill love Kombinat too.

**Chris Randall** (2008-03-27):

Well.... I wasn't familiar with Scream at all (I've avoided Reason like the plague since the day it was released...) however I went and watched a tutorial video on the Tubes since you got me curious.

Truthfully, as I said in the previous thread, they are different animals, but the net result is the same. Obviously, we don't have the "body" section in ours; I'm not a fan of speaker simulators, being of the mind that if you want the sound of something coming through a speaker, you should put a mic in front of a speaker. But that said, Kombinat does bear some resemblance to Scream in the engine choices. Ours gives you three engines, which can be applied as in a multi-band configuration, or in series (thanks, Steve!) for some truly ridiculous destruction.

So in its normal operation, Kombinat is somewhat tamer than Scream. But if you put it in to series mode, it is ridiculously more aggressive. I would _almost_ be willing to say that Kombinat is capable of distorting a signal more than just about anything out there, with quite a range of tonal possibilities. I'm not certain of that, not having tried every single distortion plugin, and I'm definitely willing to be wrong, but I think you'd be hard pressed to come up with something that can more thoroughly trash a signal than this.

All will be clear when I start putting up samples, which should be next week. We're totally finished with major coding now, and are down to the brass tacks of individual engine tuning and such.

-CR

**shamann** (2008-03-27):

"or in series (thanks, Steve!)"

Score!

On open thread topics: I, too, need to go to the dentist soon.

And I've been marvelling at the phonautogram recording the wrote about in the Times today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/arts/27soun.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

**darklordjames** (2008-03-27):

Open thread? Great! I've got a question for y'all. Let's go a little old-school here. :)

Recommend to me a tracker software for making MODs. It does need to be something that will run under Vista, under a VirtualPC session, or in a DOSbox session. This is of course something that sound in DOS programs tend to have horrible issues with.

Also, point me in the direction of any remaining life in the MOD community! I remember MODs from like 15 years ago, and I suddenly have the urge to fiddle with them. I of course have no idea where to start. :)

**shamann** (2008-03-27):

I'd recommend Milkytracker. It's a fun little FastTracker2 clone, and it'll run on almost any platform.

http://www.milkytracker.net/

**Chris Randall** (2008-03-27):

Don't know 'bout any trackers. What I _do_ know is that Jordan Rudess ad on KvR is freaking me the fuck out.

Speaking to that, our new commissioned art-ad will be running there shortly. My general concept was to break down the barriers between... cough... cough... choke. Seriously, though.

-CR

**lotlemmwax** (2008-03-27):

I'd say Renoise would be the best choice for a tracker. I think the best thing about Renoise, and probably other trackers as well, is that you can control almost everything via keyboard extremely efficiently. Once you get good and fluent with your hot keys and toggling step size and knowing what different different types rhythms look like on the grid, you can type out very intricate drum sequences even faster than you could bang it out on drum pads, and way faster than it would take to fiddle around with a mouse. When you see a seasoned tracker composer at work, he almost looks like a court reporter banging away at the keyboard.

**7point62** (2008-03-27):

"What I _do_ know is that Jordan Rudess ad on KvR is freaking me the fuck out." -CR

Word. I dun' got no Adblock at work and I'm sure that the guy at the next desk thinks it's a gay porn sidebar. If this carries on I may have to log off the internetz and actually do some work.

*shudders*