A Whole Slew Of Mini Reviews...

Just some quick off-the-cuff remarks about shit I’ve picked up recently. (Today, in fact.)

Novation Launchpad: I’ve only had this for a half an hour, so I can’t really say “OMGWTF?” or anything like that. I will say that setup was easy as can be, and it Just Works. Having buttons to record and fire clips and scenes in Live makes a world of difference in the writing process. I imagine it’d be handy live, too, but obviously I haven’t played any shows in the last hour, so I couldn’t say.

Native Instruments Massive Threat: Picked this up this morning and went through all the patches. Despite the name, there are some surprisingly delicate sounds in this 200+ patch collection. I don’t get why he put BPMs in the names of some of them; they’re all host synced, so it’s kind of silly. The wobble basses are quite wobbly. The first audio demo on the NI site is fucking hilarious, too. It’s almost a parody of dubstep, it’s so wobbly. I recommend a listen even if you’re not in to that sort of thing. (I’m not.) Silly sounds that can instantly date your music aside, this is a very good sound set. The ones straight from NI are usually no joke, and this is definitely up to par. Strong “buy” recommendation at this point.

Native Instruments The Finger: This is a Reaktor patch they’ve made to work with Kore and Kore Player. If you don’t have Reaktor (I don’t) you can’t actually edit the patches, which is kind of silly. If you never paid attention when it came out, it’s essentially a set of FX patches for Kore/Kore Player that enable MIDI keyboard control of certain tempo effects. Kind of a slick idea, but I think it would benefit from being an actual VST/AU rather than a Kore patch. I’m not complaining, though. It’s cool, and has given me some ideas for an AD product, which in and of itself is worth the price of admission.

The Usual Official “Caveat Emptor”: I got The Finger and Massive Threat in an NFR trade. I’m the only blogger that seems to tell you guys this information, despite the fact that it is a law now, at least here in the US, but you always know where I stand, and I guess that’s worth something.

And finally… Eos won an Editor’s Pick award from AudioNewsRoom. Thanks to ANR for the props!