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Send Us Your Music, Win $500 of Soniccouture Instruments

We get sent so many great tracks that use our sounds, we really wanted to have a place to keep them all together. So to kick it off, we’ve decided to have a small competition.

Now, this is not a go-and-make-a-remix-type thing or anything that requires much effort, all that is required is to submit any track you have already made (via Soundcloud) that uses a Soniccouture instrument – free instruments are fine too.

How It Works

First submit your track via the Soundcloud link on this page. All the tracks will then be displayed at the bottom of this page.

After one month, Dan & I will pick a shortlist of our favourite tracks for a public vote.The track with the most votes will win a $500 (€375) voucher to spend in the Soniccouture shop. This voucher can also be kept and used against future purchases and releases.

You will require a Soundcloud account to enter, but we figured most of you will already have one, and if you don’t, well, they’re free and handy to have.

ENTRIES HAVE NOW CLOSED, A SHORTLIST WILL APPEAR.. PRESENTLY

The Winner will be announced October 31st 2013

[soundcomp-entrees type=’soniccouture-2013′]

This algorithm simply generates a random note within an octave range, choosing from the note set or scale defined in the script.   There are five possible voices (VOICE 1 to 5), each of which can be assigned their own NOTE length, OCTave, % chance of occurrence, and VELocity.

You can see the parameters for each VOICE listed to the right of the panel:

The script is made active with the ‘Geo Generator’ button at the top left, and you can mute the input MIDI there as well if you like.  Once active, the script will start playing upon receiving a note, or else when the PLAY switch is turned on.

You can click on the little keyboard to include or exclude notes, or else choose from some PRESET scales.  There is an option for HALF TEMPO if you want to use it to generate random backdrops.  GeoGenerator will chase tempo changes if used in a sequencer.

LIVE TRANSPOSE allows you to transpose the output of the GeoGenerator with your keyboard.  If you play middle C (MIDI 60), the transpose is 0.  Above or below middle C will transpose the output.

DOWNLOAD THE SCRIPT

Requires Kontakt 5.1 or later.   GeoGenerator works best placed before any other scripts in the KSP chain.

PLAY THE SOUND OF THE NORTH POLE – BBC’S CHRIS WATSON MAKES ‘VIRTUAL INSTRUMENT’

Acclaimed nature & wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson is behind an amazing ‘virtual’ musical instrument – a piece of software that allows the user to play music created with sounds from the North Pole, the Kalahari Desert, Venezuelan swamps and more.

The ‘virtual musical instrument’ – known as Geosonics – was developed with London sound-software company Soniccouture. They first contacted Watson – known for his BAFTA award winning work on BBC’s Frozen Planet and Springwatch – in 2011, after hearing some of Chris’ recordings made using huge expanses of wire in remote parts of Australia.

James from Soniccouture says : ‘We were privileged to work with Chris because we wanted to create sounds with a very real, natural dimension to them. With Chris we had access to sounds that you literally can’t get anywhere else – he has crawled inside glaciers and fried himself in the desert for these recordings!’

VIDEO

A Short Video Of Geosonics can be seen on Youtube :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mMBOjRTTnoE

Chris Watson talks about the recordings used in Geosonics

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1jvq6Y1tT3A http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=guSu1DLC8Cw http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rrtb-N7lb5g http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=aEfATLuYpfw

As part of our upcoming Geosonics release, I spoke to Chris Watson over skype to find out some background to the many field recordings featured in the product. What unfurled was a fascinating discussion, adding more colour and depth to the recordings than I could have imagined. Tales of glaciers, baked river beds in the Kalahari, Volcanos in Iceland and of course, the very sound of the North Pole.

The Swamp Interview:

The Ice & Water Interview:

The Wires Interview:

The Wind Interview :

Since that time we have never stopped working with KSP, of course – all our instruments rely heavily on scripts to give them their function as well as their character. Aside from the instrument specific scripts used for our products, there is also Dan’s private collection of ideas & experiments – the ‘inner sanctum’ of the Scriptorium.

We had planned, at some point, to make Scriptorium II – but in all honesty Soniccouture’s production and release schedule is busy enough, and it never seems to be the right time.

So, starting next week, we will release a new script from the inner sanctum every few weeks via this blog. For free. We want to stimulate your inner sound designer; to encourage discussion and experimentation – every Scriptorium post will be an open forum for further suggestions, tips and ideas, which Dan will respond to when he can.

Additionally, to further fuel your sound design urges, we will be permanently dropping the price of the original Scriptorium product to just €29 / $39.

The first instalment from the inner sanctum will follow shortly.