Alex Ball

I've just passed 2,000 subs and am grateful for the support. As a little token of gratitude I've multi-sampled my TR-606 (12 round-robins) and put it into Kontakt for you all. The video is a very quick playback of it with some FX (as shown). The samples come clean and dry, so you can process them as you like. Requires Kontakt 5.7.3 to open it. Thanks again for your support, it's much appreciated. Hope you get some use out of the virtual 606. Download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/kxa6g4cpehz...

Time to announce the launch of a project I've been working on for some time; my debut album. It includes entirely re-worked, full-length versions of some of my YouTube songs, that some of you might recognise, as well as six songs that haven't been heard before. It also features the vocal, instrumental, artistic and technological takents of a dozen others who helped me bring this to life, and I'm hugely grateful to them.

This is a video I've been wanting to do for about a year as it's consistently the most requested thing I've had in emails and comments, so here it is! I've tried to make it as forensic and as in-depth as possible so that it covers everything, which means it's wound up being almost an hour long. But if you're looking for hints and tips on making realistic orchestral recordings with virtual instruments, the hour of your time should hopefully be worth it.

Hopefully it's a useful guide to synth and drum machine programming and arranging as well as mixing and mastering. All with the spirit of the John Carpenter sound.

One of my all time favourite scores (and films). I thought it would be interesting to make a video breaking down what's going on in the music, because it's very specific. Massive thanks to David Andrew Brent and Mike TC for appearing in this video.

The Oberheim DX is the little brother of the DMX and both were heavily used drum machines in the early 80s. There's quite a few DMX sample packs online but not a detailed DX one that I've seen, so I've made one myself. Enjoy! Here's the download link for all of my free sample packs: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ayahlcs78ly...

One of the most interesting stories of the synth world is that of Dave Smith and Sequential Circuits. I decided to try to tell some of it via their flagship series, from the Prophet 5 in 1978 to the Prophet X in 2018. With the help of a dozen other people who were incredibly generous and equally excited by their instruments, this film is the result: The History of the Prophet Synthesizer.

Thought it might be of use to do a video showing how to voice your everyday vanilla chords in an 80s way. It’s actually very simple, so hopefully it’s easy to grasp.

A few weeks back I did an 80s chord voicing tutorial and it was useful to a number of you. A couple of people sparked the idea of doing a different decade, so here's a 70s one. This is the kind of 10cc, Supertramp, ELO, Bee Gees, Elton John kind of vibe.

Another quick tutorial whilst my bigger projects are going on in the background. This time we're looking at a synth funk bass line with the Roland SH-101. The video covers the dorian mode, writing in phrases and programming the right kind of sound.

I've briefly got a 1978 Roland System 100m modular synthesizer in my studio, so thought I'd utilize the window of opportunity to do a little tutorial with it. This week we're looking at making analogue drum sounds from scratch. If you're experienced with modular then this is very, very basic stuff, but if not, you can experiment with these techniques with hardware or within software, so hopefully they'll give you some broad tips.

Elevator muzak; a sound we all know and love. Here's a tutorial on how to get the sound harmonically and with your arrangement.

One final tutorial to round out this batch before I take a break. This time we're having a look at two classics; the Roland TR-707 and the Roland TB-303. This video gives you the basic principles to get started. Along with the TR-727, TR-909, TR-808, SH-101 and MC-202, these machines played an integral part in dance music that emerged in the late 80s, most notably Acid and Techno.

This week I thought I'd demo three Daft Punk synth sounds / samples on original hardware. As these are all VCO-based analogue synths that are the best part of 40 years old, you'll probably find that settings vary slightly from one unit to the next. In fact, the settings vary on a daily basis on my own synths, depending upon temperature or how long they've been switched on etc.

Following my Daft Punk synth tutorial, a number of people sent me messages asking for a demonstration of Mr Oizo's "Flat Beat" which was done on a Korg MS-20 and an Akai S1000. In the video we look at the principals of setting up that sound and why I concluded that he likely created it from a composite of samples, rather than in one pass.

As requested, a follow up to my first "80s Chord Voicing Tutorial" from November last year. Hopefully it's useful.

As requested by a dozen or more people, here's the Rollin' & Scratchin' synth tutorial. Ideally you'd have a 1984 Juno-106, as it has fully implemented midi control, but I'm using the 1982 Juno-6 as that's what I have. The workaround is that I had to use the arpeggiator with external triggers for the opening bit of the video. The other part of the sound is the Boss HM-2 "Heavy Metal" pedal. I'm using an original Japanese unit, but I imagine the later Taiwanese version will be almost identical. You could also try the MT-2 "Metal Zone" pedal too.

This week more classic sounds from some classic machines as we look at the Roland-based House music of the late 80s and early 90s. It's about simple chords and melodies and bringing together the right combinations.

A quick spin through the basic principals of an analogue vocoder using a Seekers Voice Spectra. Demonstrates some modulator / carrier combinations and also some robot voice effects. We finish off with a short bit of music utilising the vocoder in context. I'm planning on doing some more advanced and experimental things with it in the future as there's a lot of scope to try things with it.

Land of the Rising Sound: A Roland Retrospective. The story of Roland is one of the most expansive and influential in the world of music technology. This feature length documentary sets out to tell it through their iconic inventions.

In 1981, John Carpenter and Alan Howarth worked on their first film score together; Escape from New York. This was the genesis of a fruitful decade of collaboration. The film has gone on to become a cult-classic, but the score has taken on a life of its own and had great influence upon many musicians. I was planning to break down how some of the cues were made and decided to try to contact Alan Howarth to ask him some questions. Amazingly, he responded and was gracious enough to be interviewed for this film. A rare treat, we hear from the horses mouth how the whole collaboration came about, how the music was composed, what equipment was used and how on earth they sync'd things up in a pre-digital world. Alan is still active and working on new scores and new technology, so we also get to hear what he's up to in 2019 and even get a peak at his current studio where some gear from Escape from New York still resides.

A bit of a different upload this week, but I think it’s good to mix things up. Whilst working on my documentary about ARP Instruments I got the opportunity to speak to David Frederick (aka Dave Fredericks) who was one of the key people who worked there from 1970 - 1976. His full role will be told in the film, but in a nutshell, David’s background was as a performer, recording artist, demonstrator and regional sales manager for the Lowrey Organ Company. When one of his friends at a music store took in a strange new invention called the "ARP 2600" in 1970, David was asked to demonstrate it. A certain Mr Pearlman turned up to see his instrument demonstrated live and was impressed enough to snap David up to join him at what was then Tonus Inc.

Over a 12-month period from August 2018 to July 2019, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to record with a large array of classic synthesizers and drum machines. The music I'd written with these instruments was combined with performance videos and documentaries that live on my YouTube channel. In the Spring of 2019, I was approached by Danish mix engineer JSN of Sonic Peak Studios who offered to remix one of these tracks. This then lead to further remixes and conversations about putting together an album.

"Electromotive is the definitive documentary charting the rise and demise of one of the world’s most influential and pioneering synth companies. It dives deep into the world of ARP and their instruments, with fascinating insights from those involved, copious amounts of previously undocumented information, and then debunks many myths. A triumph, a true labour of love and essential viewing for any synth nerd."

In this episode of Bad Gear, the show about the world's most hated audio tools, it's CROSSOVER TIME!!! We are going to talk about the Korg DDM-110 digital 80s drum machine but, even more important, we have the honor and the pleasure to welcome the one and only ALEX BALL on the Audiopilz channel.

Hi, my latest album "Tableaux" is finally here. Links below.

To answer the many questions I get about these specific modern polysynths I've decided to cover it off in a massive video. Hopefully this clears up which synth is or isn't the one for you! All sounds are presented "raw" meaning that only FX from the synths themselves were used (if they have them) and that there was no processing of the audio afterwards. What you hear is what the synths sound like.

Roland recently bundled together five of their plug-in / plug-out synthesizers into a package called the "Analogue Polysynth Collection". I thought it would be fun to take seven famous songs that used the original hardware and recreate the sounds using the equivalent software and explain how they were made. 1:36 The Human League - Dreams of Leaving 3:04 Depeche Mode - Tora Tora 4:34 Gary Numan - I Dream of Wires 7:03 Michael Jackson - Thriller 8:29 Mr Fingers - Can You Feel It 9:15 Harold Faltermeyer - Axel F 10:04 Tame Impala - Eventually

In 1963 two young men stepped into a factory next to the Keio railway line in Shinjuku, Japan. Their ambition was to make a new autorhythm machine, but over the next six decades their company would become one of the biggest players in music technology and would help define the sound of music around the world.

A video that I've been wanting to make for a long time demonstrating how to create short snippets of music that you can then sample and remix using hardware and/or software.

A detailed look at some famous Prodigy synthesizer sounds recreated with the original hardware that Liam Howlett used back in the day.

New album out now! Thank you.

A lot of people have asked for a thorough studio tour and so I finally did one! There's a LOT of info in this, so use the chapters to skip to the bits that are relevant to you. 0:00 Studio Tour Song 1:41 Computer / Cubase / Kontakt 6:03 Midi Inputs and Outputs 7:05 Audio Interface / Patch Bay 9:46 The Great Pedal Solution 18:25 Monitors / Acoustic Treatment / Cable Management 20:32 Korg Corner 31:02 303 / 8606 / 808 / 103 34:16 Ise-Nin / Prophet~10 35:40 System 100 37:44 S2400 / SP-12 / MPC-60 40:14 Guitars / Amps 46:45 Strings / Piano 49:55 System 100m - The Godular 55:24 My First Analogue Synth