Alex Ball

A complete remake of John Barry's theme to Thunderball using virtual instruments with some pointers of what's happening in the music.

A friend of mine brought over his 1983 OSCar analogue monosynth for the day. A fairly rare synth, they were used heavily by Ultravox. So, we unleashed our New Romantic side.

Picked up a talk box. A mutha funkin' talk box. Talk Box: MXR M222

I've been after a classic 70s synth for a while and kept returning to the sound of the Korg MS20. This synth has been through various versions and reissues, but this is the original from 1978 (with the type 35 filter for the nerds). I couldn't believe my luck when one came up for sale two miles away. It's a completely different sound to my 80s synths (the reason I picked one up). You can overdrive the filters incredibly easily and it has a very fuzzy sound. It's probably most famous for the main riff in Daft Punk's "Da Funk". It's also semi-modular and there's loads and loads of patching possibilities. If that wasn't enough, you can also run instruments or vocals through it and process them, although I'll get into that in another video probably, once I've learned how to harness it!

ProjectSAM asked if I wanted to give their "Swing!" and "Swing more!" libraries a spin. So I did. The libraries are a combination of standard, playable patches and pre-arranged chords, falls, effects, rhythms etc. There's loads in the two libraries, but I've used a selection of things in a musical context, as I always find that's the most useful way to judge something.

A video I've been meaning to do for a while; a quick play through of eight of the PastToFutureSamples kits. There's several more that I haven't included, but I thought these eight cover enough. These libraries have no GUI and only cost $10 - $15 each, but are some of the most usable drum libraries I own. Recorded with period equipment, they have bags of character and get you quickly to classic 50s, 60s and 70s sounds. I usually compress the drum channel with the Waves CLA-2A (as seen) so that there's around 1-3db of gain reduction. Then use Vulf Compressor on the mix bus (as seen) for some parallel compression. The trick is to not obliterate them into one plugin but to build the compression up in stages - channel / bus / mastering. You can see the headroom and dynamics displayed on the output lights in the top right quarter of the screen.

A real 808 dropped by my studio very briefly. Was amazing to try the real thing for the first time. The 808 has an interesting story and so, I set it to music.

Found an old TR-606 in the back of a music shop. So, here's a quick jam. It's like a mini version of the 808 with very reduced features. It's entirely analogue and the sounds are great, but the kick drum is no match for its older brother. But for a 10th of the price of an 808, I can't really complain! The other sounds are as seen - Juno-6 being triggered by the 606 and playing filtered noise and arpeggios, a 707 for some layering, the animal that is the Korg MS20 and a Baritone guitar with some Vox wah and Tubescreamer distortion.

I thought it would be interesting to try a totally live pass with my synths to see if I could do it. I usually multi-track things separately. How does it work? The TR-707 is the master and in addition to playing the kick drum, its trigger out is triggering the sequencer of the SH-101, which plays the bass line. The TR-606 is slaved to the TR-707 via Din Sync. It provides hats, snare, cymbals and toms. Its high tom trigger-out is triggering the step-sequencer on the JX-3P. Its low tom is triggering the arpeggio clock on the Juno-6. The MS-20 is free and not sync'd to anything so I can play melodies on the fly.

Remake of Alan Silvestri's Predator Theme using virtual instruments. Most things are demonstrated in the video, but here's the list: Strings: Spitfire Audio Chamber Strings, Albion, LA Scoring Strings, Orchestral Tools Berlin Strings EXP E. Brass: Cinebrass Pro & Core, Albion Woodwinds: Spitfire Symphonic Woodwinds and Albion Percussion: Spitfire Audio Joby Burgess Percussion, Orchestral Tools Symphonic Sphere Harp and Kontakt Factory Harp. Pianos are Kontakt and Project Sam. FX: Waves, Goodhertz, T-racks, Pasttofuture Reverb impulses

A song about the legendary Roland TB-303, performed on an original unit.

Did someone call 911?

I've been waiting to get my hands on a DigDugDIY Lofi dreams FX unit for about 2 years and finally nabbed one. Put it to use in an Arcade Game style track.

I've always loved 80s Sci-Fi soundtracks such as "Escape from New York" and "The Terminator". It's by no means a coincidence that they both share something in common; The Sequential Circuits Prophet 5. As the P5 is about as rare as a unicorn and as expensive as a decent car, I'll probably never get close to one. However, SCI's monophonic version of it, the Pro-One can still be found if you keep your eyes open. And sure enough, I managed to snag one. So, here's an original track following the spirit of those great scores. Minimal and atmospheric, my take on a spot of Carpentry.

This is the story of the Linn LM-1, the world's first ever digital drum machine. Iconic and incredibly rare, you're unlikely to ever see one (only 500 ever made). One was on sale and the owner was generous enough to let me test it and film it briefly before it went.

Past to Future samples are one of my favourite developers. They recently put out a Kontakt library made with the holy grail that is the Yamaha CS-80 (1976). It was recorded with a Lexicon 224 and baked onto a Studer A80 tape machine. It's about as authentic as you'll find. There's 12 patches all designed to capture the vibe of Vangelis and Blade Runner. They're seriously dreamy and huge, straight out of the box.

The Sequential Circuits Drumtraks is an overlooked unit, perhaps because of the Linn, Roland and Oberheim classics that came first, or perhaps because Sequential are so famous for their legendary synthesizers. Either way, it has a very punchy sound and reminds me of the DMX and LinnDrum. I was interested to see that Tame Impala had made use of one on the Currents album and combined with the "May peace prevail on earth" message on the circuit board; I thought I'd try some space pop rather than something 80s.

Whilst I was recording the Prophet T8 for the documentary I quickly put down some Jupiter 8 as it was the first time I’ve ever seen one. I brought the audio and video back and built more stuff around it and this is the result. I’m planning to do a bigger Roland thing with a more detailed look at these icons, but in the meantime, this is a first sketch; a quick trip to Jupiter.

Picked up a 303 and so had to try these two famous riffs together. It's not 100% perfect, but pretty close. Once I've nailed it exactly I'll possibly make a video tutorial on how to do those sounds. Drums - Sequential Drumtraks sequenced by the BeatStep Pro via its midi-in. Squelchy sequence - Roland TB-303 running into an Ibanez Tubescreamer. Riff - Korg MS20 mark I (with the type-35 filter) run back through its own external signal processor and with the keyboard voltage tracking the filter cut offs. The distortion is entirely from the synth, there's no extra processing. Also put in the bass quarter notes after the fact on a Fender Jazz bass.