Ok, so ever since Pianobook.co.uk was launched on the 29th of March, 2018, you’ve spent ages sampling your piano, and then more time editing the samples, then taken a photograph that you are happy with, then decided on using Decent Sampler as your sample player, then edited your ‘MyDecentSampleStuff.dspreset’ file so that it works correctly (and you’ve struggled with the instructions, read Dave Hilowitz’s 'format documentation' numerous times and you still don’t quite understand all of it, and more…). But, finally, you think that you are finally ready to submit it to pianobook.co.uk! Not quite ..read more

Publicly, as far as audio is concerned, I'm not very visible. Here are some places where you can find bits of audio that I have created: Synthesizerwriter Two singles have been uploaded via DistroKid so far (one of them very recently, so it may take a while for it to ripple through the system...) and so should be available on most popular steaming services. Searching for the name 'Synthesizerwriter' should be all that you need to do... Stry An experiment in not following the rules, which describes me quite well in some circumstances and contexts. The timing, phrasing and structure are del ..read more

I have always liked pedals. I could try to clarify but then if I was to say 'guitar pedals' then that excludes 'expression pedals' and 'wah pedals' (the first treddled foot pedal I ever bought was a Colorsound Wah Pedal), but these days many synthesists also use 'guitar pedals' (and expression pedals), but rarely wah pedals, and so just saying 'pedals' could be very confusing. Er, and then there's the word 'effects' as well to contend with... Audio effects? Guitar effects?  So, here we go again. I like effects pedals that are made for use by guitarists but can also be used for processing ..read more

For the whole month of August, I've been voted into the prestigious role of 'Samplist of the Month' for Pianobook.co.uk by the eponymous Discord community, and I wanted to mark it with something special... So on the 1st of August, I published two new sample packs of virtual instruments on Pianobook.co.uk: 'Deimos Strings', and 'Fairy Piano Extras'. The following day I published a second experimental sampled choir virtual instrument called 'Dan Time 2', but that's another story entirely. Deimos Strings Not one of the moons of Mars... Deimos Strings is string pads produced digitally, bu ..read more

I have been gradually refining my live rig, and something unexpected has started to irk me. So I made a workaround, maybe a fix, and now I'm going to share it with you. Power Switches I was going to say that everything had them, but one of the interesting features of many guitar pedals is that almost all of them do not have power switches - instead, you insert or remove the (more or less standard) barrel connector that carries the power. But apart from that, then I am very used to having to reach behind gear to access the power switch, which is usually (but not always, of course) on the right ..read more

At the low end of the guitar pedal marketplace, you have budget pedals: small, very affordable, and all very similar: fuzz, overdrive, chorus, phaser, flanger, delay, reverb... At the opposite end of the market there are what are often called the 'boutique' pedal manufacturers: sophisticated, beautifully engineered and as some marketing people like to say: 'reassuringly expensive' - but most importantly: diverse and unusual. You won't find conventional 'me too' phasers, loopers or delays here. Instead you will get informed, flexible, powerful, eclectic pedals - plus many other words associated ..read more

Loops in audio seem to confuse people, based on the questions that I get asked... The problem seems to be that people have got very used to a world in which looped audio is very common, but the way that it is produced is not very common. If you look at the humble WAV file as a multi-platform, generic way to store audio, then what it contains is just a digitised version of the audio. Playing back that file just reproduces the audio from the beginning to the end - if this was the previous century then a good analogy would be a tape recorder (or even a cassette recorder), where the audio is store ..read more

Yep, I do other things! This blog is only part of my outreach activities... Synthesizerwriter at the Suffolk Show 2022 (The badge is deliberate - the 2020 and 2021 shows didn't happen for some reason...) For the last day of May, and the first day of June, 2022 (that's the 31st of May and the 1st of June, just to be sure...), I was at the Suffolk Show, on the 'Innovation Martlesham' technology innovation stand (huge thanks to BT (the telco, not Brian Transeau)), trying to inspire young minds to take up a career in technology. My aim was to get kids to think about sound in a different w ..read more

The world on which we live is precious, unique, too often taken for granted, fragile, not loved enough, beautiful, amazing... and continually astounds me. I have always had the crazy idea that if I make a user interface that is totally obvious to me, then it must also be intuitive to everyone else as well. Sometimes (Well, my Probably M4L sequencer is a good example), I am very wrong. Actually, reset that word 'sometimes'. Just about every time I think this, it seems that I get it wrong. My user interfaces work for me, but not for everyone. For this I apologise. I'm not perfect, and neither ar ..read more

The pandemic must have been tricky for the Zoom Corporation (the web-site is at: https://zoomcorp.com/en/gb/ ), the Japanese manufacturer of a wide range of hi-tech audio devices from field recorders thru multi-track recorders to guitar multi-effects units. The world added a new verb: 'to zoom' to mean using videoconferencing, via the USA's Zoom Video Conferencing, Inc. (the web-site is at https://zoom.us ) company, and so there are now two 'Zooms': one for audio, and one for video.  In the pro-audio world, Zoom is synonymous with field recorders (alongside Tascam, another Japanese compan ..read more